Damage From Ida Could Cost Northeast Tens Of Billions Of Dollars

After Hurricane Ida’s remnants swept through the Northeast, terrorizing residents of New York, New Jersey, and other surrounding states, preliminary figures of the storm’s overall economic losses and damage could be in the tens of billions of dollars. 

Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research, told Bloomberg that Ida’s estimated economic losses and damage could amount to $50 billion to $60 billion range for the Northeast. He said this would make it the fifth costliest hurricane to hit the US, behind Katrina, Harvey, Maria, and Sandy.

Ida has killed at least 43 people in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Many of these states are still in emergencies as they assess the damage and begin clean-up efforts. 

Conveniently, President Biden blamed the destruction left behind by Ida on a “climate crisis that is here,” indicating this is “one of the greatest challenges of our time.

For the individual writing Biden’s speech to reporters yesterday, they may have forgotten that on a statistical basis, the most active period of hurricane season has arrived and will peak in by mid-month. But none of this “science” matters with the administration as they push their climate change agenda.   

The deluge of rain on Wednesday transformed some New York City streets into lakes and rivers and flooded subway stations.

BREAKING: Flooding right now in Short Hills, New Jersey. This is downtown! 😱

Gov. Murphy declares state of emergency due to tropical storm #Ida. #njwx pic.twitter.com/0EWWfqHRpZ

— Tena Ezzeddine (@TenaNYCLA) September 2, 2021

Late Wednesday night, Central Park recorded more than 3 inches of rain in one hour. To put that in perspective, that’s about seven weeks of average rainfall, NWS meteorologist Alex Lamers told Bloomberg. 

Between Sept. 1-2, the rain map shows parts of the Northeast, from Philadelphia to Trenton to New York City, saw anywhere between 7-11 inches of rain. 

What’s obvious is that current infrastructure failed across the Northeast and couldn’t handle the volume of rain in such a short period, which resulted in deadly flash flooding across multiple metros. Most of the deaths occurred with drownings inside cars. 

Liberals are seizing the moment and conveniently blaming this week’s disaster on climate change through negating, to even mention the most active period of the hurricane season is underway. 

There could be some truth to the infrastructure debate for the Northeast because it was built about a century ago.