Reflecting back on the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season
The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season will forever be remembered by the people of the Caribbean. During that season, there were 13 named tropical storms, with two of these catastrophic Category 5 hurricanes – Irma and Maria. When Hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall, they caused havoc and devastation in Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Sint Maarten, the Bahamas, Saint Barthelemy, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, and also impacted the southeastern islands of the Bahamas, St. Kitts and Nevis, and the northern border of Haiti.
Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 hurricane and the most powerful on record, with maximum winds of approximately 185 miles per hour, made a direct hit on the island of Barbuda on September 6. It caused widespread and catastrophic damage throughout its long lifetime, particularly in the northeastern Caribbean and the Florida Keys. It was also the most intense hurricane to strike the continental United States since Katrina in 2005.
Hurricane Maria, also a Category 5 hurricane, is regarded as being the worst natural disaster on record to affect Dominica and Puerto Rico, and the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Hurricane Jeanne in 2004. At its peak, the hurricane caused catastrophic damage and numerous fatalities across the northeastern Caribbean, compounding recovery efforts in the areas of the Leeward Islands already struck by Hurricane Irma. (Maria was the third consecutive major hurricane to threaten the Leeward Islands in two weeks, after Irma had made landfall in several of the islands two weeks prior and Hurricane Jose passed dangerously close shortly afterward, bringing tropical storm force winds to Barbuda.) As of August 28, 2018, 3,057 people were estimated to have been killed by the hurricane: 2,975 in Puerto Rico, 65 in Dominica, five in the Dominican Republic, four in the contiguous United States, three in Haiti, two in Guadeloupe, and three in the United States Virgin Islands. Total losses from the hurricane are estimated at upwards of $91.61 billion (2017 USD), mostly in Puerto Rico, ranking it as the third-costliest tropical cyclone on record.
[UN Development; Wikipedia]
This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation, Uncategorized by Grant Montgomery.