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Hurricanes bring back “flood” of memories

As I write this column, Hurricane Rita is slamming into the Florida Keys and our U.S. Secretary of Agriculture has just released a preliminary assessment of losses to U.S. agricultural production that Hurricane Katrina caused in the mid-south and drought caused in the eastern Corn Belt. Hurricane-related losses are estimated at nearly $900 million. (USDA estimates a $1.3 price tag for production losses in Illinois, Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin due to drought.)

According to USDA, major crop production areas in the mid-south were spared the wrath of Katrina. Harvest was already completed in much of the rice, soybean and corn production regions hit by the storm. Producers of horticultural crops suffered the greatest losses. Cotton losses weigh in at 4% of production in Mississippi and Alabama. Louisiana is estimated to have lost 9% of its sugarcane production.

Livestock losses are estimated at around $30 million. On top of an estimated 10,000 head of cattle lost and millions of chickens killed, dairy producers dumped about $3 million worth of milk due to the storm.

This Hurricane financial damage estimate does not include loss of processing facilities, damaged and destroyed barns, equipment, fence, machinery, loss of electrical power, fuel shortages, and carcass disposal. Dairy farmers may suffer long term affects of lost productivity in their dairy herds due to the inability to milk cows in the wake of the storm.

It seems difficult to relate to the losses incurred in Mississippi and Louisiana, but think about this. Where were you in the summer of 1993? How was your life impacted by what www.weather.com called “the most devastating flood in recent American history?”

The Great Flood of 1993 affected the upper and middle Mississippi Valley from late June to mid-August 1993. Record flooding affected the Mississippi River and most of its tributaries from Minnesota to Missouri. At St. Louis, the river crested at 49.6 feet – over 19 feet above flood stage, and more than six feet above the old record set in 1973. The Mississippi remained over flood stage at St. Louis for over two months. Transportation and industry along the Mississippi was disrupted for months. Damages to surface and river transportation in the region were the worst ever incurred in the United States.

Over 1,000 of the 1,300 levees designed to hold back flood waters failed, though major cities along the rivers, like St. Louis, were protected from flooding by massive flood walls.

Over 70,000 people were displaced by the floods. Nearly 50,000 homes were damaged or destroyed and 52 people died. Over 12,000 square miles of productive farmland were rendered useless. The total damage estimate was between $15-20 billion.

We could do nothing but watch as my families’ corn and soybean crops in the bottoms along the Illinois River were destroyed. LP tanks, grain bins and parts of homes floated in the river water that flooded the Hillview river bottoms and area roads.

In 1993, when farmsteads, homes and agricultural production areas along the Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers were flooded out in that “100-year flood” people were told they could not re-build in the flood plain. Areas that had been farmed for many years were purchased by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service for conversion to wetlands. The ripple effect of the flood of 1993 continues today in many communities of rural Illinois.

There have been no real solid figures on what it will cost to rebuild New Orleans “bigger and better” as has been promised. The USDA estimates are only for agricultural losses. I only hope the people that decide to rebuild New Orleans will be charged with no less responsibility than those impacted by the Great Flood of 1993.