Study: 82K Connecticut homes at risk in major hurricane

May 31--With one named storm already in the books for the 2018 hurricane season that officially starts Friday, a new report suggests that more than 82,000 Connecticut homes are at risk of significant damage from storm surge accompanying the arrival of a major hurricane, with a total exposure of $26.7 billion.

Running the length of the Eastern Seaboard, 3.9 million homes remain at risk from a hurricane packing the full strength of the 2012 storm Sandy, representing more than $1 trillion in property value. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a 70 percent chance of between five and nine hurricanes forming between June and November.

With five summers passed since Sandy's swath through 24 states, work is ongoing in waterfront Connecticut communities to rebuild and raise houses. The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates Sandy caused an estimated $50 billion in damage on its path from Florida to Maine, with the storm surge from Long Island Sound inundating many Connecticut coastal neighborhoods despite Sandy making landfall with below-hurricane grade winds.

"There are a number of misconceptions about storm surge flooding and hurricanes," said Tom Jeffery, a senior hazard scientist with CoreLogic. "One of them that stands out is that everybody initially thinks that the risk is to the beachfront homes -- and it is, there is a tremendous amount of risk to anybody right on that edge. But unfortunately in that storm surge, water is going to flow where it can go and where it's pushed to. And so you have inlets and streams where water can flow ... and those inland homes are also at risk."

In Norwalk alone, more than 40 homes have been built or approved along waterfront roadways since Sandy's devastation, according to a Hearst Connecticut Media analysis of city records, with many more having been elevated above flood stage on Harbor View and Rowayton Avenues, Shorefront Park and Shorehaven Road, and city neighborhoods in order to comply with new insurance requirements.

"Prior to ... Sandy, we only had two houses raised in a period of 30-plus years," said Frank Strauch, a site planner with the planning and zoning office of the city of Norwalk. "(Post-Sandy), I would suspect that 200 to 250 existing (homes) have been raised. With new homes included, I would bump that figure up to 350 to 400."

The CoreLogic study includes another 67,200 Connecticut homes at risk from a catastrophic hurricane with winds of at least 130 miles an hour. No storm of that magnitude has hit Connecticut in recorded history, though hurricanes Donna (1960) and Floyd (1999) made landfall in Florida and the Caribbean as category 4 hurricanes before losing strength on their way north.

The first named storm of the 2018 hurricane season, Alberto, caused about $50 million in damage according to early estimates by the Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm Karen Clark & Co., after Alberto made landfall near Panama City, Fla., as a subtropical cyclone with winds of 45 miles an hour.

In its own 2015 study on U.S. areas vulnerable to storm surge in the event of a catastrophic hurricane, Karen Clark & Co. determined the New York City region including Long Island Sound as having the third highest exposure nationally at $100 billion, behind only Tampa, Fla., and New Orleans.

While most Atlantic Basin hurricanes marching north toward New England end up staying well out to sea, the experiences of the past several years has Connecticut residents keeping a closer eye on tropical depressions and the wide range of possible tracks. On Thursday, the National Hurricane Center had no tropical depressions on its radar that could provide fuel for a storm. But to twist the maxim attributed to Mark Twain, if you are liking the weather in New England, wait a minute.

"It really doesn't matter how many storms there are -- it only matters where that one storm (is) that makes landfall in a populated area," Jeffery said. "Even a strong tropical storm or a (category 1 hurricane), because Connecticut is so densely populated and you have so much development, it almost doesn't matter where it comes ashore -- it's going to hit something that has value to it."

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