As I said...I currently work for a 3 star. My job is DSCA. FEMA gives us mission assignments and we do it. Part of the job is doing the EIWG...environmental impacts working group. Part of this group is the USACE. The government has modeling that produces such numbers and the USACE does a lot of work in that area pre-storm to let decision makers at ALL levels (local, state and fed) know what to expect: $ wise and "need" wise so they can pre-position assets if possible...and have others ready to roll afterwards.
When Katrina rolled through...I was the forecaster who modeled the surge for the USACE element at my command. Our G-2 took my surge and wind maps...gave them to USACE...and they plugged them into their formula. The did not count levies breaching in that initial makeup...but initial damage was estimated to be roughly 30 Billion. Then the levies breached and that went up A LOT.
Alright! Mayor Bloomberg shut down NYC transit 8 hours ago. What is your economic running total so far? ? ?
Understand Democrats. NEVER let a crisis go to waste. Spend more of the peoples hard earned dollars. Make them feel guilty for every thing we do here.