It costs a lot more than that in terms of disruption of the economies and lives. Futher when the storms pass, the bureaucrats are extremely slow to allow people back to their property.
The fact remains that they cry wolf for every hurricane when serious disasters like this are (fortunately) extremely rare events. The fact is that people get so used to hearing the same thing time and time again when there are no serious consequences that they don't pay attention to the warning when it actually means something.
The moral of the fable of the boy who cried wolf isn't hard to understand - except apparently for government bureaucrats
You know what, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. If government doesn't do the warnings and all hell breaks loose, they catch flak. Then when they do warn and little to nothing happens, you have people screaming how you disrupted their lives. NOBODY can predict what nature will ulitimately do. If you choose to live an area that experiences these powerful storms, you damn well better be prepared to run for your life when the government tells you to get the hell out of there!