The Historic Flood of 2016: 8/8 to 8/19

All public schools in St James Parish, St John the Baptist Parish as well as St. Charles Catholic High School in St John the Baptist Parish will be closed tomorrow.

Still no word of when schools will re-open in East Baton Rouge and Ascension Parishes. Tangipahoa Parish schools will re-open next Wednesday, 8/24.

I live in Slidell and just wanted to mention that the St. Margaret Mary Men's Club from Slidell is at Immaculate Conception Church and School in Denham Springs today, cooking and distributing lunch and dinner to anyone who needs it. They also brought some relief supplies such as cleaning supplies and personal hygiene products (soap, shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, etc.).

This 2016 Great Louisiana flood is one of the most extensive floods in United States history.

I went through the last few years major floods ($1 billion+ disasters) to compare. The goal is not to say "look how much worse we have it" but to impress upon you the unusual scale of this disaster. The United States tends to have a handful of $1 billion floods a year. Here is a recent sample ...

04/2016: Houston flooding: 1000 homes and business - $1.2 billion
03/2016: Texas, Louisiana flooding: 1000 homes and business - $1.3 billion
10/2015: South Carolina - $2.0 billion (I saw a more recent $2.3 billion estimate here)
05/2015: Texas, Oklahoma - $2.5 billion
08/2014: Michigan, Maryland, New York - $1.0 billion

The closest comparison I could find in recent years to the Louisiana flood is Tropical Storm Allison which destroyed 14,000 homes in Houston and damaged another 34,000. So here is Allison added to our list.

06/2001: Tropical Storm Allison, Houston - 48,000 homes and businesses - $11.5 billion - Technically this falls under "tropical cyclone damage" and not flood disasters.

Allison is a little higher than the 40,000 home estimate initially provided by the governor which has proven to be a low number. Today (8/21) state officials are indicating 60,000 homes have been flooded and this number could rise.

The Baton Rouge Area Chamber has estimated that at least 110,000 homes could have been flooded with a potential price tag approaching $20 billion for this disaster. That 110,000 represents homes in the flood plain of this event. It is almost certain some homes escaped getting water in that estimate.

Now lets add the Louisiana flood to the list and I will use a "per home flooded" factor similar to Allison as the fact both areas are very urban. Crop loss at a level greater than would be expected in Houston MIGHT inflate this number.

08/2016: Great Louisiana flood - 60,000 - 110,000 homes and businesses - potentially $14-26 billion in damages.

Since 1980 there has been 24 floods (Katrina/Allison excluded) totaling $96.6 billion in damages. The only flood in the time frame with a price tag higher than the Allison-like low end estimate I see for this was the Great Flood of 1993 along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers which is one of the largest non-tropical cyclone flood in US history ($34.9 billion)

Even if the current 60,000 homes flooded proves to be the final number, this flood will end up with a price tag making it the second costliest non-tropical cyclone flood in the United States since 1980. Even if the low end estimates are high, we are still talking about a Top 10 flood disaster in US history.

Sources

www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events
www.theadvocate.com/louisiana_flood_2016/article_62b54a48-662a-11e6-aade-afd357ccc11f.html
weather.com/storms/severe/news/houston-flood-history-may2015-allison
www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/21/490842410/louisiana-takes-stock-of-the-damage-after-devastating-flooding

FWIW, I haven't had time to update my post in this thread but there is a potential (albeit low but based on high end BRAC estimates) this could eclipse the $30 billion mark which would cause it to threaten the 1993 Mississippi flood as the costliest flood in the US since 1980. We could be staring at a Top 3-5 river flood in US history when all is said and done.

Another quick followup ... this flood finally showed up on the billion dollar disaster list. Right now this is the costliest natural disaster in the United States this year with a price tag of $10 billion which I still think will end up being low.