Max Mayfield Exits National Hurricane Center With Final Hurricane Warning

Posted on January 4, 2007

2006 was 58-year-old National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield's last year with the National Hurricane Center. The L.A. Times reports that Mayfield has left one final very serious warning as he departs. Hurricane Katrina may have been a minor disaster compared to the big one Mayfield is worried about.

"We're eventually going to get a strong enough storm in a densely populated area to have a major disaster," he said. "I know people don't want to hear this, and I'm generally a very positive person, but we're setting ourselves up for this major disaster."
More than 1,300 deaths across the Gulf Coast were attributed to Hurricane Katrina, the worst human toll from a weather event in the United States since the 1920s.
But Mayfield warns that 10 times as many fatalities could occur in what he sees as an inevitable strike by a huge storm during the current highly active hurricane cycle, which is expected to last another 10 to 20 years.
His apocalyptic vision of thousands dead and millions homeless is a different side of the persona he established as head of the hurricane center.

Putting global warming issues aside Mayfield says poor building codes combined with rampant coastal build up of property and residents is enough to make a future hurricane disaster a certainity.

What is lacking in the United States is the political will to make and impose hard decisions on building codes and land use in the face of resistance from the influential building industry and a public still willing to gamble that the big one will never hit, he said.
"It's good for the tax base" to allow developers to put up buildings on the coastline, Mayfield said in explaining politicians' reluctance to deter housing projects that expose residents to storm risks.
"I don't want the builders to get mad at me," he said, "but the building industry strongly opposes improvement in building codes."
Consumers also have yet to demand sturdier construction, Mayfield added. A builder gets a better return on investment in upgraded carpet and appliances than for safety features above and beyond most states' minimal requirements, he said.

The big one is coming and major urban areas like Tampa Bay, Florida, Miami, Florida and Houston, Texas are not ready. What exactly would the U.S. do with hundreds of billions in damages and millions of homeless people?

HURRICANES