Heeded warnings limited Harvey death toll: experts

Hurricane and tropical storm Harvey’s death toll so far is about 70 people, who drowned in floods, got crushed by trees and died during power outages — a surprisingly low number that experts say reflects heeded warnings, swift action by first responders and volunteers, and no small amount of luck.

“It was astounding that we didn’t have a much larger loss of life,” said Phil Bedient, co-director of a Rice University effort to research severe storms and evacuations. “It is a relatively low number for as big a storm as this was.”

The system intensified from an ordinary storm to a Category 4 hurricane in just over two days before striking Texas on Aug. 25 and dropping 132 centimetres of rain while parked over the Houston area.

Authorities and experts said lessons learned from previous disasters made a major difference. Floodgates installed around hospitals kept the power on. Search-and-rescue crews raced toward the coast ahead of time. Houston leaders did not call for a mass evacuation in an area with 6.5 million people, keeping them off highways that were later underwater.

Nor did authorities mince words on social media: Houston’s police chief told people not to retreat into attics unless they could break out with an axe.

There was also luck. It helped that Harvey crashed ashore along one of the more rural stretches of the Texas coast. The storm surge reached 3.8 metres in a wildlife refuge in Aransas County, where so far the only death reported was a person killed in a fire.

“As far as we know, there were few or no storm surge fatalities,” said National Hurricane Center acting director Ed Rappaport. “That’s kind of remarkable given that it’s a Category 4 landfall.”

Harvey’s full toll won’t be realized for weeks. At least 18 people are still missing in Houston alone, and bodies are still emerging.

OTTAWA — A growing demand for building materials — as Houston looks to reconstruct in the wake of hurricane Harvey — should put pressure on the White House to solve the latest softwood lumber dispute with Canada, a senior bank economist said.

U.S. home builders already use virtually every log imported from Canada, and any increase in demand following the hurricane’s devastation will mean the U.S. looks to Canada for more wood, said Brett House, deputy chief economist at Scotiabank.

“Rebuilding Houston means they are going to have to keep buying every single log they can get their hands on from Canada and that’s really going to provide an incentive to move forward on the softwood lumber discussions in a way that’s constructive for Canada,” House said Wednesday.

With the softwood dispute pushing prices upwards, continuing the quarrel will only serve to drive up the cost of rebuilding, House said. At least 200,000 houses in the Houston area were damaged by the hurricane and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott predicts the ultimate cost will reach upwards of $150 billion US, much of which will be borne by the federal government.

The U.S. covered 70 per cent of the cost of damages from hurricane Katrina in 2005 and more than 80 per cent of the damages from hurricane Sandy in 2012. With hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas this week, additional damage costs are expected.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has accused Canada of subsidizing its industry and slapped import tariffs averaging nearly 30 per cent on Canadian softwood.