On September 11, 1992, Hurricane Iniki struck Kauai leaving all residents without electricity and telephone services and damaging 70% of the homes. This study examined the hypothesis that Hurricane Iniki increased the mortality of Kauai residents by comparing mortality data for the 5 years preceding Hurricane Iniki with mortality data for the 12 months immediately following. Although the overal...

The physiognomy of Caribbean dry forest is shorter, denser and contains a greater proportion of multi-stemmed trees than other neotropical dry forests. Our previous research, conducted after Hurricane Georges in 1998, has shown that dry forest trees sprout near the base following hurricane disturbance, even if the trees have not incurred structural damage. However, for these hurricane-induced s...

This study investigated pre- to post-disaster changes in happiness of 491 women affected by Hurricane Katrina, and identified factors that were associated with the survivors' happiness after the storm. Participants completed surveys approximately 1 year before and 1 and 4 years after the storm. The surveys collected information on the women's happiness, social support, household characteristics...

We find that long-period variations in tropical cyclone and hurricane frequency over the past century in the North Atlantic Ocean have occurred as three relatively stable regimes separated by sharp transitions. Each regime has seen 50% more cyclones and hurricanes than the previous regime and is associated with a distinct range of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. O...

PURPOSE Measure the frequency of physical and sexual abuse in a sample of reproductive aged women displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and compare those experiences to the year before Hurricane Katrina. METHODS Sixty-six English-speaking women aged 18-49 years residing in Louisiana Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) housing were screened for physical and sexual abuse seven to nine months a...

This study assesses the impact of imperfect sampling in the presatellite era (between 1878 and 1965) on North Atlantic hurricane activity measures and on the long-term trends in those measures. The results indicate that a substantial upward adjustment of hurricane counts may be needed prior to 1965 to account for likely ‘‘missed’’ hurricanes due to sparse density of reporting ship traffic. Afte...

This paper describes a novel method for hurricane trajectory prediction based on data mining (HTPDM) according to the hurricane’s motion characteristics. Firstly, all frequent trajectories in the historical hurricane trajectory database are mined by using association analysis technology and their corresponding association rules are generated as motion patterns. Then, the current hurricane traje...

To better understand household hurricane evacuation decisions, this paper addresses a limitation to existing hurricane evacuation modeling aspects by developing a dynamic model of hurricane evacuation behavior. A household’s evacuation decision is framed as an optimal stopping problem where every potential evacuation time period prior to the actual hurricane landfall, the household’s optimal ch...

INTRODUCTION Millions of vulnerable, elderly individuals live in coastal areas susceptible to hurricanes and are at risk for adverse health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to determine the status of preparedness for and possible health consequences of a hurricane on a vulnerable, but experienced, elderly population. PROBLEM Preparedness guidelines have been published, but it is unclea...

SENKBEIL, J.C. and SHERIDAN, S.C., 2006. A postlandfall hurricane classification system for the United States. Journal of Coastal Research, 22(5), 1025–1034. West Palm Beach (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The Saffir–Simpson scale is useful for evaluating maximum sustained hurricane winds and storm surge over open water in the prelandfall window, but it fails to accurately account for the observed i...