Wealth shields U.S. from Myanmar cyclone scenario

By Jim Loney

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (Reuters) - With its riches, good roads and strong buildings, the United States is unlikely to see a hurricane death toll similar to Myanmar's despite the vulnerability of its overpopulated coast, storm experts say.

Parts of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shores, where 89 million people live in coastal counties, are as susceptible to storm surge as Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, where at least 38,000 people were killed by Cyclone Nargis nearly two weeks ago.

But Americans get lots of warning when a storm threatens, can use their own cars or public transit to escape on efficient, paved evacuation routes, have sturdy homes or tall buildings to protect them from a flood and plenty of food and medical care in the aftermath, said emergency management experts at a hurricane conference in Fort Lauderdale.

"Disasters happen, but the underlying poverty makes everything worse," said Florida emergency management director Craig Fugate.

Myanmar state TV raised the official Nargis death toll to 38,491 on Wednesday, while the International Federation of the Red Cross estimated up to 127,990 people had died.

About 1,500 people were killed in the United States' worst recent hurricane, Katrina, which in 2005 swamped New Orleans, a low-lying city near the Mississippi River delta, a landscape similar to Myanmar's Irrawaddy.

But the people of the U.S. delta, where a comparable hurricane could easily push a similar 12-foot (3.7-metre) storm surge ashore, are not poor, subsistence farmers dependent on their own feet to flee, and the area has good highways. Nearly 90 percent of New Orleans was evacuated for Katrina.

Mike Womack, emergency management director for Mississippi, said it would take a "multiple catastrophe" like a hurricane and an earthquake that breached the Mississippi River's 200-plus miles of levees to cause a Myanmar-like disaster in his state, where Katrina's storm surge penetrated 20 miles inland.

"That's an unlikely scenario, but it's something to think about and plan for," he said.

Florida's sparsely populated Big Bend area on the west coast could be even more vulnerable than Myanmar. The shallows of the Gulf of Mexico would allow a massive storm surge to pile up, said Stephen Baig, an oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"A Cat 2 hurricane would put 16 feet of surge into the St. Marks River," he said, referring to the second level on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity.

"The more gently the seabed slopes, the higher the storm surge it can maintain."

The nearby Tampa Bay area, home to some 2.5 million people, could see a 12-foot (3.7-metre) surge, similar to that of Nargis, with sea water sloshing up to 4 miles inland, Baig said. Local emergency managers say a Category 5 hurricane, the worst kind, could push water 10 miles inland.

"Tampa's a flood scenario. We'll lose people, but not tens of thousands," Fugate said.

Disaster managers note that even Americans who decide not to evacuate in a storm have better options than Myanmar's poor -- sturdy brick or concrete structures with stairs to upper floors and attics or rooftops to escape the floods.