Irma strikes Florida as $200 billion threat

Bloomberg

Hurricane Irma smashed into Florida as a powerful Category 4 storm, driving a wall of water and violent winds ashore and marking the first time since 1964 the U.S. was hit by back-to-back major hurricanes.
The eye of the storm moved over the lower Florida Keys at about 9 a.m. on Sunday with top winds of 130 miles (209 kilometers) an hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. After Irma rakes Florida’s west coast, it may keep moving north across Georgia and Alabama.
Just over two weeks after Hurricane Harvey struck the heart of US energy production in Texas, Irma is threatening another region with almost $200 billion worth of damages. Irma’s wrath has already roiled markets, sending insurance stocks plunging and orange juice futures surging. At least 1.3 million homes and businesses in Florida had lost power by 9:30 a.m. Sunday, a Bloomberg tally of utility reports shows.
The storm’s path forced the largest evacuation in Miami-Dade County history and sent millions of Floridians fleeing. It’s the first major hurricane to hit Florida since Wilma in 2005 and has already laid waste to the small island of Barbuda, killed at least 25 people and left thousands homeless across the Caribbean.
The storm’s track along Florida’s west coast “is almost, if not, a worst-case scenario for Tampa Bay,” said Rob Miller, a meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. “It shoves all the water into Tampa Bay and then shoves it right into downtown.”
Just before Irma’s landfall, Enki Research disaster modeler Chuck Watson said the storm’s trek up Florida’s coast could cost $192 billion and threatens $2 trillion of property. Total losses from Katrina reached $160 billion in 2017 dollars after it slammed into New Orleans in 2005. Irma is “easily on track to be the new No. 1 storm unless intensity collapses,” Watson said. President Donald Trump described the hurricane as “a storm of enormous destructive power” while discussing preparations with his Cabinet.

Storm Surge
Florida’s Tampa area may be hit with a worse storm surge because the continental shelf there is relatively shallow for as much as 90 miles offshore, said Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The last major hurricane to hit Tampa was in 1921, Masters said.
While Irma’s northern turn has raised the threat to Florida’s west coast, it potentially spares Miami a direct hit. The system was about 25 miles northeast of Key West, according to a 10 a.m. update, and moving north-northwest at 8 miles an hour. The storm could make a second landfall in Florida near Marco Island or Sarasota late Sunday and a third near Apalachicola in the state’s Panhandle region on Monday. By then, Irma may have weakened because of wind shear.
In Miami-Dade, residents woke to the reality that they’d probably dodge the most dangerous part of the storm as its track shifted west. From hotels and shelters, smokers and dog-walkers ignored advice that the worst was yet to come and emerged from their bunkers. Traffic accidents were also reported overnight as some in the county tried to leave shelters and return home.

Now, Hurricane Irma looms over Tampa’s finance near shoring hub
Bloomberg

Everyone thinks of downtown Miami as Florida’s Wall Street, but Tampa has grown into a major financial center in its own right. Now, there’s a chance that it may bear the brunt of the ferocious hurricane barreling toward the peninsula.
Hurricane Irma shifted track, elevating the risk of severe damage in Tampa, a city that’s grown rapidly as high-paying jobs moved to the region. Some 6.3 million Floridians are now under mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders, and although residents of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties on the east coast have been preparing for days, those on the opposite side of the state just woke up to the new forecast.
Over the past two decades, tens of thousands of finance industry jobs were created around Tampa, including positions in accounting, legal and human resources. Citigroup Inc. alone operates a 92-acre (37 hectare) campus there and employs around 5,400 workers, close to half its 14,000-person Florida staff. Tampa-area finance and insurance jobs have grown 14 percent in the past five years to 81,700, according to the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp. As a group, that puts it in the top five among non-government industries. The storm has everyone on alert, said Craig Richard, the Tampa economic development group’s chief executive, who lives outside the evacuation zone and was staying put. “I’m confident we can recover quickly and continue to grow the financial services sector,” he said.
“Structurally, I think they’re going to be fine,” Mayor Bob Buckhorn of Tampa said in an interview. But it’s just a question of “getting their employees back in here to do what they need to do.” For many financial institutions — also including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and MetLife Inc. — Tampa offered a location in a convenient time zone with office space available at a fraction of New York’s, part of a strategy sometimes called nearshoring.