宾利棕色油漆图片:急！！新奥尔良遭受飓风的损失状况（英语）

来自VOA的报道

Katrina: Counting the Damage to Agriculture
13 September 2005

Agriculture Report - Download RealAudio

I’m Barbara Klein with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Boats destoyed by Katrina in New Orleans
New Orleans has always been a busy center for ships and trains. The city is close to the mouth of the longest river system in North America. Normally, thousands of barges travel down the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and other rivers to New Orleans. They carry grain and other crops for export. These flat boats can hold as many as fifteen railroad cars or sixty trucks. More than sixty percent of American corn and soybean exports go through New Orleans.

All that activity stopped when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August twenty-ninth. Traffic on the lower Mississippi River came to a halt. It is slowly returning to normal. And the port of New Orleans set a goal to restart limited operations for trade ships by September fourteenth.

The American Farm Bureau estimated that the storm caused at least one thousand million dollars in damage to crops and farm animals. Most of the losses are in the states of Mississippi and Louisiana. However, the Farm Bureau says higher transportation and energy costs could add another thousand million to the price of Katrina.

Last week, the Agriculture Department offered emergency aid for producers affected by the storm. The more than one hundred seventy million dollars in assistance is mostly in the form of loans. A spokesman says more aid will come later.

The Farm Bureau says final estimates of the damage could take weeks or longer. But it said strong harvests of soybeans, corn and cotton in other states should limit any national effects of Katrina. It said the biggest effect might be on the price of sugar from sugar cane because of a limited supply.

At the same time, prices fell for corn and soybeans on the Chicago Board of Trade. But market experts say that could change as the port of New Orleans returns to normal shipping levels.

The storm hit shortly before committees in Congress were expected to consider proposed cuts in agricultural aid. The chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee said he now expects a delay.

The Agriculture Department says farm earnings in the United States last year reached a record eighty-two and one-half thousand million dollars. But many farmers could earn less this year. That is because of high fuel prices, as well as high temperatures and dry conditions in the central states.

This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by Mario Ritter. Our reports are online at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Barbara Klein.

可以参考：）~~
On September 29, 1998, Hurricane Georges made landfall in New Orleans.At the same time that people in Biloxi were thankful for the advance warning, some residents of New Orleans, Louisiana, 120 km (75 mi) to the west, were less satisfied. A day before Georges made landfall, forecasters were predicting that the hurricane had a good chance of striking New Orleans. Because much of New Orleans lies below sea level, the city is at risk for flooding. In addition, because New Orleans has a large population in vulnerable locations, emergency management officials must begin evacuations well before a storm strikes. But evacuation costs money: Businesses close, tourists leave, and citizens take precautionary measures. The mayor of New Orleans estimated that his city's preparations for Georges cost more than '50 million. After the full fury of Georges missed New Orleans, some residents questioned the value of the hurricane forecasts in the face of such high costs.

The differing views on the early warnings for Hurricane Georges illustrate some of the complexities involved in predicting disasters. Disaster prediction is more than just forecasting the future with advanced technology -- it is also a process of providing scientific information to the government officials and other decision makers who must respond to those predictions.

In general, the process has three phases. First, there is the challenge of forecasting the event itself. In the case of Georges, scientists worked to predict the future direction and strength of the hurricane days in advance.

A second important challenge is communicating the forecast to decision- makers. Because forecasts are always uncertain, a central factor in disaster predictions is communicating this uncertainty. Uncertainty is usually described in terms of odds or probabilities, much like daily weather forecasts. The media plays an important role in communicating predictions and their uncertainty to the public.

The third part of the process is the use of predictive information by decision makers. Even the most accurate information is of little value if the decision maker does not use it appropriately, for example in deciding whether to order an evacuation. If there is a breakdown in any of these three phases of prediction, the result is increased danger and a higher risk of loss of life.

Hurricane Katrina effects on New Orleans

On August 29, 2005, Katrina's storm surge caused several breaches in levees around New Orleans. Most of the city was subsequently flooded, as the breached drainage and navigation canals allowed water to flow from the lake into low areas of the city and Saint Bernard Parish. Storm surge also devastated the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, making Katrina the most destructive and costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States, and the deadliest hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane.

The total damage caused by Katrina is estimated by the NHC to be about $75 billion. (Other estimates range from $25 to $100 billion), almost double the previously most expensive storm, Hurricane Andrew, making Katrina the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history.

Federal disaster declarations covered 90,000 square miles (233,000 km²) of the United States, an area almost as large as the United Kingdom. The hurricane left an estimated three million people without electricity. While some less-damaged homes had power restored within weeks, as of February 26, 2006, only a little over one-third of structures had electricity, and fewer have hot water or cooking gas. On September 3, 2005, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as, "probably the worst catastrophe, or set of catastrophes," in the country's history, referring to the hurricane itself plus the flooding of New Orleans.

Death toll
Deaths by State State Deaths
Alabama 2
Florida 14
Georgia 2
Kentucky 1
Louisiana 1292
Mississippi 238
Ohio 2
Unknown 53
Total 1604
Missing ~1840

As of March 20, 2006, the confirmed death toll stood at 1,604, mainly from Louisiana (1,293) and Mississippi (238). However, 705 people remain categorized as "missing" in Louisiana, so this number is not final even six months after the storm.

In hard-hit St. Bernard Parish, which was flooded in its totality by Katrina, the search for the missing was slow. According to an interview in the Times-Picayune, the coroner was still trying to get a list of missing from the Red Cross in November 2005. While there were some victims on this list whose bodies were found in their homes, the vast majority were tracked down through word-of-mouth and credit card records. As of December 2005, the official missing list in the Parish stood at 47. It was feared that shrimpers and oystermen who usually ride out storms in their boats may have been swept into the marshes by the surge.

After protracted arguments over who would handle the costs, DNA testing began in December 2005 to identify approximately 263 bodies that could not be identified by other means.