Tropical Storm Isaac Damage May Reach $27 Billion

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 25, 10:42AM EDT

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Leaving aside what damage and disruption Tropical Storm Isaac could cause for the Republic Convention in Tampa, research firm CoreLogic estimates residential damage could reach $27 billion as the system marches over Haiti and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Corelogic reports:

“Based on current forecasts, Tropical Storm Isaac is predicted to strengthen into a Category 1 hurricane and become the first hurricane to impact the United States this year,” said Dr. Howard Botts, vice president and director of database development for CoreLogic Spatial Solutions. “Though the forecasted path is constantly changing, at this point, Isaac seems to be poised to strike the Gulf Coast early Wednesday. Major metro areas that could potentially feel the impact of hurricane-driven storm surge include New Orleans, La.; Baton Rouge, La.; Biloxi, Miss.; Mobile, Ala.; Pensacola, Fla. and Tallahassee, Fla., depending on where the storm makes landfall.”

The data shows nearly 210,000 total residential properties valued at more than $27.7 billion in seven major metro areas along the Gulf Coast could be at risk for storm-surge related flooding, assuming the storm hits as a Category 1 hurricane.

The cities most likely to be hit hard are New Orleans, which has not entirely recovered from Katrina in 2005, Baton Rouge, and Biloxi-Gulfport. CoreLogic puts potential New Orleans damage as high as $26,299,658,621, which seems a bit to exact to be plausible.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.