Impact
| Region | Deaths | Damage (2003 USD) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct | Indirect | ||
| Florida | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| North Carolina | 1 | 2 | $450 million |
| Virginia | 10 | 22 | $1.85 billion |
| West Virginia | 0 | 0 | $20 million |
| Washington, D.C. | 0 | 1 | $125 million |
| Maryland | 1 | 6 | $820 million |
| Delaware | 0 | 0 | $40 million |
| Pennsylvania | 0 | 2 | $160 million |
| New Jersey | 1 | 1 | $50 million |
| New York | 1 | 0 | $90 million |
| Rhode Island | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Ontario | 0 | 1 | ? |
| Total | 16 | 35 | $3.6 billion |
Strong winds from Isabel extended from North Carolina to New England and westward to West Virginia. The winds, combined with previous rainfall which moistened the soil, downed many trees and power lines across its path, leaving about 6 million electricity customers without power at some point. Parts of coastal Virginia, especially in the Hampton Roads and Northeast North Carolina areas, were without electricity for almost a month. Coastal areas suffered from waves and its powerful storm surge, with areas in eastern North Carolina and southeast Virginia reporting severe damage from both winds and the storm surge. Throughout its path, Isabel resulted in $3.6 billion in damage (2003 USD, $4.55 billion 2012 USD) and 51 deaths, of which 16 were directly related to the storm's effects.
The governors of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware declared states of emergency. Isabel was the first major hurricane to threaten the Mid-Atlantic States and the Upper South since Hurricane Floyd in September 1999. Isabel's greatest effect was due to flood damage, the worst in some areas of Virginia since 1972's Hurricane Agnes. More than 60 million people were affected to some degree—a similar number to Floyd but more than any other hurricane in recent memory.
Read more about this topic: Hurricane Isabel
Famous quotes containing the word impact:
“If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.”
—Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)