Hurricane Charley By : Rawda Al-Attiyah

9A

HurricanesThe most fundamental elements which causes a hurricane to

occur is warm water and moist warm air.[1]Hurricanes are known as the most destructive natural

disaster. Hurricanes basically are very powerful and brutal storms, often connected with strong winds and heavy rains.[2]

Each hurricane has a name, they get their names according to where they occur.[2]

When a great hurricane hits land, the effects are more harm to life and possessions then any other natural occurring disaster. The result of hurricanes often contains storm surge, strong wind, inland flooding and tornadoes.[2]

Hurricane CharleyHurricane charley was created from a tropical wave, which then

developed into a tropical depression on august 9.[3]“Hurricane charley was the third named storm, the second

hurricane, and the second major hurricane of 2004”.[4]Charley was known as a category 4 hurricane.Charley started from august 9 and lasted until august 15.[4]The storm caused landfall in southwestern Florida with a

maximum strength, then the greatest intensity of the hurricane hit the united states this makes it the strongest hurricane to hit the US since hurricane Andrew hit Florida twelve years before in 1992. [4]

After moving quickly throughout the Caribbean sea, charley then arrived Cuba on august 13 as a category 3 hurricane, which led to heavy damage and four deaths.[4]

Category 3

Florida & CubaThis picture indicates where Florida and Cuba are located.

How hurricane Charley affected Florida?Economically:”The hit to Florida's $500 billion economy from

Hurricane Charley will soar into the tens of billions of dollars but the negative effects will be offset by nearly as much in spending on reconstruction, economists said Tuesday.” [5]

"For Hurricane Charley, I don't foresee any major impact on the overall economy of Florida," said Randall G. Holcombe, a Florida State University economics professor.”[5]

Hurricane charley also impacted tourism, the Lee County Visitor Convention bureau gathers tourism data on a monthly basis. The data collected proves that after hurricane charley visitation dropped by 24% compared to the same time era in 2003. which caused the decrease of money.

Environmentally

There are a number of negative things that hurricane charley caused. One negative impact it had on Florida is that the wind destroyed a certain amount of trees which affected Florida in a bad way. As well as the wind destroyed power lines unreinforced signs.

SociallyHurricane charley affected different places in different

ways, for example in Lee country “the County property appraiser estimated 250,000 building structures, homes, and churches were damaged”[7] which indicates that many people lost their homes and had no where to live, But in Charlotte County “the sheriffs office and emergency operations center were not operational.”[7] In addition to majority of the schools were damaged, and several where harshly damaged.[7] which also caused people to lose there jobs since they weren't able to work in emergency operations and so on, in addition to it had an impact on children's education since schools were damaged.

How Hurricane Charley affected Cuba? Economically: Cuba is not considered a developed

country, so in this case not many high buildings or should I say hardly non high buildings are built as well as they don’t have developed technologies to build buildings like Japan.

“The tourism industry represents the single largest source of hard currency earnings for the Cuban government.”[8]

Anyways there is no exact information yet on damage to tourist hotels and services, it is guessed that communications for tourism industry did not mainly experience a wide damage for many reasons one would be that not many people visit the southern shore of Cuba. So there wasn’t a lot of money loss in that particular area.[8]

EnvironmentallyDay by day, more homes and building are being

demolished and discovered by destruction due to Hurricane Charley. On August 20th, press of Cuba reports that within 20,000 homes of innocent people have been destroyed and on the 25th of August 70,000 building were published to be found destroyed. Looking at this 5 day different between the reports shows the devastation of the situation.[8] 

The city of Havana and Pinar del Rio held 800 destroyed educational institutes in addition to over 300 Health care centers. The destruction was caused by the Hurricane.[8]

Socially“Food supplies are a particularly important issue

for the Cuban government, given the difficulties it has faced in feeding its populace even before the storm.”[8]

Over two hundred thousand people and one hundred fifty nine thousand animals had to evacuate since the government thought it was too dangerous to stay. The government also requested three thousand eight hundred citizens to move from off shore islands which affected them socially since they had to leave there homes.

FloridaPre Storm – April 2003 Post Storm – August

2004

Impacts of Hurricane Charley on the Southwest Florida CoastlineFocusing on Lee County

CubaBefore hurricane charley

After hurricane charley

SolutionsThere is no solution that will stop natural

disasters, but there are ways to reduce the impact of natural disasters.

One way would be to dig tunnels underground so that building wont fall on them and kill them.

Another way would be to dig places underground for people to hide which will reduce the number of deaths.

In addition to they could make places where they teach people how to prevent hurricanes from killing them and so on.

Place and Space Hurricanes usually occur in places where its surrounded by water. For

example in southeast of the united states and the Caribbean most hurricanes take place there. Florida in particular is a peninsula which means that many hurricanes happen in that area, and this is a pattern that I found.

Hurricanes are the worst natural occurring disaster. Some constraints are that hurricanes can cause many damage, in addition to it can take away peoples lives. Homes and work buildings are dented which leads to people losing their jobs and homes, so they end up living in the streets.

Hurricane Jeanne caused damage but not as much as hurricane Charley. The areas that Jeanne affected are “U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Bahamas, Florida; flooding and damage in other eastern U.S. States”[10], but the areas that charley affected are Jamaica, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina. You may notice that both hurricanes affected Florida. In conclusion I can say that Florida is a country that deals with a lot of hurricanes.

Bibliography 1. "What causes hurricanes." About. Web. 4 Feb. 2010.

<http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/hurricanecauses.htm>.2. "Causes and Effects Of Hurricane." Buzzle. Web. 4 Feb. 2010.

<http://www.buzzle.com/articles/causes-and-effects-of-hurricanes.html>.3. "Hurricane History." NHC. Web. 4 Feb. 2010.

<http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history.shtml#charley>.4. "Hurricane Charley." Wiki. Web. 4 Feb. 2010.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Charley>.5. "Reconstruction likely to offset negative economic impact of Hurricane Charley." Highbeam.

Web. 4 Feb. 2010. <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-120824308.html>.6. "Rober Neal." Hurricane Charley. Web. 4 Feb. 2010.

<http://www.fsbpa.com/05Proceedings/01-Robert%20Neal.pdf>.7. Fema.gov. Web. 4 Feb. 2010. <http://www.fema.gov/library/file?

type=publishedFile&file=488_ch1>.8. "* An Assessment of Hurricane Charley's Impact on Cuba." Http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fe494.

Web. 4 Feb. 2010. <http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fe494>.9. "Hurricane Charley 88." Http://hubpages.com/hub/Hurricane-Charley. Web. 4 Feb. 2010.10. "Hurricane Jeanne." Wikipedia. Web. 4 Feb. 2010.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Jeanne>.

Bibliography for imageshttp://www.valdosta.edu/finadmin/safety/images/Hurricane_fo

rmation.gifhttp://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history/

charley_2004_map.gifhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffir-Simpson_Hurricane_Scale

#Category_3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Charley http://www.fsbpa.com/05Proceedings/01-Robert%20Neal.pdf http://www.theodora.com/wfb/photos/cuba/

coastal_boulevard_havana_cuba_photo_gov.jpg http://www.cubajunky.com/foto-algemeen/hurricane-

charley.jpg http://www.edmaps.com/United_States_in_the_Caribbean.jpg