Providing hurricane statistics for cities in the Atlantic basin for over 25 years
Fri, Mar 29, 2024 at 3:05 AM

2008 Damage Reports



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These reports are not intended to be for up to the minute information, rather for future reference.


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Hurricane Paloma, Nov. 7th through 9th

  • Cayman Brac, Cayman Islands: Heavy damage reported. Many roofs blown off. Injuries reported, but no deaths. The British Red Cross Disaster Manager for the Cayman Islands reports that around a third of houses have no roof, with some completely destroyed. The majority of the houses have sustained structural damage.
  • Camaguey, Cuba: Early reports of damage were limited, but Cuban state media said the late-season storm toppled a major communications tower on the southern coast, interrupted electricity and phone service, and sent sea surges of up to 700 meters along the coast. The government has reported no Paloma-related deaths, but a dissident group said Tuesday one person died in the storm. Castro said 1.2 million people were moved to safety for Paloma and it was "hard to imagine" how bad things would have been had they not been.

Hurricane Omar, Oct. 15th

  • Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands: Power out on most of island, reports of four vessels sunk at the St. Croix Yacht Club, with another four to six washed ashore. Many trees down & electric wires but no structural damage to homes as Omar passed 20 miles to the east with a very small wind field.

Hurricane Ike, Sep. 1st through 14th (death toll as of Sep. 16th, 2008: 51)

  • Texas: 2.1 million homes without power right after landfall
  • Bolivar Peninsula, Texas: According to Bolivar Peninsula Special Utility District. No one has been to island yet. From rescue reports and flyover the following is apparent damage. Crystal Beach and Gilchrist, nothing left. High Island, some homes still standing. Rollover (sp) Bridge is gone. Crystal Beach from the Big Store South to Ferry on East Bay, nothing left standing. From Store North to High Island, some still standing.
  • Houston, Texas: Glass blown out of some high rise buildings.
  • Galveston, Texas: Moderate to heavy damage.
  • Seabrook, Texas: 1,000 housing units have been destroyed or severely damaged. Those residences account for the housing of 25 percent of the population.
  • Freeport, Texas: 20 or so homes collapsed, hit & miss damage.
  • Cuba: Camaguey: "We had gusts of [108 miles per hour] and many roofs have been damaged or entirely ripped from homes. There isn't much rain but the wind is howling." In Baracoa, resident William Montoya Sanchez, 39, said low-lying areas of the city were unrecognizable after Ike's passage, with roofs torn from homes and trees uprooted from the ground. State media said at least 200 homes were damaged beyond repair as the storm surge pounded Baracoa's seawall and rose as high as nearby five-story buildings, sending people scrambling away from the seaside. Authorities said La Farola road, which connects Baracoa with the provincial capital in Guantanamo, was closed due to mudslides.
  • Great Inagua, Bahamas: The Matthew Town Police Station's shutters were blown away, causing water breach and flooding. The shutters of the St. Philips Community Center, which is also a shelter, were blown off. Zion Baptist Church - a second shelter - also sustained water damage.
  • Turks and Caicos Islands: In South Caicos, a fishing-dependent island of 1,500 people, most homes were damaged, the airport was under water, power will be out for weeks, and every single boat was swept away despite being towed ashore for safety, Minister of Natural Resources Piper Hanchell said. In Providenciales, there was flooding, roof damage and downed power lines but no injuries, he said. At 3:40 pm EDT on Sep. 7, 2008, no casualties have been reported in the Turks and Caicos. Grand Turk suffered approximately 85% damage to housing and infrastructure of which 50% is major. South Caicos suffered major damage with approximately 65% of roofs blown off. Report from Middle Caicos and North Caicos indicated that there was only minor damage to roofs. There is major flooding in South Caicos due in part to previous ground saturation from Tropical Storm Hanna. North and Middle Caicos had minimal flooding of roads. In Grand Turk, roads are impassable due to fallen poles and electrical wires. Grand Turk, North, Middle, and South Caicos, and Salt Cay have lost electricity and water. While Provo has suffered some roof damage and some poles, all utilities and major infrastructure are still intact.
  • Haiti: Ike's pelting rains couldn't have come at a worse time for Haiti. The Mirebalais bridge collapsed in the floods, cutting off the last land route into Gonaives, Agriculture Minister Joanas Gay told state-run Radio Nationale. Half the homes in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, were already under water. 48 dead as of Sep. 8th, 2008.

Hanna, Sep. 2nd through 5th

  • Bahamas: Hanna lingered over the island of Great Inagua for hours, toppling power lines, but otherwise doing little damage. There were reports of heavy winds stripping shingles from roofs and knocking down trees, but no injuries, said Chrystal Glinton, a spokeswoman for the Bahamas' National Emergency Management Agency.
  • Haiti: At Gonaives the entire city is under water. Any house that had a flat roof had people on top trying to escape the water. All roads to Gonaives are under water. 110,000 people are trapped with no food or water. 167 dead.

Hurricane Gustav, Aug. 25th through Sep. 2nd (death toll as of Aug. 31st, 2008: 81)

  • Louisiana: 10 foot storm surge in many areas of southeast, flood walls held in New Orleans. Hundreds of thousands without power in state. Houma reported some roof & sign damage, but overall not as bad as expected.
  • Cuba: Telephone lines and communication towers knocked to the ground. Roads washed out. Cisterns and tin roofs ripped from buildings. Massive trees uprooted. Storm surge pushed seawater inland more than two miles along the southern coast where the powerful category 4 storm made landfall, according to official Cuban media reports, and Gustav's 150 mph sustained winds caused untold damage to the tobacco-growing region's agriculture. Reports of multiple injuries, but no deaths as of Aug. 31st, 2008. The force of the winds sent parked cars flying and ripped the doors off of houses in Isla de Juventud, said local civil defense official Ana Isa Delgadao.
  • Cayman Brac, Cayman Islands: Power lines were down, roads were strewn with debris, boats were beached and roofs were torn from houses after the centre of the category 1 hurricane passed just west of the islands Friday evening. In little Cayman "It's pretty clear from our aerial assessment of the island that there is roof damage to just about every property."
  • Jamaica: "(For) banana that was on the rebound [following Hurricane Dean] ... the wind damage, based on what I saw in St Thomas, would be about 95 percent," Tufton said. St Mary and Portland suffered 70 percent each, he disclosed. The Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management reported that the official death toll following Gustav was seven. Four persons who were swept away in a vehicle in Bull Bay, St Andrew, remained missing up to late yesterday evening, although the vehicle in which they were traveling had been found.
  • Haiti: 25 in Jacmel, Haiti, with 76 total dead in Haiti.
  • Dominican Republic: 8 deaths reported.

Fay, Aug. 15th through 20th

  • Florida: Florida landfall (SW coast). 44,000 without power statewide. Statewide, 11 deaths as of Aug. 22nd, 2008.
  • Tallahassee, Florida: Evacuations as rivers overflow with over 15 inches of rain in many locations.
  • Port St. Lucie and Melbourne, Florida: Heavy flooding, up to 14 inches of rain.
  • Brevard County, Florida: 50 mobile homes damaged by tornado.
  • Wellington, Florida: Several barns at the Palm Beach Equine Sports Complex were destroyed by a possible tornado.
  • Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Hispaniola, 23 deaths. At least 14 people are feared to have died aboard a bus that tried to cross a river flooded by Tropical Storm Fay, a Haitian lawmaker said Monday.

Hurricane Dolly, Jul. 23rd

  • Texas: The latest damage reports from around the area indicate that most portions of Cameron County have downed power lines and power outages, especially in the Brownsville...Harlingen...Port Isabel and South Padre Island areas. The South Padre Island area appears to have the worst of the power outages.

Tropical Storm Arthur, Jun. 1st through Jun. 2nd

  • Belize: Estimates of ten to fifteen inches fell in crucial areas from Corozal to Toledo, filling rivers that soon overflowed their banks. Particularly hard hit were the waterways running through the country's citrus belt: the North Stann Creek, Mullins, Sittee and Kendal rivers. As a result of the raging waters the Hummingbird Highway was washed out near Middlesex, several villages were isolated and the bridge at Kendal totally destroyed, thus severing the Southern Highway and isolating the Toledo and Southern Stann Creek districts from the rest of the country.
  • San Pedro, Belize: 65 boats under water in the lagoon and on the sea. We got a report that a little house by Boca siege area was down and a woman got hit in the head by zinc.