Everyone knew that a storm this size would eventually hit the city of Tampa on the west central coast of the Floridian peninsula, and that the cost to human life and property could be catastrophic.

As far back as 2015, the Boston-based disaster modelling firm, Karen Clark & Company, issued a report saying that Tampa, which is both low-lying and heavily populated, was the US city most vulnerable to a hurricane. It estimated the cost of a large hurricane to the area’s residential and commercial property to be about $US175 billion ($260 million).

Scientists warned that climate change was speeding up sea-level rise such that the storm surges caused by the hurricanes that formed each year over the Gulf of Mexico were rapidly becoming more destructive.

In a major report on the threat to the region, the Washington Post wrote in 2017 that due to “gambler’s luck”, the hurricanes that kept barrelling in across the gulf kept swerving at the last minute to reprieve the people of Tampa.

The last direct hit from a category 3 hurricane in 1921 left the area in ruins, but few people lived there then. A single death was recorded. More than 3 million live across the Tampa Bay region today.

A message outside an apartment in the Davis Islands community of Tampa, Florida,........

© WA Today