WI: The 1918 hurricane season is a doozy, with four major hurricanes hitting Florida alone.

fashbasher

Banned
Think 2004 or 2005-level bad. This has a few potential impacts:

1) The devastation in Florida in the waning months of WWI (with a *Katrina hitting Miami and New Orleans in August 1919) probably comes too late to allow for a Central Powers victory, but the amount of effort the US must deploy in rebuilding the Southeast might allow them to make out a bit better. Maybe Austria keeps Burgenland or Hungary keeps more of Slovakia?

2) No 1920s housing boom and bust in Florida. While it didn't solely create the Great Depression, economist J.K. Galbraith acknowledges that it played a role in fueling that decade's speculative bubble.
Could you see a softer *Great Depression in the late 1920s without a Florida land boom and perhaps with a more muted national real estate bubble in the 1920s, and therefore less bad loans on the balance sheets of the nation's banks?

3) What impact does a major series of natural disasters in the Southeast have on the Spanish flu epidemic? I imagine it could. Could the devastation and mass dieoffs lead to an earlier New Deal in the 1920s?
https://books.google.com/books?id=k...tMBsoQ6AEIXTAJ#v=onepage&q=depression&f=false
 
I don't know enough about US emergency services at the time to comment in detail but the national guard would be mobilized to aid in evacuations and distribution of food and so on.

There would probably be riots and the racial tensions could boil over as displaced blacks are put in refugee camps alongside displaced whites not to mention starvation from destroyed crops.

I don't think it will affect the outcome of WW1-maybe in the aftermath there are less US troops in Europe as some are withdrawn for disaster relief or riot control.
 
I don't know enough about US emergency services at the time to comment in detail but the national guard would be mobilized to aid in evacuations and distribution of food and so on.

There would probably be riots and the racial tensions could boil over as displaced blacks are put in refugee camps alongside displaced whites not to mention starvation from destroyed crops.

If there's incidents like some of those documented in the 1927 Mississippi River flood, then this could spark some serious discussion on reform as to how the government handles disasters, since there was far too much reliance on private donors to fund disaster relief. Which incidentally will be tested by when the Mississippi floods inevitably do come in the 1920s. I say inevitably because the 1920s were extremely wet as a whole in the entire Mississippi watershed, so a large flood will almost certainly happen.

Having a Hurricane Katrina equivalent in 1918 is far worse than all those 1918 Florida hurricanes combined.
 

fashbasher

Banned
If there's incidents like some of those documented in the 1927 Mississippi River flood, then this could spark some serious discussion on reform as to how the government handles disasters, since there was far too much reliance on private donors to fund disaster relief. Which incidentally will be tested by when the Mississippi floods inevitably do come in the 1920s. I say inevitably because the 1920s were extremely wet as a whole in the entire Mississippi watershed, so a large flood will almost certainly happen.

Having a Hurricane Katrina equivalent in 1918 is far worse than all those 1918 Florida hurricanes combined.

The scenario I'm envisioning in 1918 is three disastrous Florida hurricanes and then a *Katrina, albeit perhaps reversed somewhat. Perhaps it takes out Jacksonville, Tampa, Lake Okeechobee, and Orlando as a Cat 5 and then hits NOLA as a Cat 2 or 3? I'm especially interested in no Florida land boom (or one that's popped early enough that banks can heal) and its possible impacts on the national 1920s real estate and stock bubbles.
 
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