Opinion

Undue haste

TBO.com
Published: November 3, 2012

The sort of damage Hurricane Sandy — or is it Superstorm Sandy? — did to the Northeast is all too familiar to those of us along the Gulf Coast. Many of us have confronted storm devastation without electricity, food and running water. Overall, the people in places like New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania affected by Sandy are coping as best as can be expected. In the years to come, there will be a lot of study of the damage Sandy did and what, if anything, could be done in the future to limit the damage from storms. We welcome the findings of those examinations because they may have relevance for us on the Suncoast.

We have less use for the people who have rushed to claim that Sandy is a product of "climate change." That may well be the case, but it is too early for the certainty with which some have been making that claim.

For one, this is not the first time a powerful storm of Sandy's type has hit the Northeast. In late September 1938, a storm known by names such as the Great New England Hurricane, Yankee Clipper and Long Island Express, hit Long Island, killing some 700 people and doing an inflation-adjusted total of around $5 billion in damages.

That hurricane, however, is believed to have been milder than the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635, which roared by the colony at Jamestown, Va., and then smacked into the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

There is no need to rush to judgment about the factors that influenced Sandy.