Assessing the Damage

摘要

One of "the first attempts to assess information regarding damage to underground pipelines and related infrastructure from hurricanes and flooding reveals a wide variety of direct and indirect damage mechanisms. Utilities with underground networks potentially in harm's way would do well to learn from the experiences of their counterparts and take steps to prepare for-and possibly alleviate-future damage. In the past three years, the United States has witnessed two of the most active and costly hurricane seasons in its history. In fact, at press time-mid-September-Hurricane Ike had just made landfall near Galveston, Texas, devastating that city and causing significant damage in nearby Houston as well. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina caused the most severe flooding in modern U.S. history, displayed most spectacularly by the submergence of New Orleans. As coastal development continues to increase, the likelihood of additional flooding in the future can only be expected to increase. Such flooding, together with other, related damage caused by hurricanes, can have pronounced effects on water pipelines and other forms of buried infrastructure.