For much of Va., 2011 was a year of natural disasters

Remember 2011?

It's the year that opened still shivering from a record-breaking Christmas snowfall, that shuddered through onslaughts of spring tornadoes, rocked and rattled in an earthquake, suffocated as the Great Dismal Swamp burned, and waded out from under hurricanes and tropical storms.

Virginia's misfortunes were a small part of what the National Climatic Data Center says was a record-breaking year for billion-dollar natural disasters in the United States.

No single event in Virginia topped the billion-dollar mark, but the extremes will not soon be forgotten.

"It was one thing after another," said Laura Southard, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. "We started with snowstorms, we went to tornadoes, into an earthquake, then a hurricane, then a tropical system. We had one bad event after another."

The data center listed 12 natural disasters as of early December that left more than a billion dollars in damage last year.

The next-closest year was 2008, with nine events.

"We are seeing an increase in the number of disasters, particularly flooding, a number of hurricane disasters and a number of drought disasters," said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist with the data center.

The national list cites six outbreaks of tornadoes, with total losses of $27.7 billion, including at least 60 tornadoes in North Carolina on April 16. Eleven people were killed in the towns of Askewville and Colerain in Bertie County, N.C., and two died in Gloucester County.

The largest outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded came just a few days later, from April 25 to 28, with 343 twisters between Alabama and Virginia.

The national list also includes the Texas-area drought ($10 billion), Midwest flooding (about $6 billion) and southwest wildfires ($1 billion).

In Hampton Roads, the Great Dismal Swamp burned for 111 days, choking the region with smoke and costing $12.5 million before it was finally extinguished in November.

The cost of natural disasters increases with inflation, but that's not the only reason for the record-breaking year, Crouch said.

"One of the more vulnerable areas is our coastal region," he said. "As we have more development on the coastlines, that makes us more vulnerable to these billion-dollar disasters."

Hurricane Irene killed four people in the state, according to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, and caused $39 million in damage alone to public property and for emergency response.

The Aug. 27 storm also devastated parts of North Carolina's Outer Banks, tearing out N.C. 12 in two places and isolating Hatteras Island for weeks.

As Irene moved north along the coast, it caused tremendous floods in New York, New Jersey and Vermont.

Irene's total damage was estimated at $7.3 billion, with 45 deaths.

The state of Virginia also considers Tropical Storm Lee to have been a major disaster. The emergency management department said heavy rains and flooding from the September storm killed five people and damaged or destroyed more than 100 structures in Northern Virginia.

Perhaps the most memorable natural disaster of 2011 - locally, at least - was the Aug. 23 earthquake.

The 5.8-magnitude quake was the largest in more than a century, and the second-largest ever recorded, in Virginia. Damage to property near the epicenter in Mineral in Louisa County brought $7 million in federal assistance. The Washington Monument and National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., were damaged, and the quake was felt throughout Hampton Roads and as far north as Canada.

The new year has started out mild. Perhaps it will stay that way, suggested the emergency management spokeswoman.

"A lot of people," Southard said, "are hoping that we are going to be less busy in 2012."

Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com