The fury of the wind and the waters

The economic impact of the devastation caused by the tropical storm in Texas reaches 190 billion dollars

Hurricane Harvey - which reached Category 4, on a scale of up to 5 - lost steam after reaching the American coast in southern Texas on Friday 25, becoming a tropical storm. The damage, however, was monumental. It rained more in the state in a week than the historical average of a whole year. Numerous cities were underwater, including Houston, the most populous, with 2.3 million inhabitants. The economic impact of the devastation is estimated at $ 190 billion, more than the combined cost of Hurricanes Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and Sandy in New York in 2012.

In humanitarian terms, Harvey has caused 38 deaths by Thursday 31, a high but far cry from Katrina's 1,833. Still, it produced equally staggering images, such as the patients older asylum La Vita Bella ( "The Beautiful Life" in Italian), in Dickinson, s ubmersas the murky floodwaters as they waited impassively at ransom. It is difficult to say whether the help was slow or the water rose very fast: at the beginning of the day, it was enough to only wet the feet of the people gathered in the living room.