Recovery, National

The United States is geographically very resilient to large-scale disasters that directly impact the country. Unlike countries such as Japan or the Philippines, where the entire country is impacted by a disaster such as a typhoon, very few incidents have that kind of physical impact on the United States. However, due to the inter-connectivity of current U.S. society, an incident that has a direct impact along the Gulf Coast, such as a hurricane, has the ability to have dramatic secondary impact thousands of miles away. In 2008, when hurricanes Gustav and Ike severely damaged the petrochemical industry along the Gulf Coast, prices for gasoline skyrocketed, [Page 554]and states all along the mid-Atlantic suffered severe fuel shortages. Likewise, a disaster in one of the nation's banking ...