Water may not be the only kind of flood caused by Hurricane Irene.
Many speculate a flood of births could follow nine months from now.
History.com contemplated the future effects of the hurricane on the population and referred back to "The Great Blackout" of 1965 as an example. Many New York City hospitals reported an increase in births in August, about nine months after the blackout.
Richard Evans, an assistant professor of economics at Brigham Young University and co-writer for a paper in the 2010 Journal of Population Economics, said that the more devastating the effect of the disaster, the less likely birth rates will increase after the natural catastrophe. "When you have low-level advisories like tropical storm watches or hurricane watches, we actually do see an increase in births nine months later," Evans explained. "People are at home without power; televisions are not on. You're going to have more sexual activity."
He and his researchers discovered a 2 percent increase in fertility after a watch is issued for a tropical storm but found a 0.3 decrease after a warning is set for a tropical storm.
The phenomenon is not unprecedented. Some researchers found Hurricane Katrina spawned its own baby boom nine months after it hit New Orleans, only with a twist. The babies were being born to the workers reconstructing New Orleans, rather than to long-time residents together during the hurricane. The devastation brought an influx of immigrants seeking work at construction sites to rebuild the city, and hospitals were soon overwhelmed by the number of immigrant newborns soon after the hurricane's force. The head nurse at Louisana's Department of Health and Hospitals unit in Metairie, Beth Perriloux, said Hispanic newborns in the area increased dramatically after the storm. "Before the storm, only 2 percent were Hispanic; now about 96 percent are Hispanic," Perriloux said.
Not only could Hurricane Irene bring a baby boom in 2012, but it fueled one over the weekend, speeding up the birthing process for residents in North Carolina. According to Time magazine, the hurricane brought 60 percent more babies to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center. While the hospital tried to stay functioning under a lockdown and with the threat of losing power looming over their heads, 18 babies came into the world.
While many believe the folklore of increased fertility caused by blackouts and storm watches as an intuitive explanation of birth-rate increases, others want hard data to support the theory. The Chicago Tribune discussed the possibilities of disasters causing higher fertilitity rates and quoted Tom Smith, who sought to debunk the assumption.
"First, these events are as likely to separate partners as they are to isolate them together with 'nothing better to do,'" said Smith, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics at the University of Chicago. "Second, most people are using contraceptives. Third, these are hardly the type of events that make couples say, 'Let's start a family.'"
Whatever anyone believes about the effect of disasters on fertility, a hint of the truth might be found in the number of babies named Irene in 2012.
EMAIL: sgambles@desnews.com