By the time Hurricane Hanna reached Boston Saturday night, it had simmered into a tropical storm, ruining many of the weekend events planned for new and returning BU students.

And while the rain seemed like nothing but a wet hassle in Boston, in Milford a 100-foot road completely collapsed from the downpour.

Any Boston resident knows that the weather in New England is anything but steady. But could a Hurricane Katrina-like event ever happen in the Boston area?

Nothing is certain, but a catastrophic hurricane could happen experts say — it may just be a matter of time.

A natural disaster like a hurricane is more than just a natural event. Natural disasters can only happen when there is a hazard and when that hazard can actually do damage to a society, according to Paul Hall, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Boston University.

Fortunately, people can change the course of how much a disaster affects a community, and New England residents can find some solace in the fact that Boston officials are planning meticulously for future environmental emergencies.

Disasters at Home

A disastrous hurricane will happen in the Boston area eventually, according to Andrea Cooper, the shoreline and floodplain management coordinator for the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management.

“It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” Cooper said. But natural disasters of large magnitudes do not always have to be catastrophic. Preparation for disasters depend on the actions of residents, the local government and the state government. Much of the planning for environmental catastrophes in Massachusetts is tracked by the Massachusetts Emergency Managing Agency, according to Cooper.

A clear disaster plan, “Operation-X Evacuation,” will be implemented in the case of a natural disaster, according to John Hardiman, the Emergency Management Director of Boston for MEMA. In the case of a disaster, the city would take direct control, and the police would direct traffic.

“We look at if vehicles have enough gas to get them out of the city,” Hardiman said. “Disabled vehicles are a big problem, and so are moving disabled vehicles.” Massachusetts’ state government would act faster in the case of a hurricane than officials did in New Orleans in 2005, Hardiman said.

“The state requests federal assistance in the event of a disaster. That was one of the things with Katrina that was really slow to go into effect,” Hardiman said. “We’re ready to come in and self deploy the situation, and we would quickly pull the trigger through the state to the federal government.”

Many of the tragic events that followed Katrina were due to the state and federal governments’ actions. The president’s poorly led relief efforts in New Orleans dipped his declining ratings even further, said Andrew Reeves, an assistant professor of political science at BU.

“Katrina changed everything. It was such a monumental failure,” he said.

“During Sept. 11, the president stepped up, and people were made to feel safe — infrastructure, roads and power were maintained or restored shortly thereafter. Why did things happen so swiftly in New York and not in New Orleans? The difference between a natural disaster and al-Qaida is that there is no enemy to go out and round-up.”

MEMA has been having conferences with BU and Boston College, Hardiman said. The talks insure that the students are safe while also making sure the facilities don’t get destroyed. BU would prepared in case of an disaster, according to spokesman Colin Riley.

“We would be able to take whatever steps necessary to deal with an emergency,” Riley said. That includes whether people would remain on campus or if they needed to be removed. We’re not the only college in city of Boston, but certainly we’re the largest, so we have those plans in place.”

The eye of the storm

In 2005, the world saw more hurricanes in one year than ever before. Many recent studies have shown that due to climate change, specifically the increase of carbon in the atmosphere, the number of hurricanes per year will continue to increase. However, numbers are not always indicative of the truth, Hall said.

“One of the problems with going back and looking at trends is that the way we record hurricanes has changed,” Hall said. “There’s a good chance that we’re undercounting the amount of hurricanes happening in the past.”

To many, however, global warming appears to be part of an all-too apparent increase in natural disasters. Greater amounts of carbon emissions in the atmosphere are expected to increase and intensify storms, Cooper said.

Hurricanes, which require warm water, high wind speeds and thunder storms to form could be generated more often due to Earth’s rising temperatures, Hall said. The rising temperatures may lead to warmer water, and warmer water may lead to more hurricanes, which means that there is a possibility that the number of hurricanes per year could increase.

“The whole thing about frequency of hurricanes in the North Atlantic, it’s still a bit up in the air,” Hall said.

Though Boston residents may eventually have to face a hurricane of catastrophic proportions, what they should be more concerned about are earthquakes, Hall said. The last magnitude 6 earthquake that occurred in Boston was in 1755, and since earthquakes run in cycles, the Boston area is long overdue.

Because Boston is built on a landfill, earthquakes with large magnitudes are extremely dangerous. The loose ground allows the seismic waves – responsible for earthquakes – to amplify. The results could be devastating.

“Places like these Boston areas used to be water, and there’s a high water table,” Hall said. “Liquefaction, which is when the ground suddenly behaves as a liquid, leads the strength of the soil to go away, and all the soil flows like water.”

What’s the problem?

MEMA is one of the best state emergency agencies in the country, according to Cooper. But even MEMA may not be enough to totally control the public in the case of a natural disaster.

“MEMA is really one of the best agencies of emergency management, but disaster control is really in the hands of the local officials of Massachusetts,” Cooper said. “Where we live, and the developments made and the municipal infrastructure are all in the hands of locals. No matter what the state does, whether or not the state is in good hands, we aren’t prepared today.”

Another problem that may arise in the case of a natural disaster is that many people in Boston use public transportation. MEMA will provide the residents of Massachusetts with the best public transportation they can, but will that be enough?

Much of the devastation that Katrina caused in New Orleans had more to do with the social divides and political mistakes than the actual hurricane itself, according to Christopher Annear, a PhD candidate in anthropology.

In New Orleans much of the cheaper property is located below sea level, making it more susceptible to the storm’s wrath. On top of their location, poorer residents also lacked the proper transportation to escape.

“There were people living in certain areas of the Lower Ninth Ward of Jefferson Parish that were affected by flooding but were not directly hit by the hurricane,” Annear said. “There were a lot more residents in those areas that didn’t have cars — that simple. They didn’t have a means of getting out.”

Annear also added that much of the flooding from Katrina was due to the breaking of the levees and not to the actual hurricane.

“The hurricane was apparently a Category 1 when it glanced off New Orleans, which is still big, but not as big as expected,” Annear said. “It was the flooding due to the failed levees that caused the disaster for most people.”

The most pressing issue is the need for shoreline communities to elevate homes and businesses in the next 10 years to prepare for sea level rise within the next 50 years, Cooper said. If houses and businesses are not raised, then the consequences could be even worse than the levees breaking. Hall reiterated Cooper’s point.

“Studies have shown that the Arctic will be ice free in the next 10 years during the summer, and this is shocking,” Hall said. “If you melt all of Antarctica on top of Greenland then there’s going to be more than 70 meters of water.”

Another issue that could arise is that many politicians use natural disasters to their benefit, Reeves pointed out. Both John McCain and Barack Obama set up donation funds to support the victims of Hurricane Gustav. The disaster aid may help both candidates in the upcoming election.

“They came out looking good from this event. We all remember how the mayor [Ray Nagin] of New Orleans looked during Katrina – sort of this crazy guy who didn’t know what he was doing, “Reeves said. “McCain and Obama could have screwed up by just ignoring it.”

In a broad statistical analysis Reeves performed of all the natural disasters that had been declared by the federal government between 1988 and 1986, he found that if two states had exactly the same number of weather events, the swing state was more likely to get disaster recognition. For a state like Massachusetts, with leaders typically leaning to the left, this may not be good.

“It’s so obvious what the swing states are now,” Reeves said. “George W. Bush knew if he didn’t win Pennsylvania in 2004, he would be in trouble. If you’re president, and you know beforehand which states you really have to win, you can do certain things to maximize your chances.”