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'Death Map': Mother Nature's heat beats big chill in national death toll

Death map of US   (University of South Carolina Department of Geography)

 

Southwest. New England. The Rust Belt. Texas. California. South. Northeast. Midwest.

Now the Northwest.

I've lived in many regions of the country and I'm still alive. So, apparently, I haven't lived that dangerously. Unless you count the delusion of getting mail-forwarded-in-a-timely-manner as an indicator of a severe drought in my mental health region.

 

A "Death Map" released today shows the most dangerous places to live in the United States in terms of natural disasters.

Hurricanes, ice storms, tornadoes, blizzards, heat waves, floods, earthquakes, wildfires and other wraths of weather. Add them all up, they kill some 20,000 people every year, according to study authors, researchers Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden of the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

 

 

 

Finding out where the most people are at risk from Mother Nature should help with disaster planning.

"This work will enable research and emergency management practitioners to examine hazard deaths through a geographic lens," said Cutter, who analyzed data from 1970 to 2004. "Using this as a tool to identify areas with higher than average hazard deaths can justify allocation of resources to these areas with the goal of reducing loss of life."

 

Heat/drought ranked highest among the hazard categories, causing 19.6% of total deaths, closely followed by severe summer weather (18.8%) and winter weather (18.1%). Geophysical events (such as earthquakes), wildfires, and hurricanes were responsible for less than 5% of total hazard deaths combined.

Living along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts means a higher likelihood of dying from a natural hazard, than say, those residing along the Great Lakes and urban areas of the Northeast.

 

 

Being a native of Buffalo, N.Y. and a survivor of its infamous Blizzard of 1977,  I once might have taken issue with the notion that Death by Whiteout and Lake Effect Snow isn't as chilling as Death, Fear and Damage caused by coastal hurricanes and inland tornadoes. Buffalo's 1977 blizzard -- still the barometer of what can happen when an Arctic blast meets a wind-whipped Great Lake city -- blew with such force that the temperature plummeted to 60 to 70 degrees below zero with the wind chill factor.  Western New York stood frozen still for four days. Drifting snow piled up too high and heavy for snow plows to move it.  People needed metal detectors to find their buried cars. In the end,  23 people died from weather-related events; it took the National Guard to dig us out.

 

But then I moved to Georgia and witnessed the entire city of Savannah empty out one day and drive north to safe harbor as Hurricane Floyd targeted that port city. In Atlanta, mighty old and mighty big trees, soaked at the roots, routinely fell in thunderstorms, killing families sleeping in their houses and driving on city streets. Three friends of mine barely missed becoming a statistic.  Their roofs, living rooms, decks and kitchens, however,  needed extensive surgery.

 

Earlier this year, a rare "urban" tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta on the very street I once worked, walked and parked.

Check out these amazing photos of the storm and its damage.

(I also routinely hear from my brother in Kansas after the tornado siren silences and he, his wife and two kids emerge from the well-stocked basement shelter which also doubles, conveniently, as a wine cellar.)

 

 

Moving to the Northwest, I freaked out a bit seeing my first "tsunami evacuation" blue sign along the beach. Not very likely, I was assured. Like other regions of the country, it's the everyday events of winter and summer weather that account for the majority of natural hazard deaths. Such as floods, unleashed by record snow and rain fall. And extreme cold, heat and sudden change in weather that claim the lives of the elderly and the unprepared.

 

Heat and drought of the northern Great Plains and winter weather and floods of the Rocky Mountain region turn the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming into red-colored danger zones, according to the report.

(The high desert of New Mexico and Arizona -- not a place people associate with cold --  can be wicked in winter. This I learned one day in Flagstaff, Ariz. when I came home to my Airstream abode and found a miniature ice rink in my toilet bowl. The oil in my pickup also didn't uncolagulate for days due to the single-digit temps.)

 

I'm not sure where I'll next hang my hat. Looking at this map, and comparing it with another more familiar red and blue map, seems to indicate that red remains risky. Times two.