"Death map" shows heat a big hazard to Americans

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

"Death map" shows heat a big hazard to Americans
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Handout-BioMed-Central/photo//081217/...
A handout graphic shows Proportional hazard Mortality and Standardized Mortality Ratios. (BioMed Central/Handout/Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Heat is more likely to kill an American than an earthquake, and thunderstorms kill more than hurricanes do, according to a "death map" published on Tuesday.

Researchers who compiled the county-by-county look at what natural disasters kill Americans said they hope their study will help emergency preparedness officials plan better.

Heat and drought caused 19.6 percent of total deaths from natural hazards, with summer thunderstorms causing 18.8 percent and winter weather causing 18.1 percent, the team at the University of South Carolina found.

Earthquakes, wildfires and hurricanes combined were responsible for fewer than 5 percent of all hazard deaths.

Writing in BioMed Central's International Journal of Health Geographics, they said they hoped to dispel some myths about what the biggest threats to life and limb are.

"According to our results, the answer is heat," Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden of the University of South Carolina wrote in their report, which gathered data from 1970 to 2004.

"I think what most people would think, if you say what is the major cause of death and destruction, they would say hurricanes and earthquakes and flooding," Cutter said in a telephone interview. "They wouldn't say heat."

"What is noteworthy here is that over time, highly destructive, highly publicized, often-catastrophic singular events such as hurricanes and earthquakes are responsible for relatively few deaths when compared to the more frequent, less catastrophic such as heat waves and severe weather," they wrote.

The most dangerous places to live are much of the South, because of the heat risk, the hurricane coasts and the Great Plains states with their severe weather, Cutter said.

The south central United States is also a dangerous area, with floods and tornadoes.

California is relatively safe, they found.

"It illustrates the impact of better building codes in seismically prone areas because the fatalities in earthquakes have gone down from 1900 because things don't collapse on people any more," Cutter said.

"It shows that simple improvements in building codes in high-wind environments like hurricane coasts, and the effectiveness of evacuation in advance of hurricanes, has reduced the mortality from hurricanes and tropical storms," she added.

"So there are some things we are pretty good at in getting people out of harm's way and reducing fatalities."

Cutter said there is no national database on such deaths and this was a first try at getting one together.

(Editing by Will Dunham)


SEVERE HEAT AND COLD TOP LIST OF DEADLY NATURAL HAZARDS

Data compilation by region, type of hazards shows deaths from more frequent events accumulate into significant numbers
by Laura Sanders

Before you buy that beautiful ranch house in West Texas, check this map.

Researchers have assembled a comprehensive map showing the number of deaths caused by natural hazards between 1970 and 2004. The map, published online December 16 in the International Journal of Health Geographics, tracks deaths in the United States caused by natural events including severe weather, tornadoes, floods and hurricanes.

Significantly high mortality was identified in the South, which researchers Kevin Borden and Susan Cutter, both of the University of South Carolina in Columbia, attribute largely to severe weather and tornadoes. Other danger zones include parts of the Mississippi Valley and Great Plains. Regions of the Midwest and urban Northeast have significantly lower mortality levels than the rest of the country.

Instead of highly publicized natural disasters such as Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Borden and Cutter find that heat is the number one killer, accounting for 19.6 percent of all deaths from natural hazards. Severe weather and winter weather caused the next highest numbers of deaths, each making up about 18 percent. Lighting strikes, which the researchers painstakingly separated from deaths caused by other weather-related events, led to 11.3 percent of deaths.

In contrast, the combined percentage of deaths from earthquakes, hurricanes and fires makes up less than five percent of all deaths.

“I think most educated people would assume you see a higher mortality from big events, like earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, because those things are newsworthy,” says Cutter. “But to confirm that it’s everyday, more frequent events that add up to a big loss is a new perspective.”

The study ends at 2004. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed 1,294 people and left 595 people missing, according to estimates from The Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. Cutter predicts: “If we added four more years of data, including Katrina, the geographic patterns would change a bit.” Cutter says she can’t know how much of an impact Katrina would have on the map of casualties, because the fatalities from that event are still being tallied.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/access/id/39388/name/ls_deathmap_us...
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTIONThis map of the United States shows the geographical distribution of deaths from natural hazard, broken down by counties. Blue regions have low mortality and red regions have high mortality.


Study tracks natural disasters, odds of dodging death
by Jack Gillum

A new study pinpoints how likely it is that natural disasters will literally be the death of Americans in certain regions of the country.
The report nails down what parts of the USA have high rates of "chronic everyday hazards," from severe storms to avalanches and hurricanes.

Researchers call it "noteworthy" that highly destructive, highly publicized single events, like hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires, caused fewer than 5% of such deaths combined.

"More frequent, less catastrophic events" proved more deadly, the report states. To be sure, the heat claimed the most lives — almost 20% — researchers found. Severe weather with multiple causes (18.8%) and winter weather (18.1%) were close seconds.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of South Carolina's Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute.

Susan Cutter, a researcher and geography professor, says the study is a warning to government and emergency-management officials that more can be done to prepare for the worst.

Rural areas, coastal zones with bad weather and the South were among those areas with the greatest death risk. Those places are more prone to natural hazards and significant population growth, the researchers say.

Meanwhile, the Midwest and parts of the Northeast had the lowest rates of mortality.

Cutter says severe storms and tornadoes in the South, mixed with feeble structures like manufactured homes and a lack of emergency radios, can bode poorly for rural residents.

Greg Flynn, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, says officials have improved preparedness since recent tornadoes and hurricanes, like Ike and Katrina.

"People are taking better steps when they know severe weather is approaching," he says, "and people are now miles ahead of where they were. They're making more plans not to stay in manufactured homes."

There is a silver lining in that deaths from heat waves are arguably more preventable than those from tropical storms and violent seismic activity. Researchers say one of the benefits of looking at natural disasters through a "geographic lens" is that people in vulnerable areas can be informed about the dangers, the study states.

The researchers complain there is no "consistent source" of hazard mortality data, calling for improvements in existing databases. The findings were published this week in BioMed Central's International Journal of Health Geographics.