Hurricane Fatalities, 1900–2010: Context in these Stormy Times
Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
Despite the press given to hurricanes on the dangers they pose to life and limb, in the larger scheme of things, their contribution to U.S. mortality (less than 0.01% on average each year) verges on the trivial. More importantly, death rates are substantially lower today than they were in decades past.
In the following, I am assuming that the catastrophic failure of the levees after Hurricane Katrina should be attributed to hurricanes in general, rather than human failure–a questionable assumption. Also, I am assuming 1,525 deaths from hurricanes in 2005 (see below).
Figure 1 shows that 46% of all deaths from extreme weather events in the U.S. from 1993-2006 were from excessive cold, 28% from excessive heat, 10% from hurricanes 7% from floods, and 4% from tornadoes. Together they were responsible for an average of 1,301 deaths each year. To put these numbers in context, they constitute only 0.05% of the 2,367,000 deaths that occurred each year in the U.S., averaged over 1993-2006. Thus, hurricanes contribute, on average, about 0.006% to total U.S. mortality. (WUWT)
