Researchers from the University of North Carolina have released a map showing the risk to humans of death from a natural disaster in the United States. The pair did a county by county study of deaths from earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, floods and hurricanes to compile their results.
Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden, from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, used nationwide data going back to 1970 to create their map. According to Cutter, “This work will enable research and emergency management practitioners to examine hazard deaths through a geographic lens.
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”.
Hazard mortality is most prominent in the South, where most people were killed by various severe weather hazards and tornadoes. Other areas of elevated risk are the northern Great Plains Region where heat and drought were the biggest killers and in the mountain west with winter weather and flooding deaths