Ranked by how often it has actually been declared here — and what goes wrong in each, which is almost never the thing people prepared for.
People drive into it.
More than half of all flood deaths are vehicle-related. It takes twelve inches of moving water to carry off a small car and eighteen to move a larger one. It is almost never a road you do not know — it is the one you have driven a thousand times, where you cannot see how deep it is or whether the road is still there underneath.
Source: NWS / CDC
Do this tonight
Photograph every room in your house. It takes about eleven minutes and it is your insurance claim. Then move anything irreplaceable off the floor.
The storm is not the emergency. The outage is.
What kills people afterwards is the generator. Portable generators cause roughly 100 unintentional carbon monoxide deaths a year in the United States, and they cluster in the days after a storm when the power is out. Carbon monoxide is odourless, and by the time you are confused enough to notice, you are too confused to act. Outside, far from the house, never in a garage with the door open.
Source: CPSC
Do this tonight
Find out whether your generator has ever been started. If the answer is no, start it — an untested generator is a heavy paperweight with a full tank of fuel.
The people who die are usually the ones who could not leave.
In the Camp Fire, 85 people died, most within the first twelve hours. Most of them were older residents whose homes burned before anyone could reach them — not people who chose to stay, people who could not get out on their own. The roads out of Paradise gridlocked and some abandoned their cars and ran. The decision that saves you is made before the smoke, not during it.
Source: NIST / California Senate review
Do this tonight
Name the person in your household who could not get out alone, and name who is responsible for them. If nobody has that job, nobody will do it.
The illness is not the whole emergency.
In June 2020, 41% of US adults had avoided medical care because of COVID concerns — 12% skipped urgent or emergency care and 31% skipped routine care. The households that struggled were the ones with a prescription, a chronic condition or a caregiving duty and no plan for any of them.
Source: CDC MMWR
Do this tonight
Write down every prescription in the house with its dose, and find out how early each one can be refilled.
The days after are more dangerous than the landfall.
The wind stops, the power stays off, and the generators come out. After Hurricane Ida, Louisiana hospitalised dozens for carbon monoxide poisoning inside the first 48 hours. Cash matters here too — when the grid is down the card readers are down with it, and the store that is open cannot take your money.
Source: CPSC / state health reporting
Do this tonight
Put two hundred dollars in small bills somewhere you will not spend it, and check that your medication buffer covers a week.
It follows the fire.
A burn scar sheds water instead of absorbing it, so the slide arrives in a later rainy season — often after everyone has stopped thinking about the wildfire that caused it.
Do this tonight
If your area burned in the last few years, find out whether you are downhill of it.
