Louisiana

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.

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.

Underestimated because of the name.

The rain and the outage do the damage, not the wind — which means the same generator and floodwater failures that follow a hurricane follow this too.

Two things kill, and neither is the cold on its own.

Carbon monoxide, when the heat fails and people bring a generator or a grill inside — generators are the single largest source of non-fire CO deaths. And hypothermia, which claims around 1,300 Americans a year. The house going cold is survivable. What people do about it is what is not.

This is the one that leaves you dark for a week.

Ice brings the lines down across a wide area at once, so restoration runs into days rather than hours. That is what makes it dangerous — the longer the power is off, the more likely somebody brings a generator or a grill somewhere it should not be.

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.

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.

Where you are matters more than what you do.

Since 1996, 815 people have been killed in mobile or manufactured homes — 53% of everyone killed at home by a tornado, in housing that makes up under 6% of American homes. Anchor failure is the usual cause. If you live in one, the plan is not to shelter in place. It is to know, in advance, exactly where you are going instead.