Ohio

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.

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.

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.