HURRICANE Impacts
Hurricanes and tropical storms can cause major damage and loss of life due to the heavy rains, strong winds, and storm surge. Hurricanes are among the most important and devastating natural disasters. The two most common measures of hurricane impact are deaths and economic loss. Death tolls from extreme hurricanes can be staggering – over 20,000 lives were lost in the 1780 Antilles hurricane, perhaps as many in 400,000 died as a result of 1970’s Bohla cyclone in Bangladesh, and more than 10,000 perished during 1998’s Hurricane Mitch [1,2]. While the largest single-event death tolls in the recorded history of natural hazards are attributable to epidemics, famine, floods and droughts [3], more deaths are attributable globally to hurricanes in an average year than any other natural hazard [4]. For North America and the Caribbean, Rappaport and Fernández-Partagás [2] estimate as many as 500,000 deaths may be attributable to hurricanes since European contact in 1492, including the loss of over 20,000 in the 1780 Antilles storm, 10,000 as a result of 1974’s hurricane Fifi in Honduras, and 8,000 to 12,000 during the 1900 storm in Galveston, Texas.
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Acknowledgements & Credits: Click here for literature cited in this section, "Hurricane Impacts." This material is based upon work supported by the Texas Department of Public Safety's Division of Emergency Management. Background photo courtesy of Mark Moran (Creative Commons license CC BY 2.0)
© 2019 Jennifer L. Irish & Steven M. Quiring. All rights reserved.
© 2019 Jennifer L. Irish & Steven M. Quiring. All rights reserved.