New research reveals hurricanes and tropical storms in the United States cause a surge of deaths for nearly 15 years after a storm hits.
Official government statistics record only the number of individuals killed during these storms, which are together called "tropical cyclones." Usually, these direct deaths, which average 24 per storm in official estimates, occur through drowning or some other type of trauma. But the new analysis, published Oct. 2 in Nature, reveals a larger, hidden death toll in hurricanes' aftermath.
"In any given month, people are dying earlier than they would have if the storm hadn't hit their community," said senior study author Solomon Hsiang, a professor of environmental social sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. "A big storm will hit, and there's all these cascades of effects where cities are rebuilding or households are displaced or social networks are broken. These cascades have serious consequences for public health."
Hsiang and lead study author Rachel Young estimate an average U.S. tropical cyclone indirectly causes 7,000 to 11,000 excess deaths. All told, they estimate tropical storms since 1930 have contributed to between 3.6 million and 5.2 million deaths in the U.S. - more than all deaths nationwide from motor vehicle accidents, infectious diseases, or battle deaths in wars during the same period. Official government statistics put the total death toll from these storms at about 10,000 people.
Hurricane impacts underestimated
The new estimates are based on statistical analysis of data from the 501 tropical cyclones that hit the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from 1930 to 2015, and mortality rates for various populations within each state just before and after each cyclone. The researchers expanded on ideas from a 2014 study from Hsiang showing that tropical cyclones slow economic growth for 15 years, and on a 2018 Harvard study finding that Hurricane Maria caused nearly 5,000 deaths in the three months after the storm hit Puerto Rico - nearly 70 times the official government count.
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Data from Young and Hsiang, Nature 2024
