Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Tropical storms and hurricanes like Helene could indirectly cause up to 11,000 deaths in the 15 years that follow the initial destruction. Hurricane Helene may have already hammered the Southeast, but its lethal aftermath could last a decade or more.
Tropical cyclones, which include hurricanes like Helene and other whirling storms, boost local death rates for up to 15 years after whipping along U.S. coastlines, scientists report October 2 in Nature. Each storm may indirectly cause between 7,000 and 11,000 deaths, estimate University of California, Berkeley environmental economist Rachel Young and Stanford University economist Solomon Hsiang.
That’s a Mount Everest of an estimate compared to the official number of deaths — 24 — that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration attributes to the average storm in the team’s analysis. The results suggest that “hurricanes and tropical storms are a much greater public health concern than anyone previously thought,” Young says.
Using a statistical model, she and Hsiang analyzed the impact of all 501 tropical cyclones that hit the contiguous United States from 1930 to 2015. They measured changes in mortality for up to 20 years after each of these storms. Their analysis suggests that an individual hurricane may indirectly lead to thousands of lives lost. And taken together, the storms could have spurred as many as 5 percent of all deaths over that time period. Infants were particularly vulnerable, as were Black populations, the team found.
Young and Hsiang don’t know all the ways hurricanes may contribute to mortality, but they have some ideas. It’s possible the stress of a surviving such a storm, or the pollution left in the wake of destruction, harms people’s health (SN: 10/1/24). Or maybe local governments have less money to spend on health care after rebuilding ravaged infrastructure. It could be some combination of these and other factors, Young says. She’s interested in digging into what’s going on.
In the meantime, Young thinks her team’s work highlights the need for new disaster response polices — ones that account for hurricanes’ impact long term. “We really pull together after these disasters to help people immediately in the aftermath,” she says. But “we need to be thinking about these folks long after those initial responses are over.”
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 06, @02:05PM
It's not just hurricanes, all sorts of infrequent highly destructive events, including wars, riots, fires, mudslides and earthquakes have a significant negative effect on the built infrastructure. Generally, we build that infrastructure for our benefit, and loss of it has some level of negative impact.
The whole "that what does not kill me makes me stronger" side of things is a nice positive attitude to take, but until the lost infrastructure is replaced, it's somewhat delusional.
In the "old days" like hurricane Andrew, insurance payouts almost came close to compensation for the losses, and in some pockets things were built back better than before, but mostly not. The insured damage payout percentage is not improving over time, and there is also the very real argument that all the disaster rebuilding takes away from progress in non impacted areas.
Excuse me while I go out and do some chainsaw work to clean up from Helene before Milton hits. My recent "Marginal ECG" result was no doubt a knock on effect of the storm (and other) stress, but if I have a heart attack later today, did the storms do it?
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