U.S. Hurricane Deaths Have Been Declining Over The Past 100 Years, But Is That Changing?

Destruction on Sanibel Island, Florida from Hurricane Ian
A decades long trend in declining U.S. hurricane
deaths might be reversing. 

 The other day, I had a post in which I wondered about possible shortcomings related to evacuations ahead of last month's Hurricane Ian in Florida. 

This issue might have contributed to many of the 100 or so deaths - and still counting - that Hurricane Ian caused. 

I spotted an interesting recent article in the Washington Post that noted that in general, far fewer Americans die in hurricanes than say, a century ago.  

Warnings ahead of power hurricanes have gotten astronomically better since, say, 1950.  So, too, have evacuations, which likely have saved many hundreds of thousands of lives in the past few decades.

In the years around the turn of the 20th century, individual hurricanes killed thousands of people. In 1900, a hurricane ended the lives of about 8,000 people around Galveston, Texas.  A year before that, 3,400 Puerto Ricans died in a hurricane.

In the busy hurricane year of 1893 two hurricanes killed about 3,000 people, about half in Georgia, the other half in Louisiana. And a 1928 hurricane wiped away 1,800 Floridians. 

A database of hurricane deaths in the United States from 1851 to 2010 show that 24 hurricanes in that period each killed at least 100 people.  Only one of those deadly hurricanes was after 1972 - Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which caused the deaths of at least 1,200 people.  

It appears Katrina marked a turning point in the downward trend in U.S hurricane deaths. As the Washington Post notes, we're starting to see an uptick again, after 2010.  As we've seen, Hurricane Ian's death toll has already surpassed 100. 

The list of deadly hurricanes since 2005 continues to grow:

Ike in 2008 killed 112 people in Texas and Louisiana. 

Sandy in 2012 killed 147 in the northeastern United States. 

Maria killed 3,400 in Puerto Rico in 2017

Hurricane Ida last year came close, killed 87 Americans and another 20 in Venezuela. 

The main problem here is people are flocking to the coasts. For instance, the population of Lee County, Florida, which was hardest hit by Hurricane Ian, went from 618,754 in 2010 to 787,976 this year. according to U.S Census data. 

This increased population at the coasts makes it harder to get people out of the way of an approaching hurricane.  There's only so much the roads and other infrastructure can handle in a hasty evacuation.  Plus, a percentage of people won't evacuate no matter how much you beg them. A small percentage of a huge population can be a lot of people. 

I have to say climate change might be beginning to make the problem worse, too.  There's been a troubling trend of hurricane intensifying rapidly just before landfall.  That can catch people off guard, too late to flee ahead of a monster storm.

The base sea level is rising, too, because of climate change.  That makes the storm surges from hurricanes even worse than they'd otherwise be. 

By the way, because of the booming coastal population, hurricanes are getting way more expensive, too. Of the 20 most costly U.S. hurricanes, adjusted for inflation, all but two of the top 20 most expensive have occurred since 2001. Four (probably five if you count Ian) of the top six most expensive had hit since 2017. 

Hurricane Ian was clearly by far this year's most tragic storm.  Unfortunately, in the coming years, I fear we'll go through quite a few more Ians.