Billion Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters, 1980–2013 (part 1): Source:National Climatic Data Center The U.S. has sustained 123 weather-related disasters during the 1980-2012 period in which overall damages and costs reached or exceeded $1 billion at the time of the event. Twelve occurred during 2011 alone—the most for any year on record, with total costs being approximately $52 billion. Two damage figures are given for events prior to 2002: the first represents actual dollar costs and is not adjusted for inflation. The second (in parentheses) is the dollar cost normalized to 2002 dollars using a GNP inflation/wealth index. The total normalized losses for the 99 events are over $725 billion. Sources include Storm Data (NCDC publication), the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, other U.S. government agencies, individual state emergency management agencies, state and regional climate centers, and insurance industry estimates. 2013Category 4 Tornado in Oklahoma(May 20, 2013); an enormous category 4 tornado hit Oklahoma City, Moore, and Newcastle. Moore was the hardest hit. The city's Plaza Towers Elementary School was flattened. More than 90 people were killed in the storm, including 20 children. The tornado, stretching about a mile wide, was on the ground for 40 minutes. 2012National Drought(2012); a drought began in the spring of 2012 due to the lack of snow the U.S. received during the previous winter. The drought has caused 123 deaths and over $40 billion in damages / cost. Southeast/Ohio Valley Tornadoes(March 2–3 2012); a total of 75 tornadoes caused 4 billion in damages/costs and 42 deaths. Texas Tornadoes(April 2–3 2012); a total of 22 tornadoes, including several in the Dallas area, caused 1.3 billion in damages/costs. The tornadoes caused no deaths. Midwest Tornadoes(April 13–14 2012); 98 confirmed tornadoes hit Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. The damage cost $283 million in Wichita alone. The disaster caused nearly $2 billion in total damages/costs. Six people were killed. Midwest/Ohio Valley Storms(April 28–May 1 2012); a total of 38 tornadoes and large hail caused major damage, especially in St. Louis. At least $4 billion in damages/costs was estimated. One person was killed. Southern Plains/Midwest/Northeast Severe Weather(May 25–30 2012); a total of 27 tornadoes and severe storms caused major damage in several states and cost $2.5 billion. One person was killed. Rockies/Southwest Severe Weather(June 6–12 2012); 25 tornadoes and large hail hit Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. The hail damage cost more than $1 billion in Colorado alone. The total cost of the storms was estimated at $3 billion. East/Northeast/Plains Severe Storms (Derecho)(June 29–July 2 2012); a large storm system, also called a derecho, left damage from Ohio and Indiana through the mid-Atlantic. Damage by this disaster was estimated at $4 billion. The storm system also caused 28 deaths. Hurricane Isaac(August 2012); the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, bringing flooding, strong winds and tornadoes. Isaac caused an estimated 2.3 billion in damages and 42 deaths. Western Wildfires(Summer/Fall 2012); various wildfires burned up 9.1 million acres. The most intense wildfires were in the western part of the United States. The estimated cost of damage was between $1 and $2 billion. Hurricane Sandy(October 2012); Sandy struck the east coast, killing 132 people. Sandy caused an estimated $82 billion dollars in damages to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. 2011Texas, New Mexico, Arizona Wildfires(Spring-Fall, 2011); over $1.0 billion in total damages/costs; drought and extreme heat caused several historic wildfires across Texas, New Mexico and Arizona; over 3 million acres burned in Texas; 5 deaths reported. Hurricane Irene(August 20–29, 2011); estimate of over $7.3 billion in total damage/costs; minimal category 1 hurricane hit coastal North Carolina and moved north along Mid-Atlantic Coast causing flooding in the Northeast; numerous tornadoes were also reported; 45 reported deaths. Upper Midwest Flooding(Summer 2011); over $2.0 billion in total damages/costs; melting snow combined with above normal precipitation caused the Missouri and Souris Rivers to flood across the Upper Midwest; 4,000 homes were flooded and 11,000 people evacuated Minot, North Dakota; 5 deaths. Mississippi River Flooding(Spring–Summer 2011); $3.0–4.0 billion in total losses/costs; nearly 300 percent more than normal precipitation amounts in the Ohio Valley combined with melting snow caused historical flooding along the Mississippi River and its tributaries; 7 deaths reported. Southern Plains/Southwest Drought and Heatwave(Spring–Fall, 2011); nearly $10.0 billion in losses to crops, livestock and timber; Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, southern Kansas, and western Louisiana are all impacted; no deaths reported.

Tsunami Factfile The Indian Ocean tsunami that occured in December 2004 was the deadliest in history: Indian Ocean Tsunami: The Deadliest in History On Dec. 26, 2004, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake—the largest earthquakein 40 years—ruptured in the Indian Ocean, off the northwest coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The earthquake triggered the deadliest tsunamiin world history, so powerful that the waves caused loss of life on the coast of Africa and were even detected on the East Coast of the United States. More than 225,000 people have died from the disaster, a half a million have been injured, thousands still remain missing, and millions were left homeless. Eleven countries bordering the Indian Ocean—all relatively poor and vulnerable—suffered devastation. Hardest hit were Indonesia(particularly the province of Aceh), Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and the Maldives. The catastrophic damage included the destruction of entire cities, the contamination of farmland and forests, and the depletion of fishing stocks. Some areas faced starvation and increased suseptibility to disease. Even countries with relatively low death tolls suffered enormous damage—the Maldives, for example, had less than 100 deaths, yet the tsunami left 14 of the archipelago's islands uninhabitable, requiring its inhabitants to be permanently evacuated, and another 79 islands without safe drinking water. Seestatistics on Deadliest Tsunamisand Deadliest Earthquakes. The Science of Tsunami A tsunami(pronounced soo-NAHM-ee) is a series of huge waves that occur as the result of a violent underwater disturbance, such as an earthquakeor volcanic eruption. The waves travel in all directions from the epicenter of the disturbance. The waves may travel in the open sea as fast as 450 miles per hour. As they travel in the open ocean, tsunami waves are generally not particularly large—hence the difficulty in detecting the approach of a tsunami. But as these powerful waves approach shallow waters along the coast, their velocity is slowed and they consequently grow to a great height before smashing into the shore. They can grow as high as 100 feet; the Indian Ocean tsunami generated waves reaching 30 feet. Tsunamiis the Japanese word for "harbor wave." They are sometimes mistakenly referred to as tidal waves, but tsunamis have nothing to do with the tides. Tsunamis have been relatively rare in the Indian Ocean, and are most common in the Pacific Ocean. For more details on Tsunami, see our encyclopedia articleand Tsunami FAQs. Countries Damaged by the Indian Ocean Tsunami Deadliest Tsunamis in History Fatalities1YearMagnitudePrincipal areas 350,00020049.0Indian Ocean 100,000+1410 b.c.Crete-Santorini, Ancient Greece 100,00017558.5Portugal, Morocco, Ireland, and the United Kingdom 100,0001908Messina, Italy 40,00017827.0South China Sea, Taiwan 36,5001883Krakatau, Indonesia 30,00017078.4Tokaido-Nankaido, Japan 26,36018967.6Sanriku, Japan 25,67418688.5Northern Chile 15,03017926.4Kyushu Island, Japan Source:National Geophysical Data Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Deadliest Earthquakes in History FatalitiesYearMagnitudePrincipal areas 830,00015568.0Shansi, China 255,000+19768.0Tangshan, China 230,000+20049.1off west coast of northern Sumatra 230,0001138n.a.Aleppo, Syria 222,57020107.0Haiti 200,00019208.6Gansu, China 200,00019277.9near Xining, China 200,000856n.a.Damghan, Iran 150,000893n.a.Ardabil, Iran 143,00019237.9Kwanto, Japan Source:National Earthquake Information Center, U.S. Geological Survey. Data compiled from several sources.

The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake: At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, the people of San Francisco were awakened by an earthquakethat would devastate the city. The main temblor, having a 7.7–7.9 magnitude, lasted about one minute and was the result of the rupturing of the northernmost 296 miles of the 800-mile San Andreas fault. But when calculating destruction, the earthquake took second place to the great fire that followed. The fire, lasting four days, most likely started with broken gas lines (and, in some cases, was helped along by people hoping to collect insurance for their property—they were covered for fire, but not earthquake, damage). With water mains broken, fighting the fires was almost impossible, and about 500 city blocks were destroyed. The damages were estimated at about $400,000,000 in 1906 dollars, which would translate to about $8.2 billion today. Uncertain Death Toll In 1906 San Franciscowas the ninth largest U.S. city with a population of 400,000, and over 225,000 were left homeless by the disaster. The death toll is uncertain. City officials estimated the casualties at 700 but more modern calculations say about 3,000 lost their lives. The lowballing city figures may have been a public relations ploy to downplay the disaster with an eye on rebuilding the city. On April 20, the U.S.S.Chicagorescued 20,000 victims, one of the largest sea evacuations in history, rivaling Dunkirkin World War II. Martial law was not declared, but some 500 looters were shot by police and the military. Shifting Seismologic Knowledge The epicenter of this earthquake has moved around in the past 100 years, as advances in seismology have been made. It was first thought to have been in Marin County, then northwest of the Golden Gate, and most recently, in the Pacific Ocean about two miles west of San Francisco. The plate-tectonics theorythat would shed some light on the quake wasn't formulated until the 1920s and not embraced until some three decades later. The San Andreas faultis on the boundary between the Pacific plate and the North American plate. During the earthquake, the ground west of the fault tended to move northward and, in the most extreme instance, a 21-foot shift was measured. Earthquake ruptures are fast movers—seismologists estimated the average speed of this rupture to have been 8,300 mi/hr going north, and 6,300 mi/hr traveling south. The quake was felt from southern Oregon to south of Los Angeles and inland as far as central Nevada. Magnitude Charles Richterdeveloped his scale in 1935 to measure the amount of seismic energy released, the magnitude, of an earthquake. Seismologists found the Richter scale fine for lower magnitude quakes, but inaccurate for higher magnitude ones. The 1906 earthquake was assigned a Richter rating of 8.3, but on the newer moment magnitude scaleit has been demoted to one measuring 7.8 or 7.9. "The Big One" On Oct. 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m., at the height of the rush hour, Bay Area residents thought the "big one" had struck. The 7.1 Richter scale (6.9 moment magnitude) Loma Prieta earthquake, with its epicenter about 60 miles from San Francisco, was the largest one to hit the region since 1906. Sixty to 70 deaths were reported, freeways and bridges were damaged, and the World Series between the Oakland and San Francisco teams was postponed for 10 days. Property damage was estimated at $6 billion dollars, making this the costliest natural disaster to that date. But seismologists said this was not the major earthquake feared by all. That one is still in the future. In 1906 there were only about 650,000 people living in the area, but today more than 7 million people make their homes in the San Francisco Bay region. Scientists in 2003 estimated that there is a 62% probability of a 6.7 magnitude or larger earthquake hitting the Bay Area in the next 30 years and Californians live in the shadow of "the big one."

Hurricane Katrina: Hurricane Katrina slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, destroying beachfront towns in Mississippiand Louisiana, displacing a million people, and killing almost 1,800. When levees in New Orleanswere breached, 80% of the city was submerged by the flooding. About 20% of its 500,000 citizens were trapped in the city without power, food, or drinking water. Rescue efforts were so delayed and haphazard that many were stranded for days on rooftops and in attics before help arrived. The city became a toxic pool of sewage, chemicals, and corpses, and in the ensuing chaos, mayhem and looting became rampant—about 15% of the city's police force had simply walked off the job. The 20,000 people who made their way to the Superdome, the city's emergency shelter, found themselves crammed into sweltering and fetid conditions. At a second shelter, the convention center, evacuees were terrorized by roaming gangs and random gunfire. Relief workers, medical help, security forces, and essential supplies remained profoundly inadequate during the first critical days of the disaster. Poor and Elderly Disproportionately Affected As most of the city's citizens fled the city, those without cars or the financial means to relocate were left behind. The 100,000 who remained in the drowning city were largely poor and predominantly black, exposing the racial dimension of New Orleans’s persistent poverty: 28% of New Orleanians are poor (twice the national average) and 84% of those are black. The elderly poor were also disproportionately affected by the disaster: 70% of the New Orleans area's 53 nursing homes were not evacuated before the hurricane struck. A Natural Disaster Waiting to Happen Hurricane Katrina has been called the most anticipated disaster in modern American history. For years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had ranked New Orleans and San Francisco as the two cities most vulnerable to catastrophic natural disaster, and a day before Katrina's landfall, the National Weather Service warned that the hurricane would cause "human suffering incredible by modern standards." All Levels of Government Falter Americans were shaken not simply by the magnitude of the disaster but by how ill-prepared all levels of government were in its aftermath. Although New Orleans had performed a hurricane drill the previous year, the city and state governments had no transportation or crime prevention plans in place, and such negligence had devastating consequences. Homeland Security and FEMA The Department of Homeland Security, the new cabinet agency created for the very purpose of increasing domestic security, had unveiled its National Response Plan in Jan. 2005, which promised "vastly improved coordination among federal, state, local, and tribal organizations . . . by increasing the speed, effectiveness, and efficiency of incident management." Yet Michael Chertoff, the Department's Secretary, waited until two days after the hurricane hit before putting the plan into effect by declaring it an "incident of national significance." Critics claimed Homeland Security's efforts had been focused on the prevention of terrorism at the expense of preparing for natural catastrophes. Seeming not to grasp the scale of the disaster, Chertoff and Michael Brown, the director of FEMA, expressed surprise at the dangerous conditions in the convention center in New Orleans, days after its horrific images had saturated the airwaves, making them appear less informed than the average TV viewer. Brown was so inept in managing the crisis that he was quietly removed after two weeks. All three top jobs at FEMA had been filled by political appointees with no emergency management experience, and half of the agency's senior career professionals had been cut since 2000. The President's Response In sharp contrast to the leadership he displayed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, President Bushinitially seemed off-key and out of touch, declaring that he didn't "think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" and waiting four days before his first brief visit to the region. Trust in the president's ability to lead the country during a crisis had been a central factor in his reelection, but two-thirds of Americans considered his response to Katrina inadequate. To repair his image, Bush acknowledged the government's faltering response and pledged "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." A Year Later A year after Katrina, the population of New Orleans was less than half of what it was before the storm hit. Nearly half the city's hospitals remained shut and half its doctors had moved out of the area. Electricity was restored to just 60% of the city.

Hurricanes by the Numbers (Atlantic hurricane statistics) Millions live in the paths of the biggest storms Source: U.S. Census Bureau 10 The number of hurricanes during the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, with only two of them as major hurricanes (Category 3-strength or higher). However, one of the major hurricanes was Hurricane Sandy. It struck southeastern Cuba at Category 3 strength, then made landfall in New Jersey as a post-tropical cyclone. It was the second costliest cyclone on record (not adjusted for inflation) at $50 billion, ranking only behind Hurricane Katrina from 2005. The only other hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. in 2012 was Hurricane Isaac, which hit Louisiana. 82.2 million Population as of July 1, 2012, of coastal states stretching from North Carolina to Texas — the areas most threatened by Atlantic hurricanes. An estimated 26.2 percent of the nation's population live in these states. 34.1 million Population in 1960 of the states stretching from North Carolina to Texas. Approximately 19 percent of the nation's population lived in these areas at that time. 240.9% Percentage growth of the population of the states stretching from North Carolina to Texas between 1960 and 2012. 591,821 Collective land area in square miles of the states stretching from North Carolina to Texas. 10 Year Anniversary of Hurricane Isabel 2003 The costliest and deadliest hurricane of 2003, Hurricane Isabel made landfall in the U.S. on the Outer Banks of North Carolina on Sept. 18, destroying many homes on the barrier island. Isabel later moved north through Virginia and Washington, D.C., and ended up causing about $3 billion in damage to the mid-Atlantic region. Category 2 The strength of Hurricane Isabel at landfall based on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with maximum sustained winds measured at 105 mph. Isabel reached a peak as a Category 5 storm on Sept. 11 south of Bermuda, but gradually weakened as it approached landfall. 3 Counties that encompass the land area of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The area includes parts of Currituck, Dare and Hyde counties. 64,509 Population of Currituck County, Dare County and Hyde County in North Carolina in 2012. 26,581 The number of occupied housing units in Currituck, Dare and Hyde counties combined. $236,500; 321,200; and 93,600 Median home value of owner-occupied units in Currituck, Dare and Hyde counties, respectively. 32.0, 19.5 and 25.1 minutes Mean commuting time to work for residents in Currituck, Dare and Hyde counties, respectively. 7.8%, 11.1% and 25.1% The percent of people who live below poverty level in in Currituck, Dare and Hyde counties, respectively. History of Hurricane Naming Conventions Andrea The name of the first Atlantic storm of 2013. Hurricane names rotate in a six-year cycle with the 2013 list being a repeat of the 2007 names. 76 The number of hurricane names officially retired by the World Meteorological Organization. Although hurricane names are recycled every six years, for reasons of sensitivity, hurricane names that were so deadly and costly that re-use of the name would be considered inappropriate are retired. 1950 The year the Weather Bureau officially began naming hurricanes. 2005 In one of the busiest Atlantic hurricane seasons on record, 28 named storms formed, forcing use of the alternate Greek alphabet scheme for the first time. When the National Hurricane Center's list of 21 approved names runs out for the year, hurricanes are named after Greek letters. Of the 28 named storms in 2005, 15 were hurricanes, with four storms reaching Category 5 status (Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma) and three more being considered major. Preparing for Emergencies Using Census Bureau Statistics The growth in population of coastal areas illustrates the importance of emergency planning and preparedness for areas that are more susceptible to inclement weather conditions. The U.S. Census Bureau's official decennial census and population estimates, along with annually updated socio-economic data from the American Community Survey, provide a detailed look at the nation's growing coastal population. Emergency planners and community leaders can better assess the needs of coastal populations using Census Bureau statistics.