Using Causes of Weather Deaths in Weather Safety Education and Preparedness

This presentation will show how the causes of weather deaths can be used to more effectively expend time and money in weather safety education and preparedness. As an obvious example, emergency managers and public safety officials in Colorado shouldn’t teach rip current safety, while residents of Florida don’t have to take into account avalanches within their severe weather plans.
We will present an updated analysis on the causes of weather-related deaths in Florida and show how it can be used to guide safety awareness in the state. Past efforts, which have proven effective, will also be employed in order to further motivate change in education and preparedness practices. For example, intensive lightning safety education began in Florida two decades ago and the per capita rate of lightning deaths has fallen by over 80% in that time, with lightning falling from the leading source of weather deaths to a distant second place.
Additionally, a new analysis currently under development will update the causes of tropical cyclone deaths in the U.S. A 2014 study showed that storm deaths surprisingly increased from a distant 7th place to the leading source; however, that change was likely due to three extreme events. This more recent analysis will analyze the past decade (2009-2018) of tropical cyclone deaths in the U.S. and will exclude those extreme events. Therefore, this analysis should be more representative of the current causes of tropical cyclone deaths in the U.S. The authors think this could be useful in teaching tropical cyclone preparedness in the U.S.