"The Best Location in the Nation"
Posted on 11/04/2005 2:30:50 PM PST by LA Woman3
Hurricane victims in Florida and along the Gulf Coast have to be asking themselves something survivors of tornadoes, blizzards and earthquakes also wonder: Is there any place you can go that is safe from natural disasters?
The West has earthquakes and wildfires. Move to the Midwest and you could find yourself in Tornado Alley. The Northeast? Blizzards, ice storms and heat waves.
Experts say trying to escape catastrophic weather is a little like trying to escape from, well, the weather. Short of building a new Biosphere, it is pretty near impossible to completely avoid quakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards or heat waves.
"Unfortunately, if you drew a map of the United States, you would find that at least one and most likely two or three of those happen almost everywhere," says Larry Kalkstein, senior research fellow at the University of Delaware's Center for Climatic Research. "Every place has some sort of vulnerability." Kalkstein knows. He lives in Marco Island, Fla., a Gulf Coast town that took a direct hit from Hurricane Wilma last month.
Experts say Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma demonstrate that any search for the safest real estate in America should exclude the Gulf Coast and a good chunk of the Atlantic Coast.
The same with Tornado Alley, the area centering on northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. It is sometimes defined as stretching east to the Mississippi River or beyond to Ohio.
That leaves a big chunk of the West and the Northeast, though the geography can be pared down by knocking out fault-riddled California and northern reaches prone to ice storms and blizzards.
Heat waves could disqualify even more areas, though not necessarily in the South. Kalkstein notes that hot weather tends to be most deadly in places where people are not used to them: Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis.
Heat waves are, on average, the most deadly weather phenomenon of the last decade, according to the National Weather Service. A 1995 heat wave in Chicago killed more than 700 people in four days, most of them elderly.
William Hooke, director of policy programs for the American Meteorological Society, says people cannot avoid weather risk, but they can decide the "shape of the risk." For instance: Do you feel more comfortable living in a tornado zone or a hurricane zone?
Consider the risks every person faces every day getting into a car or walking down the street and catastrophic weather seems less of an issue. Federal statistics show that 369 people died last year from weather hazards, while 42,636 people were killed in traffic accidents and 1.37 million were victims of a violent crime.
Then there other manmade threats: Cities like Washington and New York are probably pretty high on a terrorist's list of favorite places.
So, where can you go?
Kalkstein, if "pushed to the corner," would choose Santa Barbara, Calif., since it has almost no thunderstorms, no hurricanes, rare heat waves and no blizzards. But it does have earthquakes.
Joseph Annotti of Property Casualty Insurers Association of America picks the Midwest. Yes, there are tornadoes, but he notes that nothing matches the destructive power of hurricanes and earthquakes.
"Even the worst tornado is not going to come close, damage-wise, to even a Category 2 hurricane," Annotti says.
Still, the average number of people killed by tornadoes in the past decade is more than twice the number of hurricane deaths: 57 a year versus 21, according to the National Weather Service. That number does not include the more than 1,000 people who died as a result of Katrina.
Rade Musulin of the American Academy of Actuaries lists the Northwest, the interior East Coast up the Appalachians, and Utah and Colorado as relatively safe areas.
Another, completely unscientific way to look at safety is to compare the U.S. Geological Survey earthquake hazard map, a Tornado Alley map, Kalkstein's heat wave danger zone and the Federal Emergency Management Agency's county-by-county map of declared presidential disaster declarations from 1965 to 2003.
The area left out of the resulting crazy quilt of disasters and potential disasters is ... pretty darn small.
One relatively safe place seems to be Blanding, Utah (population 3,500). It is on a mesa, so there is no flooding. City Manager Chris Webb cannot remember an earthquake or a tornado or, for that matter, any sort of weather emergency. There is snow, but Webb says the high-desert city has moderate temperatures year round, so it cannot even maintain an ice rink.
But he cautions: "There is drought down this way."
Milton Keynes is safe.
"The Best Location in the Nation"
The moon.
"We'll always hef Paris, darlink!"
Yeah, but when Yellowstone blows up, Utah is right in the line of fire.
Not that I want anyone else to move up here, but a "blizzard" is hardly a natural disaster. A blizzard is 35+ MPH winds and blowing snow. Not all that comfortable, but hardly a disaster.
Then there is air, water and food pollution and toxins...
and violent crime and pestilance...
There is no place safe....in the end all die..
..kaput!
The thing to think about is where you and your loved ones
spend eternity...
imo
Strange logic here. If it hits YOUR house, then a tornado will likely do as much damage as a Cat-2
Michigan is pretty stable. Ive only felt a couple of very weak earthquakes here in my 41 years. The great lakes protect us from most of the big storms that roll across the plains. Lots of snow along the eastern shore of lake Michigan.
Considering the fact that an F-5 tornado can produce windspeeds over 500 mph I suspect it could do some pretty serious damage if it hits your house.
Lived there 7 years. Will take my chances with the heat and occassional tornados here in Austin. Our only problem is the liberals. Wait, we had those near Detroit also. Come to think of it we had a couple of tornados hit Detroit while we were there to. Only problem was that when they showed the "damage" on the news we couldn't tell what was new and what was old.
never move out of your parents home
BS, when it gets down to 45 FH it is time to hunker down.
Blanding is a beautiful little town, but the author forgot the Yellowstone volcano.
My personal favorite is Green River, Utah. Best watermelon in the country.
Colorado is pretty low on the natural disasters department, but then again it seems to be increasingly swarmed by socialist voters and politicians.
That's about right. A lot of yuppies seem to have convinced themselves that if they have a personal exercise trainer and eat the right food and have the right political ideas and have the right health insurance they can live forever. But sooner or later, everyone dies.
I'd quote one of John Donne's sermons on this point, but I think it's clear enough.
Don't know how Utah got into this but you might also mention the huge earthquake faults that run through Salt Lake City -- 13th East and the really big Wastach Fault that runs right under the Salt Palace IIRC. Salt Lake's way overdue for a "big one."
Storms, floods and earthquakes don't kill people -- buildings kill people.
On the moon we spank nerds with moonrocks.
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