A Historical Look at Tornadoes: Damage and Death - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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A Historical Look at Tornadoes: Damage and Death

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Big problem with hurricanes. At least 5 in Oklahoma City. None, ... Can't identify causes of decline in deaths. Mobile home problem. Big disaster situations? ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: A Historical Look at Tornadoes: Damage and Death


1
A Historical Look at Tornadoes Damage and Death
  • Harold E. Brooks
  • NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory
  • Norman, Oklahoma
  • brooks_at_nssl.noaa.gov

2
Impacts of tornadoes on society
  • What happens in an average year?
  • 40 deaths
  • 400M in damage
  • Looking backwards and forwards
  • Historical trends
  • Implications for the future

3
Adjusting historical tornado damage
  • Damage numbers go up
  • Inflation, acquisition of things, population
  • Adjust for inflation, total wealth (1997)
  • Consumer Price Index
  • Current-Cost Net Stock of Fixed Reproducible
    Tangible Wealth (1925-1997)-Stuff
  • 25,000,000,000,000 in 1997

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Adjusting stuff outside of period
  • Pure inflation (gap between curves stays same)
  • Stuff grows with GNP

6
Inflation adjusted top ten
7
Stuff-adjusted Big Ten
  • 11 Oklahoma City 909 (963)
  • 10-4 all range from 1023-1141
  • Lorain-Sandusky (28 June 1924), Lubbock,
    Gainesville, GA (6 April 1936), Topeka, Omaha,
    Worcester, Wichita Falls
  • 3 Tri-State (1925, raw-16) 1392
  • 2 St. Louis (1927, raw-22) 1797
  • 1 St. Louis (1896, raw-12) 2916 (2167)

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Summary of Adjustments
  • Big damage-combination of meteorological event
    and civilization
  • Inflation still shows some era bias
  • Saint Louis 1896
  • Destroyed .01-.025 of national wealth
  • Comparable to Dallas-Fort Worth study

12
Tornado deaths
  • First recorded death
  • 1680 in Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Total of 19,814 (as of 23 April 2001)
  • When do they occur?
  • How have they changed through time?

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Problems with death tolls
  • Poor counting
  • Cultural biases (e.g., Natchez 1840)
  • Who was there (e.g., Saint Louis 1896)?
  • Indirect fatalities
  • Big problem with hurricanes
  • At least 5 in Oklahoma City
  • None, apparently, in Plainfield
    (1991)

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How has the decrease happened?
  • Causes cant be deconvolved
  • Changes
  • Number of tornadoes
  • Frequency of big deaths
  • Number in big events
  • 95th percentile killer

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How has the decrease happened?
  • Fewer fatal tornadoes
  • 40/year in 1920s, 1930s
  • 20/year in 1980s, 1990s
  • Increase in time between fatal tornadoes
  • High death tornadoes are smaller
  • 36-fatality tornadoes occurred once/year in
    1920s, 1930s
  • 95th percentile death toll dropped from 20-25
    to 10-15

23
Putting death and damage together
  • Consider deaths per damage amount
  • Inflation
  • Wealth

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3 May 1999 Oklahoma City
  • 36 deaths, 11 in mobile homes
  • gt7000 permanent homes, 100 mobile homes
  • Estimating the death toll before warnings?
  • Rate used to be 15x today, so 540
  • Inflation-adjustment, 700
  • Wealth-adjustment, 250
  • What happened?

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Mobile Homes
  • Previously
  • 20x rate of deaths compared to permanent
  • Big increase in Oklahoma City
  • What might the future hold?

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Final Thoughts
  • 1B tornadoes occur 1/decade in US
  • 3B tornado is practically worst case
  • Cant identify causes of decline in deaths
  • Mobile home problem
  • Big disaster situations?
  • Education and communication
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