Well, it's another bluebird day in Paradise! We are mostly dug out from yesterdays Snowstorm. Christmas day left us with another 18" of snow here in Bellevue. I finally finished digging out about 7:30 last night.
Today is my wife's birthday. Happy Birthday, Barbara!
The rugged central core of Idaho is a risky place to live. At least, that's the claim from a new report about the chances of being struck down by Mother Nature.
According to the study, Blaine County residents stand a better-than-average chance of being killed by natural hazards like severe winter weather than do inhabitants living in certain other Idaho counties and locations across the country. The study says that residents of Camas County are even worse off, with their chance of kicking the bucket because of natural hazards rising to the highest category included in the dour report.
Published under the innocuous title of "Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States" in the International Journal of Health Geographics, the study may make you rethink your outdoor recreation plans, if severe weather threatens. Written by University of South Carolina Geography Professor Dr. Susan Cutter and Ph.D. graduate student Kevin Borden, it assesses which regions of the country experience a higher rate of mortality at the hands of natural hazards like hurricanes, flooding, winter storms, earthquakes and wildfires.
The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The report's findings include a mixture of surprising and not-so-surprising conclusions.
"The regions most prone to deaths from natural hazards are the South and intermountain West," the study authors write.
"Significant clusters of high mortality are in the lower Mississippi Valley, upper Great Plains and mountain West," they state.
The incidence of natural hazards was broken down by 10 regions in the lower 48 states. In region 10, which covers Idaho, Oregon and Washington, severe weather—which the authors tabbed as mortality-causing events with multiple weather factors—made up nearly a third of the deaths. Next up is severe winter weather, the study indicates.
Cutter and Borden do seem to toy with the idea that personal choices may be a factor that controls the safety of those living in more natural-hazard-prone regions of the country like central Idaho.
"An important question is whether people in areas of high mortality know what to do (or what not to do) when a hazard event occurs," they say.
According to the study, Blaine County residents stand a better-than-average chance of being killed by natural hazards like severe winter weather than do inhabitants living in certain other Idaho counties and locations across the country. The study says that residents of Camas County are even worse off, with their chance of kicking the bucket because of natural hazards rising to the highest category included in the dour report.
Published under the innocuous title of "Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States" in the International Journal of Health Geographics, the study may make you rethink your outdoor recreation plans, if severe weather threatens. Written by University of South Carolina Geography Professor Dr. Susan Cutter and Ph.D. graduate student Kevin Borden, it assesses which regions of the country experience a higher rate of mortality at the hands of natural hazards like hurricanes, flooding, winter storms, earthquakes and wildfires.
The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The report's findings include a mixture of surprising and not-so-surprising conclusions.
"The regions most prone to deaths from natural hazards are the South and intermountain West," the study authors write.
"Significant clusters of high mortality are in the lower Mississippi Valley, upper Great Plains and mountain West," they state.
The incidence of natural hazards was broken down by 10 regions in the lower 48 states. In region 10, which covers Idaho, Oregon and Washington, severe weather—which the authors tabbed as mortality-causing events with multiple weather factors—made up nearly a third of the deaths. Next up is severe winter weather, the study indicates.
Cutter and Borden do seem to toy with the idea that personal choices may be a factor that controls the safety of those living in more natural-hazard-prone regions of the country like central Idaho.
"An important question is whether people in areas of high mortality know what to do (or what not to do) when a hazard event occurs," they say.
