INTRODUCTION

Satellite image of Earth’s interrelated systems and climate. Credit: NASA

Severe weather events happen every day all over the world. We see the consequences on the evening news: tsunamis kill hundreds of thousands, mudslides ravage entire neighborhoods, floods devastate entire nations, and record hurricanes cause cataclysmic destruction throughout numerous islands. In 2017, America saw one of the most destructive hurricane seasons in its history. California endured one of its worst wildfire seasons ever.

We all are under threat from weather events no matter where we live, but rarely are we properly prepared. Like a New Year’s Resolution, preparing for possible weather catastrophes sounds like a great idea, but the farther we move from it, the less likely it is we ever actually do it. We hope that this book sits on your table until that moment you decide to break the cycle and start preparing for the weather disaster most likely to affect you.

As we wrote these chapters, Houston was recovering from a thousand-year flood event at the hands of Hurricane Harvey, while Hurricane Irma had grown into a Category 5 and was bearing down on several Caribbean islands and ultimately, the American coast. Currently, weather events seem to be occurring with ever-increasing ferocity and strength. This holds true as Hurricane Irma is the strongest hurricane in the Atlantic basin outside of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico in National Hurricane Center records. At the end of 2017, we even watched as a severe weather event we’d never heard of before unfolded off the Northeast Coast: the Bomb Cyclone.

These events are terrifying to witness and, in the wake of their power, people often feel helpless. This book, Weather Disasters, seeks to calm some of those fears and informs the reader how to prepare for, survive, and navigate through the aftermath of any major weather-related disaster. Given that earth is producing more and more frequent big weather events, many more once-in-a-century events, we hope this book is instructive and helpful with its timing. Think of all recent destructive disasters: Hurricane Katrina in 2005; the 2010 Haiti earthquake; the 2011 Japanese tsunami (at Fukushima Nuclear Plant); Superstorm Sandy 2012; and the record-setting 2017 seasons for Atlantic hurricanes and American wildfires. This book seems more relevant than ever. In addition to the above disasters, we include earthquakes and volcanoes since they affect weather and are similar in the amount of devastation that they can cause.

The weather disasters that typically cause the most deaths are hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods. All three are large events that can reach so much greater an area or region than can a tornado or landslide or avalanche. Tsunamis and volcano eruptions can also cause huge death tolls but, luckily, they don’t happen often. Volcanoes may be the most destructive worldwide because they are climate-changers and species-killers but only erupt once every million years or so.

We should state upfront that we are not weather experts nor do we play ones on television. We simply are fans of weather and seasoned veterans of weather disasters, and so we wanted to put together a survival kit, so to speak, for bad weather. We have been through several kinds of bad weather and are nerdy enough to have put together loose plans and sorry disaster kits. But as severe storms became more common, we wanted to go deeper into survival planning and learn to do more for our family and property. In our own layman’s fashion, we researched anything and everything.

We never planned to provide scientific detailed specifics on hurricanes or earthquakes and the like—there are books just for that, experts such as vulcanists, meteorologists, and seismologists who write deeply and intelligently about their subject. We set out to write an every-person’s survival book for weather disasters. Our book is meant to introduce the best methods we found from our research on the best ways to prepare, to survive, and to manage the aftermath of the major weather and natural disasters. We’re just normal folks who live in normal towns but still face risks from weather disasters. It’d be difficult to live anywhere in America without having to face one or more of these weather disasters—and in many places, several.

We have lived in Tornado Alley (Tornado Alley begins in central Texas and goes north through Oklahoma, central Kansas and Nebraska and eastern South Dakota, sometimes including the area east through Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana to western Ohio) most of our respective fifty-seven and fifty-one years. We have been through dozens and dozens of tornado warnings, including at least five close calls where the storms came within a mile or less. We’ve lived in areas with extreme decade-long drought conditions. We have experienced hurricanes and blizzards. We’ve also experienced flash flooding, extreme lightning, wildfires, minor earthquakes, major hailstorms, and one particularly nasty haboob in Odessa, Texas in 1973. Mark visited Hawaii in the 1980s when the eruptions on the Big Island were especially common, devouring houses and destroying neighborhoods. At no point were we properly prepared or educated about any of the events we witnessed. We managed to avoid any human or property damage through no credit to us.

Credit: 2015 NOAA “Weather in Focus” photo contest, Amanda Hill.

Preparation is easy and is the most important part of weather-event survival. Survival is usually the result of preparation (with some luck) and a lot of remaining calm. The aftermath is often more deadly than the event—flooding, gas, contaminated water, unstable structures, etc. Warning fatigue is a dilemma we all face. We are inundated with so much information. Twenty-four-hour news channels, local news, newspapers, online news, smartphone notifications, and weather apps. Odds are that the hurricane will not hit you, the tornado will miss your house, and the earthquake won’t happen this decade, but … this book is designed to help when it does. And weather disasters do happen to someone; one time soon it just might be you and your family. Education, preparation, and operation are the three key components of weather event survival. For each weather event you risk, you need the same conscientious action: make a plan and set up supplies. Decide how serious you are about your family’s and property’s safety. We are not trying to be cavalier about it. But we do want to be encouraging. A little prep goes a long way toward survival. Once you do it, you’ll discover that it’s comforting, useful, rewarding, sometimes fun, and most of all necessary, as it might save you and your family’s lives.

ALERTS AND INFORMATION

It’s a good time to remember: you won’t be able to rely on your mobile device for everything. A handful of free emergency preparedness apps can help you in the event of a crisis even if you don’t have cell service. Your local emergency response team will almost certainly offer several methods by which to get up-to-date information. They will generally tie into one or more radio stations, offer text messaging and social media sites, and be connected to both local television and the Red Cross.

Be careful about getting information from sources other than official sources and then re-tweeting or re-posting it. You might accidentally be forwarding information that is incorrect or only partly accurate, and that could be dangerous for others.

The Red Cross offers numerous apps, in fact, including the Shelter Finder app, First Aid, a hurricane app, an earthquake app, a wildfire app, and others. Each one includes checklists, advice for emergency situations (from performing first aid and CPR to handling food and water during power outages), quizzes, a sign-up for emergency notifications, and more. Facebook Check-In is also a useful emergency feature that, when activated because of a major disaster, allows users to inform friends and family of their whereabouts and safety status.

Similarly, the official FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) website includes information for all kinds of disasters, including tips for creating an emergency kit, and emergency meeting locations, maps of important locations, and so on. Finally, the aptly-named Disaster Alert app offers a real-time map that shows active (or impending) incidents that have been deemed as “potentially hazardous to people, property, or assets.” This includes hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes.

When planning for a disaster, there are certain persons that you need to keep in mind:

• Children: They rely on us for their well-being and safety. Keep them in mind when making plans. They are shorter, weaker, less educated and haven’t seen many (if any) weather disasters. They will be scared, confused, and panicky. Water that’s up to your knees might be neck-deep for them. Rushing water is scary to little ones. Earthquakes are nightmarish. Even for teenagers, weather disasters are frightening and disorienting. Our kids look to us for leadership. So if you include your children in your plans, allow them to have some ownership, educate them about the weather events and how these could play out, and generally show them that you are in charge, that there is a plan, and that everything will be okay. That’s the role we have as adults and parents.

• Disabled and elderly and needy: People with access and functional needs require our planning and our assistance as much as children do. They might need adaptive equipment, means by which to power their electrical apparatus, help with transportation, medicines, and other needs. Whether they are part of your family or neighborhood, be a part of their planning and survival.

Hurricane damage after a 2005 storm. Credit: Doug Helton, NOAA, NOS, ORR.

• Pets: One of the saddest parts of our research was discovering how many pets are injured or killed because of weather-related events; the worst part is that most of the deaths could have been prevented by owners. Don’t expect flooding and still leave your pet tied up outside. Don’t expect blizzard conditions and leave your pet outside. Don’t evacuate and not have made plans for your pet to survive. You took them in and they are part of your family. Treat them like it.

A universal checklist for your pet(s):

Medications

Important documents (vaccination records, medical history)

Water and pet food (can opener if needed)

Pet-friendly soap

First-aid (triple antibiotic, Benadryl, etc.)

Leash, collar, harness, muzzle

ID tags

Carrier if needed

Current photo(s)

Bowls for food and water

Blanket or dog bed

Litter and pan for cats

Toys or treats

First Responders

If you think you might want to be a first responder, check with your local and community emergency organizations/agencies and see what roles are available and how to go about making it happen. A national emergency training program is called CERT (Community Emergency Response Team.) Check to see if your locale offers these courses, usually eight weeks in length. These awareness courses train people in basic disaster response skills such as fire suppression, urban search and rescue, and medical operations. CERT allows certified persons to take a more active role in emergency disaster response.

You might be instrumental in the planning aspect by setting up shelters and organizing neighborhoods. But if the disaster occurs and you’re one of those with the determination to help others, be safe and don’t take unnecessary chances. You can certainly be one of those heroes out in a boat fighting rising floodwaters and saving citizens and pets, but you can also be a hero by helping evacuate or attend to senior citizen homes, hospitals, and shelters. There are any number of ways to be a good citizen. Also, just to be neighborly, add to your inventory of supplies so you have them on hand when you go out to help others.

Layout of this Book

For each chapter, we break down the weather event into three parts: 1) Preparation; 2) Survival; and 3) Aftermath. We include conversational and informative narratives that feature the nature of this disaster, statistics of the event, sidebars and lists, and other relevant information. Each chapter also includes an emergency supply list and suggested items for a survival kit. There is a lot of crossover and repetition in each list, some basic emergency core necessities, but with each disaster, the list changes by addition. A volcano adds a respirator and goggles. Floods add wading boots. Some items you’ll need for every list and they are indispensable. These are things we can’t emphasize enough.

Avalanche on Mount Everest. Credit: Pixabay.

Ten Deadliest Natural Disasters

Rank is determined by estimated death toll

1. 1,000,000 to 4,000,000: 1931 China floods; China, July 1931

2. 900,000 to 2,000,000: 1887 Yellow River flood; China, September 1887

3. 830,000: 1556 Shaanxi earthquake; China, January 23, 1556

4. 300,000: 1839 India cyclone; India, November 26, 1839

5. 300,000: Calcutta Cyclone; India, October 7, 1737

6. 280,000: 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; Indian Ocean, December 26, 2004

7. 273,400: 1920 Haiyuan earthquake; China, December 16, 1920

8. 250,000 to 500,000; 1970 Bhola cyclone; East Pakistan (Bangladesh), November 13, 1970

9. 250,000 to 300,000: 526 Antioch earthquake; Byzantine Empire (Turkey), May 526

10. 242,000 to 655,000: 1976 Tangshan earthquake; China, July 28, 1976