A new research has indicated that hurricanes and tropical storms hitting the United Stated can result in an increased number of deaths for as long as 15 years after the disaster strikes.
This means that there is actually a “hidden death toll” as these natural catastrophes are causing more deaths than reported.
Official government statistics only account for the amount of people killed during these storms, which are collectively referred to as “tropical cyclones.”
Per verified estimates, direct deaths resulting from a geological disaster result from drowning or numerous types of trauma and average to 24 per storm.
An analysis public in Nature journal on October 2 however founded that a larger and concealed death toll is the aftermath of hurricanes which always goes unreported because it’s never accounted for.
Senior study author Solomon Hsiang said, “In any given month, people are dying earlier than they would have if the storm hadn’t hit their community.”
“A big storm will hit, and there’s all these cascades of effects where cities are rebuilding or households are displaced or social networks are broken. These cascades have serious consequences for public health,” he explained the cause.
When his team started out, it initially thought that there would be a “delayed effect of tropical cyclones on mortality for maybe six months or a year, similar to heat waves.”
But the result shocked them because these impacts don’t last for a year or two but for 15 years, when the public attention is completely lost from the hurricane that had hit the nation, as reported by Sci-Tech Daily.
