Hurricane Irma Death Toll

[gcreptile 11,091]

By all accounts, Hurricane Irma is going to be a big one, possibly the biggest one ever.

 

What do you think, how many people will be killed by it eventually?

 

For comparison, the deadliest hurricane in history, the Great Hurricane of 1780, had roughly 25000 fatalities.

Hurrican Mitch, the deadliest hurricane in modern times caused 19.325 fatalities, a much more reliable number.

Hurricane Andrew had 65 fatalities, Katrina had 1.833.

 

Irma had 23 fatalities so far (could be rising with any minute). How many will it be at the end?

 

I say... 2.500.

 

[RadGuy 1,619]

Well, almost all of Mitch's thousands of fatalities happened in Honduras and Nicaragua.

 

Basically, when an Atlantic hurricane has such a huge death toll, it's mostly in underdeveloped countries in Central America and the Caribbean.

 

Irma has already hit the Caribbean, and the death toll is only 23. It could still rise, but probably not by much.

The only islands directly affected (Anguilla, Barbuda, Sint Maarten, etc.) had small populations anyway. The hurricane stayed slightly north of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and just barely made landfall in Cuba.

 

It's about to hit Florida of course. Death toll won't rise by that much. First of all, because, as I mentioned, hurricanes never kill many people in America in modern times. Katrina was the only exception, killed about a 1000 because levees broke and submerged an entire large metropolitan area of New Orleans.

Second of all, because it's not supposed to directly hit a major city. Earlier models had it going directly towards Miami, but now it is predicted to go to west Florida.

Third of all, because tons of people already evacuated Florida.

 

So, I am going for a death toll of 100. Split that up into 80 in the Caribbean and 20 in the US.

[gcreptile 11,091]

Yep, all good points. But I have a feeling something is going to go wrong. Plus, I expect disaster response to be comparatively bad.

[msc 18,557]

Tomasz Shakermaker, the BBC weather guy whose name I can't spell at all (from a certain person's Crowdsourced Deathlist entry) has landed in Florida to give live updates on the weather, instead of just giving them from a studio in London...

 

Call of the deadpooling season if it goes wrong for him..

[The Unknown Man 593]

I'm going to say 650.

[Deathray 2,942]

On 09/09/2017 at 13:38, Phantom of the Midway said:

Second of all, because it's not supposed to directly hit a major city. Earlier models had it going directly towards Miami, but now it is predicted to go to west Florida.

 

 

That's good.

 

19 hours ago, msc said:

Tomasz Shakermaker, the BBC weather guy whose name I can't spell at all (from a certain person's Crowdsourced Deathlist entry) has landed in Florida to give live updates on the weather, instead of just giving them from a studio in London...

 

Call of the deadpooling season if it goes wrong for him..

 

I actually had him in my Crowdsourced Deathlist team and on one of my DDP teams. This could be interesting...

 

The very fact he flew out justifies my decision to put him on that Crowdsourced list

[Joey Russ 7,268]

The death toll is currently at about 30 people. The hurricane has now weakened to a category 2 hurricane, so I don't think there will be much more deaths thankfully tbh.

[gcreptile 11,091]

Yep, went far better than feared.

[CastAway 490]

NYT puts count (seems to be of everyone hit by Irma) at 56. However, news coming of 6 deaths at a nursing home, which means the count will be going up. That said, it'll still be closer to the 100 prediction that anything else, IMO.

[Drewsky1211 4,821]

Eight Dead After Florida Nursing Home Goes Without Air-Conditioning After Irma

[Joey Russ 7,268]

2 minutes ago, Drewsky1211 said:

Eight Dead After Florida Nursing Home Goes Without Air-Conditioning After Irma

Look above you next time you post. 

[Toast 16,241]

7 minutes ago, Joey Russ said:

11 minutes ago, Drewsky1211 said:

Eight Dead After Florida Nursing Home Goes Without Air-Conditioning After Irma

Look above you next time you post. 

Eight is not six.  Was the news story updated?

[Joey Russ 7,268]

4 minutes ago, Toast said:

Eight is not six.  Was the news story updated?

Yes, the link got updated in the previous post. 

[CastAway 490]

8 hours ago, Toast said:

Eight is not six.  Was the news story updated?

Yup, the toll was updated. 

 

And on that point, there's a chance numbers related to the storm go up, at least in a round about way - HuffPost reports that Little Havana is still without electricity, and notes that there is concern that it could cause a situation like the one in the nursing home given the fact that a quarter of Little Havana's population is over 60. Hopefully light is restored soon, but I guess we'll see.