Delaware

The days after are more dangerous than the landfall.

The wind stops, the power stays off, and the generators come out. After Hurricane Ida, Louisiana hospitalised dozens for carbon monoxide poisoning inside the first 48 hours. Cash matters here too — when the grid is down the card readers are down with it, and the store that is open cannot take your money.

Two things kill, and neither is the cold on its own.

Carbon monoxide, when the heat fails and people bring a generator or a grill inside — generators are the single largest source of non-fire CO deaths. And hypothermia, which claims around 1,300 Americans a year. The house going cold is survivable. What people do about it is what is not.

The illness is not the whole emergency.

In June 2020, 41% of US adults had avoided medical care because of COVID concerns — 12% skipped urgent or emergency care and 31% skipped routine care. The households that struggled were the ones with a prescription, a chronic condition or a caregiving duty and no plan for any of them.

It is the car and the shovel, not the cold.

About 70% of winter storm deaths happen in automobiles. Roughly 100 more people a year die while shovelling snow, and over half of those are cardiac. The safest thing most households can do in a snowstorm is stay off the road, and stop shovelling before they are tired rather than after.