Ranked by how often it has actually been declared here — and what goes wrong in each, which is almost never the thing people prepared for.
6 declarations in Georgia
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.
Source: CPSC / state health reporting
Do this tonight
Put two hundred dollars in small bills somewhere you will not spend it, and check that your medication buffer covers a week.
4 declarations in Georgia
The storm is not the emergency. The outage is.
What kills people afterwards is the generator. Portable generators cause roughly 100 unintentional carbon monoxide deaths a year in the United States, and they cluster in the days after a storm when the power is out. Carbon monoxide is odourless, and by the time you are confused enough to notice, you are too confused to act. Outside, far from the house, never in a garage with the door open.
Source: CPSC
Do this tonight
Find out whether your generator has ever been started. If the answer is no, start it — an untested generator is a heavy paperweight with a full tank of fuel.
Underestimated because of the name.
The rain and the outage do the damage, not the wind — which means the same generator and floodwater failures that follow a hurricane follow this too.
Do this tonight
Treat the preparation as identical to a hurricane. The name is the only thing that is smaller.
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.
Source: CDC MMWR
Do this tonight
Write down every prescription in the house with its dose, and find out how early each one can be refilled.
Where you are matters more than what you do.
Since 1996, 815 people have been killed in mobile or manufactured homes — 53% of everyone killed at home by a tornado, in housing that makes up under 6% of American homes. Anchor failure is the usual cause. If you live in one, the plan is not to shelter in place. It is to know, in advance, exactly where you are going instead.
Source: AP analysis of NOAA data
Do this tonight
If you live in a manufactured home, drive to your nearest sturdy shelter once, in daylight, and time it. That number is your warning threshold.
This is the one that leaves you dark for a week.
Ice brings the lines down across a wide area at once, so restoration runs into days rather than hours. That is what makes it dangerous — the longer the power is off, the more likely somebody brings a generator or a grill somewhere it should not be.
Source: CPSC
Do this tonight
Work out how you would keep warm for five days without the furnace, and make sure the answer does not involve burning anything indoors.
