1/17/2024 0 Comments Recent hurricanes 2017![]() ![]() The Georgia Department of Public Health and North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services provided CDC with information on confirmed hurricane-related deaths. As Irma traveled inland, it weakened to a tropical depression despite this weakening, 75,000 customers in North Carolina ( 3) and >900,000 customers in Georgia ( 4) experienced storm-related power losses.Īs part of CDC’s public health response to the hurricanes, the Epidemiology and Surveillance Task Force in the Emergency Operations Center tracked online media reports of hurricane-associated deaths and contacted states for confirmation ( 5, 6). Irma affected the entire state of Florida 7 million residents were evacuated ( 1) and 6.7 million utility customers lost power ( 2). Wind damage compromised power lines, and a storm surge caused extensive flooding, primarily along the coast. Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 hurricane (185-mph winds), caused catastrophic damage in the Caribbean before moving northwest and making landfall in Florida on September 10, 2017, as a Category 4 hurricane. Understanding the need for subcategorization of disaster-related circumstances of death and the possibility of overlapping categories can help public health practitioners derive more effective public health interventions to prevent deaths in future disasters. Further analysis revealed two unique subcategories of heat-related and oxygen-dependent deaths in which power outage contributed to exacerbation of an existing medical condition. The most common circumstance-of-death categories were exacerbation of existing medical conditions and power outage. CDC’s Emergency Operations Center collaborated with state health departments in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina to collect and analyze Hurricane Irma–related mortality data to understand the main circumstances of death. Disaster-related mortality surveillance is critical to an emergency response because it provides government and public health officials with information about the scope of the disaster and topics for prevention messaging. Three powerful and devastating hurricanes from the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season (Harvey, Irma, and Maria ) resulted in the deaths of hundreds of persons.
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