An examination of rip current fatalities in the United States

Victor Gensini () and Walker Ashley

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2010, vol. 54, issue 1, 159-175

Abstract: This study analyzes fatalities caused by rip currents in the conterminous United States for the period 1994–2007. Results include the frequency of fatalities from rip currents, their cause, and their unique spatial distributions. An analysis of historical hazard event data illustrate that, on average, 35 people reportedly die from rip currents each year in the United States. Also, similar to other hazard events where unique differences in gender vulnerability have been found, men are over six times more likely to fall victim to a deadly rip current than females. Rip current fatalities are most common in the southeastern United States, with a nonuniform spatial distribution along other Atlantic, Pacific, and Great Lakes coastlines. Physical vulnerabilities are suggested as the primary cause for the unique fatality distribution found. Temporally, summer season weekends are shown to have the more fatalities than any other time of the year. A classification scheme was developed to categorize synoptic-scale weather conditions present during deadly rip current events. More than 70% of all rip current fatalities are associated with onshore winds. Specifically, a rip current fatality is most likely when a surface high pressure system creates these onshore winds. The quality of the fatality reporting database available for researchers is also assessed. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Keywords: Rip currents; Coastal hazards; Fatality distributions; Drownings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-009-9458-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:54:y:2010:i:1:p:159-175

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-009-9458-0

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().