US Census Bureau 2022 report on evacuations due to natural disasters.
The US Census bureau recently performed an online household poll where they introduced some new questions related to the number of people who have to evacuate their houses during an emergency. I found this information very interesting and was thinking of it in terms of how it might affect someone’s decisions with regards to their own preparedness for natural disasters.
The data captured was for the year 2022, and was a result of a household poll conducted by the US Census Bureau. If you’re interested in reading the source material I originally found the article at Scientific American, but found a confirming article at Axios, as well as the original data from the US Census Bureau.
By the Numbers:
The article suggests that in 2022 roughly 3.3 million people were displaced from their homes due to natural disasters. Of those 1.9 million were displaced due to hurricanes, 665,000 were displaced due to flooding, around 660,000 were displaced due to fires, and more than 320.000 from tornados, and 850,000 from Other. Every single state reported at least one person that had to evacuate their home, though the southern states led the way, with Florida itself accounting for 1 million people who reported displacement from home due to natural disasters.
Another interesting reporting point was related to the length of time people were displaced from their homes, with roughly 40 % of displacements lasting less than a week, then 23 % reporting they were displaced more than a week, but less than a month, around 7% reporting they were displaced more than a month, but less than six months, around 12 % reporting they were displaced more than six months, and around 10 % reporting they never returned home, with a good percentage who did not report a time frame at all.
Your geographic location tends to matter quite a bit in this case, with those in hurricane states seeing the highest levels of displacement. It’s hard to gauge just how seriously to take some of these numbers, as they are based on a voluntary survey given by the US Census, combined with some interesting data (like 1600 people in North Dakota reporting being displaced by hurricanes), you may have to decide for yourself how much to trust it. I found it interesting nonetheless.
What does it mean for me.
In the context of bugging out this information suggests that over 1 % of the United States had to “bug out” in some regards last year. Other sources of data have suggested that over the course of their lives roughly 22 % of people have had to leave their homes due to emergencies, but I haven’t been able to find a lot of information to back that up. These particular displacement questions were first asked by the census bureau in 2022, so they do not have any historical comparison data.
I don’t think there is any way to calculate your own odds of ever having to evacuate your home based on this information, or really any other information as well. Your odds will vary geographically, although the data suggests that areas that get hurricanes and flooding are seeing the highest numbers of people displaced from their homes. If you’re interested you can find information about your state on the US Census Bureau site, but I imagine that in each state the risk varies quite wildly geographically as well. If you’re interested in seeing if you’re area is sitting in a flood plain FEMA has site that can help, as well as their generic natural hazards map (click on natural hazard type to view the map for that type), which has categories for earthquakes, heat waves, wildfires and more.