take lives. Often the government bails on 'declaring' counties as disaster areas so they don't have to pay out federal aid. Where are the safest counties and where yours stands? Find out here!

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February 12, 2008

When it comes to bad weather — or just bad luck — some parts of the USA seem to attract disaster.

Thirty counties across the nation have been included in federal disaster declarations at least 10 times over the past decade, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal records. Most fall in what could be called the nation's disaster belt: a stretch of land from South Florida to rural Oklahoma that faces regular bouts of everything from giant hurricanes to floods, ice storms and wildfires.

Photo: A Halloween decoration stands in a flooded front yard near Anardarko, in Caddo County, Okla., in October 2000. Caddo County, along with the Florida Keys, leads the nation in natural disasters, Federal Emergency Management Agency records show. (File photo by J. Pat Carter, AP)

The counties in it have endured significant destruction, and the disaster declarations have opened a floodgate of federal aid. Records show the government has issued more than $5 billion in grants and loans to those 30 hard-hit counties over the past decade.

"You name it, we've had it. There's been a lot of damage here," says Larry McDuffey, the part-time emergency management chief in rural Caddo County, Okla. That county, along with the Florida Keys, leads the nation in natural disasters, records from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) show.

Caddo County, southwest of Oklahoma City, has suffered floods, tornadoes and even last gasps of a tropical storm — so many that the federal government has included it in 13 major disasters over the past decade, five of them last year. "None so far this year," McDuffey chuckles, "but we're fixing to head into tornado season."

The rest of the disaster-prone counties are scattered across the eastern USA, from Alabama to Upstate New York. Far more of the nation — 266 of its 3,100 counties — faced no disasters at all in the past decade.

The storms wiped out crops and ruined homes; some were killers. Even so, nearly all were on a vastly smaller scale than the hurricanes that ravaged the Gulf Coast and Florida in 2004 and 2005. The government declares a disaster only after state authorities ask for help and FEMA determines that the area is too badly damaged to recover on its own, says David Garratt, second in command of disaster aid for the agency.

"Obviously some places are more vulnerable to certain types of disasters," Garratt says.

Three counties in New York's Catskill Mountains made the list, mostly because of heavy rain and snow. One flood last year killed four people after nearly a foot of rain fell in three hours.

"It's been one thing after another up here," says David Nicosia, a meteorologist in the area.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/2008-02-11-disaster-belt_N.htm