The Federal Emergency Management Agency has issued a risk rating for every county in America for 18 types of natural disaster, and Indiana County, as one might expect, fares pretty well.
The ratings cover the risk of disaster events happening and the estimated loss from them, using data from 2019. Indiana County is rated as having a very low risk of natural disaster and of expected annual loss from disasters. It also has a “very low” assessment of social vulnerability and a “very high” rating for community resilience.
Indiana County’s riskiest disaster events are from lightning, where there were 1,117 events in 2019. Overall, the risk of being struck by lightning is rated very low, but the damage from lightning was relatively high. The same is true for landslides – a low risk of them happening, but damage from them was relatively high.
Indiana County has a very low to relatively low index for risk from a cold wave, a heat wave, earthquake, hail, drought, river flooding, winter weather, ice storm, hurricane, tornado, strong wind, and wildfire.
Categories which do not apply to Indiana County include avalanche, coastal flooding, tsunami, and volcano.
FEMA’s riskiest five counties in America are Los Angeles, three counties in the New York City area, Miami, and Philadelphia.
Four counties surrounding Washington, D.C. rank among the lowest risk in the nation, along with suburban Boston, Long Island, suburban Detroit and Pittsburgh.
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