Hazard Risk Per Resident (By Jurisdiction)

Hazard Risk Per Resident — By Jurisdiction

The same FEMA data, ranked by expected annual loss per resident instead of the county total -- so a small county with real exposure isn't buried under a handful of huge ones. Shown alongside Social Vulnerability and Community Resilience: what actually separates a bad storm from a catastrophe.

A raw total rewards scale — a huge county racks up a bigger number partly because there's simply more there to lose, not because any one resident faces more danger. Dividing by population fixes that. But the dollar figure alone still isn't the whole story: Social Vulnerability and Community Resilience are what actually separate a bad storm from a catastrophe — Hurricane Katrina made landfall as "only" a strong Category 3, and it became the deadliest disaster in this dataset's memory because of who could evacuate and whether the levees held, not because the wind was unsurvivable. Money buys mobility — a car, a place to go, the ability to miss work — so Lack of Reliable Transportation (the share of adults without it) is shown alongside as the closest available read on who actually can't leave. A high resilience score today can reflect real rebuilding since a past disaster, not a claim that the disaster didn't happen.

A small county landing near the top of this list isn't a math artifact to wave away — it's a different kind of signal than a big county in the same spot. The same dollar total that would barely register against Los Angeles's economy can be a meaningful share of a small county's whole tax base, workforce, or population. A high per-resident number in a small place isn't necessarily "this individual is in more danger" — it's closer to "one bad year could reshape this place's economy or its culture," which a huge, diverse county can absorb in a way a small one can't. Population is shown for every row so you can read the number in that context, not to discount it.

31 jurisdictions ranked, highest expected loss per resident first

#	Jurisdiction	Expected Loss / Resident / Yr	Population	Counties	Social Vulnerability	Community Resilience	Lacks Transportation
1	Alaska (AK)	$1,279	735,706	30	27.1	26.2	9.3%
2	California (CA)	$769	39,287,377	58	39.6	33.9	9.6%
3	Hawaii (HI)	$744	1,445,235	5	31.9	65.6	8.1%
4	Louisiana (LA)	$726	4,611,961	64	65.8	70.0	11.8%
5	Montana (MT)	$709	1,116,875	56	31.7	58.5	8.1%
6	Nebraska (NE)	$676	1,978,707	93	19.5	72.3	7.0%
7	Missouri (MO)	$636	6,191,814	115	32.4	64.3	8.8%
8	Kansas (KS)	$604	2,947,197	105	26.4	67.7	7.5%
9	Arkansas (AR)	$580	3,049,391	75	56.6	42.3	10.3%
10	Iowa (IA)	$571	3,210,507	99	23.2	86.7	7.2%
11	Mississippi (MS)	$556	2,946,779	82	68.5	52.9	12.5%
12	Kentucky (KY)	$521	4,534,824	120	48.7	59.6	—
13	Illinois (IL)	$505	12,694,798	102	42.0	77.4	8.4%
14	Alabama (AL)	$493	5,086,768	67	58.5	59.9	10.3%
15	Arizona (AZ)	$488	7,378,838	15	40.5	16.9	9.2%
16	Minnesota (MN)	$450	5,739,445	87	22.0	93.9	7.4%
17	New Mexico (NM)	$444	1,362,014	18	57.2	24.4	11.8%
18	Nevada (NV)	$431	3,184,612	17	42.0	12.6	10.4%
19	District of Columbia (DC)	$429	681,294	1	40.9	93.3	7.8%
20	Idaho (ID)	$397	1,934,262	44	21.3	54.9	7.8%
21	Florida (FL)	$392	22,416,077	67	52.3	37.5	—
22	Delaware (DE)	$369	1,021,191	3	39.7	74.5	8.3%
23	Colorado (CO)	$369	5,862,189	64	17.4	59.0	—
24	Indiana (IN)	$346	6,851,073	92	35.1	71.7	8.1%
25	New Jersey (NJ)	$344	9,343,809	21	44.6	66.2	7.8%
26	New Hampshire (NH)	$332	1,394,868	10	15.3	72.0	6.1%
27	Georgia (GA)	$306	10,940,407	159	34.3	42.3	9.8%
28	Maine (ME)	$300	1,387,817	16	28.2	87.1	8.5%
29	Michigan (MI)	$283	10,077,761	83	39.7	82.0	8.8%
30	Massachusetts (MA)	$210	7,044,056	14	30.1	90.7	7.9%
31	Maryland (MD)	$171	6,206,011	24	30.8	72.7	8.2%