Between hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, and active lava-spewing volcanoes (okay, that one’s a stretch), 35.8 million homes have a “high risk” or “very high risk” of a natural disaster hitting it, says MarketWatch.
The total number works out to be 43 percent of U.S. homes. The figures come from a report released this week by real estate research firm RealtyTrac. The counties with the highest risk are situated along the Atlantic coast or are places firmly within earthquake country, like in Northern California.
The study says that, “Since 2008, an average of 26.4 million people per year have been displaced from their homes by disasters brought on by natural hazards.” It also cites a New England Journal of Medicine piece that says there were three times as many natural disasters in the country from 2000 to 2009 than there were in the 1980s.
