US Counties With the Lowest Community Resilience to Disasters

3,144 US counties ranked by community resilience to disasters, from lowest to highest. First are Hudspeth County, TX (0.0318), Esmeralda County, NV (0.0636) and Presidio County, TX (0.0954). The middle one of the 3,144 has 50.

What this measures

How ready a county is to get through a disaster and bounce back. Counties are ranked from 0 (least) to 100 (most). The rank mixes 49 facts about a place, such as schooling, health care, jobs, housing, emergency services and local government. It comes from a University of South Carolina index, which FEMA changed a little. Many of the facts come from the Census Bureau's survey, so it partly repeats other measures on this site. Source: FEMA National Risk Index (Census and University of South Carolina indexes).

For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.

The 100 lowest counties

More on community resilience to disasters

• US Counties With the Highest Community Resilience to Disasters
• Community resilience to disasters by US county: map by year and what it goes with

A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.