Abstract. An analysis was made of the loss of life caused by Hurricane Harvey. Information was collected for 70 fatalities that occurred due to the event and were recovered within the first 2 weeks after landfall. Most fatalities occurred due to drowning (81 %), particularly in and around vehicles. Males (70 %) and people over 50 years old (56 %) were overrepresented in the dataset. More than half of the fatalities occurred in the greater Houston area (n = 37), where heavy rainfall and dam releases caused unprecedented urban flooding. The majority of fatalities were recovered outside the designated 100- and 500-year flood hazard areas.

Abstract. An analysis was made of the loss of life directly caused by hurricane Harvey. Information was collected for 70 fatalities that occurred directly due to the event. Most of the fatalities occurred in the greater Houston area, which was most severely affected by extreme rainfall and heavy flooding. The majority of fatalities in this area were recovered outside the designated 100 and 500 year flood zones. Most fatalities occurred due to drowning (81%), particularly in and around vehicles.Males and people over 50 years old were overrepresented. 15

Response to reviewer comments We acknowledge the valuable comments of the reviewers. We respond to all comments below and have made several changes based on these comments. A few more generic issues are discussed below. Both reviewers (Ilan Kelman and anonymous reviewer nr. 3) raise the issue of defining direct and indirect deaths. We agree that this is difficult and sometimes confusing issue and have adopted the classification proposed by the National Weather Service (2016) and have changed the formulation in various parts of the paper accordingly. Most fatalities in our analysis are due to direct causes, in this case drowning (81%). We also note that the study is limited to C1 NHESSD Interactive commentPrinter-friendly version Discussion paper