Illinois Ranked 5th Most Prepared State For Natural Disasters

ACROSS ILLINOIS — Blizzards, wildfires, severe storms, tornadoes, hurricanes and flooding are several natural disasters states across the U.S. face, especially during the current storm season. Chicago-based Gold Eagle, a company that provides products to protect and preserve cars, boats, lawns, motors and engines and more has ranked all 50 states on their disaster preparedness.

Gold Eagle said a disaster is declared when both the state and local governments aren't able to respond to a weather event due to its size, strength or destruction.

Good news for those in the Land of Lincoln - Illinois was ranked number 5 when it comes to how prepared everyone is in case disaster should strike.

Gold Eagle looked at four key factors and those results in order to calculate a state's overall preparedness score:

• Number of disasters: Using data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the company looked at the number of disaster declarations in each state since 1953.
• Funding: Size of a state's emergency management budget per capita.
• Response: Number of National Guard members per capita.
• Infrastructure: Factored each state's infrastructure score using date from the American Association of Civil Engineers.

Illinois, ranked number 5, has severe storms for the state's most common type of disaster, with June being the worst month for storms to strike.

However, when it comes to the top five states most at risk for snow or tornado, Illinois ranked 4 for snow and 5 for tornado.

Gold Eagle ranked all 50 states based on four key factors for disaster preparedness, other highlights include:

• Iowa is the most prepared state, while Texas is the least prepared
• 3 of the top 5 counties with the highest number of disasters are in California
• Only 10 US counties have suffered only 1 federally declared disaster since 1953

To see the rankings, visit goldeagle.com.

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