Today was the rainiest day I have encountered in France and while cooped up in the rental home I read the whole of Kurt Larson‘s 1999 book Isaac’s Storm.

That is the book that launched Larson on his career of “popular narrative nonfiction”, as the New York Times described it. Or to explain a little, books of real events presented in a style that reminds us of fiction.

Isaac’s Storm recounts what is still the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history — a hurricane that killed about 6,000 people in Galveston, Texas, in 1900. (Other U.S. disasters here.)

And as I sat inside the house in southern France, it dawned on me:

France seems almost preternaturally protected from natural disasters.

Consider:

When we do a google search of France natural disasters … we get a short list of items … none of which compares, in the sense of fatalities, with the Galveston hurricane.

France just doesn’t do earthquakes, hurricanes or floods. Nor does it do extreme heat or shocking cold. It seems to be blessed, in that regard.

If we rank natural disasters by deaths, we are mostly looking at China, India and Bangladesh, with earthquakes, floods and cyclones the most prominent killers.

And France has pretty much none of that.

The country has very few earthquakes. The biggest one to make the “French” list is the 1909 Provence quake (a 6.0 on the Richter scale), which killed 46 people.

We find one tsunami, in Nice in 1979, which may have killed 23 people.

Moving to floods, the casualty count goes up, but nowhere near Galveston numbers.

–The 2010 Var Floods may have killed 39 people.

–The Great Flood of 1968 is on the list, that was almost entirely dangerous in Great Britain. France claims one fatality — a cyclist who rode over a downed power line, but adds “the wine harvest was seriously damaged”.

–The greatest natural disaster in France that wikipedia is willing to dredge up is the 1959 Malpasset Dam Collapse, which killed 423 people, also in the Var area.

Well, good for France.

The country has had plenty of man-made calamities, wars in particular (World War I, 1.3 million dead), but also mine explosions (1,099 dead in 1906). And public health disasters like the Black Death.

But when it comes to floods or earthquakes or storms, France may be one of the safest places on earth.

Which was some comfort to me, here in southern France, as the rain pounded and wind blew for 15 hours … and a country shrugged and said “the water is good for the vines”.