Question about deaths attributed to hurricanes (school, elect, Maine, New York)

[EdwardA]

I'm curious about how newspapers and other groups assign a death to being caused by a hurricane and one because of human error.

For example in this story a young lady is killed because her family decides to travel home during the arrival of Irene. The power was cutoff and the streetlights were not working. They enter an intersection at the same time another vehicle enters and both vehicles collide resulting in the young woman's death.

What I'm confused about is why is the paper saying Hurricane Irene is responsible? The hurricane didn't blow the cars into the intersections.

In another story cited as an Irene related death a man dies trying to save a child who is standing in water near downed wires. He gets electrocuted. Again yes Irene knocked down the wires but can the storm be blamed for the death in a journalistic sense?
Hurricane Irene kills Katherine ‘Momo’ Morales of Manassas Park in N.C. - The Washington Post

At that time, the front end of the hurricane had already knocked out power across the region, including a streetlight at a busy intersection. Police said Morales and her family were heading home from Myrtle Beach, S.C., when their Ford Explorer approached the light, drove into the intersection without stopping and collided with another sport-utility vehicle that also failed to stop. The impact threw Katherine, her mother, another woman and that woman’s 7-year-old daughter from the vehicle.
A 1-year-old and a 3-year-old were strapped into car seats and were not injured, police said.
Morales was pronounced dead at the scene. Her mother, Glenda Yessenia Cruz, the other woman, Edith Martinez, and her child, Lindsey Martinez, were taken to the hospital. The woman remained in critical condition Sunday, police said. The child was in stable condition, and Morales’s mother was released, police said. Police said the driver of the other vehicle and her two children were also treated and released.


The local high school student was one of nearly 20 people killed from Florida to Connecticut in situations related to Hurricane Irene, including people who were in homes and cars hit by trees, surfers who were tossed from their boards in rough surf and at least one in a fire caused by downed wires. A man in his 50s was electrocuted in New York when he tried to save a child who had waded into flooded streets with downed wires.

[Ceece]

Most of the deaths were caused by falling trees as a direct result of the hurricane. Other deaths are circumstantial and were it not for the hurricane there would probably have been other deaths instead. I heard and early report of someone dying of a heart attack and it was pinned on the hurricane, not sure I agree but it doesn't really matter. People have been spinning facts and figures forever.