The objective of this paper is to better understand the physical and human factors that contribute to flood casualties in a flood in the Gard region of France in September 2002. It is one of few papers that combine the physical and human components of floods into one cohesive paper. Results indicate that none of the casualties occurred on a catchment with only slight rainfall or before maximum rainfall occurred, demonstrating that all casualties paralleled the storm dynamics. Additionally, small catchments with a lead time of less than one hour proved to be more dangerous since they occur in the open, they led to the most deaths, and they occur repeatedly. Some results that are counterintuitive to previous flood research and knowledge are that small catchments react for the entire duration of the storm, and the catchments in the range of 50-500 km2 did not lead to any deaths, despite the consistent intensity of this flood across all basins.
