What causes more damage a hurricane or tornadoes?

A tornado can have much higher winds than a hurricane and cause incredible destruction, but it does it over a much smaller area. A hurricane can cause coastal flooding that sweeps away whole communities. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 killed between 8,000 and 12,000 people; it is still the deadliest natural disaster of any kind in US history. Hurricanes and tropical storms can also drop enormous amounts of rain, causing flooding many miles inland. Hurricanes cause widespread damage to the electrical distribution grid that can cause power outages over large areas for much longer periods of time. It is only the very strongest hurricanes that cause structural damage due to wind that can be compared to a tornado.