Many people lacked transportation -- either not having cars, or not having sufficiently reliable ones.

A full city evacuation still takes days, and given the uncertainty and wide possible zone of destruction of a major storm means that both a wide area has to be evacuated, and it's not clear precisely where landfall will be until a day or so immediately prior.

Mass evacuation via buses or rail is far more efficient, but can only be organised effectively by, or at least strongly coordinated with, government.

Any localized event that kills over a thousand inviduals points to a systemic problem, not an individual problem.

Transportation, communication, education, and to some degree even culture are also infrastructure.