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Quote from the article:
'"California is lucky because "we don't have lots of severe weather," said Kimberly Shoaf of UCLA's Center for Public Health and Disasters. "Although we have heat, it is constant heat.

"It's not the temperature itself but the difference between the average temperature and the heat extremes" that is dangerous because it catches people unprepared, she said."'
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Yup.
I am in Alberta.
I see people hop in their cars wearing light clothing when they are going to drive 100 miles across the prairie in minus 40 degree weather all the time.
If they had any sort of a problem, even just a flat tire, they stand a good chance of becoming a statistic.

Now, were they a victim of the weather or of their own stupidity?

We just had the news of 8 snowmobile enthusiasts lost to an avalanche in Fernie B.C. and then 2 skiers to avalanches at the Whistler Mountain ski resort at Vancouver. There had been avalanche warnings where the eight were lost and they knew that they were taking a risk.
The 2 skiers got caught by their stupidities by skieing on slopes that were posted as closed because of avalanche conditions.

I think an awful lot of these people are killed from their own stupidity and not from the natural hazard at all.

Edit added:
Yes to the comment about sexy news stories.
It seems a death has to be sudden, horrible, bloody and painful to be reportable. It seems to help if it is a movie star that does the dying too!
The same thing with property damage.
A flood is just not the same sort of earth shaking event that an earthquake is.