Natural Disasters Decline – Really?

I read the recent Reuters report stating that natural disasters were at a decade low this year. “The  world this year suffered the fewest number of natural disasters in a decade, but floods, droughts and other extreme weather continued to account for most of the deaths and economic losses, according to a United Nations report released on Monday.”  At first glance this sounds good to me.

However, reading a bit more carefully I see that 7,000 people died from weather-related incidents, billions of dollars in economic damage were caused and the impact of extreme weather will affect larger numbers of people, especially those living on the coast, in the future.  Global warming may be one of the biggest reasons we see an increase in the number of coastal incidents.

You can read the Reuters article here.  To view the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) click here.

Seems to me that the best thing to do with the information from this report is to be thankful for the decline in 2009 and, like FEMA is reminding us, “Resolve to Be Ready” in 2010.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 10:51 am and is filed under natural disasters, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.