Earthquakes: The decade’s deadliest killers are sudden, intense and unpredictable
JOHANNESBURG, 28 January 2010 (IRIN): Earthquakes killed more people in the last 10 years than any other natural hazard, said new figures released by the Belgium-based Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).
The figures come out a few weeks after the recent quake in Haiti, in which more than 112.000 people are known to have died so far.
Almost 60 percent of the people killed by natural disasters between 2000 and 2009 perished in earthquakes, followed by 22 percent in storms, and 11 percent as a result of extreme temperatures.
On the other hand, floods affected 44 percent of the two billion people struck by disasters, and droughts affected 30 percent, while earthquakes affected only four percent.
Femke Vos, a CRED researcher, pointed out that because earthquakes were sudden and had an immediate impact, they claimed more lives than other slower-onset natural hazards, such as flooding and droughts, where people had time to prepare or adapt.
Lives lost in last decades deadliest disasters:
Indian Ocean Tsunami: 226.408
Cyclone Nargis (Burma): 138.366
Sichuan earthquake (China): 87.476
Pakistan earthquake: 73.338
Heat waves in Europe: 72.210
Source: CRED
– The area over which earthquakes leave their footprint is also compara-tively small in relation to, say, floods or cyclones, which destroy vast areas but cause fewer direct deaths, said CRED director Debarati Guha-Sapir.
CRED figures for earthquake casualties included the Indian Ocean tsunami caused by an undersea quake in 2004, which left 226.408 dead and has been billed as the deadliest disaster of the 2000 decade.
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The UN-backed CRED-study said nearly 60 percent of about 780.000 people killed by disasters in 2000 to 2009 died during earthquakes.
The study only included disasters, such as earthquakes, floods or storms, which have had a discernible human impact, including deaths or declarations of emergencies. It also only measures losses of life directly attributable to disaster events, and not consequent deaths resulting from diseases or wounds.
– These figures are therefore definitely an underestimate of the real impact of disasters, CRED Director Debarati Guha-Sapir said.
Overall there has been a dramatic rise in natural disasters during the past decade, Guha-Sapir stressed.
During the 2000 to 2009 period, there were 385 disasters, an increase of 233 percent since 1980 to 1989, and of 67 percent since 1990 to 1999, according to CRED data.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
