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2010 is year of the natural disaster
Source: Agencies |
December 21, 2010, Tuesday
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EARTHQUAKES, heatwaves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010, the deadliest year in more than a generation.
"It just seemed like it was back-to-back, and it came in waves," said Craig Fugate, who heads the United States' Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.
"The term '100-year event' really lost its meaning this year," he said.
And we have only ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.
Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.
Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, a river breaches, or a cyclone hits, more people die.
Disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes "are pretty much constant," said Andreas Schraft, vice president of catastrophic perils for the Geneva-based insurance giant Swiss Re. "All the change that's made is man-made."
The January earthquake that killed over 220,000 people in Haiti is a perfect example.
Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people, many of them living in poverty, and more poorly built shanties than it did 25 years ago. So had the same quake hit in 1985 instead of 2010, total deaths probably would have been in the 80,000 range, said Richard Olson, director of disaster risk reduction at Florida International University.
In February, an earthquake that was more powerful than the one that struck Haiti hit an area of Chile that was less populated and not as poor - it caused fewer than 1,000 deaths.
Climate scientists say the Earth's environment is also changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.
In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 160,580 square kilometers, about the size of Bangladesh. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people.
"It's a form of suicide, isn't it? We build houses that kill ourselves (in earthquakes). We build houses in flood zones that drown ourselves," said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado. "It's our fault for not anticipating these things."
The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is said to be a classic sign of man-made global warming which scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the Russian heat wave, which set a national record of 44 degrees Celsius, would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming - 18 countries set records for the hottest day ever.
"These weather events would not have happened without global warming," said Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the US.
That is why the people who study disasters for a living say it would be wrong to chalk 2010 up to just another bad year.
"The Earth strikes back in cahoots with bad human decision-making," said Debarati Guha Sapir, the director for the World Health Organization's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. "It's almost as if the policies, the government policies and development policies, are helping the Earth strike back instead of protecting us from it. We've created conditions where the slightest thing the Earth does is really going to have a disproportionate impact."
"It just seemed like it was back-to-back, and it came in waves," said Craig Fugate, who heads the United States' Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.
"The term '100-year event' really lost its meaning this year," he said.
And we have only ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.
Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.
Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, a river breaches, or a cyclone hits, more people die.
Disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes "are pretty much constant," said Andreas Schraft, vice president of catastrophic perils for the Geneva-based insurance giant Swiss Re. "All the change that's made is man-made."
The January earthquake that killed over 220,000 people in Haiti is a perfect example.
Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people, many of them living in poverty, and more poorly built shanties than it did 25 years ago. So had the same quake hit in 1985 instead of 2010, total deaths probably would have been in the 80,000 range, said Richard Olson, director of disaster risk reduction at Florida International University.
In February, an earthquake that was more powerful than the one that struck Haiti hit an area of Chile that was less populated and not as poor - it caused fewer than 1,000 deaths.
Climate scientists say the Earth's environment is also changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.
In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 160,580 square kilometers, about the size of Bangladesh. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people.
"It's a form of suicide, isn't it? We build houses that kill ourselves (in earthquakes). We build houses in flood zones that drown ourselves," said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado. "It's our fault for not anticipating these things."
The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is said to be a classic sign of man-made global warming which scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the Russian heat wave, which set a national record of 44 degrees Celsius, would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming - 18 countries set records for the hottest day ever.
"These weather events would not have happened without global warming," said Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the US.
That is why the people who study disasters for a living say it would be wrong to chalk 2010 up to just another bad year.
"The Earth strikes back in cahoots with bad human decision-making," said Debarati Guha Sapir, the director for the World Health Organization's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. "It's almost as if the policies, the government policies and development policies, are helping the Earth strike back instead of protecting us from it. We've created conditions where the slightest thing the Earth does is really going to have a disproportionate impact."
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