CRED Crunch: Newsletter Sep 2008

The first semester of 2008 was one of the worst ever recorded in EM-DAT. Indeed, once again, the world witnessed the extreme vulnerability of our society to natural hazards. Cyclone Nargis and the Sichuan earthquake, two historical events, resulted in the death of over 225,000 people.

Cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar in May and claimed 138,366 lives, is the third deadliest cyclone ever recorded in EM-DAT, while the Sichuan earthquake is the third deadliest disaster in recent Chinese history with 87,476 people killed. From January to the end of June 2008, 101 natural disasters were reported. They killed 229,043 people, affected more than 130 million others and caused over 34 billion $US of damages. Floods and storms were the two most reported types of disasters, accounting respectively for 40% and 33% of the disaster occurrence. In terms of impacts, even if the figures are highly influenced by the two aforementioned major events, it is worth to note the large number of people that have been affected by floods (44 million), most of them in China.

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