Source: The Globe and Mail
19 Dec 2010 - This was the year the Earth struck back. Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter of a million people in 2010 – the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.
How deadly
Nearly 260,000 people died in natural disasters in 2010 through Nov. 30, compared with 15,000 in 2009, according to Swiss Re, an insurance provider. The World Health Organization, which hasn’t updated its figures past Sept. 30, is just shy of 250,000. By comparison, deaths from terrorism from 1968 to 2009 were less than 115,000, according to reports by the U.S. State Department and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The last year in which natural disasters were this deadly was 1983 because of an Ethiopian drought and famine, according to the WHO. Swiss Re calls 2010 the deadliest since 1976. While the Haitian earthquake, Russian heat wave and Pakistani flooding were the biggest killers, deadly quakes also struck Chile, Turkey, China and Indonesia in one of the most active seismic years in decades. Flooding alone this year killed more than 6,300 people in 59 nations through to September, according to the WHO. Inundated countries include China, Italy, India, Colombia and Chad. Super Typhoon Megi with winds of more than 320 kph devastated the Philippines and parts of China.
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