World Health Agency Says Disasters of 2005 Not Entirely Natural

GENEVA, Switzerland, January 10, 2006 (ENS) - The high death toll in 2005 from tsunamis, hurricanes, typhoons, mudslides, earthquakes, volcanoes, locusts and pandemics can not be blamed entirely on natural disaster, the United Nations health agency said in a year end statement. Human activities such as deforestation and emission of greenhouse gases also play a part.

The World Health Organization (WHO) blames a wide variety of factors for last year's high death toll - climate change, global warming influenced by human behavior, socioeconomic factors causing poorer people to live in risky areas, and inadequate disaster preparedness and education on the part of governments as well as the general population.

“I don't like to use the term natural disasters,” said Ciro Ugarte, regional advisor for emergency preparedness and disaster relief with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in Washington, DC.

Two girls were killed where they were caught in the tsunami wave that struck the east coast of India December 26, 2004. (Photo by Ananda Vikatan courtesy TC Malhotra)

From January to October 2005, over 97,400 people were killed in disasters globally, with some 88,000 of those deaths resulting from so-called natural disasters, according to the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), a WHO institution that operates a global disaster database in Belgium. Such deaths have been increasing since 1975.

The year 2005 was marked by the tragic aftermath of the December 26, 2004 earthquake and tsunami waves in Asia, as well as hurricanes in central and north America, notably Katrina, which flooded about 80 percent of the U.S. city of New Orleans, and the October 8 earthquake in Pakistan and India.

Famine struck after crops were destroyed by locusts in Niger, and in El Salvador a volcanic eruption was followed by Hurricane Stan.

But natural phenomena do not always generate human disasters. Dr. Ugarte observed that in 2005, several earthquakes that struck in South America were of a higher magnitude than the one that devastated northern Pakistan and parts of India in October, but these hit sparsely populated areas and so they caused less damage.

The same goes for several tsunamis in 2005 which were not deemed “disasters” because they didn't endanger anyone, Dr. Ugarte said.

In the future, natural phenomena such as earthquakes and hurricanes are likely to affect more people because the global population that now stands at about 6.5 billion people is projected to reach 9.1 billion people in 2050, according to UN figures.

People are taking risks in deciding where to live, WHO pointed out, citing one of the earliest recorded disasters, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, which buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, killing about 10,000 people. Today, two million people live within its possible range.

Another important factor is environmental degradation, according to Marko Kokic, spokesperson for WHO's Health Action in Crisis Department, who said natural storm events in Caribbean and Indian Ocean lands were amplified because of deforestation and stripping of vegetation from coastlines.

Haitian hillsides with no trees cannot hold back landslides loosened by flooding rains. (Photo courtesy Grassroots International)

Disasters are also a consequence of development and industrialization, said Kokic. In Europe, experts believe that countries such as France and Germany are more adversely affected by floods today than in the past because major rivers, such as the Rhine, have been straightened to ease commercial traffic.

Global warming as well as routine, cyclical climate changes are causing a higher number of strong hurricanes in the Caribbean, meteorologists say.

Add to that the increasing number of people living in substandard housing and along coastlines, as well as the destruction in a crisis of hospitals and other essential infrastructure and you have the potential for more devastating disasters than a few decades ago, WHO concludes.

Dave Paul Zervaas, regional coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations’ International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, maintains that preparation should focus on making people less vulnerable to disasters.

“We think it’s much more important now to look at vulnerabilities, because you have factors you can control,” Zervaas said. “You can work to lower vulnerability.”

A helicopter loads sand bags into areas where the levee has broken and is flooding New Orleans neighborhoods as a result of Hurricane Katrina. (Photo by Jocelyn Augustino FEMA)

WHO says "clearly, climate change - whether helped by human behavior or not - is playing a role."

Hurricane experts say the world is in the midst of a routine, cyclical climate change that causes the Caribbean to heat up, increasing the frequency of powerful storms. The effect of this is greater than that of global warming, says Stanley Goldenberg, a meteorologist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Miami, Florida.

Many countries are working to improve their disaster preparedness, but more needs to be done, Ugarte said.

“Countries are now better prepared in comparison to 1970,” he said. “But now the level of preparation and risk reduction that you need is huge in comparison to that year.”

Disaster experts say early warning systems and education are essential to prevent and mitigate against the effects of natural disasters. Currently, tsunami early warming systems are under construction in India, Thailand and Indonesia.

In its World Disasters Report 2005, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies notes that a simple phone call saved thousands of lives when the giant tsunami waves hit India in 2004.

A fisherman’s son named Vijayakumar Gunasekaran, who lives in Singapore, heard about the tsunami early on the radio and phoned relatives living on the east coast of India. Following his warning, all 3,630 residents evacuated their village there before the waves arrived.