Natural Disasters — by the Numbers

For the United States, as a whole, the was not a mega-disaster in 2019 that caused significant property insurance losses. I can tell because my USAA Insurance rebate is the highest it has been in a bunch of years. Of course, there were people who did have a tornado, storm or — for the Midwestern farmers — flooding that went on for months. As previously reported here, there were rivers in North Dakota that never went below flood stage once the flooding began. 

If you are looking for data on disasters, this site, Natural Disasters, gives a tally of losses in people and other damages throughout the years. See the summary and links below.

I do believe that many of these trends are going to start arching upward as global warming and the impacts of climate change begin to take hold in ever-increasing ways. It is one of the reasons that emergency management and its associated disciplines like risk management are great careers for people entering the workforce today. Business, unfortunately, is looking up!

Summary

• Natural disasters kill on average 60,000 people per year, globally.
• Globally, disasters were responsible for 0.1% of deaths over the past decade. This was highly variable, ranging from 0.01% to 0.4%.
• Deaths from natural disasters have seen a large decline over the past century — from, in some years, millions of deaths per year to an average of 60,000 over the past decade.
• Historically, droughts and floods were the most fatal disaster events. Deaths from these events are now very low — the most deadly events today tend to be earthquakes.
• Disasters affect those in poverty most heavily: High death tolls tend to be centered in low- to middle-income countries without the infrastructure to protect and respond to events.