ND : Disasters kill more in 2008 than in Tsunami - UN report

According to the recent UN report of Wednesday, the casualties in the first half of the year 2008 is itself more than the disastrous Tsunami which occured in India in 2004 and which was mainly due to the earthquake in China and cyclone in Myanmar.

Salvator Briceno, head of the UN's disaster management agency (ISDR), said, "2008 is a terrible year. There have already been more victims than in the tsunami."

This year, till now, already more than 230,000 people have lost their lives , and anoter 130 million people were affected due to these disasters, he said while addressing the people on the occasion of International Day for Disaster Reduction.


According to the datas, the cyclone "Nargis" has already swapped away 138,000 lives, and this data is also an estimation, not an exact figure.
On the other hand, the earthquake in south-west China's Sichuan province left a death toll of 87, 500.

Another disastrous event occured in India in the form of flood which took away many lives in Bihar, especially its northern region, this year. After all these, a devastating hurricane season in the Caribbeans also all contributed to the grim statistics.

The average economic cost of the natural disasters for the half of the period of the year, since the past ten years, was nearly 15 billion dollars, but this time, in 2008, this economic cost is 35 billion dollars, equivalent to 26 billion euros, till now.