WW: Record Year for Weather-Related Disasters (fwd)

Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 11:13:58 -0400 (AST)
From: Daniel Haran <ah813@chebucto.ns.ca>
To: sust-mar@chebucto.ns.ca
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <sust-mar-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>

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32,000 dead due to weather related stuf... hmm...

the website is www.worldwatch.org

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 23:46:49 -0500
From: Richard Bell <dbell@bellatlantic.net>
To: worldwatch@crest.org
Subject: WW: Record Year for Weather-Related Disasters

NEWS FROM THE WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 27, 1998

Vital Signs Brief 98-5
RECORD YEAR FOR WEATHER-RELATED DISASTERS
by Janet N. Abramovitz and Seth Dunn

With one month to go, 1998 has already set a new record for economic
losses from
weather-related disasters.  According to preliminary estimates by the
Worldwatch
Institute, storms, floods, droughts, and fires caused at least $89
billion in
economic losses worldwide during the first eleven months of the year.

The 1998 preliminary total represents a 48 percent increase over the
previous
record of $60 billion in 1996-and far exceeds the $55 billion in losses
for the
entire decade of the 1980s.  (Loss estimates for individual years are
available
from the Worldwatch Institute website,
www.worldwatch.org/alerts/981127.html .)
During the first three-quarters of 1998, the U.S. insurance industry
alone had
weather-related claims of more than $8 billion-three times the claims in
1997.

The direct human impact of this year's weather-related disasters has
also been
staggering.  An estimated 32,000 people have been killed, and another
300
million-more than the population of the United States-have been
displaced from
their homes or forced to resettle because of extreme weather events in
1998.
<rest snipped>


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