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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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