Despite the occasional trials and tribulations that our Irish weather sends us, we get off very lightly compared to many other distant lands. The statistics for weather disasters during 1996, recently issued by the World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva, drive home this message most effectively.
According to WMO, there were 8,340 deaths from natural disasters during the year, and some 85 to 90 per cent of these involved the weather. It is accepted, moreover, that this figure is an underestimate; many weather related deaths may not be specifically designated as such, and may therefore escape the net of the statistics. But according to available figures, nine countries around the world reported 100 deaths or more in 1996 directly attributable to the weather, while 30 countries had 10 or more such casualties during the year.
Top of the list was India, where 3,320 people were reported either dead or missing as a result of cyclones, rainfloods or tornadoes. The most severe event of the year was a cyclone which approached from the Bay of Bengal in November and left 1,000 dead and another 1,000 unaccounted for. China was the next worst hit, with 2,500 deaths from rainfloods or typhoons (another name for cyclones), and third was Malaysia, where 332 people perished in their encounter with tropical storm, Greg.
In the United States there were 292 weather victims; 72 died in three major hurricanes - Bertha (12), Fran (34) and Hortense (26) - 154 died in three snowstorms, and the remaining 66 succumbed to floods or tornadoes.
Another, and perhaps more valid, way of looking at fatalities due to weather is to consider them per head of population - and this provides a rather different ranking. By this criterion, Macao heads the list in 1996 with the apparently small total of 13 casualties caused by a spell of unusually cold weather; with a population of a mere 430,000, however, this works out at one weather-death for every 33,000 citizens. Next comes Costa Rica, Malaysia and Latvia, while India, with its 3,320 casualties, drops to number nine on the list. The United States is 23rd, with one casualty for every 890,000 of its residents.
If you measure the effects of weather disasters in terms of the economic damage that they cause, however, the US is far ahead of anybody else; their estimated bill for weather damage during 1996 was $10.3 billion. China is next with an estimated $3.24 billion, while at the other end of the scale comes Ethiopia, where rainfloods and lightning were estimated to have caused a modest $19,000 worth of damage.