Chapter 3

ADRC-Natural Disasters Data Book-2003

Figure 42:

Amount of Damage in Europe (2003)
Drought
9.6%

Wild Fires
23.8%

Earthquake
7.8%

Flood
58.8%

Source: ADRC, Japan and CRED-EMDAT, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, 2003

3.2.5 Characteristics of Disasters in Oceania:
Disaster trends in Oceania are a bit different compared to those in other regions in theyear 2003.

Natural disasters in the year 2003 were different from the average pattern ofoccurrence of natural disasters in Oceania. Almost all types of natural disasters have occurred inthe region except earthquakes, but the majority of them are windstorms, floods, slides and wild
fires totaling 95% among them.

This trend can be seen in Figure 43.

According to the Figure

44, majority of the human loss is from windstorms (48%) followed by slides (28%) and floods(15%).

The reason is due to the storms in the pacific island countries (Fiji and American Samoa)

and slides in Papua New Guinea in 2003.

Figure 45 illustrates the pattern of totally affected

people in Oceania in 2003, with windstorms, and wild fires causing the majority (96%) of thehuman suffering.

The reason for this unusual picture is the severe windstorm in Fiji and Australia,

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ADRC-Natural Disasters Data Book-2003

and wild fires in Australia and slides in Papua New Guinea.

Further majority of the economic

damage has been caused by the wild fire (50%) followed by windstorm (28%) and flood (22%)(Figure 46).
It is concluded that in 2003, Oceania experienced mostly hydro meteorological, almostin equal dimensions due to the geographical location.

Figure 43:

Number o f Disasters in Oceania (2003)
EpidemicFlood
25.0%

5.0%

Slides10.0%
Wind Storm
55.0%

Wild Fires
5.0%

Source: ADRC, Japan and CRED-EMDAT, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, 2003

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ADRC-Natural Disasters Data Book-2003

Figure 44:

Number of People Killed in Oceania (2003)
Flood
15.2%

Wind Storm
47.8%

Slides28.3%
Wild Fires
8.7%

Source: ADRC, Japan and CRED-EMDAT, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, 2003

Figure 45:

Number of Totally Affected People in Oceania(2003)
FloodEpidemic

1.3%

1.1%

Slides1.6%

Wild Fires
6.8%

Wind Storm
89.2%

Source: ADRC, Japan and CRED-EMDAT, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, 2003

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Figure 46:

Amount of Damage in Oceania (2003)

FloodWind Storm

22.5%

27.6%

Wild Fires
49.9%

Source: ADRC, Japan and CRED-EMDAT, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, 2003

This section provides summary of patterns of natural disasters in the world withregional perspectives. Tables 2 and 3 in the Chapter 1 also provide these figures in a tabulatedform.

It can be said that in 2003, the world was affected by both hydro meteorological disastersand geophysical disasters in all the regions, while Oceania also experienced mostly hydrometoreological disasters.

It is easily understood from these sections that Asia is an extremely

disaster prone region of the world in terms of human loss and suffering.

It is evident when we

see the most severe disasters in the year 2003 such as Bam Earthquake in Iran, Typhoon Maemi
in Korea, and floods in China, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which were occurred in theAsian region.

It can be said that affected populations are deprived of their benefits of thesocio-economic development thus considerably hindering efforts towards sustainable economic
development in the region and throughout the globe.

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