World

Super-Disasters Ahead?

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 24, 1999 / 8:37 AM EDT / CBS

Following a year of the most damaging natural disasters on record, the Red Cross on Thursday warned that a new class of weather and population growth-driven Â"super-disastersÂ" is likely to wreak unprecedented havoc on the planet over the coming months.

The World Disasters Report said 1998 was the grimmest year on record, with Hurricane Mitch killing 10,000 people in Central America, Indonesia parched by the worst drought in 50 years, and floods affecting 180 million people in China.

Fires, droughts and floods from last year's freak El Nino weather pattern claimed 21,000 lives and contributed to an overall natural disaster bill of more than $90 billion, it said.

Natural disasters created more refugees than conflict did, the report said. Declining soil fertility, drought, flooding and deforestation drove 25 million Â"environmental refugeesÂ" from their land into urban squatter communities.

The report warned of a new era of Â"super-disasters.Â"

Â"Everyone is aware of the environmental problems of global warming and deforestation on the one hand and the social problems of increasing poverty and growing shanty towns on the other,Â" said Astrid Heiberg, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Â"But when these two factors collide you have a new scale of catastrophe,Â" she said.

Â"And this is just the beginning,Â" the report said. With rising temperatures and melting ice sheets expected to increase sea levels by 17 inches in the next 80 years, there will likely be a tenfold rise in the number of people at risk of floods.

Half the worldÂ's population lives in coastal zones, the report said. Coastal cities especially at risk include some of the world's largest -- Tokyo, Shanghai China, Lagos and Jakarta, it said. The cost of the necessary protective walls will be astronomical.

But as the number of disasters increases, aid for poor countries falls. Over the past five years, emergency aid has been slashed by 40 percent, the report said.

Insurance coverage is also shrinking as the industry tries to protect itself against the costs of climate change.

After suffering a number of Â"billion dollarÂ" storms, many insurance companies now refuse to insure the hurricane-prone Caribbean. In the case of Hurricane Mitch, which devastated much of Honduras and Nicaragua, only 2 percent of the total $ 7 billion in losses was covered, it said.

In a grim reminder of mother natureÂ's potential for destruction, floods were ravaging parts of Eastern Europe Thursday, forcing hundreds of people from their homes in Hungary. In flood-prone Bangladesh, thousands were still homeless Thursday in the wake of floods that killed three people.