Factbox: Poor, unprotected nations suffer most disaster deaths

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Deaths caused by disasters are far higher in poorer countries than in wealthy nations which are better able to warn and protect people, new figures issued on the International Day for Disaster Reduction show. Of the 1.35 million people killed by natural hazards from 1996 to 2015, 90 percent died in low and middle-income countries, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), which collects the data. Over those two decades, 56 percent of deaths were caused by earthquakes and tsunamis, while the rest were due to storms, floods, extreme temperatures, drought, landslides and wildfires. Here are some facts from a report released on Thursday by CRED and the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR): * In the period from 1996 to 2015, 7,056 disasters wererecorded worldwide. The frequency of geophysical disasters -mainly earthquakes, including tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions -was broadly constant, but there was a sustained rise in climateand weather-linked disasters. * In 15 of the 20 years, the greatest loss of life was dueto extreme weather events. * Tsunamis were 16 times more deadly than earthquakes interms of the proportion of victims killed, making them thedeadliest natural hazard on the planet. * No wealthy countries appear on the list of top 10countries for disaster deaths in the last 20 years, which is ledby Haiti with 229,699 deaths, Indonesia with 182,136, andMyanmar with 139,515. These three were hit hard bymega-disasters: the Haitian earthquake of 2010, the 2004 IndianOcean tsunami, and Cyclone Nargis in 2008 respectively. * Other countries in the top 10 are China, India, Pakistan,Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Iran and Venezuela. * The number of weather and climate-related disasters morethan doubled over the past 40 years, accounting for 6,392 eventsin the 20 years from 1996 to 2015, up from 3,017 in the periodfrom 1976 to 1995. * In 2015, the hottest year on record, almost as many peopledied in heat waves as were killed in the Nepal earthquake. Therewere 32 major reported droughts, double the annual average of 16over the decade from 2006 to 2015. * Natural hazards were both more frequent and more deadly inthat decade compared with the previous 10 years. Earthquakescaused increasing numbers of deaths per disaster. * But excluding Cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar in 2008causing more than 138,000 deaths, the average numbers dying inboth storms and floods declined decade-on-decade.Sources: CRED's Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), UNISDR (Reporting by Megan Rowling @meganrowling; editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)