Natural disaster cruelty rises as more dies in 2015 than previous years

Earthquake damage in Kathmandu, Nepal

The death toll from natural disasters such as earthquakes and heatwaves have caused a large number of fatalities in Asia in the first six months of 2015, the world‘s largest reinsurance company Munich Re said on Tuesday.

Reinsurance company Munich Re concluded by analyzing the natural catastrophes for the first half of 2015 which was characterised by the earthquake in Nepal and by the heatwave that affected India and Pakistan. Around 12,000 people died in these two natural calamities.

In the first half of the year, a total of over 16,000 people died worldwide in severe weather events and earthquakes. This means that, by the end of June, the number of people that lost their lives in natural catastrophes was much greater than in the previous year, the world‘s largest reinsurance company Munich Re said in a press release issued on July 14, 2015.

Nepal earthquake was the natural disaster with the largest number of fatalities in the first half of the year, but also the most grievous event in terms of overall losses. These totalled US$ 4.5bn, of which only US$ 140m was insured.

The costliest natural catastrophe for the insurance industry in the first half of the year was a series of winter storms that struck the Northeastern United States and Canada at the end of February. The insured loss was US$ 1.8bn, with total losses of US$ 2.4bn.

The costliest natural catastrophe in Europe was winter storm Niklas.  The overall loss was US$ 1.4bn (€ 1.3bn), of which around US$ 1bn (€ 900m) was insured.

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