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Heatwave - UK & Europe

Typhoon - Japan

Hurricane - USA

Wildfires - USA

Floods - France

Earthquake - Iran

Other events
Catastrophe Report 4
July 8, 2003 - February 20, 2004 - Bill McGuire


Image by Reto Stöckli, Robert Simmon and David Herring, NASA Earth Observatory, based on data from the MODIS land team.
With no devastating earthquake since the Gujarat (NW India) quake in January 2001, it was inevitable that a major seismic event would happen soon. This time, SE Iran was the target, with the city of Bam taking the brunt of a magnitude 6.6 earthquake in the early hours of December 26th 2003. Highlighting the worth of enforced anti-seismic building codes, a magnitude 6.5 quake in central California just four days earlier had little impact, killing two and damaging around forty buildings. In contrast, the Iranian event is estimated to have killed perhaps 43,000 people and damaged or destroyed 85 percent of buildings. Other smaller earthquakes occurred in Panama, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and China, although casualties and damage were limited. The Chinese government reported an annual number of 22 damaging quakes, together taking 290 lives and causing damage totalling 365 million US$.

For 2003 as a whole, Munich Re. report 50,000 deaths due to natural catastrophes (close to five times the 2002 figure), with economic losses

exceeding 60 billion US$ (up from 55 billion in 2002), and insured losses totaling around 15 billion US$ (up from 11.5 billion in 2002). Using different criteria, Swiss Re. report an annual death toll of 22,000 due to 350 natural and technological disasters, quoting figures of 65 billion US$ for economic losses and 17 billion US$ for insured losses. As for the first half of 2003, financial losses in the second half were dominated by weather-related events, in particular Hurricane Isabel, Typhoon Maemi, the California wildfires and the French floods. The annual death toll was dominated by the Bam earthquake, with the balance being made up primarily by the victims of earthquakes in Algeria and China, floods in South and SE Asia and China, and heat waves and cold waves in South Asia.

In the US, the ISO reports that insured catastrophe losses for 2003 overall – at 12.8 billion US$ - were the third highest in the last decade, exceeded only by 2002 (28.1 Billion US$) and 1994 (17 billion US$). Major losses arose, in the latter half of the year, from Hurricane Isabel (1,685 billion US$) and wildfires in California (2 billion US$). Severe weather and the Californian wildfires contributed to fourth quarter losses of 2.64 billion US$, the highest for ten years.

In total, 39 states were affected by catastrophic events during 2003, with California (2.1 billion US$), Texas (1.5 billion US$), Tennessee (1.2 billion US$), Oklahoma (1.1 billion US$) and Virginia (1 billion US$) bearing the brunt of insurance payouts. In Europe, the unprecedented heat wave, and accompanying drought and wildfires, contributed to economic losses of 15 billion US$. Apart from this, however, Europe escaped lightly during the second half of 2003 and early 2004, with only the French floods in December totting up a substantial loss. The Chinese government reported annual economic losses for 2003 due to natural catastrophes of 22.8 billion US$, with 2,145 lives lost; the summer floods alone (see Catastrophe Risk Management, August 2003) cost 8 billion US$.

This report was first published in Catastrophe Risk Management in April 2004.