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Hurricane Dennis - US & Caribbean

Refinery Explosion - US

Earthquake - Indonesia

Drought, heat wave and wildfires - Europe

Flood - India

Flood - China

Typhoon - Taiwan and China

Other events
Catastrophe Report 7
February 18th to August 7th 2005 - Bill McGuire


Dozens of wildfires ravage Portugal in August 2005. Image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite. Photo courtesy: NASA MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
Even while the need for an Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System was still under discussion, March 2005 saw a second great earthquake rupturing the sea floor off the west coast of Sumatra. Close to a thousand lives were lost on the string of islands that parallel the Sumatran mainland and once again tsunami were generated. Fortunately, wave heights reached a maximum of only 3 m and damage was localised. The second quake had been predicted due to increased stress on neighbouring faults caused by the huge December 26th event. Stresses remain high on adjacent crustal weaknesses in the offshore Sunda Trench and on the onshore Sumatra Fault, which may trigger further large quakes in the months and years to come. In February, Iran was struck by a magnitude 6.4 earthquake that took more than 600 lives and injured over 1,400. As at Bam, little more than a year earlier, the mud-brick buildings provided little protection against even moderate ground shaking. Other earthquakes worthy of note within the period of this report, include a magnitude 6.6 event off the north coast of Japan’s Kyushu island in February, which resulted in a single fatality and 500 injured, and a magnitude 7.2 quake off the north California coast in June that generated small (up to 26 cm) tsunami.

Torrential rains and floods continued to cause death and destruction, with China and India being particularly badly hit. The perennial summer floods in China have not been as severe – so far – as those of 1998. Nevertheless, the death toll is approaching one thousand and economic losses are estimated at US$2.77 billion. Monsoon rains struck the city of Mumbai and the surrounding region with a vengeance, and by early August, rainfall for the city – at 146.6 cm - was close to twice that expected at this time of year.

The resulting death toll topped a thousand and early estimates put insured losses at more than US$230 million. Elsewhere, economic losses due to floods reached close to US$600 million in Romania, US$450 million in Bulgaria and US$400 million in Canada’s Alberta province. Other lethal and damaging flood events occurred in Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Iran, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, the United States and elsewhere.

Predictions for an extremely active Atlantic hurricane were corroborated by the arrival of Hurricane Dennis in early July. Dennis briefly held the record for the most powerful early-season hurricane on record, before losing this to Hurricane Emily little more than a week later. Total economic losses in the Caribbean and US, arising from Dennis, are estimated at somewhere between US$5 and 9 billion, while US insured losses look to be around US$950 million. Meanwhile, in the Pacific, Typhoon Haitang triggered economic losses of around US$1 billion.

Heat waves, drought and wildfires continue to exact a growing toll. In India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, extreme heat resulted in the deaths of more than 400 people, while dozens more died in the United States. In Europe temperatures in excess of 40º C claimed 18 lives in Italy, 56 lives in Romania, triggered huge wildfires in Portugal, Spain and Greece, and exacerbated extreme drought conditions across much of the continent.

This report was first published in Catastrophe Risk Management in Autumn 2005.