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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
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Catastrophe Report 7
February 18th to August 7th 2005 |
Drought, heat wave and wildfires - Europe
| Territory: |
|
Europe |
| Region: |
|
Portugal, Spain, France, UK, Italy,
Germany, Poland, Greece, Czech Republic, Balkan States and eastern
Europe. |
| Date: |
|
April to August |
| Event: |
|
Drought, heat wave and wildfires |
| Impact: |
|
Fourteen fire fighters died in Guadalajara (Spain)
in mid-July. In northern Italy 18 people were reported dead
due to soaring temperatures at the end of June, and a further
56 in Romania in late July. Spain’s worst drought on record
is threatening 80 million citrus trees in Murcia (SE Spain),
where water reserves are just 16 percent of normal. A 30 percent
fall in the Spanish olive oil crop is expected. In Portugal,
many remote villages have been evacuated for safety purposes
and roads closed due to poor visibility. In northern Italy,
where the Po river and regional reservoirs are too low to provide
irrigation, half the melon crop and a fifth of the plum, apple,
apricot and peach crops have already been lost. Soya, corn and
sugar beet crops in Italy are also badly affected. In Portugal,
12,690 wildfires had been recorded through mid-June, up 55 percent
on average. By the end of July, 53,000 hectares of forest had
been destroyed, making a total of 820,000 hectares in the last
five years – 25 percent of the country’s forest.
Economic losses due to a combination of drought and fires in
Portugal are expected to exceed US$1.5 billion, or around 1.5
percent of the country’s GDP. |
| Summary: |
|
Europe is suffering under drought conditions,
with much of the continent experiencing between a quarter to
a half of expected rainfall over the period April 1st to June
30th. In many places, this follows a dryer than normal winter
and spring. Temperatures have risen above 40 degrees C in Spain,
Portugal, Italy, Romania and Greece. In France, some form of
water rationing has been enacted across more than two-thirds
of the country. Portugal is suffering its worst drought for
60 years, with 80 percent of the country suffering from extreme
drought. In the longer term, the Europan Space Agency’s
Desert Watch project warns that 300,000 square kilometres of
Europe’s Mediterranean coast – an area hosting a
population of 16.5 million people – is threatened by desertification.
Wildfires have affected southern France, Spain and Greece, but
Portugal has been worst affected, particularly in the north
with most of the blazes located in the Porto, Braga and Aveiro
districts. |
| Data sources: |
|
UK Met Office. World Weather Impacts Archive
http://www.met-office.gov.uk/cgi-bin/newsid
The Portugal Post
http://www.portugalpost.com/
|
| Additional sources:
|
|
NASA Earth Observatory/Natural Hazards
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/
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