Stronger and more frequent natural disasters in 2011 made it the most expensive year ever for natural catastrophe losses, Swiss Re announced.
Last year’s natural catastrophe bill for the global economy of £244 billion dwarfed the previous most costly year of 2005, at around £141 billion. Insured losses last year came in at £105 billion, the reinsurance company reported.
The record prices can be almost solely pinned on large earthquakes in Japan and NZ. While there was no dramatic increase in the amount of quakes reported, it was the scale of last years quakes that broke the bank. Over the past three decades geophysical events accounted for just under 10 per cent of insured losses, but last year this figure was around 65%.
The most expensive single event was the Japan earthquake and tsunami. While the earthquake which triggered the wave was the biggest in Japanese history, it’s damage was relatively minimal compared to the tsunami. The wave reached a height of up to 40 meters in some areas and washed away entire towns, killing around 16,000 people.
The economic cost of the earthquake and what followed was £135 billion and the insured losses amounted to £26 billion, the most costly single event of all time.
The earthquakes in New Zealand were another big one. The February quake killed 181 people, destroyed buildings and had an insured cost of around £8 billion. Then the day before Christmas dozens were injured again with three more strong quakes.
Perhaps the most costly weather related natural catastrophes was the floods in Thailand. While Thailand is used to getting heavy rainfall in the wet season, a La Niña phenomenon caused the rain to be much heavier and last much longer. 800 people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands of houses were flooded.
The main financial cost was the effect the floods had on Thailands computer production industry. Thailand produces around 25% of the world’s supply of components for computer hard drives, and this was directly effected by the floods and cost the economy tens of billions of dollars.
The Thailand floods and the Japan earthquake contributed to an unusual geographical spread of disaster costs. Asia bared an unusual large amount of the disasters, with 70% of economic losses relating to natural disasters coming from the region.
