chapter 4 - DRK

Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)in low-income nations even though a high proportion of the population exposed tocyclones lives in high-income nations. In viewing the dramatic differences in fatalitiesbetween the different categories of nations, it should be remembered that low-incomenations are the countries that are the least urbanized while almost all upper-middle andall high-income nations are predominantly urban.Japan has more people exposed to tropical cyclones than the Philippines. However,if both countries were affected by a cyclone of the same magnitude, past experiencesuggests that mortality in the Philippines would be 17 times higher than in Japan.This does not mean that cities in high-income nations are always safer, as was shownby the deaths and devastation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, but relativeto the intensity of the disaster, fatalities are much less common. Disasters from firesand from transport and industrial accidents are much less common in cities in highincomenations than in low- and middle-income nations (although this certainly wasnot the case historically as many of today’s wealthiest cities experienced disastrous firesor industrial accidents in the past).Figure 1.1Distribution of fatalities and economic loss from tropical cyclones per year%100908081.374.1People killedEconomic loss70605040302016.4 16.81003.1Low-incomenationsLower-middleincome nations0.95.9Upper-middleincome nations1.3High-incomenationsSource: Based on figures from UNISDR (2009)In high-income countries, Japan has the largest number of people exposed,followed by the Republic of Korea and the United States.When an earthquake hits a city, it can be a very dangerous place to be – as was seenin Port-au-Prince in January, in Bam, Iran in 2003 or in Turkey’s Marmara region in1999. But this need not be so. For instance, in July 2007, a large earthquake struck theWorld Disasters Report 2010 – Focus on urban risk13