2009, Disasters in Numbers - Earthquakes often are the worst

From the United Nations ISDR (International Strategy for Disaster Reduction):

According to the Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters, 3,852 disasters killed more than 780,000 people over the past ten years, affected more than two billion others and cost a minimum of 960 billion US$.  This is from the report 2009: Disasters in Numbers.

In the past decade, nearly 60 per cent of the people killed by disasters died because of earthquakes. After earthquakes, storms (22%) and extreme temperatures (11%) were the most deadly disasters between 2000 and 2009.

The most deadly disasters of the 2000 decade were the Indian Ocean Tsunami, which hit several countries in Asia (2004) leaving 226,408 dead; Cyclone Nargis, which killed 138,366 people in Myanmar (2008); and the Sichuan earthquake in China (2008), causing the deaths of 87,476 people. 73,338 people were also killed in the earthquake in Pakistan (2005) and 72,210 in heat waves in Europe (2003).

In 2009, the total number of people killed and affected by disasters was lower than in 2008, as no major disaster occurred: 327 events killed 10,416 people, affected nearly 113 million others and caused a total of 34.9 billion US$ economic damages.