Originally published October 3 2005
New Orleans disaster calls attention to dangerous housing trends
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
According to a U.N. report given last January, 2.5 billion people were impacted by natural disasters between 1994 and 2003, indicating an increasing trend, not in the number of catastrophic events, but in the number of populations exposed to such events.
The levees in New Orleans inspired a false sense of security, says Dennis S. Miletti, a leading scholar on disaster prevention.
"We rely on technology and we end up thinking as human beings that we're totally safe, and we're not," said Miletti, of the University of Colorado.
By another measure -- property damage -- 2004 was the costliest year on record for global insurers, who paid out more than $40 billion on natural disasters, reports German insurance giant Munich Re. Florida's quartet of 2004 hurricanes was the big factor.
The expanding U.S. population "has migrated to hazard-prone areas -- to Florida, the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, particularly barrier islands, to California," noted retired U.S. government seismologist Robert M. Hamilton, a disaster-prevention specialist.
The way America builds too often invites disasters, experts say -- by draining Florida swampland and bulldozing California hillsides, for example, disrupting natural runoff and magnifying flood hazards.
The more advanced the nations, the bigger the blow may be.
Terry Jeggle, a U.N. disaster-reduction planner, cites the New Orleans levee system -- dependent on pumps that run on electricity produced by fuel that must be transported in.
The scientific consensus expects global warming to intensify storms, floods, heat waves and drought.
Climatologists are still researching whether climate change has already strengthened hurricanes, whose energy is drawn from warm ocean waters, or whether the Atlantic Basin and Gulf are witnessing only a cyclical upsurge in intense storms.
The prospect of more vulnerable populations on a more turbulent Earth has U.N. officials and other advocates pressuring governments to plan and prepare.
� Along Bangladesh's cyclone coast, 33,000 well-organized volunteers stand ready to shepherd neighbors to raised concrete shelters at the approach of one of the Bay of Bengal's vicious storms.
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