42 million displaced by natural disasters in 2010

Throughout the past few months I have been constantly revealing details of not only natural disasters but also what we could expect in the future with the buzz about 2012. I really don’t conceive that the year 2012 will be the end of the world but I do assume that several mega scale natural disasters could hit country’s that are least expected to be struck and in the most unusual ways.

It was just recently that a series of tornadoes killed hundreds in the US and it was around 3 months back that the Fukushima disaster killed around 15,000 people in Japan.

It is with this backdrop that I wish to bring to you this report, courtesy of Associated Press. It shows that 42 million People were displaced in countries around the world only during the past year. Therefore I wish to reiterate the need to prevent the damage caused to the environment, which is the only possible way to save ourselves.

(AP) OSLO, Norway - About 42 million people were forced to flee their homes because of natural disasters around the world in 2010, more than double the number during the previous year, experts said Monday.

One reason for the increase in the figure could be climate change, and the international community should be doing more to contain it, the experts said.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said the increase from 17 million displaced people in 2009 was mainly due to the impact of "mega-disasters" such as the massive floods in China and Pakistan and the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.

It said more than 90 percent of the disaster displacements were caused by weather-related hazards such as floods and storms that were probably impacted by global warming, but it couldn't say to what extent.

The number of people displaced last year — about 42 million — is roughly the size of Argentina's entire population, and the onslaught of natural disasters so far this year also has been grim.

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan left more than 10,000 people dead, some 17,500 missing and about a half-million homeless.

In the United States, tornadoes have wreaked havoc from Alabama to Massachusetts, while floods have inundated states from Montana to Louisiana. In the southwest Missouri city of Joplin, the U.S.'s deadliest tornado in six decades killed at least 141 people and destroyed more than 8,000 homes in a city of about 50,000 people.

Asia was the hardest hit region last year, with the largest number of displaced people seen in countries such as India, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China and Pakistan.

In China alone, more than 15 million people were forced to leave their homes following floods, while 11 million people were displaced in Pakistan, the report said. The large floods in India in 2009 also continued to force people to leave their homes in 2010.