Comparisons and discussion
Disaster losses worldwide are dominated by low-probability
high-impact events(a small subset of the whole range of natural
hazards affecting most countries adversely on are gular basis).The
disasters reported here were unusually catastrophic for both New
Zealand and Thailand,amounting to aloss of about 15 day sper
person in each country,but comparing them to a few other recent
disasters might be instructive.For example,the loss experienced
by Sri Lanka in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was significantly
higher in per capita terms (53 days),while the Haiti(Port-au-Prince) earthquake of 2010 was both much larger in absolute
terms( 20.9 million lifeyears lost) and in per capita terms(771
days) – more than 2 years lost per every single person living in
country.