2010: Year of natural disaster

Earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, super typhoons, snow storms, landslides and droughts rob the lives of at least 300,000 people in 2010.

Scientists and experts say that natural disasters are partly due to objective reasons, partly due to humanity, making the level of cruelty more intense.

Record many records

The construction and development of poor quality makes earthquakes more devastating. The shabby houses built up close to the ground could not stand when the ground shook, the river was boiling and the tropical storm was fierce. The earthquake in February 2010 killed more than 220,000 Haitian people, the clearest evidence. Port-au-Prince with a population tripled since 1985, is directly proportional to the number of crowded slums.

Merapi volcano disaster in Indonesia caused many deaths .

Meanwhile, the earthquake occurred in Chile with a stronger intensity than the one that took place in Haiti, causing less than 1,000 people to die, because the Chilean population is smaller, with houses built more firmly and people not must live in bad conditions like in Haiti.

The frequency of extreme weather patterns this year is the classic sign of global warming that scientists have long warned. Last summer, a record heat wave attacked Russia, while severe drought engulfed nearly 160,600 square kilometers in Pakistan. These two disasters killed nearly 17,000 people, more than the number of people killed by plane accidents in the past 15 years combined. Scientists say that the death heat wave in Russia occurs every 100,000 years without the impact of global warming. But preliminary data shows that 18 countries have recorded a record heat that has never been seen before.

Turkey, China and Indonesia also experienced one of the worst earthquake levels in decades. As of the end of September, a total of 20 earthquakes with a magnitude of 7 or higher, while the normal frequency is 16 matches. As of this time, floods have killed more than 6,300 people in 59 countries, WHO said. China, Italy, India, Columbia and Chad suffer the most devastating floods. Super typhoon Megi with winds of more than 200 miles per hour devastated the Philippines and part of China.

Many unusual phenomena

This year also saw many unusual phenomena. Volcanic dust in Iceland makes European air traffic stalled for 4 days and more than 7 million people cannot travel. Volcanoes also erupted in Congo, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Philippines and Indonesia.

When the El Nino phenomenon causes many types of extreme weather to end, it is replaced by the phenomenon of La Nina with other types of extreme weather. It is also unusual for both of these weather systems to occur in one year.

2010 is also the year marking many technical disasters due to human hands. The oil spill disaster caused by BP made 172 million gallons of oil covering the Gulf of Mexico; The problem of miners trapped underground makes dozens of people dead in the US, China and New Zealand. Chilean workers who survived the 69-day trapped underground are the rare lucky stories of the year.

This year's natural disaster caused an economic loss of about 222 billion USD - greater than the value of Hong Kong's economy because this year's catastrophes often hit poor areas like Haiti, where the people have little protection. dangerous.