Natural disasters caused by extreme weather claimed seven times as many victims in 2003 as in the previous year and the trend is set to continue, the world's biggest reinsurance company said on Wednesday.
Munich Re said in its annual review of natural catastrophes that earthquakes, heat waves and tornadoes had killed 75,000 people during the year, including 40,000 who died in December's severe earthquake in Iran.
The figure was higher than the 50,000 estimate the company gave in a preliminary report in December, largely because the full effects of the Iranian earthquake were not yet known then, a Munich Re spokesman said.
"After three years of relative calm, no fewer than five great natural catastrophes occurred in 2003," the report said, saying the five events alone had accounted for about a third of all economic and insured losses.
Apart from the Iranian earthquake, a heat wave that hit central and southern Europe in the summer claimed 20,000 lives, and an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale killed 2,200 in Algeria in May, the report said.
The most expensive disasters for insurers, however, were in the United States, where tornadoes battered the Midwest in May and a heat wave caused drought and forest fires in California in October and November, destroying thousands of homes.
The Californian fires cost the insurance industry some $2 billion, Munich Re said, while a massive hailstorm in Texas during the tornadoes "will go down in US insurance history" after generating insured losses of more than $1 billion.
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