Natural disasters exhaust Russian economy

Natural disasters that occur annually cause terrible damage to the affected countries. Casualties, destruction of human settlements and infrastructure, pollution, ecological issues, man-made disasters - these effects put countries in a distressed situation and often lead to significant economic decline.

Any major earthquake, flood, or a hurricane causes significant harm to the state budget of the affected country. Human losses are irretrievable, and sometimes it is impossible to restore entire cities or regions. The main task of the authorities is to keep the economy from fluctuations, save infrastructure and to ensure that the financial component of the tragedy is not fatal to the state budget. It takes days, weeks or months after the disaster.

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In Russia, the most frequently occurring natural disasters are earthquakes, landslides, storms, hurricanes, forest fires and floods. The latest tragedy in the Krasnodar Region that saw a two-month amount of rain on July 7 had killed over a hundred people, and tens of thousands were injured.

The flooding has caused horrible damage to the Krymsk city, Gelendzhik and Novorossiysk. Villages were flooded, roads washed away, electricity supply was disrupted, there was a breakage of wires, and small businesses have suffered greatly due to the flooding of shops, stalls and offices. The total flood damage in the area today is estimated at one billion rubles, but this number is expected to grow.

According to the calculations of a special commission created to determine the damage, as of July 9 the flooding destroyed 5,185 houses, and 2,035 yards with a population of 26,475 people in the cities of Gelendzhik, Krymsk, Novorossiysk, settlements Divnomorskoe, Nizhnebakansky, Neverdjayevskaya, and Kabardinka.

In addition, three kindergartens, a school, city hospital, medical midwife center and tuberculosis hospital were damaged. Some power lines, distributing pipelines, culverts, bridges and local roads have also suffered. The federal highway M-4 "Don", with only one lane in the area of Aderbievki, was also damaged.

According to the President Vladimir Putin, the victims of the disaster in the Kuban region will be paid up to 160,000 rubles from the federal and regional budgets, and the families who lost relatives will receive 2 million rubles. The President also said that new houses in place of the lost ones will be built with the money of the federal treasury.

The flooding is not the first one in the Krasnodar Region. Just two years ago, in October of 2010, a flooding occurred in Kuban and caused the damage of 2.5 billion rubles. The consequences of that tragedy were less devastating with 17 people killed, six missing, 7,500 people injured, and 1,500 homes flooded. According to the current data on the consequences of the latest flood, there are 26 thousands victims and 5 thousands flooded homes.     

In terms of the economic and business losses of the area, the scale of the disaster is considerably larger. In addition to the already mentioned small businesses, travel companies have suffered losses because the flood occurred at the height of the travel season. Today it is unclear whether these companies will receive compensation from specific individuals responsible for the unpreparedness of the communities to natural disaster, or whether the enormous losses will be blamed on "high water" and unstable climate of the Russian south.

Other countries have also suffered significant natural disasters in recent years. With the advent of the new millennium, nature has dealt more severe blows to the economies of different countries. Tsunami, active volcanoes and earthquakes have caused great damage to the economies.

In 2004, a devastating wave struck South-East Asia, covering coastal areas of Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. As a result of the disaster, the countries lost 10.7 billion dollars. A flood in the already impoverished country of Haiti in 2010 killed 10,000 people, destroyed tens of thousands of homes, particularly in the province of Puerto Plata.

Damage from natural disasters was estimated at several billion dollars. One of the most "expensive" disasters of this century was the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011, where the natural disaster was followed by a technology-related accident at the nuclear power plant "Fukushima". As a result of the disaster, Japan's economy has lost 265 billion dollars only in the first half of 2011.

The total losses incurred by the global economy over the past year as a result of natural and man-made disasters were calculated at $370 billion dollars. For comparison, in 2010 the total amount of damage to the element of the global economy was at $226 billion dollars.

On the bright side, according to statistics, countries are now better prepared for disasters, and pay enough attention to the improvement of early emergency warning systems. Such insurance in the future should help not only reduce economic losses from natural disasters, but, first and foremost, reduce human losses.

Maria Snytkova

Pravda.Ru

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