February 28, 2020
Severe flooding that hit Iran in March and April was the world’s ninth costliest weather disaster of 2019, according to insurance broker Aon.
It cost the country $8.3 billion in economic losses and $200 million in insured losses sustained by private insurers and government-sponsored programs, while claiming the lives of 77 people, the report said.
The Earth was besieged in 2019 by weather disasters that inflicted losses worth $40 billion, tying with 2018 for the fourth-highest inflation-adjusted number of billion-dollar weather events on record.
The combined economic losses (insured and uninsured) from all 409 weather and earthquake disasters cataloged by Aon in 2019 were $232 billion.
From mid-March through April 2019, widespread flash flooding affected large parts of Iran, most severely in Golestan, Fars, Khuzestan and Lorestan.
The costliest weather disaster in 2019, according to Aon, was Typhoon Hagibis, which hit Japan October 6-12, with losses of $15 billion and 99 people killed.
Aon said about 11,000 people died in natural disasters in 2019, which ranked among the 10 years with the lowest number of disaster-related deaths since 1950. The deadliest natural disaster of 2019 was the monsoon flooding in India, which killed an estimated 1,750 people.