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On the other hand, hard-to-predict disasters are still a potent threat. Tornadoes, for instance, form and dissipate rapidly and are difficult to detect with radars and satellites. Tornado research still depends on observers on the ground. So tornado warnings haven’t improved in the same way as hurricane forecasts. According to the National Weather Service, more than half of tornado warnings are false alarms. As a result, tornadoes remain some of the deadliest weather phenomena in the US.

Geological disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are even more difficult to predict. Even so, scientists have improved their understanding of where such events will occur, and while they have lead times measured in minutes, parts of the world now have earthquake early warning systems. Better earthquake detection and warnings have also improved tsunami warning systems.

The issue is that the places in the world with the most robust forecasting and alert programs for disasters are often the wealthiest regions. Between 1970 and 2019, more than 91 percent of all weather and climate-related deaths occurred in developing countries, according to the WMO. Only half of the world’s countries have early warning systems in place for multiple hazards, and across regions like Africa, Latin America, and island countries, there are large gaps in weather and climate observations.

So building up disaster warning systems for everyone in the world, and doing so in five years, is a monumental task. “It is a wildly ambitious goal but an important one,” Samantha Montano, an assistant professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, said in an email.

The devastation of a disaster doesn’t end with the storm

Despite the epochal scale and devastation of events like hurricanes and wildfires, it can be surprisingly difficult to grapple with the full extent of their impacts. One can add up the casualties when the ground is shaking, the wind is blowing, and the rain is falling, but how many deaths and injuries in the aftermath of the event should be added to the tally?

And when it comes to “natural” disasters, it can be difficult to separate which impacts are from forces of nature and which ones stem from human causes, like construction in high-risk areas or a poor disaster response.

“Historically, indirect deaths have been either not tracked at all or very poorly tracked,” Montano said.

Look at the list of deadliest hurricanes in the US and you’ll notice that most of them were decades ago, with some more than a century in the past. There are a couple conspicuous outliers, however. Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a category 5 storm with winds topping 175 miles per hour, officially killed around 1,800 people. Hurricane Maria in 2017, also category 5, killed more than 3,000. But the true toll of these disasters was likely much greater.

In San Juan, Puerto Rico, darkened buildings line streets at night, with the only lights coming from headlights of passing cars. Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Puerto Rico’s power outage after Hurricane Maria in 2017 lasted months, contributing to the death toll of the disaster.

While the storms themselves were exceptionally severe, both hurricanes had long tails of destruction. Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent collapse of levees in New Orleans led to flooding and road blockages that lasted more than 40 days. In the wake of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico suffered the largest blackout in US history, leaving residents without power for vital medical devices, refrigerators, and lighting for months.

Warnings may have helped some people avoid the acute elements of the storms, but much of the devastation from these disasters came in their aftermath, stemming from failures to prepare and respond.

“The theory is with better warnings, you should see a reduction [in deaths], and in many cases we do. But then you factor in socioeconomics, and even with warnings, you may still have the death tolls that are very high,” said Craig Fugate, who led the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President Barack Obama.

Disaster warnings don’t eliminate the events themselves, and there are wide disparities in who is equipped to evacuate ahead of a disaster and who has the resources to resume their lives in its wake.

For example, in the US, heat waves are the deadliest weather phenomenon. But even with warnings, there is little to do about them besides seeking air conditioning. Access to cooling, however, varies greatly with income and location. The risks can be managed or reduced, but not everyone has access to those tools; the worst effects often fall on the poorest.

Clearly, warnings are not enough on their own to reduce fatalities. People also need the means to act on those warnings.

We can’t take declining disaster deaths for granted

With climate change, many weather-related disasters are getting pushed toward greater extremes, so even places that once could readily endure storms, floods, and fires are struggling to cope. History is no longer a useful guide. “As we keep seeing record-setting events occurring, looking backward isn’t preparing us,” Fugate said.

Saving more lives thus demands a more comprehensive assessment of the threats that lie ahead and of tactics to deal with them. That could entail more access to air conditioning to cope with heat waves, tougher building codes to help withstand earthquakes, better fire-resistant construction for housing, and stronger seawalls in coastal areas. In some areas, it may require people to move away from areas prone to severe fires or flooding. Reducing emissions of the gases heating up the planet is critical as well.

Even in countries with forecasting systems in place, there is still plenty of room for improvement. While researchers can anticipate the path of a hurricane, they still struggle to predict its intensity, a major factor in its destructive potential.

These are all expensive interventions with huge political implications, but without them, some of the progress in saving lives could stall or reverse. “If we continue on the current path of doing relatively minimal mitigation and preparedness at the same time that we see an increase in risk then, yes, it is possible to see an increase in deaths over time.” Montano said.

And while fewer people are dying, the economic costs of disasters are mounting. In 2021, the US experienced 20 separate weather and climate disasters that cost more than $1 billion.

Chart showing disaster costs in the US. NOAA
The number of billion-dollar disasters is on the rise in the US.

The rising damage tolls are a result of having more people and property in the paths of dangerous weather events, as such events increase in severity. Costly disasters are a major concern for the economy and the global insurance industry.

Keeping global warming in check is an overwhelming task, but it should not be a cause for despair or complacency. The success in reducing disaster-related deaths shows that there are effective ways to mitigate some of the worst effects of climate change. Closing the gaps in warnings and building up disaster response systems should be an urgent priority and an obligation, particularly for the countries, like the US, that contributed the most to the problem.

Sri Lanka’s current crisis is years in the making

The current Rajapaksa administration failed to contain the fallout from recent crises and other long-brewing economic problems, which hampered the government’s ability to supplement its already-dwindling foreign currency reserves. Then, last year, the government banned the import of chemical fertilizer, ostensibly to protect the foreign currency it had on hand; instead, the ban laid waste to the nation’s rice and tea industries, causing the government to spend more importing food than it had saved from the fertilizer ban, Keenan told the Sydney Morning Herald in June. And without the foreign currency that the now-struggling tourism industry used to provide, the government could no longer import the basics that people need to survive.

Those struggles — the church attacks, Covid-19, the gutted tourism industry, low taxes, the fertilizer ban, and, of course, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and attendant fuel crisis — would be more than enough on their own. But the Rajapaksa family’s propensity toward policy failures, corruption, and overly-ambitious infrastructure projects is nothing new, and set in motion the circumstances that brought Sri Lanka’s economy to its knees.

Before there was President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, there was President Mahinda Rajapaksa — the same brother that, until May 9, served as Sri Lanka’s prime minister before protesters chased him out of the job and out of his estate, Temple Trees. Under Mahinda, Sri Lanka took on several costly infrastructure projects including a cricket stadium and the Hambantota International Port. China lent billions to Sri Lanka under Mahinda to finance projects including the port; however, Sri Lanka’s government agreed to allow a Chinese state-run creditor to control a majority stake of the port as part of their debt repayment in 2017.

Now, Gotabaya said in an interview in June, China’s proving less willing to loan to Sri Lanka so the government can import basic goods. “My analysis is that China has shifted their strategic focus into Southeast Asia,” he said at the time. “They see more strategic interest in Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia, that region, and Africa.” That sentiment, of course denies his own government’s role in China’s waning interest in assisting Sri Lanka, making that reluctance about shifting priorities rather than Gotabaya and his administration failing to meet its creditor’s demands for financial solvency and economic stability.

The president’s refusal to take responsibility for the economic crisis also meant that he delayed requesting assistance from the International Monetary Fund and others to help restructure Sri Lanka’s debts and bail out the country, prolonging the economic crisis — which has now become a political crisis.

Entrenched corruption is prompting calls for “system change”

Now, with the potential end of the current Rajapaksa administration, it’s unclear exactly how Sri Lanka will emerge from the unprecedented economic crisis it’s currently facing. Talks with the IMF last month, while apparently fruitful, failed to produce a plan to right the economy and put it on a stable path forward; political instability could potentially thwart continuing discussions.

While Both Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe have agreed to go following a decision by parliament urging them both to resign office effective immediately, they could delay in an attempt to hang on to power. Rajapaksa has allegedly agreed to leave by July 13 and Wickremesinghe hasn’t set a date and there’s not actually a guarantee that they’ll do so, according to Keenan. “All those in power & close to it in #SriLanka, with v few exceptions, care only about playing the angles, buying time, almost never about the public interest,” he tweeted Saturday. “This is why so many demand ‘system change.’”

.@NCdeMel on Ranil “buying time”: promising, like Gotabaya, to resign soon.

All those in power & close to it in #SriLanka, with v few exceptions, care only about playing the angles, buying time, almost never about the public interest. This is why so many demand “system change”. https://t.co/MzzRrWbbTQ

— Alan Keenan (@akeenan23) July 9, 2022

De Mel told Al Jazeera English that, “If you look at the prime minister’s history of leadership of his own party, in the last 20 years every time they’ve lost an election — and they have lost many — the prime minister, within his party, has promised to step down, provided there is consensus in the rest of the party ranks about an alternative leader.” Now, de Mel said, Wickremesinghe at least may be trying, “to buy time, and to not actually defer to the enormous call of society and people to resign. So I think it is very clear that it is a tried and tested, cynical tactic that is being presented as an excuse to remain.”

Additionally, the New York Times has reported incidents of state violence against protesters, with 42 people injured after run-ins with state security forces, and four journalists with a Sri Lankan television station attacked outside the prime minister’s residence by security forces. On Saturday. the police had used water cannons and tear gas against protesters, and had reportedly fired shots into the air to attempt to disperse the crowds.

Should Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe actually end up leaving office, it’s not clear that the Rajapaksa political dynasty will end with Gotabaya. Mahinda’s son, Namal, served in his uncle’s cabinet until this year and still serves in parliament; Basil Rajapaksa, a brother of the president, was the finance minister in his brother’s administration and according to some insiders effectively ran the country during its economic spiral. He resigned his post June 9, but even then, he told reporters, “I cannot and will not step away from politics.”

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