Why do disaster mitigation?
The number of major natural disasters and their costs has increased dramatically in recent years. The 84 great natural disasters recorded world-wide in the 1990s were three times as many as occurred in the 1960s; the combined economic loss was eight times greater than the loss for the disasters of the 1960s. Flooding of the Sagenauy River in 1996 and the Red River in 1997 and the eastern Canada ice storm in 1998 each cost the Canadian government an average of $366 million in disaster financial assistance payments. There is international consensus that investment in mitigation prior to an emergency will reduce the cost of recovering from an emergency. The State of Queensland, Australia has estimated that every dollar spent on disaster mitigation saves at least three dollars in economic and social recovery. The International Federation of the Red Cross has estimated that investigating US$40 billion worldwide in mitigation measures in the 1990s would have reduced disaster related economic
