I thought for sure that the Bahamas would be on the list from hurricane Dorian earlier this year.
Edit: Just googled it. The official death toll was 50. That's much lower than I would have though given how hard the islands were hit. They basically had a category 4/5 hurricane stall out over the islands for most of a day. Glad to hear the loss of life wasn't as bad is it could have been!
I wonder if they're still really trying to calculate the loss of life? A lot of people were literally washed out to sea. I imagine that in a year or so they'll have a much clearer picture of how many people died in Dorian.
The loss of life was much greater than this number. Hundreds of people remain classified as "missing", and the death toll also notably excludes undocumented Haitian immigrants, who mostly resided in flimsy shacks that were generally obliterated by the hurricane, causing an even greater loss of life. I don't think they even really tried to make a realistic calculation, at least for now, possibly in order not to scare future tourists away...
Very interesting, could you explain the methodology slightly more? I'm assuming this is calculated per year-- if so, could you add the relevant year to the answer columns for reference?
The source data lists the percentage of people who died from a natural disaster in each country every year. I averaged those percentages. Then, I did some more research (by Googling the countries and dates) to see which kind of natural disaster caused the most deaths over that time period.
If by "wiped off" you mean that the islands disappeared, that didn't happen. There were some islands, both inhabited and uninhabited, that were completely washed over by the waves, which meant that the entire island was salted, killing virtually all plant life and a significant number of people. Four (if I remember right) of those inhabited islands were subsequently abandoned, but they still exist.
I understand the point of averaging the percentages and all, but I just want to point out it's a bit misleading. In Haiti, for example, a sobering 70% of all deaths in 2010 were caused by the earthquake, but most normal years, the percent is less than 0.1%. Similarly, Honduras had a really devastating cyclone in 1998, but basically nothing at all any other years. Most of these death tolls are dominated by 1, maybe 2, extreme events, as opposed to an equal chance of dying every year.
Also, it's not mathematically correct to average %s. eg, if a country had 10 deaths one year with one to a natural disaster (10%), then 100 deaths the next year with 50 to a natural disaster (50%), the actual % to natural disasters would be 46%, while the average would suggest it was 30%. Generally countries' death tolls don't vary that much, but it could probably make a significant difference for some of the smaller countries
Natural disasters are comparatively rare in Europe and usually well mitigated. In Africa, other causes of death are likely to overshadow natural disasters.
Edit: Just googled it. The official death toll was 50. That's much lower than I would have though given how hard the islands were hit. They basically had a category 4/5 hurricane stall out over the islands for most of a day. Glad to hear the loss of life wasn't as bad is it could have been!