More than 25,000 people died in major natural disasters during 2001 - including earthquakes, floods, and freezing cold - more than twice the number of victims from the year before.
The massive earthquake in the state of Gujarat in India in January, which cost 14,000 lives and caused £3.1 billion sterling in damage, pushed the 2001 total well beyond the roughly 10,000 who died in disasters in 2000, according to a report by Germany's Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance company.
The company said the costliest in financial terms was Tropical Storm Allison, which hit the US in June and caused around £4.15 billion in damage, including 100,000 cars damaged or destroyed by flooding. But far fewer people, 25, were killed.
Munich Re's totals for the year excluded the September 11th terror attacks in the United States because they were man-made.
After the Indian earthquake, the mostly deadly natural disasters were: the earthquake and landslides in El Salvador in which 850 people were killed; floods in Algeria, 750 dead; February cold weather in Afghanistan, 650 dead; and floods in Vietnam and Cambodia, 440 dead.
The economic loss worldwide rose from £20.7 billion the year before, Munich Re said. Of this year's £25 billion loss, only £8 billion was covered by insurance, it added.
Still, those losses were modest compared to 1999, when earthquakes in Turkey, Taiwan and Greece combined with fierce winter storms in western Europe to boost damages to £70 billion. Some 70,000 people died.
AP