"Report: 90 Percent of Disasters Are Weather-Related"

"UNITED NATIONS --  Ninety percent of disasters in the last 20 years have been caused by floods, storms, heatwaves and other weather-related events — and these weather-spawned disasters are becoming more frequent, according to a report released Monday.

The report said the 6,457 weather-related disasters that were recorded between 1995 and 2015 claimed 606,000 lives and affected more than four billion people.

Flooding alone accounted for 47 percent of the weather-related disasters, affecting 2.9 billion people — 95 percent of them living in Asia which bore the brunt of disasters due mainly to its large and varied landmass including multiple river basins and flood plains, it said."

Edith M. Lederer reports for the Associated Press November 23, 2015.