Natural Disasters in 2023

Earthquakes

The most severe natural disaster in 2023 was an earthquake, located on the border ofTurkey and Syria. It is estimated to have caused around 60’000 deaths.

A few months later in August, a second strong earthquake hit Turkey near Malatya.

Several earthquakes of high magnitude and damages to the infrastructure happened in 2023, mostly in the Islamic part of the world (Turkey, Morocco and Afghanistan).

Fires

There were a lot of wildfires in north America and southern Europe. In Canada huge amounts of forests fell to the flames. In spring, the fires of northeastern Canada had such a vast extent, that the smoke was even visible by the naked eye in Europe and New York was covered in the smoke, appearing smog.

The most severe fire in terms of casualties was on Hawaii with at least 36 deaths and the completely destroyed city of Lahaina.

In Europe, Greece was affected the most with wildfires on Rhodes, near Athens and on the border with Turkey. On Rhodes, a lot of tourists had to be evacuated, whereas in northern Greece rumors were spread that the fires were caused by local people to hinder refugees coming from Turkey to get through Greece.

Floods

North America and Europe not only had to deal with fires, but also with floods, especially on the north-east coast of the US, in Slovenia and in Greece, where the floods followed a phase of wildfires. Slovenia even stated that this flood was the biggest natural disaster in their history. But also north Africa, namely Libya was hit very hard by a flood causing a 25% destruction of the city Derna.

In Asia China was affected by floods in Hongkong and Beijing and also North Korea was hit, increasing the food insecurity in the country.

In summary, we can say that North America and Europe faced both, wildfires and floods, while the Islamic world was hit hard by earthquakes. East Asia was affected mostly by floods and storms. There were some volcanic eruptions (like Etna, or Gundavik), but they did not cause major damages.