Study reveals long-term death toll of cyclones as world battered

PARIS: As a typhoon battered Taiwan and rescuers searched for hurricane survivors in the United States on Wednesday, a study estimated that the long-term death toll of such tropical cyclones is around 300 times greater than official figures.

Hurricane Helene has killed at least 155 people in the southeastern US, Hurricane John killed at least 16 in Mexico last week and two people have died in Taiwan even before Typhoon Krathon makes landfall, expected Thursday morning.

However the immediate deaths recorded during tropical cyclones -- also called hurricanes or typhoons, depending on where they hit -- represent just a fraction of the real toll they take on lives in the years after the storm clears, according to new research.

And with human-driven climate change expected to help make tropical cyclones more intense, the US researchers called for people in the affected regions to receive more support.

The research published in the journal Nature is the first to use statistical modelling to estimate how cyclones affect the overall number of deaths in a region over a long time frame, lead study author Rachel Young told AFP.

The researchers looked at 501 tropical cyclones that hit the continental US between 1930 and 2015, analysing the number of excess deaths from all causes recorded in the 15 years that followed.

The average number of deaths officially reported during individual storms was 24.

But if indirect deaths in the years after the storm were counted, the average toll for each was between 7,000 and 11,000, around 300 times higher than government figures, the study estimated.

This would mean that cyclones contributed to between three and five percent of all deaths recorded in the affected areas on the US Atlantic coast over those 85 years, the study said.