There was this proviso, "The Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, which caused some 250,000 deaths, does not feature on this chart. Economic losses there amounted to only $14 billion in today’s prices, partly because of low property and land values in the affected areas."
I'm surprised I haven't heard more comparisons to the 2004 tsunami or to the 2010 Haiti earthquake (92,000 - 316,000 deaths) which also didn't make this chart. I think it was after that quake I read some statistic about how poorer countries have much more deaths as a result of an equivalent disaster. I haven't seen much on how much area of Japan was affected but I did hear something like 400 miles of the coast was affected by the tsunami. At that scale, the fact that there were only 10-20,000 deaths is amazing.
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