Statistics show that ocean rip currents claim more lives than any other natural hazards like bushfires, floods, cyclones and sharks.
Natural hazards come second only to diseases when it comes to causing the most number of human deaths. In order to determine which of these hazards claim the most number of lives, researchers from the University of New South Wales conducted an analysis. According to a press statement released by the university, ocean rip currents claim more lives than any other natural hazards like bushfires, floods, cyclones and sharks.
Rip currents claim an average of 21 lives every year in Australia alone, followed by 5.9 lives claimed by bushfires, 4.3 by floods, 7.5 by cyclones and 1 by sharks.
"Rips account for greater overall loss of human life than other high profile natural hazards. Yet they do not get anywhere near as much attention and dedicated funding," said Dr Rob Brander, a coastal geomorphologist at UNSW, and lead author of the study.
Rip currents are strong, narrow seaward flowing currents that frequently carry swimmers to far distances offshore, causing exhaustion, panic and drowning. The country has over 1,000 mainland beaches with an estimated 17,500 rip currents operating at any given time.
"And this is likely to be an underestimate because there has to be a witness to an event who saw the person was caught in a rip, and then this information has to be included in the coronial report," said Dr Brander.
What makes the discovery all the more astonishing is that while other types of hazards, like bushfires, have the capacity to claim large numbers of lives in a single event; rip currents are almost always present and rarely result in more than one death at a time. However, when the number of deaths is accumulated, more people die as a result of them.
"As rip current are a global problem, it is hoped that this study can be applied in other countries to more appropriately place the rip current hazard in perspective with and context of other natural hazard types," Branders concluded.
