Extreme weather, but fewer disasters

When Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines on November 8, 2013, it tossed roofs, palm trees and even whole ships into the air. The typhoon, one of the strongest ever, killed nearly 8,000 people. No other disaster claimed more lives in 2013, according to the Red Cross World Disaster Report. All in all, 100 million people were affected by disaster last year, most of them in Asia.

When the storm had passed, many survivors seeking consolation turned to religion. People's religious beliefs can help them bounce back after a crisis, the Red Cross said. In its report, it stressed the need for aid agencies to take culture and religion into account when working in areas hit by disaster.

But in face of catastrophes, cultural practices and beliefs can also aggravate disaster. When Indonesia's Mount Merapi erupted, hundreds of villagers living nearby refused to evacuate, saying they would be protected by supernatural creatures. Many were killed by ash and debris.

The report also cites the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It says that the spread of the disease can partly be attributed to a clash of cultures. Traditions in parts of Sierra Leone and Guinea involve washing the dead, while the disease can only be stopped with quarantine for those infected and killed by Ebola. The Red Cross has now formed a burial team trying to bridge that cultural gap.

A statue of the Hindu Lord Shiva is submerged in water during floods in Uttrakhand state in June 2013. Heavy rainfall at the foot of the Himalayas caused floods and landslides in northern India that left nearly 6,100 dead in 2013's second-worst natural disaster. Floods remain the most frequent natural disasters worldwide.

The rains in northwest and central India were at least twice as heavy as usual during monsoon season. They also caused the rise in waters of the Yamuna River in New Delhi, seen here on June 20, 2013. The floods were the country's worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami.

Germany also experienced floods in 2013 - the worst the country has seen in a decade. With 14 people killed, the death toll remained well under the figures in India. Yet, when it comes to damages, the flood set a record in 2013. It caused more than $12 billion in damages, more than typhoon Haiyan which destroyed goods worth $10 billion.

The Red Cross differentiates natural disasters from "technological disaster," of which it counted 192 last year. The worst one also happened in Asia when more than 1,100 people perished in a garment factory building collapse in Bangladesh in April. The collapse of the eight-story building sparked debate about unsafe working conditions in the textile industry.

One year after the Rana Plaza disaster, a Bangladeshi woman holds a candle with a portrait of a missing relative. The gathering to pay tributes on the eve of the tragedy's anniversary in Savar, near Dhaka, shows that cultural practices and traditions also provide a way to deal with the loss that comes with disaster.