In a year when disaster caused unprecedented economic losses around the globe, Australia may have been on the right track when it started passing the hat.
It was in February that the Australian government introduced a flood levy to help pay for the damage that Mother Nature wrought upon Queensland state.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the government needed money to pay for repairs in the wake of "the most expensive season of natural disasters our nation has ever known."
It wouldn't be long before other countries found themselves wrestling with similar challenges, determining how to rebuild in the face of record disaster.
Days after Australia introduced its flood levy, neighbouring New Zealand was hit by its most costly disaster on record.
The Feb. 22 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, left 181 people dead, caused an estimated $15-billion in damage and destroyed much of the city's downtown.
"This may be New Zealand's single-most tragic event," New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said days later, when the city was still feeling aftershocks.
But it was the massive double-disaster in Japan weeks later, which dwarfed any other such catastrophe in 2011.
On March 11, a powerful earthquake rumbled the ocean floor and triggered a massive tsunami. Thousands were killed, towns were wiped out and a nuclear reactor was rendered inoperable.
Kurt Karl, the chief economist at the Zurich-based insurer Swiss Re, said the tsunami brought an unforeseen level of disaster to northeastern Japan.
"The size of this one surprised everyone I think," Karl said in a recent telephone interview from Zurich. "This one was so much larger than expected."
According to Swiss Re figures, insurance companies paid out US$35 billion to cover losses that resulted from the twin disasters -- about one-third of the total money insurers paid out to disaster victims across the globe in 2011.
And that was on top of the trillions of yen the Japanese government planned to spend on reconstruction efforts.
Yet after the tsunami, there was still more record devastation ahead in many parts of the world.
In the United States, tornadoes killed more people than in any other year on record by the time the month of May was over.
And when combining the deadly twisters with the flooding, wildfires, blizzards and hurricanes of 2011, there were 12 billion-dollar disasters that struck the U.S. in the same year.
National Weather Service director Jack Hayes told The Associated Press it was the most cases of severe weather in a single year in the U.S. that he had seen in 40-plus years as a meteorologist.
In Canada, a preponderance of flooding and fire emergencies left premiers calling on Ottawa to develop a long-term federal disaster mitigation program.
Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger said that by investing in prevention today, the Canadian government will be able to prevent destruction tomorrow -- such as in his province, where $1 billion in flood-prevention infrastructure has staved off billions more in damage.
"So $1 billion gets you $30 billion of savings, but just a whole lot less disruption of people's lives and disruption in the economy," Selinger said in June, as Western premiers called on Ottawa to create a federal program.
Selinger's press secretary, Matt Williamson, told CTVNews.ca that the premiers have raised the issue with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and it is now under consideration in Ottawa.
Jessica Slack, a spokesperson for Public Safety Canada, also told CTVNews.ca that discussions have been initiated with the provinces and territories on a national disaster mitigation program.
"This builds on the Prime Minister's commitment to develop a cost-shared, national disaster mitigation program to decrease community vulnerability and enhance community resiliency," Slack said in an email.
Overseas in Thailand, people scrambled to protect themselves and their belongings from the worst floods to hit the country in a half-century.
The flooding started in July and lasted into November in some places. More than 600 people died and insurers were on the hook for $8 billion to $11 billion, according to Swiss Re figures released in December.
Looking forward to 2012, there is no way of telling what may lie ahead in terms of disasters. But it seems to be a given that insurers will be raising rates.
Karl said with the year that has gone by, the industry has "had rates going up, prices going up, to be able to help our clients in the future.
"Obviously if you don't have enough, you haven't priced it appropriately, you'll be short on your reserves when the time comes for the next set of events."
With "unusually high activity in earthquakes lately," the price for coverage has gone up accordingly.
With files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press
