WHAT IS DISASTER?

Disaster is a sudden, calamitous event bringing great damage, loss, and destruction and devastation to life and property. The damage caused by disasters is immeasurable and varies with the geographical location, climate and the type of the earth surface/degree of vulnerability. This influences the mental, socio-economic, political and cultural state of the affected area. Generally, disaster has the following effects in the concerned areas, and severity of the disaster. It may also be termed as a serious disruption of the functioning of society, causing widespread human, material or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected society to cope using its own resources. Thus, a disaster may have the following main features:o Unpredictability o Unfamiliarity o Speed o Urgency o Uncertainty o Threat Thus, in simple terms we can define disaster as a hazard causing heavy loss to life, property and livelihood. e.g. a cyclone killing 10,000 lives and a crop loss of one crore can be termed as disaster. TYPES OF DISASTER Generally, disasters are of two types Natural and Manmade. Based on the devastation, these are further classified into major/minor natural disaster and major/minor manmade disasters. Some of the disasters are listed below, Major natural disasters: Flood Cyclone Drought Earthquake Major manmade disaster: Setting of fires Epidemic Deforestation Pollution due to prawn cultivation Chemical pollution. Wars Minor natural disasters: Cold wave Thunderstorms Heat waves Mud slides Storm Minor manmade disaster: Road / train accidents, riots Food poisoning Industrial disaster/ crisis Environmental pollution

Natural disaster
A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard (e.g., flood, tornado, hurricane, volcanic eruption, earthquake, heatwave, or landslide). It leads to financial, environmental or human losses. The resulting loss depends on the vulnerability of the affected population to resist the hazard, also called their resilience.[1] This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meetvulnerability."[2] Thus a natural hazard will not result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g. strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas.[3] The term natural has consequently been disputed because the events simply are not hazards or disasters without human involvement.[4]

Man made disaster :

Man made disasters are those disasters or calamities we face due to our wrong doings. You see, when God made this planet for us millions and millions of years ago, it was all balanced meaning to say, there were enough trees to hold the earth together, and the air was so clean and unpolluted that all kinds of living creature could live harmoniously. But what happened now? Needless to say, due to the eagerness of men to advance in science and technology, they are willing to sacrifice even their own planet.

Earthquakes
Main article: List of earthquakes See also: Earthquake

The 1693 Sicily earthquake. About 60,000 people are thought to have died in this earthquake.

An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. At the Earth's surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by vibration, shaking and sometimes displacement of the ground. The vibrations may vary in magnitude. Earthquakes are caused mostly by slippage within geological faults, but also by other events such as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, and nuclear tests. The underground point of origin of the earthquake is called the focus. The point directly above the focus on the surface is called the epicenter. Earthquakes by themselves rarely kill people or wildlife. It is usually the secondary events that they trigger, such as building collapse, fires, tsunamis (seismic sea waves) and volcanoes, that are actually the human disaster. Many of these could possibly be avoided by better construction, safety systems, early warning and evacuation planning. [edit]Volcanic

eruptions

Main article: List of largest volcanic eruptions See also: Types of volcanic eruptions

Artist's impression of the volcanic eruptions that formed the Deccan Traps in India.

Volcanoes can cause widespread destruction and consequent disaster through several ways. The effects include the volcanic eruption itself that may cause harm following the explosion of the volcano or the fall of rock. Second, lava may be produced during the eruption of a volcano. As it leaves the volcano, the lava destroys many buildings and plants it encounters. Third, volcanic ashgenerally meaning the cooled ash - may form a cloud, and settle thickly in nearby locations. When mixed with water this forms a concrete-like material. In sufficient quantity ash may cause roofs to collapse under its weight but even small quantities will harm humans if inhaled. Since the ash has the consistency of ground glass it causes abrasion damage to moving parts such as engines. [edit]Hydrological [edit]Floods A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land.[8] The EU Floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water.[9] In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Flooding may result from the volume of water within a body of water, such as a river or lake, which overflows or breaks levees, with the result that some of the water escapes its usual boundaries.[10] While the size of a lake or other body of water will vary with seasonal changes in precipitation and snow melt, it is not a significant flood unless such escapes of water endanger land areas used by man like a village, city or other inhabited area. Main article: List of floods See also: Flood

disasters

[edit]Tsunamis Main article: Historic tsunamis See also: Tsunami

The tsunami caused by the December 26, 2004, earthquake strikes Ao Nang, Thailand.

Tsunamis can be caused by undersea earthquakes as the one caused in Ao Nang, Thailand, by the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, or by landslides such as the one which occurred atLituya Bay, Alaska. Ao Nang, Thailand (2004). The 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquakecreated the Boxing Day Tsunami and disaster at this site. Lituya Bay, Alaska (1953). 2010 Chile earthquake

On October 26, 2010, a tsunami occurred at Sumatra, Indonesia On March 11, 2011, a tsunami occurred near Fukushima, Japan and spread through the Pacific.

[edit]Droughts See also: Drought

On the outskirts of Dadaab, Kenya, during the 2011 East Africa drought.

Drought occurs when rainfall is insufficient to maintain river flow and ground-water levels fall to such an extent that water becomes unavailable or almost unavailable to support life. The formal definition of drought varies from area to area. [edit]Hailstorms See also: Hail Hailstorms are rain drops that have formed together into ice. A particularly damaging hailstorm hit Munich, Germany, on July 12, 1984, causing about 2 billion dollars in insurance claims. [edit]Heat

waves

See also: Heat wave The worst heat wave in recent history was the European Heat Wave of 2003.

Hurricane Katrina

A summer heat wave in Victoria, Australia, created conditions which fuelled the massive bushfiresin 2009. Melbourne experienced three days in a row of temperatures exceeding 40C with some regional areas

sweltering through much higher temperatures. The bushfires, collectively known as "Black Saturday", were partly the act of arsonists. The 2010 Northern Hemisphere summer resulted in severe heat waves, which killed over 2,000 people. It resulted in hundreds of wildfires which causing widespread air pollution, and burned thousands of square miles of forest. [edit]Tornadoes Main article: List of tornadoes and tornado outbreaks See also: Tornado
This section requires expansion.

A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone,[11] although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider sense, to name any closed low pressure circulation. Tornadoes come in many shapes and sizes, but are typically in the form of a visible condensation funnel, whose narrow end touches the earth and is often encircled by a cloud of debris and dust. Most tornadoes have wind speeds less than 110 miles per hour (177 km/h), are approximately 250 feet (80 m) across, and travel a few miles (several kilometers) before dissipating. The most extreme tornadoes can attain wind speeds of more than 300 mph (480 km/h), stretch more than two miles (3 km) across, and stay on the ground for dozens of miles (more than 100 km).[12][13][14] Well-known historical tornadoes include: The Tri-State Tornado of 1925, which killed over 600 people in the United States; The Daulatpur-Saturia Tornado of 1989, which killed roughly 1,300 people in Bangladesh.

[edit]Health

disasters

[edit]Epidemics Main article: List of epidemics See also: Epidemics

The A H5N1 virus, which causes Avian influenza

An epidemic is an outbreak of a contractible disease that spreads at a rapid rate through a human population. A pandemic is an epidemic whose spread is global. There have been many epidemics throughout history, such as Black Death. In the last hundred years, significant pandemics include:

Preparedness

Preparedness is how we change behavior to limit the impact of disaster events on people.[11] Preparedness is a continuous cycle of planning, managing, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, creating, evaluating, monitoring and improving activities to ensure effective coordination and the enhancement of capabilities of concerned organizations to prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, create resources and mitigate the effects of natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters.[12] In the preparedness phase, emergency managers develop plans of action carefully to manage and counter their risks and take action to build the necessary capabilities needed to implement such plans. Another aspect of preparedness is casualty prediction, the study of how many deaths or injuries to expect for a given kind of event. This gives planners an idea of what resources need to be in place to respond to a particular kind of event. Emergency Managers in the planning phase should be flexible, and all encompassing carefully recognizing the risks and exposures of their respective regions and employing unconventional, and atypical means of support. Depending on the region municipal, or private sector emergency services can rapidly be depleted and heavily taxed. Non-governmental organizations that offer desired resources, i.e., transportation of displaced home-owners to be conducted by local school district buses, evacuation of flood victims to be performed by mutual aide agreements between fire departments and rescue squads, should be identified early in planning stages, and practiced with regularity.