DISASTER REVIEW

A disaster is a natural or man-made (or technological) hazard resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment. A disaster can be ostensively defined as any tragic event stemming from events such as earthquakes, floods, catastrophic accidents, fires, or explosions. It is a phenomenon that can cause damage to life and property and destroy the economic, social and cultural life of people. According to ifrc.org, disaster is a sudden, calamitous event that seriously disrupts the functioning of a community or society and causes human, material, and economic or environmental losses that exceed the community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources. Though often caused by nature, disasters can have human origins. In contemporary academia, disasters are seen as the consequence of inappropriately managed risk. These risks are the product of a combination of both hazard/s and vulnerability. Hazards that strike in areas with low vulnerability will never become disasters, as is the case in uninhabited regions. Developing countries suffer the greatest costs when a disaster hits – more than 95 percent of all deaths caused by disasters occur in developing countries, and losses due to natural disasters are 20 times greater (as a percentage of GDP) in developing countries than in industrialized countries.

Disaster is also defined as a sudden event that has very unfortunate consequences for those affected by it. Disasters involve large-scale loss of life and property. The worst disasters in history have killed thousands of people at a time. Some have destroyed whole towns or cities. A volcanic explosion on the Island of Thera (now Santorini) about 1500 B.C. wiped out the entire Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, 120 kilometers away.

Disasters are of two types: (1) natural disasters, usually caused by geological or meterological events, and (2) major accidents involving human actions or technology. Famine, drought  and war are regarded as disasters but their onset is usually rather gradual. This article deals with sudden events.

Natural disasters have usually been far more destructive of life and property than have accidents resulting from human actions. This is because most natural events, such as volcanic eruptions, cyclones, hurricanes and floods, unleash massive forces that humans are rarely able to match.

Historically, earthquakes have been the most damaging natural disasters. They have brought great loss of life and made millions of people homeless. They usually strike without warning and effects to predict them continue to prove fruitless. Falling objects and collapsing buildings cause most deaths and injuries during an earthquake. Perhaps the worst quake ever recorded was that of 1201, centred on northern Egypt or Syria . It killed more than 1 million people.

Earthquakes that take place in or near the sea are usually associated with a destructive tidal wave, or tsunami. In 1992, an earthquake near Maumere on the Island of Flores, Indonesia, triggered tsunamis that devastated the coast of Flores and killed about 2,500 people.

Erupting volcanoes, floods, cyclones and hurricanes cause fewer deaths today than they once did because modern technology allows experts to warn people beforehand. Towns and villages in the path of a lava flow or a violent storm can usually be evacuated quickly and successfully. These occurrences do  however, cause massive damage and destruction to buildings and agricultural land, especially in developing countries.

The most dramatic volcanic eruptions, such as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, have been totally unexpected events. Before 79, Vesusvius had not erupted for centuries. The worst volcanic  eruption in modern history was that of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia., in 1815. In a catastrophic explosion, the 4,000-metre Mount Tambora blew off about one-third of its height. The blast killed more than 90,000 people and made thousands more homeless. The eruption hurled debris into the atmosphere and darkened the skies around the world for months. The year 1816 became known as “the year without a summer”.

Floods can cause destruction over a wide area. In 1887, during what was probably the worst flood in recorded history, the Huang He River in eastern China overflowed an area of 130,000 square kilometers and killed about 900,000 people. The worst cyclone ever recorded struck East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1970. Cyclones are common in this region, but the 1970 one was exceptionally destructive. It killed more than a quarter of a million people, left millions homeless and swamped precious agricultural land.

Accidents involving human actions or technology include air crashes, ship collision and sinkings, train crashes and fires. They rarely cause as many deaths as natural disasters but they can be just as destructive of property, The great fire of London in 1666 razed most of the old city of London to the ground but caused the deaths of only six people. In 1989, the oil spill caused by the oil tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska, U.S.A., fouled 1,600 kilometres  of coastline, including beaches in wildlife reserves . The accident caused no human casualties but killed thousands of birds and other animals.

These are many accidents in history that have cost large numbers of lives. The release in 1984 of poisoned gas from a factory in Bhopal, India, killed 3,500 people. The sinking of the Titanic in the North Atlantic in 1912 drowned about 1,500 people. The worst accident at sea in modern times was a collision in 1987 between a passenger ferry and an oil tanker in the Mindoro Strait in the Philippines. About 1,840 people died in the tragedy. About 800 people died in the worst train crash in history which occurred in 1981 in Bihar, India.

The worst air crash occurred in Japan in 1985 when a Boeing 747 jumbo jet airliner plunged into Mount Okura killing 520 passengers and crew. The worst collision between occured on the ground in 1977 between two 747’s taxiing along intersecting runways at Tenerife airport in the Canary Islands. The accident  killed 583 people aboard the two aircraft. Space exploration has included a few disasters in both the U.S. and former Soviet space programmes. In one of the worst, seven U.S. astronauts died in 1986 when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up just after liftoff.

Related articles: Earthquake, Cyclone, Flood, Tidal wave, Tornado and Volcano.