Hazards, Disasters, and Catastrophes - oh my!

This week I will determine the difference between hazards, disasters, and catastrophes.

Natural Hazards

Natural hazards are natural processes/events that have potential to threaten human life and property. Some examples of natural processes are volcano eruptions and earthquakes. These natural processes are only considered hazardous when humans are in their path. No area of the United States is free of hazards.

Major hazards in the United States include tornadoes and windstorms, as they are associated with the largest volume of deaths per year. Most of these cause big property damage. Expansive soils cause more than $15 billion in damages per year.

Natural Disasters

If an event occurs over a limited amount of time within a defined area, it is considered a natural disaster. In addition to this criteria, one of the following must also occur for an event to be deemed a natural disaster:

  • 10 or more people are killed
  • 100 or more people are affected
  • a state of emergency is declared
  • international assistance is requested 
High income countries suffer the more economic losses but the lowest number of deaths as opposed to other countries. During the past half century, there has been a dramatic increase in natural disasters. 

Catastrophes

These are massive disasters that require significant expenditure of money and takes a long time (years) for recovery. An example of a catastrophe is Hurricane Katrina -  the largest financial catastrophe in the United States.

Comments

  1. AnaGGAugust 27, 2018 at 8:57 AM

    Awesome-Looking forward to all the things you'll learn about your country in the upcoming weeks!

    ReplyDelete

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