Natural Disaster

A disaster is the tragedy of a natural or human-made hazard (a hazard is a situation which poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or environment) that negatively affects society or environment.

A natural disaster is the result of when a natural hazard affects humans. The amount of human vulnerability is the factor that leads to financial, environmental, or human impact.

A natural disaster is a consequence when a natural hazard (e.g., volcanic eruption or earthquake) affects humans. Human vulnerability, caused by the lack of appropriate emergency management, leads to financial, environmental, or human impact. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster: their resilience. This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meet vulnerability". A natural hazard will hence never result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g., strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas.

There are several types of natural disasters that may occur and the type of disaster usually depends on the geographic location in which a population of humans reside. For instance, an avalanche occurs in areas of mountainous terrain and a cold environment. The following natural disasters are common to happen throughout the world:

Volcanoes:

A Volcano is a vent in the earth through which hot gases and molten rock rise to the surface. A cone shaped mountain of erupted material around such a vent is also called a volcano. The name is taken from Volcano, an island north of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. The island was given its name by the ancient Romans because it spewed smoke like vapor, and was thought to be the home of Vulcan, their god of fire.

Ex: Cotopaxi Mexico 1877 mud flow flowed 150 miles

Earthquake:

A natural disaster that involves a violent and sudden shaking of the earth's crust (the outermost layer of the earth's surface). The point of origin of an earthquake is called the "focus" of the earthquake and the area on the earths surface directly above the focus is called the "epicenter". Earthquakes are not directly responsible for deaths of humans or wildlife, but rather it is the aftereffects that are triggered by an earthquake that makes them so deadly. Earthquakes can cause buildings to collapse, fires to spread, tsunamis to form at sea, and volcanoes to erupt. While earthquakes are generally difficult to predict ahead of time, safety measures can be put into place that could prevent these secondary events from happening or minimizing the damage.

Ex: 2005 Kashmir Quake.. Death tolls have been estimated at over 79,000, with thousands more injured..

Tornadoes

Tornadoes are one of weathers most deadly and fascinating forces. Even though they are often limited by size (not being more than one kilometer wide at most) they leave vast areas of destruction and death behind them. They are also called twisters or cyclones.

Ex: Tornado Outbreak.. April 1974.. took 330 lives, left 5484 people injured and destroyed a stretch of 2500 miles

Blizzards

Blizzards are dangerous winter storms that are a combination of blowing snow and wind resulting in very low visibilities. While heavy snowfalls