Disasters

A disaster (from Middle French désastre, from Old Italian disastro, from Latin pejorative prefix dis- bad + astrum star) is the impact of a natural or man-made hazard that negatively affects society or environment. more...

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Disasters occur when hazards strike in vulnerable areas. Disasters are generally more limited in scale than doomsday events, the global impact of which would threaten a large proportion of life on earth. The word disaster's root is from astrology: this implies that when the stars are in a bad position a bad event will happen.

Disaster management

Chances of survival after a disaster are greatly improved when people, local governments and emergency services, businesses and national governments prepare survival plans and assemble survival gear beforehand. What constitutes sufficient preparation is highly dependent on the location and the disasters that are likely to occur in the area.

Natural disasters

A natural hazard can cause a natural disaster. Appearing to arise without direct human involvement, natural disasters are sometimes called acts of God. A natural disaster requires inappropriate human action in an area at risk before the strike of a hazard for it to develop into a disaster. A specific disaster may spawn a secondary disaster that increases the impact. A classic example is an earthquake that causes a tsunami, resulting in coastal flooding.

Avalanche

An avalanche is a slippage of built-up snow down an incline, possibly mixed with ice, rock, soil or plantlife in what is called a debris avalanche. Avalanches are categorized as either slab or powder avalanches. Avalanches are a major danger in mountainous areas during winter.

Cold

Extreme cold snaps are hazardous to humans and their livestock. A 2003 Mongolian cold snap, locally known as a dzud, killed almost 30,000 livestock.

Drought

A drought is a long-lasting weather pattern consisting of dry conditions with very little or no precipitation. During this period, food and water supplies can run low, and other conditions, such as famine, can result. Droughts can last for several years and are particularly damaging in areas in which the residents depend on agriculture for survival. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s is a famous example of a drought.

Earthquake

An earthquake is a sudden shift or movement in the tectonic plate in the Earth's crust. On the surface, this is manifested by shaking of the ground, and can be massively damaging to poorly built structures. Earthquakes occur along fault lines, and are unpredictable. Single earthquakes have killed hundreds of thousands of people, such as in 1976 Tangshan earthquake, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake that hit Anchorage, Alaska, and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

Read more at Wikipedia.org