Essay on Exploring Why Some Hazards Are Easier to Predict Than Others

Natural disasters are a prime example of this. Although meteorologist have concluded that certain weather conditions can lead to various extreme storms, such as tornados or hurricanes, there is a limit to what we can do with that information. For example, the conditions required to make a tornado are common knowledge, when spring warm fronts and winter cold fronts meet they create the perfect atmosphere for a twister. With this knowledge and the capability to know when and where cold/warm front are going to be coming from, meteorologist are able to send out tornado watch and warnings to the affected communities. However, it is nearly impossible to discern if those winds will combine in the right way to make a funnel or if that funnel will touch down. Furthermore, if the tornado does manage to touch down they are unable to tell what its exact path of destruction it will be. The tornado that ripped through Joplin Missouri in 2011 is a prime example that we cannot always predict when a storm will strike, and the extent of the damage it will cause when it does. Although scientist continue to make strides in these fields, we will never be able to know exactly what is coming because various fields of study such as weather are not an exact science, and there are far too many possible factors to

Is it possible to predict when a catastrophe could happen? The natural catastrophes are easy to provide with the technology, but the man disasters are worst because it is impossible to know when they could happen. The protagonist of the short story “Grace Period” by Will Baker was able to understand the clues who foretell the worst for him. With the facts in the article “Nuclear Weapon Effects” written by John Pike, the nuclear weapon is probably the most logical thing that could happen in “Grace Period” and the main character would probably die by the effects of his exposition to the radiations.

Throughout this unit, the Science in Practice class has been learning about natural disasters and the impact it has on humans and environment. The natural disaster that will be discussed in this report is the Boxing Day Tsunami, which occurred on the 26th of December, 2004. The tsunami took place in the Indian Ocean. Due to, two tectonics plates, the Indo-Australian plate and the Eurasian plate colliding, causing an underwater earthquake. Due to this awful disaster, people were killed, injured, diagnosed with diseases, homes and businesses were destroyed, the environment damaged.

In 2010, an earthquake occurred that scared ten million lives of men, women, and children. However, the earthquake

2. Physiographic natural disasters: Southeast Asia is a realm of islands, peninsulas containing high mountains and deep valleys that is under constant threat from natural disasters. From earthquakes, tsunami, to volcano eruptions, this region has seen it all, including cyclones, floods, landslides, and other hazards. The Pacific Rim is part of the Ring of Fire, in 2004 a tsunami will 300,000 people, 1883 the Krakatau volcano erupted killing 30,000, and in 1815 the Tambora volcano erupted affecting the climate for 20 years. There is a widespread of casualities in this diverse region, putting a struggle on human survival.

A natural disaster is never planned, how were they supposed to know about the earthquake? The rockslide? Blizzard? Tsunami? The survivors never actually planned on it happening, despite as many precautions they may have taken. “The Seventh Man” by Haruki Murakami is a perfect example of this, the main character lost his best friend to a wave that was completely unexpected. Even despite their precautions, as stated in paragraph 23, the main character telling his best friend, “The minute we get any wind, though, we’re going straight back home.” Regardless of these canniness, both of the characters were gravely affected by the unforeseen wave. Other cases that involve people being trapped, or hurt by a choice that they made, most victims will clarify that they did what they thought was best for survival. They did what they thought would keep them from dying, to somehow last long enough for an escape or

Scientists have projected possible tsunami scenarios for coastal Oregon and Washington, based on the human impact of the 2004 Sumatra and 2011 Japan tsunami. An earthquake along the Cascadia subduction zone could be as large as the one that hit Japan lastMarch, and the tsunami could reach the coast in 20 minutes (National Geographic Society [NGS], 1996). The tsunami could create a massive catastrophe killing over 10,000 people during the summer since the evacuation centers are sparse and some people have lower access to high ground (NGS, 1996). For instance, a resort town named Ocean Shores lies on a low-ground narrow peninsula and 5,500 people live there year-round (NGS, 1996). According to the National Geography Society (1996), a catastrophic

Tsunamis are usually caused by tectonic displacement of the ocean floor often resulting in an underwater earthquake. This happened on Boxing Day in 2004 in the Indian Ocean where there was a 1000km thrust fault from a release of stress along the constructive-destructive plate boundary. No technology was in place to detect such a disaster and, although scientists knew a tsunami was likely to hit Southern Asia, most of the warnings were too late and the first TV broadcasts in Thailand even happened after the waves had hit. Up to 290,000 people were killed and thousands of bodies are still missing to this day. Since this disaster, a tsunami warning system has been put in place in the Indian Ocean and technology such as this is almost guaranteed to prevent such a high death toll for the future. There is a strong argument that if such technology was implemented before 2004, then thousands of lives could have been saved through evacuation and similar measures. Technology is the best way to reduce the impacts of earthquakes because they can predict a upcoming earthquake, allowing residents of an area time to evacuate to safe land, saving many lives. However, there are many other ways of reducing the impacts of earthquakes and technology has its limitations.

In the last decade alone, there have been a number of natural disasters that have caused substantial physical damage and great emotional distress to the people who were affected. The aftermath of a natural disaster presents many concerns; communities become displaced, health risks and complications occur, food scarcity becomes a result of lost crops, and emotional aftershocks become apparent. Some Haitian’s have yet to recover from the earthquake they experienced in 2010. (Davis, 2015) “According to FEMA, the total damage for hurricane Katrina is estimated at $108 billion.” (CNN News, 2015), and 86,000 lives were taken in the earthquake of Pakistan in 2005 (EERI, 2006). In 2008, communities of Sichuan, China, endured a 7.9 magnitude earthquake that collapsed several buildings, killing over 87,000 people. Buildings had very poor infrastructures, which caused the destruction of many local schools. This contributed to the deaths of thousands of school aged children (BBC News, 2013). However, the Boxing Day tsunami was one of the largest and most destructive natural disasters of

Natural disasters are the catastrophes cause by “Mother Nature”, which is often difficult to forecast or manage (Morrison, et al 2014). Examples of

Researchers have found that if a 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes the U.S’s california there is a great chance that a tsunami will occur. If that happens it will cost over 70 billion dollars to repair. People around that area would only have a 15 minute notice to flee. It could destroy roads, power lines, bridges, towns, and so much more. Over 100,00 people would die at an estimate. There has been two major earthquakes. One of the earthquakes was on a sunday and at a 6.8 magnitude and the other one in 2005 was at a 7.0 magnitude. In california there has been six earthquakes over a 7.0 magnitude or greater in the past 100 years. Scientists have focused on the 9.0 earthquake and the tsunami in japan in

Another human factor is the earthquake mitigation through education and community awareness. Schemes such as the one in Sichuan, China helped to save thousands of lives. The weekly intervals of training in case of an earthquake, educated children and adults of what to do when the quake struck. Evacuation schemes such as the window slides or hiding under tables was reported to have saved thousands when the magnitude 8.0 hit the area in 2008. However, some were not saved due to their unwillingness to move and evacuate the area. Some people of the village, notably the poorer and elderly refused to leave as they didn’t want to leave all they owned behind.

Due to diverse geo-climatic conditions prevalent in different parts of the globe, different types of natural disasters like floods, droughts, earthquakes, cyclones, landslides, and volcanoes etc may strike according to the vulnerability of the area.

While natural disasters such as floods, drought and hurricanes are commonly thought to occur due to environmental forces such as weather, climate and tectonic movements; a deeper investigation into the ‘disaster’ displays other contributing forces. Human factors have a large, if not equal, contribution to the occurrance and outcome of such disasters (Pelling, 2001). As Pelling (2001) argues, there is both a physical and human dimension to ‘natural disasters’. The extent to which the natural occurrence of a physical process, such as a flood or earthquake, impacts on society is constructed by that society, creating a ‘disaster’ as measured by a

The first general issue of reductionism (Elliott, 2000). There may be a tendency to take a simple approach to causes of disasters (Richardson, 1994) reducing them to simplistic activity or blame; this diverts attention away from emergent properties, or previously unforeseen system interactions (Elliott, 2000) and inhibits a holistic approach which would otherwise consider the range of political, economic and