How Natural Disasters Affect the Environment

A natural disaster has the capability to cause large scale damage and destruction to an area. Seismic events have been known to alter landscapes and affect the livelihoods, health and development of communities. No two earthquake events are the same and the level of threat posed by an earthquake can vary due to both the human and physical factors of an area. The 2010 magnitude - 7.0 earthquake that occurred in Haiti is an example of where a natural disaster caused a previously vulnerable area to suffer tremendous loss and debilitating socio-economic impacts, to an already poverty-stricken nation.

Disaster is anything that can occur causing damages, an ecological disruption and deterioration of health and the health services. Disaster can be manmade or natural disasters such as floods. When disasters like flooding or tornadoes that may be accompanied by floods occur, the public health personnel and public health nurses are normally the first people who respond to the emergency, given that they are the people who understand and know the available resources used in providing first aids to the affected victims.

The natural environment is, of course, not “getting its revenge”. Geophysical, meteorological, and hydrologic processes are unfolding as they have for millennia, beginning long before humans occupied the earth and continuing to the present. Given the eons-long perspective of the natural environment, it would be very difficult to identify meaningful changes in event frequency for the short time period in which scientific records are available on geological, meteorological, and hydrological phenomena. Event frequency, from an emergency management perspective, is not really the issue. It is certainly true that, over the years, more people have been affected by natural disasters and losses are becoming progressively greater. The significant feature driving these observations, however, is the extent of human encroachment into hazard prone areas. With increasing population density and changing land use patterns, more people are exposed to natural hazards and consequently our accumulated human and economic losses are increasing. Much of this exposure is a matter of choice. Sometimes people choose hazardous places, building houses on picturesque cliffs, on mountain slopes, in floodplains, near beautiful volcanoes, or along seismic faults. Sometimes people choose hazardous building materials that fail under extreme environmental stresses—for example, unreinforced masonry construction in seismically active areas. Some exposure results from constrained choices; the cheap land or

Our natural hazard is a hurricane. They can go up to 70 to 200 miles per hour wind speed. Each hurricane lasts up to about a week. They are huge storms that run on water. They are able producing to about 200 times of the world's electricity. Hurricane winds can rip off roofs, blow out windows and flatten buildings. and they’re notorious for making deadly weapons out of random debris. Hurricanes can also make tornadoes, which have even stronger winds. They create sink holes. There have been many hurricanes some worse than others. One of the worst hurricanes to ever occur was Hurricane Galveston.

With the current changes in weather patterns, strange climatic conditions and other uncontrollable natural disasters, there has been a lot of attention directed towards the mitigation of the negative effects such natural disasters can have on man and the society at large.

Natural disasters are considered either meteorological disasters such as snowstorms and hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes, typhoons, extreme cold spells or heat waves, or topological catastrophes, such as floods, landslides, avalanches, and earthquakes. In terms of services and financial assistance offered by the government in response to a natural disaster, Public Safety Canada (PS) initiates action only in the event of a natural disaster where municipal, provincial, or territorial governments are burdened by costs in excess of what they can be reasonably expected to

Natural disasters are terrible things that have been happening more often in America. One of these disasters is a hurricane. Hurricanes are severe storms with rain and wind that reach up to a category five. A hurricane that recently hit the southern U.S. and many other countries was Hurricane Irma. At one point, Irma was a category five. This hurricane was a horrendous hurricane that took many lives. Unfortunately, the physical destruction was devastating, leaving many people without their homes, without power, and with trees down. Fortunately, a majority of the people affected, had their lives spared. As you can see, hurricanes are very dangerous and can be deadly.

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

Distressing natural disasters, such as hurricane Irma have devastated the world and caused loss of homes, as well as greatly affecting humanity. According to French Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe of St. Martin, “95 percent of the island’s houses had been damaged and 60 percent were uninhabitable. Earlier, France's interior minister said at least eight people had died.” This devastating hurricane is one of the many examples of how extreme natural disasters negatively impact the world and how dominant Mother Nature is over humanity.

Disasters, whether natural or manmade, can happen anytime and anywhere, without warning. An earthquake, hurricane, tornado, fire, or hazardous material spill or even an act of terrorism can happen

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

Natural disasters may be defined as natural catastrophes which cause great damage by disrupting the functioning of a society thus rendering the country incapable of coping through using its own resources as there is a need for outsider assistance in order to effectively preserve lives and the environment. Conversely, Natural hazards are natural phenomena that are potential threats to people within a society, structures or economic assets and may cause disaster. Natural disasters are inevitable and ubiquitous worldwide. Within the Caribbean, they are chiefly present in the forms of hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, droughts, and volcanoes. The great damages caused by natural disasters may be divided into three categories: social, economic

Natural disasters are anything from floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, or anything else nature could develop that causes massive amounts of damage, or cause a large losses of life. Such events are not anything caused because of human beings, but only by the actions of atmospheric conditions, or due to the changes of continental drifts that these disasters occur. Technology has come a long way since the early days before the industrial revolution where predictions can be made and warnings can be issued. This helps reduce the amount of possible loss of lives that would occur in 21st century. However, that is not what happened during Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 Hurricane.

Natural disaster is a sudden and terrific event in nature (such as a hurricane, tornado, flood, heat waves,typhoon) that usually results in serious damage and a huge amount of deaths.