Natural Disasters Essay

The county fire marshal Alan Carson, saw the fire around 1.30 am and he defined the fire was a big one. Added that the weather and

Gas prices are considered to be returning to normal as most of the oil refineries are reopening following the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey. Many of the drivers in Houston were affected by the increase in gas prices and long lines at the gas stations when Hurricane Harvey hit. Due to Harvey’s landfall, it caused most of the Texas population to flock to the pumps, in fear of a long-term gas shortage. Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service stated, “The national average gas price has peaked to $2.67, following the hurricane. This was around a 35-cent increase from pre-Harvey levels.” The increase in gas prices was a “result of coastal oil refineries electing to shut down, rather than wanting to

It all started on 137 De Koven Street, in Catherine and Patrick O’Leary’s Barn. Daniel Sullivan ,who was a friend and the first one to discover the fire, did not hesitate to call out for help. When the fire was barely 15 minutes old, the O’Leary’s barn and neighboring houses were already engulfed in fire as families stood outside, watching, and waiting for any kind of help to arrive.“The absence of rain for three weeks [has] left everything in so flammable a condition that a spark might set a fire which would seep from end to end of the city.” Reported the Chicago Tribune in the Sunday Edition.

In October 2003, San Diego experienced the Cedar Fire that claimed 273,246 acres, 2,820 structures, and 15 lives (CAL FIRE, 2015). It gained the moniker, “The Hundred Year Fire” because another fire of its magnitude was not expected for another 100 years (San Diego Fire Facts, 2016). This expectation was short lived because four years after this fire in October 2007, San Diego experienced the largest wildfire in history (San Diego Fire Facts, 2016). This fire gained the name, “Witch Fire” (CAL FIRE, 2015).

The Yellowstone fires of 1988 struck my interest in the first two weeks of readings. Being honest, I’ve never read much about the fires until now. These fires were started by a lighting storm. According to most records small fires were reported in June and everything seemed okay for the beginning of the summer. Then July came around and the whole summer was just about the fires. ("The Yellowstone Fires Of 1988")

Hurricane Sandy was a tropical cyclone that devastated portions of the Caribbean, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States in late October 2012. The eighteenth named storm and tenth hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, as measured by diameter, with winds spanning 1,100 miles. Sandy is estimated in early calculations to have caused damage of at least $20 billion. Preliminary estimates of losses that include business interruption surpass $50 billion, which, if confirmed, would make it the second-costliest Atlantic hurricane in history, behind only Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to hit the United States. Hurricane Katrina started out as any other hurricane, as the result of warm moisture and air from the oceans surface that built into storm clouds and pushed around by strong forceful winds until it became a powerful storm. Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005 and crossed southern Florida as a moderate Category 1 hurricane, causing some deaths and flooding there before strengthening rapidly in the Gulf of Mexico. The hurricane strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane over the warm Gulf water, but weakened before making its second landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on the morning of Monday, August 29 in southeast

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

Occasionally, during periods of high rain the brush would grow up and the high winds would spread the fire to the tops of the trees creating canopy fires in tress that were otherwise fire-resistant (like the Ponderosa Pine). These canopy fires, however,were not as destructive as the ones that the West is experiencing today because of how the forest was spaced out. If a canopy fire broke out in one area, it would be contained by the grassland border, and be reduced to a low intensity grass fire which would eventually burn out. This meant that some areas of forests would be severely damaged; some would experience moderate damage, while still others might not even have fire. The effect of this kind of sporadic fire was the key to maintaining the mosaic landscape of the West.

Wildfires occur when the climate is moist making trees and shrubs ready to grow and when a dry, hot period occurs a wildfire can occur. Wildfires mostly occur in highly vegetated areas like

Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast with tremendous force at daybreak, August 29, 2005, severely punishing regions that included the city of New Orleans and its neighboring state Mississippi. Resulting in a total of just over 1700 people killed, and hundreds of thousands missing. When we think of Hurricane Katrina stories, we think of stories that were published by the media such as, “Packing 145-mile-an-hour winds as it made landfall, the category 3 storm left more than a million people in three states without power and submerged highways even hundreds of miles from its center. The hurricane's storm surge a 29-foot wall of water pushed ashore when the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast was the highest ever measured in the United States.

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 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.

What is known is that humans used fire for a variety of purposes, such as agriculture and hunting. Humans learned that if a forest was cleared of undergrowth, it was easier to hunt for animals in the forest. In the Australia of 50,000 years ago, there were large animals – termed the megafauna – that the indigenous people hunted for food. Soon after humans arrived on the continent, however, the megafauna disappeared. There are several possible reasons for the extinction. One particularly dramatic one is that humans’ extreme use of fire, perhaps uncontrolled, caused the climate to become more arid, and making it impossible for some megafauna to survive. Possibly, the plants that were their sustenance were destroyed. Some animals – such as a large, emu-like bird – were hunted to extinction. (NPR) The climate of most of Australia is still arid.

The first experience I had was travelling through an area called Baynton about 100kms north east of Melbourne early in 2009. It was about 6 weeks after the Black Saturday bushfires devastated the whole region, driving through was incredibly eerie and unsettling. Everything was black and charred, in the paddocks there was no grass, no fences, all the trees were burnt trunks, no foliage at all was present. There were no animals grazing in the paddocks, no wildlife was visible and no green anywhere. Fire is a natural part of life as my friend told me that day, trees will grow again, fences can be mended, the animals and wildlife will return. People are what matter, thankfully no one lost their lives in the region I travelled that day. Seeing the devastation reminded me the power of nature and how there are still many natural occurrences that mankind cannot control or master. Speaking with residents (personal communication, March, 2009), similar and consistent observations were made that bushfire