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Earthquakes

Earthquakes, also called temblors, can be so tremendously destructive, its hard to imagine they occur by the thousands every day around the world, usually in the form of small tremors. Some 80 percent of all the planet's earthquakes occur along the rim of the Pacific Ocean, called the "Ring of Fire" because of the preponderance of volcanic activity there as well. Most earthquakes occur at fault zones, where tectonic platesgiant rock slabs that make up the Earth's upper layercollide or slide against each other. These impacts are usually gradual and unnoticeable on the surface; however, immense stress can build up between plates. When this stress is released quickly, it sends massive vibrations, called seismic waves, often hundreds of miles through the rock and up to the surface. Other quakes can occur far from faults zones when plates are stretched or squeezed. Scientists assign a magnitude rating to earthquakes based on the strength and duration of their seismic waves. A quake measuring 3 to 5 is considered minor or light; 5 to 7 is moderate to strong; 7 to 8 is major; and 8 or more is great. On average, a magnitude 8 quake strikes somewhere every year and some 10,000 people die in earthquakes annually. Collapsing buildings claim by far the majority of lives, but the destruction is often compounded by mud slides, fires, floods, or tsunamis. Smaller temblors that usually occur in the days following a large earthquake can complicate rescue efforts and cause further death and destruction. Loss of life can be avoided through emergency planning, education, and the construction of buildings that sway rather than break under the stress of an earthquake. There are few places on Earth where people need not be concerned about flooding. Any place where rain falls is vulnerable, although rain is not the only impetus for flood. A flood occurs when water overflows or inundates land that's normally dry. This can happen in a multitude of ways. Most common is when rivers or streams overflow their banks. Excessive rain, a ruptured dam or levee, rapid ice melting in the mountains, or even an unfortunately placed beaver dam can overwhelm a river and send it spreading over the adjacent land, called a floodplain. Coastal flooding occurs when a large storm or tsunami causes the sea to surge inland. Most floods take hours or even days to develop, giving residents ample time to prepare or evacuate. Others generate quickly and with little warning. These flash floods can be extremely dangerous, instantly turning a babbling brook into a thundering wall of water and sweeping everything in its path downstream. Disaster experts classify floods according to their likelihood of occurring in a given time period. A hundredyear flood, for example, is an extremely large, destructive event that would theoretically be expected to happen only once every century. But this is a theoretical number. In reality, this classification means there is a one-percent chance that such a flood could happen in any given year. Over recent decades, possibly due to global climate change, hundred-year floods have been occurring worldwide with frightening regularity. Moving water has awesome destructive power. When a river overflows its banks or the sea drives inland, structures poorly equipped to withstand the water's strength are no match. Bridges, houses, trees, and cars can be picked up and carried off. The erosive force of moving water can drag dirt from under a building's foundation, causing it to crack and tumble. In the United States, where flood mitigation and prediction is advanced, floods do about $6 billion worth of damage and kill about 140 people every year. A 2007 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that coastal flooding alone does some $3 trillion in damage worldwide. In China's Yellow River valley, where some of the world's worst floods have occurred, millions of people have perished in floods during the last century. When floodwaters recede, affected areas are often blanketed in silt and mud. The water and landscape can be contaminated with hazardous materials, such as sharp debris, pesticides, fuel, and untreated sewage. Potentially dangerous mold blooms can quickly overwhelm water-soaked structures. Residents of flooded areas can be left without power and clean drinking water, leading to outbreaks of deadly waterborne diseases like typhoid, hepatitis A, and cholera. But flooding, particularly in river floodplains, is as natural as rain and has been occurring for millions of years. Famously fertile floodplains like the Mississippi Valley in the American Midwest, the Nile River valley in Egypt, and the Tigris-Euphrates in the Middle East have supported agriculture for millennia because annual flooding has left millions of tons of nutrient-rich silt deposits behind.

Most flood destruction is attributable to humans' desire to live near picturesque coastlines and in river valleys. Aggravating the problem is a tendency for developers to backfill and build on wetlands that would otherwise act as natural flood buffers. Many governments mandate that residents of flood-prone areas purchase flood insurance and build floodresistant structures. Massive efforts to mitigate and redirect inevitable floods have resulted in some of the most ambitious engineering efforts ever seen, including New Orleans's extensive levee system and massive dikes and dams in the Netherlands. And highly advanced computer modeling now lets disaster authorities predict with amazing accuracy where floods will occur and how severe they're likely to be. Hurricanes are giant, spiraling tropical storms that can pack wind speeds of over 160 miles (257 kilometers) an hour and unleash more than 2.4 trillion gallons (9 trillion liters) of rain a day. These same tropical storms are known as cyclones in the northern Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal, and as typhoons in the western Pacific Ocean. The Atlantic Oceans hurricane season peaks from mid-August to late October and averages five to six hurricanes per year. Hurricanes begin as tropical disturbances in warm ocean waters with surface temperatures of at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.5 degrees Celsius). These low pressure systems are fed by energy from the warm seas. If a storm achieves wind speeds of 38 miles (61 kilometers) an hour, it becomes known as a tropical depression. A tropical depression becomes a tropical storm, and is given a name, when its sustained wind speeds top 39 miles (63 kilometers) an hour. When a storms sustained wind speeds reach 74 miles (119 kilometers) an hour it becomes a hurricane and earns a category rating of 1 to 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Hurricanes are enormous heat engines that generate energy on a staggering scale. They draw heat from warm, moist ocean air and release it through condensation of water vapor in thunderstorms. Hurricanes spin around a low-pressure center known as the eye. Sinking air makes this 20- to 30-mile-wide (32- to 48-kilometer-wide) area notoriously calm. But the eye is surrounded by a circular eye wall that hosts the storms strongest winds and rain. These storms bring destruction ashore in many different ways. When a hurricane makes landfall it often produces a devastating storm surge that can reach 20 feet (6 meters) high and extend nearly 100 miles (161 kilometers). Ninety percent of all hurricane deaths result from storm surges. A hurricanes high winds are also destructive and may spawn tornadoes. Torrential rains cause further damage by spawning floods and landslides, which may occur many miles inland. The best defense against a hurricane is an accurate forecast that gives people time to get out of its way. The National Hurricane Center issues hurricane watches for storms that may endanger communities, and hurricane warnings for storms that will make landfall within 24 hours.

Volcanoes are awesome manifestations of the fiery power contained deep within the Earth. These
formations are essentially vents on the Earth's surface where molten rock, debris, and gases from the planet's interior are emitted. When thick magma and large amounts of gas build up under the surface, eruptions can be explosive, expelling lava, rocks and ash into the air. Less gas and more viscous magma usually mean a less dramatic eruption, often causing streams of lava to ooze from the vent. The mountain-like mounds that we associate with volcanoes are what remain after the material spewed during eruptions has collected and hardened around the vent. This can happen over a period of weeks or many millions of years. A large eruption can be extremely dangerous for people living near a volcano. Flows of searing lava, which can reach 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,250 degrees Celsius) or more, can be released, burning everything in its path, including whole towns. Boulders of hardening lava can rain down on villages. Mud flows from rapidly melting snow can strip mountains and valleys bare and bury towns. Ash and toxic gases can cause lung damage and other problems, particularly for infants and the elderly. Scientists estimate that more than 260,000 people have died in the past 300 years from volcanic eruptions and their aftermath. Volcanoes tend to exist along the edges between tectonic plates, massive rock slabs that make up Earth's surface. About 90 percent of all volcanoes exist within the Ring of Fire along the edges of the Pacific Ocean.

About 1,900 volcanoes on Earth are considered active, meaning they show some level of activity and are likely to explode again. Many other volcanoes are dormant, showing no current signs of exploding but likely to become active at some point in the future. Others are considered extinct.

Wildfires
Dry, Hot, and Windy
Uncontrolled blazes fueled by weather, wind, and dry underbrush, wildfires can burn acres of landand consume everything in their pathsin mere minutes. On average, more than 100,000 wildfires, also called wildland fires or forest fires, clear 4 million to 5 million acres (1.6 million to 2 million hectares) of land in the U.S. every year. In recent years, wildfires have burned up to 9 million acres (3.6 million hectares) of land. A wildfire moves at speeds of up to 14 miles an hour (23 kilometers an hour), consuming everythingtrees, brush, homes, even humansin its path. There are three conditions that need to be present in order for a wildfire to burn, which firefighters refer to as the fire triangle: fuel, oxygen, and a heat source. Fuel is any flammable material surrounding a fire, including trees, grasses, brush, even homes. The greater an area's fuel load, the more intense the fire. Air supplies the oxygen a fire needs to burn. Heat sources help spark the wildfire and bring fuel to temperatures hot enough to ignite. Lightning, burning campfires or cigarettes, hot winds, and even the sun can all provide sufficient heat to spark a wildfire. Although four out of five wildfires are started by people, nature is usually more than happy to help fan the flames. Dry weather and drought convert green vegetation into bone-dry, flammable fuel; strong winds spread fire quickly over land; and warm temperatures encourage combustion. When these factors come together all that's needed is a sparkin the form of lightning, arson, a downed power line, or a burning campfire or cigaretteto ignite a blaze that could last for weeks and consume tens of thousands of acres. These violent infernos occur around the world and in most of the 50 states, but they are most common in the U.S. West, where heat, drought, and frequent thunderstorms create perfect wildfire conditions. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and California experience some of the worst conflagrations in the U.S. In California wildfires are often made worse by the hot, dry Santa Ana winds, which can carry a spark for miles. Firefighters fight wildfires by depriving them of one or more of the fire triangle fundamentals. Traditional methods include water dousing and spraying fire retardants to extinguish existing fires. Clearing vegetation to create firebreaks starves a fire of fuel and can help slow or contain it. Firefighters also fight wildfires by deliberately starting fires in a process called controlled burning. These prescribed fires remove undergrowth, brush, and ground litter from a forest, depriving a wildfire of fuel. Although often harmful and destructive to humans, naturally occurring wildfires play an integral role in nature. They return nutrients to the soil by burning dead or decaying matter. They also act as a disinfectant, removing disease-ridden plants and harmful insects from a forest ecosystem. And by burning through thick canopies and brushy undergrowth, wildfires allow sunlight to reach the forest floor, enabling a new generation of seedlings to grow.

Wild fire

Sociological hazards
[edit]Crime Main article: Crime Crime is to breach the rules or laws for which some governing authority (via mechanisms such as legal systems) can ultimately prescribe a conviction. Individual human societies may each define crime and crimes differently. While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the law counts

as a crime; for example: breaches of contract and of other private law may rank as "offenses" or as "infractions". Modern societies generally regard crimes as offenses against the public or the state, distinguished from torts (offenses against private parties that can give rise to a civil cause of action). In context, not all crimes provide man-made hazards. [edit]Arson Main article: Arson
A building damaged by arson.

Arson is the criminal intent of setting a fire with intent to cause damage. The definition of arson was originally limited to setting fire to buildings, but was later expanded to include other objects, such as bridges, vehicles, and private property. Arson is the greatest cause of fires in data repositories. Sometimes, human-induced fires can be accidental: failing machinery such as a kitchen stove is a major cause of accidental fires.[1] [edit]Civil disorder Main articles: Civil disorder and Riot Civil disorder is a broad term that is typically used by law enforcement to describe forms of disturbance. Although civil disorder does not necessarily escalate to a disaster in all cases, the event may escalate into general chaos. Rioting has many causes, from antipathy over low minimum wages to racial segregation. Examples of well-known civil disorders and riots are the Poll Tax Riots in the United Kingdom in 1990; the 1992 Los Angeles riots in which 53 people died; the 2008 Greek riots after a 15-year-old boy was fatally shot by police; and the 2010 Thai political protests in Bangkok during which 91 people died. [edit]Terrorism Main articles: Terrorism and Asymmetric warfare
September 11 attacks, which are in multiple categories of manmade disaster: terrorist attack, air disaster, arson, and structural collapse

Terrorism is a controversial term with varied definitions. One definition means a violent action targeting civilians exclusively. Another definition is the use or threatened use of violence for the purpose of creating fear in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological goal. Under the second definition, the targets of terrorist acts can be anyone, including civilians, government officials, military personnel, or people serving the interests of governments. Definitions of terrorism may also vary geographically. InAustralia, the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act 2002, defines terrorism as "an action to advance a political, religious or ideological cause and with the intention of coercing the government or intimidating the public", while the United States Department of Stateoperationally describes it as "premeditated, politicallymotivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience".[2] [edit]War Main article: War War is a conflict between relatively large groups of people, which involves physical force inflicted by the use of weapons. Warfare has destroyed entire cultures, countries, economies and inflicted great suffering on humanity. Other terms for war can include armed conflict, hostilities, and police action. Acts of war are normally excluded from insurance contracts and disaster planning. [edit]Technological [edit]Industrial

hazards

hazards

Industrial disasters occur in a commercial context, such as mining accidents. They often have anenvironmental impact. The Bhopal disaster is the world's worst industrial disaster to date, and theChernobyl disaster is regarded the worst nuclear accident in history. Hazards may have longerterm and more dispersed effects, such as dioxin and DDT poisoning. [edit]Structural collapse

The 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridgecollapsing, in a frame from a 16mm Kodachrome motion picture film taken by Barney Elliott

Structural collapses are often caused by engineering failures. Bridge failures may be caused in several ways, such as under-design (as in the Tay Bridge disaster), by corrosion attack (such as in the Silver Bridge collapse), or by aerodynamic flutter of the deck (as in Galloping Gertie, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge). Failure of dams was not infrequent during the Victorian era, such as the Dale Dyke dam failure in Sheffield, England in the 1860s, causing the Great Sheffield Flood. Other failures includebalcony collapses or building collapses such as that of theWorld Trade Center. [edit]Power outage Main article: Power outage A power outage is an interruption of normal sources of electrical power. Short-term power outages (up to a few hours) are common and have minor adverse effect, since most businesses and health facilities are prepared to deal with them. Extended power outages, however, can disrupt personal and business activities as well as medical and rescue services, leading to business losses and medical emergencies. Extended loss of power can lead to civil disorder, as in the New York City blackout of 1977. Only very rarely do power outages escalate to disaster proportions, however, they often accompany other types of disasters, such as hurricanes and floods, which hampers relief efforts. Electromagnetic pulses and voltage spikes from whatever cause can also damage electricity infrastructure and electrical devices. Recent notable power outages include the 2005 JavaBali Blackout which affected 100 million people and the 2009 Brazil and Paraguay blackout which affected 60 million people. [edit]Fire
An active flame front of the Zaca Fire

Main articles: Bush fire, Fire, Mine fire, Wildfire, andFirestorm See also Category: Fire disasters involving barricaded escape routes Bush fires, forest fires, and mine fires are generally started by lightning, but also by human negligence or arson. They can burn thousands of square kilometers. If a fire intensifies enough to produce its own winds and "weather", it will form into a firestorm. A good example of a mine fire is the one near Centralia, Pennsylvania. Started in 1962, it ruined the town and continues to burn today. Some of the biggest city-related fires are The Great Chicago Fire, The Peshtigo Fire (both of 1871) and the Great Fire of London in 1666. Casualties resulting from fires, regardless of their source or initial cause, can be aggravated by inadequate emergency preparedness. Such hazards as a lack of accessible emergency exits, poorly marked escape routes, or improperly maintained fire extinguishers or sprinkler systems may result in many more deaths and injuries than might occur with such protections. [edit]Hazardous materials Main article: Dangerous goods [edit]Radiation contamination
Chernobyl nuclear power plant

When nuclear weapons are detonated or nuclear containment systems are otherwise compromised, airborne radioactive particles (nuclear fallout) can scatter and irradiate large areas. Not only is it deadly, but it also has a long-term effect on the next generation for those who are contaminated. Ionizing radiation is hazardous to living things, and in such a case much of the affected area could be unsafe for human habitation. During World War II, United States troops dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a result, the radiation fallout contaminated the cities' water supplies, food sources, and half of the populations of each city were stricken with disease. The Soviet republics ofUkraine and Belarus are part of a scenario like this after a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plantsuffered a meltdown in 1986. To this day, several small towns and the city of Chernobyl remain abandoned and uninhabitable due to fallout. In the 1970s, a similar threat scared millions of Americans when a failure occurred at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power

Plant in Pennsylvania. The incident was fortunately resolved, and the area retained little contamination. A number of military accidents involving nuclear weapons have also resulted in radioactive contamination, for example the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash and the 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash. [edit]CBRNs Main article: CBRN CBRN is a catch-all initialism for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear. The term is used to describe a non-conventional terror threat that, if used by a nation, would be considered use of a weapon of mass destruction. This term is used primarily in the United Kingdom. Planning for the possibility of a CBRN event may be appropriate for certain high-risk or high-value facilities and governments. Examples include Saddam Hussein's Halabja poison gas attack, the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway and the preceding test runs in Matsumoto, Japan 100 kilometers outside of Tokyo,[3] and Lord Amherst giving smallpox laden blankets to Native Americans.[4] [edit]Transportation [edit]Aviation Main article: Air disasters
The ditching of US Airways Flight 1549was a well-publicised incident in which all on board survived

An aviation incident is an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations, passengers, or pilots. The category of the vehicle can range from ahelicopter, an airliner, or a space shuttle. The world's worst airliner disaster is the Tenerife crash of 1977, when miscommunications between and amongst air traffic control and an aircrew caused two fully laden jets to collide on the runway, killing 583 people. [edit]Rail Main article: Rail disasters
Granville-Paris Express wreck at Gare Montparnasse on 22 October 1895

A railroad disaster is an occurrence associated with the operation of a passenger train which results in substantial loss of life. Usually accidents with freight (goods) trains are not considered disasters, unless they cause substantial loss of life or property. One of the most devastating rail disasters occurred in 2004 in Sri Lanka when 1,700 people died in the Queen of the Sea train disaster. Other notable rail disasters are the 1989 Ufa accident in Russia which killed 574, and the 1917 Modane train accident in France which killed 540. See also the list of train accidents by death toll. [edit]Road Traffic collisions are the leading cause of death, and road-based pollution creates a substantial health hazard, especially in major conurbations. The greenhouse effect of road transport is a significant fraction of the anthropogenic warming effect, and the rapid consumption of fossil fuel accelerates the Hubbard peak. [edit]Space Main article: Space accidents and incidents
Disintegration of the Space Shuttle Challenger

Space travel presents significant hazards, mostly to the direct participants (astronauts or cosmonauts and ground support personnel), but also carry the potential of disaster to the public at large. Accidents related to space travel have killed 22 astronauts and cosmonauts, and a larger number of people on the ground. Accidents can occur on the ground during launch, preparation, or in flight, due to equipment malfunction or the naturally hostile environment of space itself. An additional risk is posed by (unmanned) low-orbiting satellites whose orbits eventually decay due to friction with the extremely thin atmosphere. If they are large enough, massive pieces travelling at great speed can fall to the Earth before burning up, with the potential to do damage.

The worst space disaster to date occurred on February 15, 1996 in Sichuan, China, when a Long March 3B rocket, carrying the Intelsat 708 telecommunications satellite, suffered a guidance systemfailure two seconds after liftoff and crashed into a nearby village. The Chinese government officially reported six deaths and 57 injuries, but some U.S. estimates run as high as 200 deaths. The second worst disaster was the Nedelin catastrophe which occurred in the Soviet Union on October 24, 1960, when an R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile exploded on the launch pad, killing around 120 (best estimate) military ground support personnel. The Soviet government refused to acknowledge the incident until 1989, then claiming only 78 deaths. One of the worst manned space accidents involved the Space Shuttle Challenger which disintegrated in 1986, claiming all seven lives on board. The shuttle disintegrated 73 seconds after taking off from the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Another example is the Space Shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated during a landing attempt overTexas in 2003, with a loss of all seven astronauts on board. The debris field extended from New Mexico to Mississippi. [edit]Sea travel A Partial list of shipwrecks Ships can sink, capsize or crash in disasters. One well known sinking was that of the titanic which hit an iceberg and sank. [edit]Costs Some man-made disasters have been particularly notable for the high costs associated with responding to and recovering from them, including:

Deepwater Horizon oil spill, 2010: Between $60 and $100 billion.[5] September 11 attacks, 2001: $20.7 billion; Chernobyl disaster, 1986: $15 billion estimated cost of direct loss. It is estimated that the damages could accumulate to 235 billion for Ukraine and 201 billion for Belarus in the thirty years following the accident; Three Mile Island, 1979: $1 billion; Exxon Valdez oil spill, 1989: The clean-up of oil spill cost an estimated $2.5 billion; recovery for settlements, $1.1 billion; and the economical loss (fisheries, tourism, etc.) suffered due to the damage to the Alaskan ecosystem was estimated at $2.8 billion; AZF chemical plant explosion, 2001: 1.8 billion[6]

The costs of disasters varies considerably depending on a range of factors, such as the geographical location where they occur. When a disaster occurs in a densely populated area in a wealthy country, the financial damage might be huge, but when a comparable disaster occurs in a densely populated area in a poorer country, the actual financial damage might relatively small, in part due to a lack ofinsurance. For example, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami (although obviously not man-made) with a death toll of over 230,000 people, cost a 'mere' $15 billion,[7] whereas the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in which 11 people died, the damages were six-fold.

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