Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Define Hazard/disaster
Natural Hazard – a natural event or physical process which affects people, e.g.
causing loss of life, injury, economic damage, disruption of peoples lives or
environmental degradation.
or
H xV
R=
C
Define context and chronic hazard
Context hazards that have widespread threats with the potential to affect the entire
planet. Climate change is an example of this.
Chronic hazards are hazards that are ongoing.
Climate change is a global issues, and will come to affect all areas of the world, however
not all at the same degree. It is a chronic (ongoing) hazard. It has a massive amount of
affects linked to rising temperatures. For example hurricanes need temperatures of 27
degrees Celsius to form, and if temperatures rise, this will make them occur more often.
Climate change has various issues , not just environmental. These include, impacts on
societies and economies, threatening their existence in terms of water availability, food
security and health and wellbeing.
Climate change also has indirect impacts. This include thermal expansion of the oceans
as water expands by heating, which leads to rising sea levels. The sea levels are also
rising as the ice caps melt. The prediction of climate change requires successful
modeling of the future by scientists from places such as the IPCC (Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change).
Changing salinity – the earths oceans and winds distribute heat between the warmest
and coldest parts. The thermohaline circulation is a flow of warm and cold water that
circulates around the world’s oceans. This occurs because in the North Atlantic the
water is cold and saline (salty), which makes it heavier and causes it to sink. When it
sinks it draws warmer water in from the oceans surface from the Tropics. This then
sends cold water to the tropics to be warmed again.
Identify and explain local risks in relation to global warming and other hazards
Northampton Floods (1998)
Cause – 7th April a cool northerly airflow covered the UK an area of low pressure formed
over Iceland. 8th April this depression moved southwards across the UK 9th April
thunderstorms broke out ahead of it. A blocking anticyclone over Scandinavia meant
that the rain remained virtually stationary over the midlands for almost two days. Flood
forecasting was handicapped by insufficient rainfall information which masked the
severity of the event. El Nino has been worsened by global warming, expanding it to
areas such as the UK, and influencing this flood.
Impact – More than 2400 properties in Northampton were affected. There were two
deaths. Power supplies were cut off and as most people were asleep, there was little
time to take action and reduce damage. A mass evacuation was launched with lorries,
trucks and small boats evacuating people to higher ground. Some residents were stuck
in their homes for over 12 hours, and some suffered from shock. Bu 10 th April water
polluted with sewage, heavy metals and mercury had swept through 2500 properties.
One in three houses in St James were uninsured, and 5000 cars in the area were written
off. The council offered residents who had council houses other houses away from the
flood; this cost them almost 6 million pounds. Local businesses lost thousands of pounds
in stock; some shows were forced to close for months.
Management – People were not being made aware they were living on a flood plain,
therefore they were not aware of the dangers. The Northampton flood relief fund was
established and over £160,000 was collected to help the victims. Local companies
including Tesco and Sainsbury’s helped out with emergency food supplies. The council
agreed they would not grant planning permission on any greenbelt land on the
floodplain. River channels were poorly maintained in some places, with trees and debris
reducing the storage capacity of the channel. Flood defenses were poorly maintained
and funded, for example some had 4 meter gaps in. Some drainage systems were in a
poor condition leading to worsened size and depth of the floods.
Research 2 compulsory disaster hotspots and explain causes, impacts and interactions
(California Coast and the Philippines)
The Philippines – It at major risk because; it sits across a major plate boundary, the
Philippine and Eurasian plates. This is a destructive plate boundary. Its northern and
eastern coasts face the Pacific, which is the world’s most tsunami-prone ocean. It also
lies within South East Asia’s major typhoon belts and landslides are also common in
mountain districts. The Philippines consist of about 7000 islands, and it is 25% bigger
than the UK. It has a massive population of 91 million people (2007) and its GDP per
capita in 2006 was $5000, a middle-income country. Typhoone are the main hazard,
they have averagly 20 per year. Volcanic er
Mt Pinitabu – June 15th 1991. The biggest eruption in over 50 years. It showed signs of
eruption form April 1991 (steam/earthquakes) therefore a 30km exclusion zones were
set up. 200,000 people were evacuated by the first eruption (12 June). The second
eruption was cataclysmic, a dome the size of the volcano collapsed, and there was a
massive pyroclastic blast causing lahars. Effective monitoring reduced the death and
injry toll to just over 4300 people. 350 of those people died. Some evacuees also died in
camps exposed to disease. 80,000 hectares of farmland were buried beneath ash,
disrupting the livelihoods of 500,000 farmers and their family. Economic losses were
$710 million, mainly in agriculture. 5000 tones of SO2 was released, meaning that it
contributed significantly to global warming.
California – Lies on the San Andreas fault, where the Pacific and North American plate
which is a conservative plate. Also California is subject to severe climatic patterns,
particularly El Nino. This causes occasional fires and droughts because of hot weathers,
and at other times floods and land slides.
1989 Earthquake – Date and Time – 5.04pm, 17th October 1989. Magnitude 7.1, also 5.2
aftershock. 63 people died and 14,000 were injured. Just over 1000 homes were
destroyed and over 23,000 damged. 366 businesses were destroyed and 3530 damaged.
The cost of the damage was US$6 billion.
1994 Earthquake – Date and Time – 4.31am, 17th January 1994. Magnitude 6.7 and
thousands of aftershocks from 4.0-5.0. 12500 buildings were damaged, and 9000 homes
and businesses were without electricity for several days . 48,500 people were without
water.