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A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property. It typically causes economic damage. How bad the damage is depends on how well people are prepared for disasters and how strong the buildings, roads, and other structures are. [2] Scholars have been saying that the term natural disaster is unsuitable and should be abandoned. [3]
An environmental disaster or ecological disaster is defined as a catastrophic event regarding the natural environment that is due to human activity. [2] This point distinguishes environmental disasters from other disturbances such as natural disasters and intentional acts of war such as nuclear bombings .
A natural phenomenon is an observable event which is not man-made. Examples include: sunrise, weather, fog, thunder, tornadoes; biological processes, decomposition, germination; physical processes, wave propagation, erosion; tidal flow, and natural disasters such as electromagnetic pulses, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and earthquakes. [1] [2]
The word disaster is derived from Middle French désastre which comes from Old Italian disastro. This in turn comes from the Ancient Greek pejorative prefix δυσ - (dus-) "bad" [48] and ἀστήρ (aster), "star". [49] So the word disaster ("bad star" in Greek) comes from an astrological sense of a calamity blamed on the position of planets ...
1976 Seveso disaster, chemical plant explosion, caused highest known exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) in residential populations; 1983 Times Beach, Missouri the town was completely evacuated due to a dioxin contamination; 1984 Bhopal disaster (December 3, 1984, India), leak of methyl isocyanate resulted in more than 22,000 ...
Cyclones. Extratropical cyclone. European windstorms; Australian East Coast Low "Medicane", Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones Polar cyclone; Tropical cyclone, also called a hurricane, typhoon, or just "cyclone"
The death toll from natural disasters has declined over 90 percent since the 1920s, according to the International Disaster Database, even as the total human population on Earth quadrupled, and temperatures rose 1.3 °C. In the 1920s, 5.4 million people died from natural disasters while in the 2010s, just 400,000 did.
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) explains the relationship between natural disasters and natural hazards as follows: "Natural hazards and natural disasters are related but are not the same. A natural hazard is the threat of an event that will likely have a negative impact. A natural disaster is the negative impact following an ...