How Can Humans Prevent Natural Disasters?
How can humans prevent natural disasters? With humans contributing to stronger hurricanes, and man-made earthquakes, there must be something we can do to prevent them. Sadly many natural disasters are a natural cause and we cannot prevent them from happening. But we can prepare for when they happen.
Chris Dinesen Rogers from The Hunker article affirms natural disaster prevention can be what can really save lives in a disaster. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are the ones who plan the prevention. "According to FEMA, floods are the most common natural disaster. Effects of floods are complicated by weather patterns such as drought, which hardens soils and increases the possibility of flash flooding. The amount of impervious surfaces in developed areas can contribute to flood waters and risk the health of local streams and watersheds." Knowing how floods occur, now we can take a big step to watch roads, homes in rural areas, farms, and keeping rivers in wetlands is one way to reduce flooding. Reducing impervious surfaces can reduce flash flooding to lessen impact.
Although prevention is our main priority, we all should consider having an emergency safety/prevention kit it is very important. Batteries, matches, flashlights, canned food, rubbing alcohol, band-aids, and most important water can help you through the disaster in times of need.
Extreme flooding is unusual dry lands in the rural area are often affected by the flood. Linking to landslides this can be very deadly as the ground becomes unstable and can cause massive landslides. This is also very harmful to wild life. Either affected by the flood or the landslide, wild life animals live can be claimed. Prevention can be to key to saving many life's.
Baltic Huston, Texas flooding in April 20, 2016
Since the year 1989, the United Nations launched the campaign International Day for Disaster Reduction. Every year on this day the point is to "promote a global culture of risk-awareness and disaster reduction." Today many people are forced out of their homes by a disaster cause.
Robert Glasser, Special Representative Secretary of the UN tells us more.
Pakistan has also been focusing on reducing disasters in that region. The News Paper Source Plus was informed that Pakistan's goal is to reduce the global disaster mortality rate by 2030. Reducing the number of affected people will also reduce economic loss, damage to infrastructure, and damage to health and education facilities.
What if humans don't believe this though? How do you spread the word in a less developed country?
Have we reduced disasters rate since 1989?
I found it interesting how you included emergency kits as a way to prevent the disasters. I disagree with you on that topic. Emergency kits won't prevent the disasters. The kits will definitely come in handy after the disaster, but they can't prevent the disasters from happening. Maybe I'm just not understanding the point entirely. I am still asking myself, "How can we prevent natural disasters?" That was the title of this post, but I am still looking for answers. I think you did a really good job of providing ways that we can help ourselves prepare for the disasters. I think if the "prevent" in the title was changed to "prepare", that would be better suited for this particular post.
ReplyDeleteThe first paragraph in this post I think you helped answer the how can humans prevent disaster? While this isn't true for every disaster, as you had said there are ways that organizations or the local government can help by maintaining an area to prevent flooding, however we have to ask ourselves is this something they are actually willing to put money into? It most certainly puts a dent into an organization or government's budget to alter land to prevent it from causing disaster to homes. You could have also added information on more than just flooding I suppose, for example in Tokyo, Japan they use different materials and structuring of their building so that when they experience an earthquake their buildings don't come tumbling down, as so many do on a higher magnitude level earthquake. I was a little lost by your wording in the last paragraph - as I think you may have said preparation and not prevention, as the last paragraph was geared more towards how humans can better prepare themselves in case of an emergency - so maybe changing the wording on that?
ReplyDeleteGet ready for a natural disaster is a smart move to contain deaths and injuries. I liked how you pointed out the importance of a survival kit; it is something small and easy to prepare, but at same time can really save a life during a crisis as a natural disaster. However, I don’t think that you answered to your question. There are so many instruments to predict natural disasters (for example, seismograph); what is the scientific community doing to improve instruments and methods to predict natural disaster? Your post is really interesting, but it sounds more like a quick guide to survive during disaster other than an analysis to explore ways to prevent disasters.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting how your sources identified a natural disaster not as the event itself, but the event coupled with the damage it causes. It’s like if a hurricane happens in the middle of the ocean and never hits any land or civilization, we don’t call that a natural disaster; we just call it a hurricane. So when you increase preparedness and are able to reduce or eliminate the damage these natural events cause, they are, in effect, no longer natural disasters. I’ve never thought about it that way, and it is a very neat notion. All that being said, however, I feel like this post sort of veers off from the theme of all your other posts, which focus more on how human interaction with the environment may increase the likelihood of certain natural phenomenon. It is still on the same topic by definition, because it is still talking about humans’ ability to change the amount of natural disasters, but it just isn’t in the same spirit as your other posts, if that makes any sense. I still like the information in this post though. It is cool and something to think about.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that places in droughts are at high risk for flash floods, I would have thought the opposite. I totally agree that it is very important to be prepared in case of natural disasters or really any kind of emergency. It's kind of like the boy scout motto if you will. It's very applicable in real life tho.
ReplyDeleteThis blog was very interesting to me. I am aware that floods do happen. I was living in Loveland while that flood happened. Luckily, I was up on a hill and safe. It did make me realize the importance of having an emergency kit available. You didn't specifically say how the land is being watched for floods. It said how, but not who does this. Are land owners suppose to take care of this as a prevention?
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