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Disaster Distress Helpline staff are available to speak to those who call or text before, during, and after a natural disaster. Examples include industrial accidents, shootings, acts of terrorism, and incidents of mass violence. As with natural disasters, these types of traumatic events may also cause loss of life and property. They may also prompt evacuations from certain areas and overwhelm behavioral health resources in the affected communities.
In the aftermath of the tragic loss of life that occurred on September 11, , the feelings of loss of security and well-being—arguably the most crucial ingredients for leading a happy, healthy life—dramatically affected the citizens of the United States. Disaster Distress Helpline staff are also trained to respond to calls or texts related to these types of disasters. Infectious disease outbreaks, incidents of community unrest, and other types of traumatic events can also bring out strong emotions in people.
Community upheaval, such as that seen in Ferguson, Mo. His passions include contributing to the management of the patient airway and providing solutions that save lives in difficult conditions.
Whether you're in a Hospital or EMS setting, this is the place for you. We'll share information on current industry news, tips, as well as the latest and greatest in S SCOR products. Our hope is that this blog is not only informative but a collaborative and open forum for you to share your thoughts on developing opportunities and challenges within your profession.
Share your thoughts. All rights reserved. Say Sep 19, PM. Earthquakes: The abrupt and violent nature of earthquakes mean many injuries are due to falling objects. Floods: In the United States, floods account for more deaths than all other disasters on this list. Hurricanes: During a hurricane, a hospital must be equipped to withstand the hurricane itself as well as provide medical care to the victims. Tornadoes: Since tornadoes often occur with little to no warning, many victims are in structures when they hit.
About Sam D. In the first 15 years of the 21st century the death rate had declined to an average of 0. This is a fold reduction in the likelihood of being killed by lightning in the US. The map here shows the distribution of lightning strikes across the world. This is given as the lightning strike density — the average strikes per square kilometer each year. In particular we see the high frequency of strikes across the Equatorial regions, especially across central Africa.
Natural disasters not only have devastating impacts in terms of the loss of human life, but can also cause severe destruction with economic costs. When we look at global economic costs over time in absolute terms we tend to see rising costs. But, importantly, the world — and most countries — have also gotten richer.
Global gross domestic product has increased more than four-fold since We might therefore expect that for any given disaster, the absolute economic costs could be higher than in the past. A more appropriate metric to compare economic costs over time is to look at them in relation to GDP. This is the indicator adopted by all countries as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to monitor progress on resilience to disaster costs.
In the chart shown here we see global direct disaster losses given as a share of GDP. There is notable year-to-year variability in costs — ranging from 0. In recent decades there has been no clear trending increase in damages when we take account of economic growth over this period. This is also true when we look at damages specifically for weather-related disasters. This trend in damages relative to global GDP is also shown in the interactive chart. Since economic losses from disasters in relation to GDP is the indicator adopted by all countries within the UN Sustainable Development Goals, this data is also now reported for each country.
The map shows direct disaster costs for each country as a share of its GDP. Here we see large variations by country — a fold difference ranging from less than 0. This data can be found in absolute terms here. The two authors found that for every person killed by a volcano, nearly 40, people have to die of a food shortage to get the same probability of coverage in US televised news.
In other words, the type of disaster matters to how newsworthy networks find it to be. The findings tells us, among other important things, that networks tend to be selective in their coverage and attention is not reflecting the severity and number of people killed or affected by a natural disaster.
Food shortages , for example, result in the most casualties and affect the most people per incident 13 but their onset is more gradual than that of a volcanic explosion or sudden earthquake. This bias for the spectacular is not only unfair and misleading, but also has the potential to misallocate attention and aid. Disasters that happen in an instant leave little time for preventative intervention. On the other hand, the gradual disasters that tend to affect more lives build up slowly, allowing more time for preventative measures to be taken.
However, in a Catch situation, the gradual nature of these calamities is also what prevents them from garnering the media attention they deserve. There are other biases, too. However, after controlling for disaster type, along with other factors such as the number killed and the timing of the news, there is no significant difference between coverage of African and Asian disasters.
Instead, a huge difference emerges between coverage of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific on the one hand, and Europe and South and Central America, on the other. The two visualizations show the extent of this bias.
One of the major successes over the past century has been the dramatic decline in global deaths from natural disasters — this is despite the fact that the human population has increased rapidly over this period. Behind this improvement has been the improvement in living standards; access to and development of resilient infrastructure; and effective response systems.
These factors have been driven by an increase in incomes across the world. What remains true today is that populations in low-income countries — those where a large percentage of the population still live in extreme poverty , or score low on the Human Development Index — are more vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters. We see this effect in the visualization shown. This chart shows the death rates from natural disasters — the number of deaths per , population — of countries grouped by their socio-demographic index SDI.
What we see is that the large spikes in death rates occur almost exclusively for countries with a low or low-middle SDI. Highly developed countries are much more resilient to disaster events and therefore have a consistently low death rate from natural disasters. Note that this does not mean low-income countries have high death tolls from disasters year-to-year: the data here shows that in most years they also have very low death rates. But when low-frequency, high-impact events do occur they are particularly vulnerable to its effects.
Overall development, poverty alleviation, and knowledge-sharing of how to increase resilience to natural disasters will therefore be key to reducing the toll of disasters in the decades to come. There are multiple terms used to describe extreme weather events: hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones and tornadoes.
What is the difference between these terms, and how are they defined? The terms hurricane , cyclone and typhoon all refer to the same thing; they can be used interchangeably.
A tropical cyclone is a weather event which originates over tropical or subtropical waters and results in a rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms. Its circulation patterns should be closed and low-level. The choice of terminology is location-specific and depends on where the storm originates. The term hurricane is used to describe a tropical cyclone which originates in the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, and eastern North Pacific. When it originates in the Northwest Pacific, we call it typhoon.
In the South Pacific and Indian Ocean the general term tropical cyclone is used. In other words, the only difference between a hurricane and typhoon is where it occurs. The characteristics of a hurricane are described in detail at the NASA website. A tropical disturbance arises over warm ocean waters. It can grow into a tropical depression which is an area of rotating thunderstorms with winds up to 62 kilometres 38 miles per hour.
Whilst hurricanes and tornadoes have a characteristic circulatory wind patterns, they are very different weather systems. The main difference between the systems is scale tornadoes are small-scale circulatory systems; hurricanes are large-scale.
These differences are highlighted in the table below:. The VEI is derived based on the erupted mass or deposit of an eruption. Historic eruptions that were definitely explosive, but carry no other descriptive information are assigned a default VEI of 2.
A key issue of data quality is the consistency of even reporting over time. For long-term trends in natural disaster events we know that reporting and recording of events today is much more advanced and complete than in the past. This can lead to significant underreporting or uncertainty of events in the distant past.
In the chart here we show data on the number of reported natural disasters over time. This change over time can be influenced by a number of factors, namely the increased coverage of reporting over time. The increase over time is therefore not directly reflective of the actual trend in disaster events.
This same data is shown here as the number of reported disaster events by type. Again, the incompleteness of historical data can lead to significant underreporting in the past. Wikipedia has several lists of disasters, and an overview of these lists can be found at List of Disasters. Summary Natural disasters kill on average 60, people per year, globally.
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