What Are Hazards?
Hazards are dangerous conditions or events with potential for injury, loss of life or damage to property, agriculture or environment. They can be categorised in various ways, but based simply on how they originate, hazards can be grouped in two broad, and six more specific categories (further described later):
- Natural: hazards with meteorological, geological, biological or extra-terrestrial (space) origins.
- Unnatural: hazards with human-caused or technological origins.
What Are Disasters?
Almost every day, either in the newspaper or on TV, there are reports of disasters in Australia and other countries. So what are disasters? The loss of the sole breadwinner in a car crash may be a 'disaster' to a family, but only an accident to the community. The word is used by the media to cover many different hazards and emergency situations, but not always in the most appropriate way. What are the characteristics that make disasters different from accidents, for example?
Variables
Disasters of all kinds and sizes happen when hazards seriously affect communities. They can occur anywhere and they are generally unpredictable, occurring at any hour of the day or night. Disasters can vary in the following ways:
- Cause - They can result from a natural, or unnatural hazard e.g. flood or transport accident.
- Frequency and Risk - Some occur more often and therefore present a greater risk than others e.g. in Australia, there is a much higher risk of damage from severe storms than landslides.
- Duration of Impact - Some may be of limited duration, while others may last for long periods e.g. a tornado may only last for a few minutes, but a drought may go on for years.
- Speed of Onset - Some happen suddenly, while with others there is a warning period of perhaps hours or days e.g. there may be only a few minutes warning of a flash flood, whereas the relatively slow onset of a cyclone allows a much longer warning time.
- Scope of Impact - This can vary enormously with the type of hazard e.g. a bridge collapse is a localised event causing damage over a much smaller area than a cyclone.
- Destructive Potential - This can vary enormously with the type of hazard e.g. a bridge collapse is a localised event causing damage over a much smaller area than a cyclone.
- Predictability - Some hazards follow certain patterns, and others do not e.g. floods are usually confined to known flood plains but toxic gas emissions have no boundaries.
- Control and Human Vulnerability - In some disasters we are totally helpless and must leave them to run their course. In others we can do something to lessen their impact even if we cannot prevent them from occurring e.g. unlike tornadoes, bushfires can often be prepared for and controlled, however more Australians are vulnerable to them as they happen more frequently and affect larger areas.
Definition
Despite all of these differences, however, it is still possible to simply define a disaster as follows:
A disaster is a condition or event of significant destruction, disruption or distress to a community.
