Healthcare in India

           Natural disasters

Natural disasters are those adverse events resulting from natural processes of the earth. Examples of such events include earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, and fires. Many natural disasters are profoundly destructive. They leave in their wake a trail of injury, death, loss of livestock, property damage, and economic loss. The event with the highest death toll since 1980 was the Boxing Day tsunami in South East Asia that claimed the lives of 220,000 people. In regards to economic damage, the most destructive natural disaster during that time was the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Although natural disasters are largely seen as out of human control, human actions are at times responsible for the extremity of such events. Land use can influence the ability of an area to deal with the heavy rains that result in flooding On a larger scale, the adverse effects of rising global temperatures may result in increasing frequencies of hurricanes and other extreme weather events in the future.

Over the past decade, over 300 natural disasters occur yearly around the world affecting millions and cost billions. The disaster cycle is a framework used to base a coordinated plan to respond, recover, prevent, and prepare for a disaster. Access to clean water, proper sanitation, food/nutrition, shelter, and the threat of communicable diseases are concerns that have the potential to be detrimental to the management of a natural disaster, slowing the recovery process.

 

Types of Disasters

Avalanches

Avalanches are masses of snow, ice, and rocks that fall rapidly down a mountainside. They can be deadly.

Falling masses of snow and ice, avalanches pose a threat to anyone on snowy mountainsides. Beautiful to witness from afar, they can be deadly because of their intensity and seeming unpredictability.

Humans trigger 90 percent of avalanche disasters, with as many as 40 deaths in North America each year. Most are climbers, skiers, and snowmobilers. Learning about avalanches, and the conditions that cause them, can help people recreate more safely in the backcountry.

Avalanches contain three main features: the starting zone, the avalanche track, and the runout zone. Avalanches launch from the starting zone. That’s often the most unstable part of the stope, and generally higher on the mountain.

Once the avalanche starts to slide, it continues down the avalanche track, the natural path it follows downhill. After avalanches, large clearings or missing chutes of trees provide clues to an avalanche’s trajectory.

Volcanoes

These fiery peaks have belched up molten rock, hot ash, and gas since Earth formed billions of years ago.

Volcanoes are Earth's geologic architects. They've created more than 80 percent of our planet's surface, laying the foundation that has allowed life to thrive. Their explosive force crafts mountains as well as craters. Lava rivers spread into bleak landscapes. But as time ticks by, the elements break down these volcanic rocks, liberating nutrients from their stony prisons and creating remarkably fertile soils that have allowed civilizations to flourish.

There are volcanoes on every continent, even Antarctica. Some 1,500 volcanoes are still considered potentially active around the world today; 161 of those—over 10 percent—sit within the boundaries of the United States.

But each volcano is different. Some burst to life in explosive eruptions, like the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, and others burp rivers of lava in what's known as an effusive eruption, like the 2018 activity of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano. These differences are all thanks to the chemistry driving the molten activity. Effusive eruptions are more common when the magma is less viscous, or runny, which allows gas to escape and the magma to flow down the volcano's slopes. Explosive eruptions, however, happen when viscous molten rock traps the gasses, building pressure until it violently breaks free.

Wild fire

Wildfires can burn millions of acres of land at shockingly fast speeds, consuming everything in their paths. These rolling flames travel up to 14 miles an hour, which converts to about a four-minute-mile pace, and can overtake the average human in minutes.

In 2020, the wildfire season in the United States—which lasts from June through September—promises to be particularly devastating. This summer is expected to be the hottest on record, with drought conditions predicted in California through September. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has derailed mitigation efforts—such as homeowner assistance programs and controlled burns—due to concerns over social distancing and respiratory dangers. By the end of June, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection had responded to nearly double the number of fires than it had in the entire 2019 season.

Lightning

Contrary to the common expression, lightning can and often does strike the same place twice.

Lightning is an electrical discharge caused by imbalances between storm clouds and the ground, or within the clouds themselves. Most lightning occurs within the clouds.

"Sheet lightning" describes a distant bolt that lights up an entire cloud base. Other visible bolts may appear as bead, ribbon, or rocket lightning.

During a storm, colliding particles of rain, ice, or snow inside storm clouds increase the imbalance between storm clouds and the ground, and often negatively charge the lower reaches of storm clouds. Objects on the ground, like steeples, trees, and the Earth itself, become positively charged—creating an imbalance that nature seeks to remedy by passing current between the two charges.

Lightning is extremely hot—a flash can heat the air around it to temperatures five times hotter than the sun’s surface. This heat causes surrounding air to rapidly expand and vibrate, which creates the pealing thunder we hear a short time after seeing a lightning flash.

Cyclones

Also known as typhoons and cyclones, these storms can annihilate coastal areas. The Atlantic Ocean’s hurricane season peaks from mid-August to late October.

Centuries ago, European explorers learned the indigenous word hurakan, signifying evil spirits and weather gods, to describe the storms that battered their ships in the Caribbean. Today, "hurricane" is one of three names for giant, spiralling tropical storms with winds of at least 74 miles (119 kilometres) an hour.

Called hurricanes when they develop over the North Atlantic, central North Pacific, and eastern North Pacific, these rotating storms are known as cyclones when they form over the South Pacific and Indian Ocean, and typhoons when they develop in the Northwest Pacific.

The Atlantic Ocean’s hurricane season peaks from mid-August to late October and averages five to six hurricanes per year. While cyclones on the northern Indian Ocean typically form between April and December, with peak storm activity around May and November.

Earthquakes

Earthquakes are naturally destructive effects of our planet's constantly changing surface. Thousands of them happen every day.

 Earthquakes, also called temblors, can be so tremendously destructive that it’s hard to imagine they occur by the thousands every day around the world, usually in the form of small tremors. See the latest earthquakes and learn how to stay safe during these disastrous events.

Some 80 percent of all the planet's earthquakes occur along the rim of the Pacific Ocean, called the "ring of fire" because of the preponderance of volcanic activity there, as well. Most earthquakes occur at fault zones, where tectonic plates—giant rock slabs that make up Earth's upper layer—collide or slide against each other.

These impacts are usually gradual and unnoticeable on the surface; however, immense stress can build up between plates. When this stress is released quickly, it sends massive vibrations, called seismic waves, often hundreds of miles through the rock and up to the surface. Other quakes can occur far from faults zones when plates are stretched or squeezed.

Floods

No other kind of natural disaster in America has caused more death and destruction than floods. Learn about different kinds of floods and what causes them.

 There are few places on Earth where flooding is not a concern. Any area where rain falls is vulnerable to floods, though rain is not the only cause.

How floods form

A flood occurs when water inundates land that's normally dry, which can happen in a multitude of ways.

Excessive rain, a ruptured dam or levee, rapid melting of snow or ice, or even an unfortunately placed beaver dam can overwhelm a river, spreading over the adjacent land, called a floodplain. Coastal flooding occurs when a large storm or tsunami causes the sea to surge inland.

Most floods take hours or even days to develop, giving residents time to prepare or evacuate. Others generate quickly and with little warning. So-called flash floods can be extremely dangerous, instantly turning a babbling brook or even a dry wash into rushing rapids that sweep everything in their path downstream.

Meanwhile, melting glaciers and other factors are contributing to a rise in sea levels that has created long-term, chronic flooding risks for places ranging from Venice, Italy to the Marshall Islands. More than 670 U.S. communities will face repeated flooding by the end of this century, according to a 2017 analysis; it's happening in more than 90 coastal communities already.

By Rohit kumar