Lecture Notes: New & Emerging Disasters and Hazards

There are four (4) phases of Comprehensive Emergency Management which make up the foundation for the all-hazards approach to emergency management. Those four phases are: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. They are so much a staple in the field that they deserve listing by bullet point:

· Mitigation includes efforts to prevent man-made or natural disasters by the assessment of threats to a community. These assessments include the likelihood of an attack or disaster taking place

· Preparedness includes the planning, resource allocation, and training of individuals. This phase also has disaster response exercises which help people practice what to do if a disaster occurs

· Response includes public donations, incident management, coordination, search and rescue operations, damage assessments, and handling of fatalities

· Recovery involves clean, the reinstitution of public services, the rebuilding of public infrastructure, and all that is necessary to help restore civic life, including disaster assistance and crisis counseling

It largely goes undisputed that natural disasters have increased in number in recent decades. The charity group, Oxfam, in 2007 reported that disasters have quadrupled in the last two decades. The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per year in the early 1980s, and currently suffers about 500 per year. The number of people affected by extreme natural disasters has increased by almost 70% (from 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994 to 254 million people a year between 1995 to 2004). Likewise, floods and wind-storms have increased from 60 events in 1980 to 240 a year in 2007, with flooding up six-fold.

What are the risks (threat or hazards)? Natural: Hurricanes, Wind Storms, Tornadoes, Flooding, Snow, Ice Storms, Fire, Lightening, Earth Quakes, Disease, Droughts, Solar, Tsunamis, etc. Technological Risk: Power outages, Structural failures, Chemical Plant Exposures and Explosions, Hazardous Material Releases, Transportation Crashes, Grid Failures, Cyber Failures, etc. Human Risk: Terrorism, Crime, Health Risks, Accidents, Economic Failure, Social Decline and Upheaval, etc.

There are many reasons for the increased number of disasters. One, it may very well be that better reporting is the ultimate cause of the increase. A lot more organizations and people are devoted to recording and documenting disasters than before. Two, the world has seen an increase in population, and along with this increase, there is a growing tendency for people to move to coastal areas, and build residences in high danger areas. The continual building of structures next to foreseeable dangers (like building high schools next to highways, or glass skyscrapers on top of earthquake zones) will likely only stop when society gets tired of all the premises liability lawsuits every year.

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