Natural Disasters: Why Haven't We Learned from Them Yet?
Whitney Gregory
Dr. Alexander
Third Year Writing
7 May 2010
Natural Disasters: Why Haven’t We Learned From Them Yet?
George Santayan, a famous Spanish-American philosopher, once said, “Everything is life is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate and comic in its existence,” (“Quotable Quote” 1). This too can be said about natural disasters in today’s time. A natural disaster is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as, “any form of nature that has catastrophic consequence, such as an avalanche, earthquake, flood, forest fire, hurricane, lighting, tornado, tsunami or volcanic eruption.” Many times the people affected by such an event take a backseat to the actually disaster itself. Why is that? Why is it that certain parts of the world, when hit by a natural disaster, seem to be more devastated by it than the same event somewhere else? And, why have those areas at the highest risk of being affected by a natural disaster made little to no effort of better preparing themselves for such an event? The disaster part of a natural disaster can be prevented when the appropriate steps to better prepare a vulnerable area are taken. By taking the mistakes of the past and learning from them, one has the capability of lowering the statistics of those whom are devastated by a natural disaster each year.
The first step to understanding natural disasters is to know what they are capable of doing. The Federal Management Emergency Agent is the U.S.’s disaster relief branch of Homeland Security. The mission statement of FEMA, as stated on their website, is “to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards” (“What We Do” 1). In an effort to do this, FEMA has provided information on planning and preparing, recovering and rebuilding, and on natural disasters in general. FEMA has provided information on every
Dr. Alexander
Third Year Writing
7 May 2010
Natural Disasters: Why Haven’t We Learned From Them Yet?
George Santayan, a famous Spanish-American philosopher, once said, “Everything is life is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate and comic in its existence,” (“Quotable Quote” 1). This too can be said about natural disasters in today’s time. A natural disaster is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as, “any form of nature that has catastrophic consequence, such as an avalanche, earthquake, flood, forest fire, hurricane, lighting, tornado, tsunami or volcanic eruption.” Many times the people affected by such an event take a backseat to the actually disaster itself. Why is that? Why is it that certain parts of the world, when hit by a natural disaster, seem to be more devastated by it than the same event somewhere else? And, why have those areas at the highest risk of being affected by a natural disaster made little to no effort of better preparing themselves for such an event? The disaster part of a natural disaster can be prevented when the appropriate steps to better prepare a vulnerable area are taken. By taking the mistakes of the past and learning from them, one has the capability of lowering the statistics of those whom are devastated by a natural disaster each year.
The first step to understanding natural disasters is to know what they are capable of doing. The Federal Management Emergency Agent is the U.S.’s disaster relief branch of Homeland Security. The mission statement of FEMA, as stated on their website, is “to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards” (“What We Do” 1). In an effort to do this, FEMA has provided information on planning and preparing, recovering and rebuilding, and on natural disasters in general. FEMA has provided information on every
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