Factors Making Small Communities in Pakistan More Vulnerable to Disasters
Factors making small communities
In
Pakistan more vulnerable to disasters
As soon as we hear the word disaster, automatically resounding screams and shocking images come in to our mind. Disaster however is a sudden or unforeseen event that has a negative effect on human lives. At individual level it may limit to major illness, death or some economic issue and at a wider scenario it might have effects on the community as a whole in the form of a fire, collapse of a building, epidemics, flood, an earth quake or displacement through conflict, all leading to destruction of assets and above all costing lives.
There is no single definition or explanation of a disaster, as a matter of fact in this modern age of science and technology one could predict the time and place and estimate the damage when a disaster would hit a certain area however only an estimate could be made about the outcome of the dreadful event still all the disasters could not be forecasted. This prediction also has difference in opinion when it comes to interpret the disaster; economists may measure it by calculating the loss of assets, health workers might talk of diseases that might spread after the event, political view might be setting institutions to deal with the event and social view might involve the effects on the society.
Pakistan has been at risk to many natural and manmade disasters in the past. History states various events when cyclones, flooding, drought, landslides and earth quakes have hit the country. The country is also believed to be one of the most flood prone terrains in South Asia. The floods of 1950, 1992 and 1998 and 2011 have taken various lives and made severe damage to property and assets. Pakistan is also located at seismically active zone making the area vulnerable to extreme consequences. This vulnerability was proven on October 2005 when an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the rector scale had hit 9 districts in Kheyber Pakhtunkhuwa and Azad Jammu Kashmir killing over
In
Pakistan more vulnerable to disasters
As soon as we hear the word disaster, automatically resounding screams and shocking images come in to our mind. Disaster however is a sudden or unforeseen event that has a negative effect on human lives. At individual level it may limit to major illness, death or some economic issue and at a wider scenario it might have effects on the community as a whole in the form of a fire, collapse of a building, epidemics, flood, an earth quake or displacement through conflict, all leading to destruction of assets and above all costing lives.
There is no single definition or explanation of a disaster, as a matter of fact in this modern age of science and technology one could predict the time and place and estimate the damage when a disaster would hit a certain area however only an estimate could be made about the outcome of the dreadful event still all the disasters could not be forecasted. This prediction also has difference in opinion when it comes to interpret the disaster; economists may measure it by calculating the loss of assets, health workers might talk of diseases that might spread after the event, political view might be setting institutions to deal with the event and social view might involve the effects on the society.
Pakistan has been at risk to many natural and manmade disasters in the past. History states various events when cyclones, flooding, drought, landslides and earth quakes have hit the country. The country is also believed to be one of the most flood prone terrains in South Asia. The floods of 1950, 1992 and 1998 and 2011 have taken various lives and made severe damage to property and assets. Pakistan is also located at seismically active zone making the area vulnerable to extreme consequences. This vulnerability was proven on October 2005 when an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the rector scale had hit 9 districts in Kheyber Pakhtunkhuwa and Azad Jammu Kashmir killing over