Natural Disasters

by John Russell

Natural disasters take many different forms and can happen without warning. Earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, drought, typhoons and hurricanes are all natural disasters.

The earthquake of 26th December 2004 resulted in one of the worst natural disasters in living memory. It was a massive underwater quake and occurred in the Indian Ocean. This caused a huge tidal-wave (a tsunami) to cross the Indian Ocean. It destroyed coastlines, communities and brought death and destruction to many people.

The surface of the earth has not always looked as it does today; it is moving continuously (although very slowly) and has done so for billions of years. This is one cause of earthquakes, when one section the earth (tectonic plate) collides with another. Scientists can predict where (but not when) this might happen and the area between plates is called a fault line. However, earthquakes do not always happen on fault lines, which is why they are so dangerous and unpredictable.

Volcanoes happen where the earth’s crust is thin - lava, dust and gases burst out (erupt) from beneath the earth. They can rise into a massive cone shape - like a mountain and erupt, or they can be so violent that they just explode directly from the earth with no warning. There are 1511 ‘active’ volcanoes in the world. This means that they may still be dangerous. Natural disasters like volcanoes are often unpredictable. We regularly do not know when they might happen, or even where they will happen. In the future, scientists may be able to watch and predict events before they happen. This could save many lives. In South America, scientists predicted the eruption of Popocatépetl. Tens of thousands of people were safely moved just before the biggest eruption of the volcano for a thousand years. No one was hurt. Hurricanes are extremely strong storms and often happen in the Caribbean. They cause high winds, huge waves, and heavy flooding and can be hundreds of miles across. Tornadoes or ‘twisters’ are very strong spinning winds. They can move objects as big as a car and can blow buildings down. These are very common in West Africa and certain areas of the USA.Floods happen in many countries after very heavy rainfall. When rain pours for weeks at a time, rivers overflow and people and property can be trapped or simply washed away.Another kind of natural disaster is a drought. This happens when there is no water, when it doesn’t rain for a long time and rivers dry up. Plants, animals and even humans die as a result of drought, for we all need water to live. Many countries today suffer from drought. This causes crops to fail, animals to die and sadly, people to starve. All the disasters mentioned above are very dangerous and continue to kill thousands of people each year, but they are nowhere near the most dangerous disaster to ever happen on earth. One type of event in earth’s history has regularly killed millions of beings; asteroid impacts. About once every million years the earth is hit by a piece of rock and ice from space large enough to cause massive destruction (including earthquakes, volcanoes and ice ages) and sometimes to kill entire species. 65 million years ago more than half the earth’s species were killed by such an impact (including all the dinosaurs).

Disasters on the earth may seem dangerous, but the biggest threat to humans is likely to come from space.