Week 1: Hazards, Disasters, and Catastrophes.

What is the difference between Natural Hazards, Disasters, and Catastrophes?

Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog about the great country Chile! This will be a weekly blog about my knowledge and understanding of Chile as a country and its geological information such as weather, tectonic plates, possible disasters and that sort of thing. This first post will be all about natural hazards, disasters, and catastrophes and the differences between the three.

The main difference between natural Hazards, Disasters, and Catastrophes is the magnitude of these events. A Natural Hazard is defined as a "natural process/event that is a potential threat to human life and property". These are naturally occurring events and their severity is low compared to the other two. If there is no danger to human life or property then it isn't classified as a hazard. A Natural Disaster is a little bigger as the name would suggest. A Natural Disaster is defined as "a hazardous event that occurs over a limited time span within a defined area. One of these occurs: less than 10 people killed, less than 100 affected, a declared state of emergency, a requested international assistance". If any of these things occur, it can be called a natural disaster. It is a major step up from a hazard as now there is a much larger scale of things being affected. The final term for this weeks blog is a Catastrophe. A Natural Catastrophe is defined as "a massive disaster that requires a significant expenditure of money and a long time (years) for recovery". This is again a step up from the last term. A Catastrophe is a major danger to human life and is incredibly damaging to property and can cause billions of dollars worth of damage. The largest financial catastrophe in U.S. History, Hurricane Katrina, was responsible for at least $100,000,000,000 worth of damage. I got all of my information from the week 1 module of Ana Garcias Geology 9 class. Until next week.