Disaster

A disaster is a natural or man-made event that negatively affects life, property, livelihood or industry often resulting in permanent changes to human societies, ecosystems and environment.

According to the Word Detective the word disaster is built up from the Latin elements meaning "away," "wrong" or "not", and "aster", meaning "star". So when your stars were in a bad position (based on astrology), a "disaster" is about to happen.

Disasters may be called different things depending upon the context. Here are common alternative terms and contextual uses:

business interruption – Information Security specialists use this phrase to denote an event that affect normal business operations.
catastrophe – Insurance specialists use this phrase to denote a disaster beyond actuarial expectations.
crisis – Disaster Management and Information Security specialists use this phrase to denote an event that requires activation of Crisis Management organizations.
disruption – Information Security specialists use this phrase to denote a disaster that interrupts normal business or technical processes.
event – Disaster Management specialists use this phrase as a catch-all for disasters.
outage – This phrase is used by Information Security specialists to denote a service or process failure.

Natural disasters

Natural disasters arise without direct human involvement, but can become more severe because of human actions prior, during or after the disaster itself. Also, one specific event may spawn another type of disaster. For example, a hurricane may cause flooding by excessive rain or by pulling seawater onshore, also called a storm surge.

A volcanic eruption is particularly prone to spawning additional events like earthquakes, structural fires and wildfires, flooding from melting of mountain snow and ice, landslides, mudslides, thunderstorms and, if the volcano is located in or near the ocean, tsunamis.

Avalanche
Cold in excess
Disease
Drought
Earthquake
Epidemic
Famine
Fire
Flood
Hail
Heat in excess
Hurricane also called typhoon or cyclone
Landslide
Mudslide
Sink hole
Storm surge
Thunderstorm
Tornado
Tsunami
Volcanic eruption
Waterspout
Wildfire
Winter storm

Man-made disasters

File:WTC1 on fire.jpg

The World Trade Center on fire following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001

Disasters having an element of human intent or negligence are called man-made disasters. However, some of these events can also occur as the result of a natural disaster.

Surviving a disaster

Chances of survival after a disaster is greatly improved when people, local governments and emergency services, businesses and national governments prepare survival plans and assemble survival gear beforehand. What consitutes sufficient preparation is highly dependant on the location and the disasters that are likely to occur in the area.

Personal and family disaster preparation

People and families should make an assesment the likely threats in their location and prepare emergency supply kits, learn basic first aid and decide on 'safe' meeting places.

Young children should be trained to:

recognize the warning signs for dangerous situations
respond safely to different threats
evacuate to a safe place
know their full name
know their parent's full name
know their telephone number
know their address
know the names of their relatives

Emergency supply kits should include the basic items recommended in the links provided below in addition to any special needs like diapers for babies, presribed medicines or glasses for those who need them.

Local government and emergency services disaster preparation and management

Local governments and emergency service organizations maintain disaster response plans to minimize further death and property loss with quick and efficient action. A predetermined command structure containing the functions, names, telephone numbers, and addresses needed for a disaster are used to mobilize local police, fire and medical forces (occasionally supported by military forces). A disaster command structure attempts to quickly establish control over a disaster scene to rescue victims, clear casualties and where possible, subdue the threat. Governments may also provide basic humanitarian assistance.

Business disaster preparation and management

To minimize losses and the death or injury of staff, businesses can create a business continuity plan and restore key business functions quickly. Like local government, business should maintain a predetermined command structure in addition to the steps required to restore data and resume business operations.

Businesses also must consider non-traditional threats like liquidity shortages, public relations, power outage and telecommunication outage as a part of their plans.

National disaster preparation

National governments maintain disaster response plans to support local governments and to isolate an event's effects to a localized area. Naturally occuring disease, biological terrorism, and crop blights are examples of events that may be containable to a small area. A predetermined command structure which may include specialized agencies like the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency aids disaster relief and support of the local governments and emergency services.

Since nations have direct command control over miliatary forces, they may choose to deploy personnel as requested or needed to assist in rescue, treatment of victims, humanitarian aid, and the maintaining of civil order. Generally speaking, national governments can coordinate the deployment of emergency services personnel from unaffected areas to reduce the administrative burden on local command structures. Also, national governments generally have more resources and funds to assist local governments with relief efforts.

Humanitarian disaster preparation

For larger disasters that overwhelm the affected goverments, international non-governmental humanitarian agencies may mobilize to offer water, food, housing and medical and psychological treatment of disaster victims. Humanitarian aid may also include longterm recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Information security disaster preparation

Adherance to accepted information security principals require disaster recovery plans. A disaster is the start of a 'crisis' where predefined crisis management plans activate. During the development of the crisis management plan, minimum thresholds are established against which a disaster's effect can be compared. Once a disaster sufficiently interrupts key functions and processes, recovery activities can be intiated to control expectancy loss.

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