Project Work
Name of the
Na Disaster
Get into groups and collect information relating to various disasters
from newspapers, magazines, books, etc.
Each group should work on one disaster.
Fill in the boxes in the table given below with necessary information. One is
done for you. Present your version before the class.
Nature of the
Disaster
Problems
Rescue
Natural Man-
Faced
Operations
made
natural
. power cut
evacuation to sa
disaster
breakdown in
places
communications supply of food
.blocking of
clothing
roadways
• health camps
• lack of food and sanitation
clothing
clearing roadw
. loss of property
• restoration of
spread of diseases and communi
distribution
2
Cyclone/
Tsunami
compensatic
Floods
Earthquakes
Answers
Answer:
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, internationally reported disasters in 2002 affected 608 million people worldwide and killed 24,532—well below the preceding decade's annual average mortality of 62,000 (IFRC 2003). Many more were affected by myriad local disasters that escaped international notice.
Disaster has multiple and changing definitions. The essential common element of those definitions is that disasters are unusual public health events that overwhelm the coping capacity of the affected community. This concept precludes the universal adoption of a threshold number of casualties or victims. What would be a minor incident in a large country may constitute a major disaster in a small isolated island state. Not only are "quantitative definitions of disasters unworkably simplistic" as noted by Alexander (1997, 289), but when based on the economic toll or the number of deaths, they are also misleading with regard to the immediate health needs of the survivors or their long-term impact on the affected country.