Disaster 033
Disaster 033 :
"A disaster is... an event associated with the impact of a natural hazard, which leads to increased mortality, illness and/or injury, and destroys or disrupts livelihoods, affecting the people or an area such that they (and/or outsiders) perceive it as being exceptional and requiring external assistance for recovery" (Cannon 1994, 29, fn.2). "Many people now accept that human activity itself has created the conditions for disaster events. This is partly because of growing awareness that through negligence or inappropriate response, the workings of social systems have made a disaster out of a situation which otherwise might not have been so serious. There has also been a growth in understanding that it is hazards that are natural, but that for a hazard to become a disaster it has to affect vulnerable people" (Cannon 1994, 16)
