Natural disaster and an overview on cyclones
Unless natural disasters are considered as serious national issues by the authorities the hope for mitigation and prevention would remain unstable and fragile
Dr. Forqan Uddin Ahmed
Natural disaster is a phenomena which can occur in anytime without having any notice in anywhere in the world. When it hits with tremendous force in a particular place, it destroys decades of human effort in building infrastructure, investment and of course life. In the past twenty years for example earthquakes. floods. tropical cyclones. drought and volcanic eruptions have killed 5 million people, inflicted injuries and rendered homeless as many as 1.5 billion people and also caused more than 200 billion US dollars worth of material damage(Source: World Bank:1999)
Natural disasters not only threaten our human habitats but also have other seriously adverse impacts. For example, losses from natural disasters reduce the pace of sustained economic development and often lead to a heavy drain on available resource to mitigate the economic . This losses are particularly observed in South Asian and other Third World or developing countries.
People of these countries suffer most serious consequences caused by natural disasters. A report from the Yokohama, Japan, world conference on Natural Disasters. Reduction in 1994 stated that 90 percent of natural disasters and 95 percent of the total disasters related deaths occur in the developing countries. The per capita losses in the gross national products (GNP) are estimated to be twenty times greater than in industrial countries. These losses are growing due to increasing concentration of population and investments in vulnerable locations and inadequate investment in measure to reduce risk (UNCRD 1999)
Indirect losses of natural disasters, or losses resulting from the consequences of physical destruction, have not been measured, studied, and modeled to the same extent as direct losses (the monetized losses of physical destruction). Recent unprecedented business interruption losses$6.5 billion in Northridge (Gordon and Richardson, 1995) and a staggering $100 billion of interruption losses in the 1995 Kobe earthquakehave focused attention on the need for more intensive scientific study and measurement of these indirect losses. Evidence to date suggests that the proportion of indirect impacts increases in larger disasters, and thus may constitute a larger fraction of total losses and damage in large disasters than in smaller disasters (Gordon and Richardson, 1995 and Toyoda, 1997).
By their nature, indirect losses are harder to measure than losses stemming directly from physical damage. For example, a ruptured power line is readily observed and the cost of its repair evaluated. Far less obvious are losses such as those of industries that are forced to close down because they lack critical power supplies, firms with power that lose business because suppliers or buyers lacked power, and firms that lose business because employees of firms affected by the power outage have reduced incomes and consequently spent less. Compared to a natural disasters direct effects, indirect losses are more difficult to identify and measure, and are generally spread over a much wider area.
Disaster has been defined by various individuals and organization in various ways depending on their nature of understanding and on the ways of focusing the issue. Most important definition of disasters are:
i. Any occurrence which results in damage economic disruption, loss of human life deterioration of health status and health services delivery on a scale sufficient to warrant an extraordinary response from outside the affected community.
ii. A disaster is a serious disruption of functioning of a society, causing widespread human. Material or environmental losses which exceed the ability of affected society to cope with its own resources.
iii. An event, natural or man-made, sudden or progressive, which impact with such severity that the affected community has respond by taking exceptional measures
The word cyclone has been derived from the Greek term kilos meaning coil snakes. It originates when mixture of heat moisture air forms a low pressure centre over the ocean in tropical latitudes where water temperature is over 26 degree centigrade. Wind currents spin and organize around deepening becomes a tropical cyclone when winds reach gale force or 117 km per hour. Cyclone also tend to from when:
1. Variation regional temperature over the ocean is observed.
2. Intensity of air pressure develops
3. Collision of warm and cold air starts.
4. Forces generated as result of movement of the earth works activity.
This cyclone rotates antilock-wise in the northern hemisphere and clock-wise in the southern hemisphere. In America it is known as hurricane, in Far East as Typhoon, in Australia as willy-nilly in china, as Baguio and in Asia as Cyclone.
Tropical regions of both side of the hemisphere are the cyclone prone areas of the world with exception of certain of regions South Atlantic Ocean. Where there no evidence of such cyclone, the remarkable zone of cyclone in the world, among which South-Western parts of pacific ocean are the most vulnerable areas occurring highest number of cyclones per year, followed by South-Western regions of North Atlantic especially Cape Verde Islands and Bay of Bengal in the north Indian Ocean.
As incident in the preceding paragraph that Bay of Bengal is most important cyclone prone sea and the coastal belt of Bangladesh is known as one of the potential landing ground of cyclone of the world. This belt is affected by the cyclones and tidal surges every year. Statistics of 250 years shows that, 13 sever cyclones out 19 have so far been hit in the coastal belt of Bangladesh. Analysis of these data also reveals that frequency of occurrence of this cyclone has been increased recently than in the past and most the cyclones have been occurred in the month of October and November.
In the last 25 years (1970 to 1996) cyclone alone has killed 4,57,208 people, among which 3,00,000 in 1970, 11069 people in 1985 and affected about 1,73,81,999 people. The total economic loss of the catastrophic cyclone in April 1991 has been estimated 3,38,00 million taka while in 1985 it was 9410 million taka only.
Natural disasters threaten our normal pattern of life, our progress and destroyed our socio-economic development, representing a considerable challenges for the global community. These consequences of disasters have convinced the national government, NGOs and international community, that disaster prevention and mitigation are the essential components of any range of sustainable development projects and politics. Finally, to address the need for capacity building, training and resource mobilization should be strengthened.
Unless natural disasters are considered as serious national issues by the authorities the hope for mitigation and prevention would remain unstable and fragile.
The writer is Deputy Director General Commandant (PRL), Ansar-VDP Academy, Safipur, Gazipur
