Earthquake disasters: beliefs, myths and reality

During 1999, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported 20 major earthquakes exceeding 7.0 on the Richter scale. After four of these earthquakes, local authorities in affected countries or regions requested disaster assistance through our Ambassadors or other U.S. representatives. These four earthquakes resulted in over 18,750 deaths, destroyed over 200,000 homes and buildings, and left over 250,000 people homeless.

In each of these disasters, initial assistance requests were for technical search and rescue expertise (SAR) for collapsed structures. To address the immediate search and rescue needs, USAID deployed Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DART) with search-and-rescue experts provided by partner agencies. The DART provided initial liaison, coordination, and communications support to the search-and-rescue team and followed on with humanitarian assistance, including the assessment of shelter, water, sanitation, food, and public health needs.

Some people of these organisations try to contrast and compare beliefs, myths, and realities of a natural disaster in the context of a devastating earthquake. Here there are the results.

Beliefs: Major earthquakes are on the increase worldwide.

Reality: Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, USGS scientists tell us that earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant throughout this century and, according to extensive records, have actually seemed to decrease in recent years.

A partial explanation lies in the fact that in the last 20 years, there has been an increase in the number of earthquakes that scientists have been able to locate each year. The number of seismograph stations in the world grew from only 350 stations operating in 1931 to more than 4,000 today. In addition, data comes in rapidly by telex, computer and satellite allowing scientists to rapidly locate many small earthquakes that were undetected in earlier years.

Myth: Earthquakes kill people randomly and indiscriminately.

Reality: The majority of deaths and injuries associated with earthquakes are due to the collapse of buildings and other structures. Rural, disbursed, and smaller single-family buildings survive better than multistoried urban apartment buildings. Building designs, construction materials, and construction practices can either minimize or greatly increase death and injury from earthquakes. Earthquakes, as with other natural disasters, disproportionately affect the poor because they are most likely to be living in poorly constructed housing in high - risk areas.

Myth: Foreign volunteers, medical and others are needed in large numbers.

Reality: In conducting assessments of hospitals, clinics, and emergency health - care facilities in Turkey, we observed and were frequently told that there was no shortage of trained medical personnel. The main, problem was medical staff severely stressed from losing their own homes. A frequently expressed need was for temporary shelter, food, and water for the existing medical staff to enable them to better serve their community. Volunteers who just fly in to help often have no means of support (shelter, food, water) and may become a burden on an already over-stressed infrastructure. Most of the "professional" teams come as completely self-sufficient organization.

Active vocabulary:

exceeding	collapsed	extensive records	collapse
affected	deploy	partial	rural - urban
ambassador	provide	telex	shortage
representative	liaison	randomly	burden
initial	devastating	indiscriminately	self-sufficient

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29