Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Resilient Cities: Coping With Natural Hazards
Wayne K﻽D﻽ Davies
Although no city or community can ever be entirely safe from
natural hazards, they can be more resilient to the destructive
forces that claim lives and assets…. Community Resistance is
characterized by: its capacity to withstand stress or destructive
forces through resistance or adaptation; its capacity to manage
or maintain certain basic functions and structure during
disastrous events; and the capacity to recover or 'bounce back'
from an event. Twigg 2007, p. 6.
9﻽1
Introduction
Throughout civilized history many urban places have experienced losses from de-
structive natural events, such as violent storms, floods, fires, landslides, volcanic
eruptions and earthquakes. Despite these catastrophic events, most have recovered,
because of the resilience of their people and the inherent advantages of their site
and situation which encouraged re-building on the same or an adjacent site, as in
Lisbon which was largely destroyed after the 1755 earthquake and tsunami. Oth-
ers have been annihilated and never rebuilt. Perhaps the best known example of
the latter in historical times was the rapid burying of the Roman towns of Pompei
and Herculaneum under 4-6 m of the explosive acidic ash and pumice thrown out
by the violent eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Many other settlements have been
destroyed through the advance of deserts and the erosion of shorelines. The loss of
human life in more recent disasters testify to the damaging force of some of these
extreme natural events, such as the deaths of over 500 hundred thousand people
after the Bhola cyclone in Bangladesh in 1970, to the Haiti earthquake of 2007 that
claimed over 316,000 lives according to the government, around the capital city
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