Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
reducing their ability to provide medical aid and emergency shelters respectively.
Elsewhere, inappropriate sites have been chosen. International relief for the Carib-
bean island of Montserrat after the destruction of hurricane Hugo in 1989 led to
the construction of a new hospital. Unfortunately it was built below a volcano that
erupted in 1995 and destroyed the new building under a rain of pyroclastic material.
The
headquarters of local emergency measures organizations
and security services
should also be seen as priority buildings, simply to ensure that key personnel, as
well as their secure communication facilities, are able to provide organization, sup-
port and advice in the critical hours after a disaster. This ensures a continuing, and
importantly a local, organizational response to the problems, especially before na-
tional and international organizations are able to assist.
9735
Protecting and Working with Nature
Chapters 4-6 have described the ways in which many urban places are producing
greener and more sustainable practices to reduce the negative effect of our human
activities, although there is still a long way to go before these effects are neutral-
ized. Many of these new practices have the additional effect of providing greater
protection against some unexpected natural event. Perhaps the most obvious is the
protection of wetlands that act as storage areas in times of excessive rain and whose
plants filter out noxious materials created and washed out from urban areas. In ad-
dition, it has already been noted how off-shore coral reefs, mangrove swamps or
islands help absorb the impact of storms and provide protection for areas behind, so
they should be re-established if they have been destroyed. Shelter belts of bushes or
trees in dry or windy locations have traditionally been built around settlements to
provide protection against the wind or in desert areas against the advance of sand,
whose abrasive properties can quickly degrade buildings. It is also inexcusable to
allow deforestation near settlements, for this increases the risk of rapid rainfall run-
off and floods, apart from increasing the probability of landslides from surrounding
slopes. Development should not be allowed on steep and unstable slopes, especially
those formed by unconsolidated materials that are more prone to slump, while re-
afforestation and measures to improve slope stability and water retention need to be
undertaken to reduce the risks of disasters. A promising recent trend is for cities or
governments to pay people in rural areas to manage the upstream lands from cities
to preserve water quality, which reduces the need for expensive filtration plants. Yet
many environmental restoration policies must also ensure that negative effects are
not produced. The restoration of swamps in tropical areas can help breed mosqui-
toes which increase the risk of malaria; the presence of trees immediately around
settlements in forested, or extensive grassy areas subject to drought can increase the
probability of fire risks, unless there are adequate firebreaks outside urban places,
which is still rarely the case
.
Also there is always the need to evaluate the positive
and negative effects of natural barriers that may affect risk reduction. Yet all these
policies are relatively limited approaches to this new theme of working with nature
to reduce the risk of damage from natural hazards.
