Epilogue - Natural Hazards - page 291

the fact that we have lived through a passive period for
hazards, as mentioned above. Another explanation is
the fact that, as we develop longer geophysical records,
extreme events are more likely to appear in those
records. Additionally, technological advances in com-
munications have dramatically shrunk our spatial
awareness to the point that today's unusual weather
or geological event is everyone's experience. Such
developments have heightened people's awareness of
natural hazards. I believe that the long-term prognosis,
at any location, is for the occurrence of a wide range of
hazards that have not necessarily been detected in the
historical record. We are experiencing a shift in regime
for a number of hazards. It is not unusual for an
earthquake of 7.2 on the Richter scale to occur in the
supposedly aseismic area of Tennant Creek, Australia
(September 1988), nor for tornadoes to sweep through
New York City (July 1989). These extreme events,
while not common in these areas, are certainly within
the realm of possibility. There is a pressing need for the
serious assessment of extreme hazards in many parts of
the world. For example, volcanic activity is possible in
Australia even though there are no active volcanoes,
and tropical cyclones could affect an area like southern
California. In the former case, volcanoes have erupted
in Australia in the past 10 000 years. In the latter case,
southern California lies close to an area generating
tropical cyclones. Natural hazards, and in some cases
very unexpected hazards, are simply more common
than perceived.
Finally, the pervasiveness of so many hazards, plus
ones that we have not discussed, should not be viewed
pessimistically. When a natural disaster occurs, and is
splattered across our television screens, we tend to
believe that few survive. In fact, it is surprising that so
few people die or are injured. There have been only a
few disasters in the past 150 years that have wiped out
most of a population. Mt Pelée in 1902 left two

survivors out of 30 000; the Mt Huascarán debris flow
of May 1970 killed most of the population of Yungay,
Peru, while the November 1985 eruption of the
Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia killed most of
the people in the path of its subsequent lahar. Consider
the odds of survival for other large natural disasters
mentioned in this text: Cyclone Tracy killed 64 people
out of a population of 25 000 in Darwin on
25 December 1974; only one out of every four people
died in the horrific Tangshan earthquake in China in
1976; the death toll in the Tokyo earthquake of 1923
was 140 000 people out of a population well in excess
of 1 million. Human beings are very resilient and apt at
surviving and, in particular, are gifted at coping with
disasters. These aspects were emphasized in Chapter
13. Any text on natural hazards tends to emphasize, as
does this one, the sensational, negative, or gruesome
aspects of disasters. However, it is only appropriate to
end this topic by noting people's remarkable ability
during calamities to rescue, survive, and recover from
such events.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER
READING

Bryant, E. 2001. Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Houghton, J.T., Meira Filho, L.G., Bruce, J., Hoesung Lee,
Callander, B.A., Haites, E., Harris, N. and Maskell, K. (eds)
1995. Climate Change 1994: Radiative Forcing of Climate
Change and an Evaluation of the IPCC IS92 Emission Scenarios.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Houghton, J.T., Meira Filho, L.G., Callander, B.A., Harris, N.,
Kattenberg, A. and Maskell, K. (eds) 1996. Climate Change
1995: The Science of Climate Change . Cambridge University
Press, New York.
Nott, J. 2003. The importance of prehistoric data and variability of
hazard regimes in natural hazard risk assessment: example from
Australia. Natural Hazards 30: 43-58.