This document discusses hazards and their impacts. It defines hazards as natural or man-made events that can threaten communities. Natural hazards like earthquakes, floods and typhoons are inevitable natural processes, while technological hazards result from human errors or activities. The document profiles hazards based on their magnitude, frequency, duration and effects. The Philippines is prone to natural hazards due to its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire and Philippine Fault Zone. Hazards can have physical, socioeconomic and environmental impacts, though some natural impacts may be beneficial by introducing adaptation.
This document discusses hazards and their impacts. It defines hazards as natural or man-made events that can threaten communities. Natural hazards like earthquakes, floods and typhoons are inevitable natural processes, while technological hazards result from human errors or activities. The document profiles hazards based on their magnitude, frequency, duration and effects. The Philippines is prone to natural hazards due to its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire and Philippine Fault Zone. Hazards can have physical, socioeconomic and environmental impacts, though some natural impacts may be beneficial by introducing adaptation.
This document discusses hazards and their impacts. It defines hazards as natural or man-made events that can threaten communities. Natural hazards like earthquakes, floods and typhoons are inevitable natural processes, while technological hazards result from human errors or activities. The document profiles hazards based on their magnitude, frequency, duration and effects. The Philippines is prone to natural hazards due to its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire and Philippine Fault Zone. Hazards can have physical, socioeconomic and environmental impacts, though some natural impacts may be beneficial by introducing adaptation.
This document discusses hazards and their impacts. It defines hazards as natural or man-made events that can threaten communities. Natural hazards like earthquakes, floods and typhoons are inevitable natural processes, while technological hazards result from human errors or activities. The document profiles hazards based on their magnitude, frequency, duration and effects. The Philippines is prone to natural hazards due to its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire and Philippine Fault Zone. Hazards can have physical, socioeconomic and environmental impacts, though some natural impacts may be beneficial by introducing adaptation.
Prepared by: Ms. Gladys Jane S. Cumba CONCEPT OF HAZARD
The concept of hazard was mentioned in Module 1 in the context disasters and disaster risks. Again, hazards may cause disasters. They either increase or decrease the risk of disasters in a certain community. Hazards are events that pose threat, danger, or risk to any element exposed to them. Hazards are possibilities. They can strike anywhere and anytime. And, as explained in Module 2, hazards result in disasters if a community is left both exposed and vulnerable to that hazard. Hence, it should be remembered that extreme hazard events are not always associated with disaster. It is actually the circumstance of that community that causes a hazard to bring a disaster.
TYPES OF HAZARDS
Natural hazards are those that are caused by physical and biological elements in the environment. These are natural events that may not be controlled by humans such as earthquakes, floods, landslides, tornadoes, tsunamis, typhoons and wildfires.
Natural hazards are inevitable. They are part of the natural processes of Earth operating throughout Earth’s history. Hence, it would be best to leave them to operate on their own rather than intervening or altering their natural course. Geologic processes such as earthquakes, as an example of natural hazard, have been continuously shaping and sculpting Earth’s surface. They are natural events that are considered natural hazards because of the risk of destroying the surroundings and jeopardizing people’s lives.
Man - made hazards, also called technological hazards, are those caused by factors that are generally traced to human errors, intent o negligence, or glitches in technology. These include bomb explosions, chemical spills, nuclear plant blasts, radioactive emissions, and wars. If you have noticed, these operations are all products of the advancing technology and lifestyle of humans. The continuous development of technology poses more hazards not just to the creators themselves, but also to their environment. Most hazards have caused disasters in human history. Typhoons are considered one of the most powerful of the natural hazards because they travel across a wide area, last for a longer time, and thus create more destruction. Tornadoes and earthquakes likewise cause great loss and damage but they generally happen in a certain place and only lasts for a short time.
Fig. 3.1 An affected area in Leyte; photo taken the morning after Typhoon Yolanda
Not all typhoons and fires bring about such disastrous impact. Accurate warnings about the strength of a typhoon or immediate action on putting out a fire can greatly diminish the grave potential effects of these events. So how and when does an event turn into a disaster?
PROFILING HAZARDS
Profiling hazards is important in predicting the possible disasters that a certain
hazard can bring. They are useful in planning for a disaster especially if the same impacts are likely to be brought by a hazard that frequents a certain place.
Hazards can be profiled in different ways: magnitude of event (high-scale or
low scale), frequency (number of times in a year), duration (short-term or long - term), and causality of effects (direct or indirect). MAGNITUDE OR STRENGTH OF THE EVENT
The magnitude of the hazard can be assessed by the measurements obtained
from scientific instruments, sometimes scaling can vary depending on the reference tables used per country. For example, magnitude 5.0 above is considered high scale in earthquakes based on the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS). Floods reaching 1.0 meter is likewise considered high-scale. Typhoons with winds up to 150 kph are deemed strong and powerful.
FREQUENCY
The frequency of the hazard to occur in the area is important because it tells its proneness to that hazard. This is usually, but not always, associated with the area’s geographical location on Earth or its topographical condition. For example, a coastal community may be frequented by storm surges if it belongs to the typhoon belt. On the contrary, another coastal community may be frequented by flooding, and not storm surges, if its topography or level of ground is lower than the sea level. Usually, government agencies record frequencies of natural hazard occurrences to see any patterns to serve as tools in preparing for a disaster.
DURATION OF IMPACT
The impact of hazards varies in duration. The assessment of the duration is
either short or long. In earthquakes for example, the length of shaking, trembling, and even the after shocks are recorded. If this event happened in a span of more than a minute, the earthquake is deemed to be long. Another example is the volcanic eruption that can last for days. The assessment of this duration can have implications on how extensive preparatory activities should be and even the post disaster plans.
CASUALITY OF EVENTS
The impact of hazards can also be assessed based on the causality of events, that is, whether the exposed element receives the likely disaster directly or indirectly. Sometimes, other elements that are not visibly present in the site of the event also suffer some degree of consequences because all communities interact within and outside their territory. Also, communities and nature are dynamic such that interrelationship and mobility make possible a chain reaction of varying effects. HAZARD - PRONE AREAS
A hazard - prone area is a location where a natural hazard is likely to happen if
preventive measures are not implemented. Due mainly to its geography, the Philippines is considered prone to natural hazards, and hence natural disasters as well. It is situated along the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area surrounding the basin of the Pacific Ocean where many volcanoes have formed. Thus, seismic activities such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions frequently occur in the region. Around 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes occur in the region.
Fig. 3.3 Map showing the Pacific Ring of Fire
Another reason the Philippines is considered prone to disasters is its major
tectonic feature, the Philippines Fault Zone (PFZ). A fault is a crack or break in Earth’s crust along which rocks have moved. A rapid or sudden movement of rocks releases a large amount of seismic waves, which cause the ground to move or shake. This sudden shaking of the ground is called an earthquake. The PFZ is a series of interrelated faults that cut across the country from northwestern Luzon to southern Mindanao. Some of the disastrous earthquakes in the Philippines are located in the PFZ. IMPACTS OF HAZARDS
The impact of hazards are likely outcome of disaster. The exposed elements will initially receive all the negative impacts. In some cases, however, not all the impacts of hazards are adverse. Some natural hazards result in changes that may be beneficial or supportive of the other existing elements.
1. Physical elements. People, buildings, roads, poles, bridges and all other material objects may be ruined by hazards. Volcanic eruptions, explosions, fire, or lighting may instantly burn or incinerate objects that it comes in contact with. Cracks, fissures, or total damage may happen if tremors, explosions, and landslides take place. All these, again, are possibilities still depending on many factors that increase or decrease the disaster risk of a community.
2. Socioeconomic elements. The positive impacts of hazards on the
socioeconomic elements may be in the form of introducing new habits, practices, systems or values that may be geared toward the values of resiliency and recovery. The impacts will induce adaptation on the part of the affected community. They will tend to create a new operations or ways of living that can withstand the next possible occurrence of the same hazard. On the other hand, hazards can also bring negative impacts to these types of elements. In the economic point of view, areas most frequented by hazards usually would have lower standards of living or poor living conditions. One reason is the inability to join in market competitions given limited or constrained resources.
3. Environmental elements. Just like other exposed elements, perhaps the inital impact of hazard to the ecosystems and other organisms in them may be disastrous. However, in some cases, again due to adaptation, or because natural hazards are natural events and hence part of the natural cycles on the Earth, the occurrence may benefit certain components of Earth. For instance, the ashes spewed out during the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo revealed to have made some soils in Zambales fertile.
