Inside The Box, Issue 1.2: All Disasters Are Local
All Disasters Are Local
What Natural Hazards Can Teach Us About Managing Risk
Short of a nuclear detonation, few man-made events can compare in scope or sheer destructive power to the forces that Mother Nature unleashes on the world with relentless regularity.
In their most extreme forms, earthquakes flatten infrastructures and leave hundreds of thousands injured or dead. Hurricanes bring once vibrant cities to their knees. Tsunamis cross oceans and reshape coastlines. Even the lowly sinkhole will swallow an entire multi-story building every so often.
Although risk managers commonly refer to these events as “natural hazards,” the term itself is really little more than a handy rubric, shorthand for a broad array of environmental forces. Chiefly geologic or meteorological in origin, these hazards will be all too familiar to anyone who follows the news. Besides earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis, the most common include volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, heavy rains and snows, avalanches, landslides and mudslides. (Pandemic disease, too, is a special kind of natural hazard in biological form.)
It is not our purpose here to dissect each and every hazard. But a closer look at a handful of examples will help us make useful observations about the distinctive analytical-risk dynamics of natural hazards, and allow us to grasp some fundamental truths that can be applied in equal measure to managing most any type of hazard risk.
Just as House Speaker Tip O’Neill once observed that “all politics is local,” so too must risk managers understand where hazards are most likely to happen and what impact they will have on local economies and people. Only then will they be able to correctly prioritize and proactively shape their responses to the complex environmental hazards that surround them.