Almost every day you, hear about a disaster happening somewhere in the world.  It appears that whenever you open a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch a TV news report, there a report of a natural disaster of some kind somewhere around the world.   From floods in Australia, to Earthquakes in Japan, the fires in California, to mud slides in Brazil, typhoons in Florida to droughts in Africa.

There are predications that at any one moment of time, something like 200 million around the globe are displaced because of some kind of natural disaster. A horrifying number!

In most cases there is huge human loss which is overwhelming tragedy.  As well as the human loss is the long term economic impact because of loss of manufacturing, mining and agriculture industries, significant loss of infrastructure as well as  long term illness due to breakdown of core infrastructure facilities’ like power, transportation,  sanitation and water purification plants and the list goes on. 

In many of the cases, the suffering can be significant reduced when countries, states, provenances, communities, families and individuals are better prepared.  Preparation could range from having the right building codes for earth quakes, have man made flood barriers, to vegetation growth on hill slides to avoid mudslides, having  appropriate disaster environments , having prepared disaster coordination centres to readily move emergency workers to resolve any impeding issues.

What is important to understand that every one of us has a degree of responsibility in preparing for the most common major disaster in your local environment?  For example, typhoons are very common in Central America, so why not be prepared for a potential typhoon. In California, the key risk are earthquakes, fires, tsunami and severe storms.   

There are a number of key steps that you and your family can take to reduce the impact of a natural disaster.

In a natural disaster, there are typically 3 phases,

1.  the lead up time for the potential disaster

2.  the actual disaster the period

3.  just after the disaster until normality

Further articles will provide you ideas about how to manage survive and manage your way through this adventure.