Natural Disasters There are places on this planet which seem to be playing with fate and some might be places you would not suspect. Would you believe there is a large city in Italy which could be in a lot of danger from a volcano which has wiped out towns before. I am talking about Mount Etna. We are all familiar with Pompeii and other Roman towns which were covered by ash and lost most of their populations to Etna’s wrath. There was a huge volcanic eruption which happened so fast it trapped most of the residents and we can even see the casts made of the ash of their bodies today. Naples is about 268 miles from the volcano which is too close for comfort. Experts have said if a major eruption was to happen, the city could be in danger along with its almost one million residents and they figured the volcano is overdue for an eruption. We have seen in the past how exposed some places are to tsunamis. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. To be more exact the number was said to be 227,898. This was due to an earthquake in the Indian Ocean with the resulting tsunami. The earthquake was the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake. It had an incredible amount of energy. It has been said the energy of the quake was equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs. It is hard to say which disasters are the worst, but if I had to choose, I would say a giant tsunami is capable of killing the most people, but some would say it really is a giant meteor hitting the earth. I think maybe these people are correct and I was wrong because if an asteroid hit us which was big enough, it could wipe out all life on the planet. There are no shortages of other natural disasters. There are forest fires, floods, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanos, diseases, famines and many other things. We have become so dependent on cell phones this can hinder search and rescue in occurrences where towers have been damaged or destroyed. One of the places which is hit over and over by hurricanes in the United States is Florida. Areas of Florida have suffered tremendous hurricane damage and death. South-West Florida seems to be a bad spot for these storms. I like Florida, but there is no denying being in certain parts of the state in hurricane season can be hazardous. It may sound hard to believe but there is an area of the United States and Canada known as Tornado Alley. It is in the central part of the United States and Canada where the most tornadoes appear. It has been defined as extending through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, North Dakota, Montana, Ohio and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. As of May 28, 2024 we have had 862 tornadoes in the United States so far this year. I think this is an amazing figure and doesn’t even account for the tornadoes from then to when this article is posted. Earthquakes are a big problem worldwide and so far, this year as of the writing of this article there have been 6,039 worldwide. If I asked you what country had the most earthquakes what would you guess? It turns out it is the country of Japan. The place with the least earthquakes is Antarctica. It is not completely free of them however. If we discount Antarctica and look for the country with the least earthquakes that country is said to be Qatar. In the last year the death toll in Turkey and Syria was almost 60,000 people. There is a list of countries which face the highest flood risk. While the countries list at most risk for floods, they are not always the ones with the most flood damage. An example of two countries which suffered severe floods were Pakistan and Bangladesh with Bangladesh floods affecting 72 million people, the country which is a top number on the list for the worst flooding risk is the Netherlands with a risk of 58.7%. Bangladesh is number 2 with a risk factor of 57.5%. In the United States people who live along the coast of Florida and are subject to flooding are over 3.5 million just in that one state. When it comes to forest fires, there is one country which is said to have had the most since the start of this century and that country is Russia. One hectare is about 2.5 acres. Russia has lost 1.3 million hectares a year to forest fires since 2001. The latest data about forest fires shows forest fires are on the increase. The National Park Service has shown humans cause 85% of all forest fires. In 2022 a report stated the United States lost 7.5 million acres to forest fires. It seems we even beat Russia that year. Talking about volcanoes we find that in the year 2024 in the first five months, there were 51 volcanic eruptions. Some were continued from 2023 and some were new eruptions. Volcanic eruptions can be harmless if they are small and there are no people near them. On the other hand, I don’t have to say they can be deadly, because it is obvious. One strange thing about them, they can preserve history by covering buildings and artifacts for many thousands of years. Because of this they can supply an eye into things about the human past we didn’t know about. One thing we learned was Pompeiians had very good teeth for the time. They had a diet low in sugars and high in fruits and vegetables. One of the deadliest events nature can spawn on us is disease. This is especially true when the disease is an unknown type. It doesn’t matter when this happens. Take Covid for example. It is said millions died around the world and the worst part is it seemed to have been created on purpose. It is now being said it escaped from a lab. Even with all our modern tools we had a hard time containing this disease. Some of the diseases we conquered in the past are making a resurgence. Measles, polio, plague, small pox and much more. It certainly doesn’t help us that all these people coming over the border could be bringing in anything. Careful scrutiny of people entering the country could help us but this is no longer happening. There is almost a guarantee those old diseases will appear again because they are in some third world countries.
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