Natural Hazards

  1. I am from the Philadelphia suburbs and throughout my life we haven’t really experienced any natural hazards. According to the Nathan World Map of Natural Hazards, my area is prone to heavy rain which can be due to tropical cyclones that form along the east coast. We can also experience some moderate hail during the winter months typically. Other than that, my area does not experience many natural hazards. When I was looking all of the different maps, it was kind of hard to see where my exact town is but I was in the general vicinity when looking at them. It would have been nice to see a map of just the United States for this task but I have lived in the same place for my whole so I pretty much know what type of natural hazards I have experienced.
  2. On March 5th at approximately 4:37 pm (UTC) in Tuscany Italy there was a meningococcal meningitis C outbreak that killed 4 people. This disease is spread from person to person through bacteria when they come in close contact with each other. Luckily not many people died from this outbreak because it can be easily treated if caught at the right time. This type of outbreak could happen in my area because meningitis is just spread through personal contact with people who have the bacteria. However, there are a lot of good hospitals in my area that can treat people in an appropriate manner. I have not heard of meningitis outbreaks in my town so it does not seem like my area is vulnerable to this disease but something like this could happen.
  3. The area of southeast Pennsylvania can experience the following hazards according to Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency  are transportation accidents, floods, fires, winter storms, tropical storms (tornadoes and windstorms), hazardous material accidents, geological incidents (earthquakes, landslides, and subsidence), nuclear facility accidents, dam failures, terrorism, and riots. Since I have lived in the same area for my whole life, I know which of the ones above are the most common. These would be transportation accidents, winter storms, and sometimes tropical storms. My area was hit pretty badly during hurricane Sandy and we’ve had a few bad snow storms like one who dumped about 30 inches in the area in January of 1996. On the other hand, transportation accidents are the most common because my area is becoming very urbanized and that means more people are on the road with cars. Luckily my area does not experience significantly dangerous hazards but there have been a few bad storms here and there.
  4. Considering winter and tropical storms are out of people’s hands, we can only help better prepare for them. For example, if we improve our technology we can get a more accurate timeline of the storm and possibly know its magnitude. There have been plenty of storms in the past that the weather stations have made out to seem really bad but then they were wrong when it actually came through. Knowing what to expect before a storm comes can help people prepare themselves whether it means stocking up on food or reinforcing their house. The other main natural hazard in my area is transportation accidents and we could reduce the vulnerability of them by reducing the speed limit on some roads that are winding and we can also add more stop lights at intersections that do not have any. There are a couple intersections in my town that are dangerous when people try to make turns onto.

http://www.pema.pa.gov/planningandpreparedness/communityandstateplanning/Pages/Hazard-Vulnerability.aspx#.Vv3Nn5vD_IU

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