According to the Nathan World Map of Natural Hazards, my hometown in Plainview, New York, prone to a few natural disasters. Since I am located on an Island, I am surrounded by water. Therefore, the first disaster my town is prone to have is hurricanes. Hurricanes can form off the coasts and have extreme affects such as power outages and more. We also have heavy rainfall storms were can cause another natural disaster, flooding. Flooding occurs when the sea water level gets too high and our sewage systems cannot filter out the water quickly enough. This can be disastrous to my area and can cause people to lose everything, including their homes.

The natural disaster that I found was a tornado that occurred in Alabama on April 1, 2016 at 3:25 am. The damage level of the disaster was ranked as medium and the exact area in Alabama of this occurrence took place in Eldridge, Ardmore.

My hometown cannot experience this same type of disaster. No one is completely sure what causes tornadoes. It is thought to be the result of the updraft and downdraft in thunderstorms, which can make a tornado vortex. These types of thunderstorms do not usually occur in Long Island, New York, which is where I am from. Therefore, my hometown doesn’t really experience tornadoes at all. Although tornadoes can physically form in New York, it is very unusual and extremely minor if any at all.

The damage from this tornado was mainly to physical objects as there were zero deaths or injuries as a result of this disaster. The reason for the medium ranking was that nobody was too much affected by the aftermath of this event. It was merely a regular sized tornado that people in Alabama are probably used to and were able to handle in a safe matter. My hometown is relatively small, about 6 miles in radius. This tornado definitely traveled less than that far being that it was minor sized. This is a much smaller area than the area that was affected, but on a very low scale. My hometown is not used to this type of disaster so they would probably not have been as well prepared. For this reason, if this disaster were to have occurred in my hometown, it would have been significantly more serious. The scale of the event would be much greater, and people may have even gotten hurt if we were that ill prepared.

A severe natural disaster that recently occurred in my hometown last year was Hurricane Sandy. Sandy took down tons of different towns in Long Island, taking out power, wrecking infrastructure, causing injuries and even some deaths. This disaster affected the people in my town differently, depending on the materials that their homes were made of, and how close they were located to the water. Residents who were located closer to the water felt the affects of the disaster much greater. This makes people much more vulnerable, because this factor is out of their control, so all they could do was hope for the best.

Like I have previously stated, the most serious natural disasters that we have to deal with in my town are hurricanes and flooding. These disasters, although can be devastating, are not as bad when compared to areas that experience tornadoes and things that are harder to prevent. Although storms can cause much damage, by simply staying indoors you can usually keep yourself safe. When a tornado is tearing up miles at a time, it is a bit difficult to just stay in your home and hope it doesn’t come your way.

In order to prevent and reduce the vulnerability to natural hazards in my city or town, we can do a few things. First off, we can do everything we can to inform people as soon as we have any signs of these hazards coming our way. Next, we can do our best to build the entire infrastructure to be able to handle the worst weather conditions that the area should experience. This means it should be able to handle extreme snowfall, heat, cold, hurricanes, flooding, and storms in general. Weather is out of our control, but the best way for us to keep ourselves safe is to prepare and be ready.

Works Cited

“‘Long-track Tornadoes’ Possible Today for North Alabama.” AL.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.

“Weather and Atmospheric Conditions That Cause Hurricanes.” About.com News & Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.