Module 8 – Natural Disasters

According to the Nathan World Map, the region I am located in is subject to multiple natural hazard. To start, my town is subject to an increase in heavy rain. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed how much the precipitation has increased. In the summertime, the heavy rainfall brings a deep fog that can block one’s view in an extreme way. In the winter, the heavy precipitation comes with more snow and ice storms. Due to the high level of precipitation, there is also a higher chance that my region will get hail storms as well. This is also stated on the Nathan World Map. With high precipitation comes high winds and my area is also more subject to tornadoes. This map has helped me identify the hazards in my area accurately and it has helped me see the increasing trend of the weather patterns.

In my hometown, there is no possible way for a volcano to erupt. There are no volcanoes around to cause harm to my town. If this disaster were to hit my hometown, in the middle of the town, there would be thousands of students and residents misplaced. The scale of the disaster is too big for my town to handle, especially if they are not trained in how to handle it. Since the ashes ruin the buildings in a certain radius, if this were to happen in my town, all of the buildings would be ruined. When looking at the town that it actually happened in, a few schools were damaged and the students were placed in other schools for the time being. If this were to happen at the same scale in my town, then there would be less people to find a place for. The population in my town is closely condensed. If something that spreads quickly were to happen then a lot of people would be impacted. Some people would be more subject to damage than other. Some people live in town houses that are connected to one another so that puts them at a greater risk for spreading the damage to one another. A way to prevent this, is to stop building houses so close together.

In my personal experience from living in my hometown for all of my life, there has been many times that the level of precipitation has been a hazard to the people in the town. There was one situation that I will never forget. When I first got my learners permit to drive when I was in high school, there was a night that I was driving home from work with my mom. On this night, there was a rain that was so heavy I could not see more than 5 feet in front of my car. In this particular situation I was on a windy back road and I had to slow down to below 5 miles per hour to be able to safely drive. There was no shoulder to pull over on and if I had completely stopped in the middle of the road someone would have crashed into me.

In order to prepare for the possibility to driving during heavy rains, there should be shoulders added to different back roads so the cars on the road have the option to safely pull over without driving into the grass. In order to solve this problem, more tax dollars can go to adding these to the roads. Once the state has money to do construction on roads, they can send employees out to create these shoulders to add more safety to the roads that run through the town. In order to get this done, I can get the information out to the people in town and to the state company that is in charge of all of the roads to get this hazard fixed.

 

 

One thought on “Module 8 – Natural Disasters

  1. Hi, my name is Sarah, and here is a link to my blog post: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/04/01/module-8-vulnerability-reduction-2/.
    I also chose a natural hazard with a volcano, and my hometown does not have volcanoes either. I said a lot of the same things you did, about how people would not be prepared, and much more damage would occur because of the amount of people living around the volcano. I like the solution you came up with for the heavy rain in your hometown. It does sound like this would be very difficult to drive in, especially as a new driver. If your town was more prepared for heavy rainfall, I’m sure there would be less accidents as well.

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