My hometown is Leesburg, Virginia. Leesburg is located in Northern Virginia and is about 40 minutes outside of Washington D.C. After looking at the Nathan World Map of Natural Hazards, I was able to see the hazards that directly affect where I live. Based on the map my area is in zone 0 for earthquakes, zone 3 for tropical cyclones, zone 2 for hailstorms, zone 0 for extratropical storms, zone 3 for tornadoes and zone 1 for wildfires. While I find this map interesting in helping determine my areas natural hazards, I do think there are some flaws. It shows my hometown is in zone 0 for extratropical storms which is very surprising considering within the past couple years and especially this year we received over 48 inches of snow. Overall I think this map is very difficult to understand which specific zone your area is in due to the lack of clarity within the map itself.

A current disaster that I found using the Hungarian National Association of Radio Distress Signaling and Infocommunications’ (RSOE) Emergency and Disaster Information Service (EDIS) was a Volcano Eruption in the US state of Alaska. No one was found dead, missing or injured. My hometown will not be able to experience the same type of disaster. Though in the state of Virginia there are two extinct volcanoes, there are none in my area. A volcanic eruption cannot happen within my area because there no is no volcanic activity. The ones that are in the state of Virginia however are extinct, meaning that they have not had an eruption for over 10,000 years. The scale of this volcanic eruption relative to my hometown is huge. This volcanic eruption created an ash cloud that stretched more than 400 miles into the inside of Alaska. The town of Leesburg is 12.47 miles long that means the ash cloud was almost 32 times that of my hometown. It is difficult to determine the impact of this disaster if it were the same scale of my hometown. However, it seems as though all Leesburg residents would be effected by it, not just one set of people. In Alaska this natural hazard is affecting a lot of the air traffic within the state as the ash from the eruption is now 37,000 feet high. With a volcanic eruption everyone is vulnerable, however we have a very large community of elders within my town and I believe it would be harder for them to evacuate and withstand the effects of the air quality after the eruption. The only way we could reduce my town’s vulnerability would be to evacuate everyone as soon as possible and hope for the best.

Tornadoes are the main natural hazard for my hometown, according to USA.com. I can personally attest to this fact as it is true. While living in Virginia we had a tornado warning and had to go into our basement away from the windows for about ten minutes until the siren stopped. We live in an area with a forest in our backyard and after the tornado warning there were trees broken off and some very close to falling on the electrical telephone wires.

World Media Group. “Virginia Natural Disasters and Weather Extremes.” Virginia State Natural Disasters and Weather Extremes. USA.com, 2016. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.

I think the actions that could be done to reduce vulnerability to the natural hazards in my town is to emphasize on what the module calls “Pre-event Preparedness.” If we could determine the natural disasters such as tornadoes further ahead of time that would allow my town and many others to be prepared and properly evacuate if necessary. This action would also allow ample time for those elders as mentioned above to be safe from any harm of the tornados. The best people to preform these actions would be meteorologists or the National Weather Service, which would be able to find out certain patterns of these tornados or natural hazards. As a resident of Leesburg I can do my best to become aware of the weather changes that occur in my hometown. I would also do my best to be apart of the emergency response in order to help educe harm.