- My hometown is Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Locating my hometown was difficult because the scale on the map was so large. In my town natural disasters do not really occur frequently. On the maps I would say that Lansdale is at a level zero zone for earthquakes and at a level one zone for extratropical storms. Also, the Nathan World Map of Natural Disasters indicates Lansdale is at a level one zone for wildfires, level two zone for tornados, and level three zone for hailstorms. I can’t even say with much certainty that I categorized my hometown correctly. The level zones that the map issued my hometown are pretty accurate regarding the weather. In conclusion, it would have been easier to classify my hometown if the map had been zoomed in on to Pennsylvania.
- On March 31, 2016 at 06:37 AM (UTC), the Popcatepetl Volcano erupted in the States of Puebla, Mexico and Morelos. Damage level is not or not known. The number of affected people was zero. However, The last report came over 24 hours ago and it is not updated. The Popcatepetl Volcano is 50 miles away from Mexico City, one of Mexico’s largest cities. The radius of the eruption is 100 km. My hometown cannot experience a volcanic eruption because there are no volcanoes in Pennsylvania. If a volcano were to erupt in Lansdale, the entire town would be covered in volcanic debris along with neighboring towns. In my town, the less wealthy and elderly would be vulnerable to a volcanic eruption in Lansdale. It would be hard for the less wealthy to afford cleaning volcanic debris. Also, famers with a lot of property would have so much more to clean.
- In my hometown of Lansdale natural hazards don’t happen very often, based off of personal experience. I have been living in Lansdale for almost 11 years and so I know the usual weather pretty well. The only one time I can recall is a storm that changed from snow to rain and then into hail. At night I remember my parents wanting to park our cars in the garage because hail the size of golf balls was following out of the sky. I went outside to walk my dog and we just got pelted with balls of ice. It hurt a lot.
- In Lansdale, pre-event preparedness would help to reduce vulnerability to natural hazards. Issuing a protocol for when hail gets to a certain size would be effective. For example, local government could rule that if hail is bigger than 1cm in radius there’s a warning issued telling people to stay indoors. The best way to get this accomplished would be to write to and get in contact with our county commissioner (my town does not have a mayor). Some things I can do to help reduce vulnerability is build resilience in non-disaster times. So when it’s not hailing I can replace glass counter top tables that are on my porch with a metal table or a wooden one. Also, I can go around my neighborhood right after a bad hail storm and see if anything needs repairing or help.
Module 8- Jonah Kim
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