320 Big pictures
oil pipelines, powerlines, telephone lines, water pipelines, sewer lines, rail-
roads, and roads/highways -- particularly cause effects to ramify across a region.
Clean water supply as a daily human need is especially significant after a
disaster.
Sometimes effects on natural systems are more severe, such as radioactivity in
soil and water around Chernobyl and Kiev which will degrade nature for eons.
Ecosystem services (Chapter4)tothe region’s people are reduced. The degree
of loss or damage from a disaster also depends on preceding human activities
and land uses. A massive 2005 New Orleans (USA) flood, which was triggered
byahurricane, mainly resulted from broken levees constructed to raise a huge
adjoining lake level 5 m above major portions of the city (Costanzaet al.2006).
So now let us turn to the ten bad disasters.Wildfire
If you enter an area where almost every plant has fire adaptations, e.g.,
rapid multi-stem resprouting, the landscape has a long history of frequent fire.
If you see a few buildings and it’s warm or windy, watch out. Attempts to stop
thehistory have created a large fuel buildup ripe for an abnormally big fire.
So it is with the Pine Barrens by the Philadelphia metro area, eucalypt forest
around Canberra, chaparral engulfing San Diego and Los Angeles, and oakland
byBarcelona and the Mediterranean. A 2003 wildfire eliminating koala, emu,
and other wildlife swept into Canberra’s green wedge and compact neighbor-
hoods. In both 2003 and 2007, wildfire wiped out >2000 homes where sprawl
had encroached on the fire landscape around San Diego.Volcanic eruption
Lava flows, massive mud or debris flows, landslides, dense particulate
air pollution that coats the lungs, and longer-term deposits of volcanic ash are
theculprits. The Italian city of Pompeii was covered by an eruption of Mount
Vesuvius so quickly that archaeologists centuries later felt they were looking at
amomentindaily life frozen in time. In 1985 Pereira (Colombia) was devastated
byamud flow from a volcanically melted alpine glacier.Earthquake
Consider some urban disasters: 526 Antioch (Syria, now Turkey); 1703
Tokyo; 1755 Lisbon; 1812 Caracas; 1905 Kangra (India); 1906 San Francisco;
1908 Messina (Italy); 1923 Kanto (Japan); 1939 Erzincan (Turkey); 1948 Ashgabat
(Turkmenistan); 1964 Anchorage (USA); 1976 Guatemala City; 1976 Tangshan
(China); 1985 Mexico City; 1995 Kobe (Japan); 2003 Bam (Iran). Rolling waves or
surface ruptures with lateral or upward/downward movements last for seconds