A natural disaster is the consequence of a natural hazard (e.g. volcanic eruption, earthquake, or landslide) which affects human activities. Human vulnerability, exacerbated by the lack of planning or lack of appropriate emergency management, leads to financial, environmental or human losses. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster, their resilience. This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meet vulnerability". A natural hazard will hence never result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g. strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas. The term natural has consequently been disputed because the events simply are not hazards or disasters without human involvement.

Natural hazards

main: Natural hazard A natural hazard is a threat of an event that will have a negative effect on people or the environment. Many natural hazards are related, e.g. earthquakes can result in tsunamis, drought can lead directly to famine and disease. A concrete example of the division between hazard and disaster is that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was a disaster, whereas earthquakes are a hazard. Hazards are consequently relating to a future occurrence and disasters to past or current occurrences.

Natural disasters

main: list of deadliest natural disasters

Avalanches

• The 1910 Wellington avalanche
• The 1954 Blons avalanches
• The 1970 Ancash earthquake
• The 1999 Galtür Avalanche
• The 2002 Kolka-Karmadon rock ice slide

Earthquakes

Earthquakes by themselves rarely kill people or wildlife. It is usually the secondary events that they trigger, such as building collapse, fires, tsunamis and volcanoes, that are actually the human disaster. As many of these could be avoided by better construction, safety systems, early warning and evacuation planning, the term unnatural disaster is not unwarranted.

main: List of earthquakes

Some of the most significant earthquakes in recent times include:

• The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, the second largest earthquake in recorded history, registering a moment magnitude of 9.3. The huge tsunamis triggered by this earthquake cost the lives of at least 229,000 people.
• The 7.6-7.7 2005 Kashmir earthquake, which cost 79,000 lives in Pakistan.
• The 7.7 magnitude July 2006 Java earthquake, which also triggered tsunamis.