Disaster by Choice: How our actions turn natural hazards into catastrophes

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The main message of this book is that disasters are not natural. Societies and humanity choose to create them. We can also, with insight, economic resources and political will, choose to prevent them [...] I hope that this book is widely read and its message heeded." The baseline is that we have options regarding where we live, how we build, and how we get ourselves ready for living with nature," Kelman maintains. "Nature does not choose, but we do. We can choose to avoid disasters and that means disasters are not natural."

For the environmental events and processes we can deal with by reducing vulnerability, which are most of them, we are the real causes of disasters, not nature. Inadvertently or deliberately, in knowledge or in ignorance, disasters emerge through human choices, actions, behavior, and values. Closing this chasm between what we know and actually using this knowledge is not easy. The book starts really well with a gripping description of the Haiti earthquake and its aftermath. Kelman makes a good job of telling the story and using it to powerful effect. He goes on to effectively describe some of the possible natural hazards that can lead to disasters, this time focusing his story on the mundane-seeming protection of Canvey Island from the Thames and on Australian bushfires (in a book written before 2019's devastating fires). We see how a combination of economics, politics and the human ability to not think to clearly about the future encourages a repeated failure to learn the lessons of past events. blame nature for the damage wrought, when in fact events such as earthquakes and storms are entirely commonplace environmental processes We feel the need to fight natural forces, to reclaim what we assume is ours, and to protect ourselves from what we perceive to be wrath from outside our As Kelman mentions, these are all “essential pieces of the disaster jigsaw”, but he unfortunately does not really assemble them. And that is a shame, as I feel Kelman makes some excellent points of which I will highlight three.In a story that resonates with the moorland fires in England, three people in July 2016 chose to camp in the woodlands around Nederland, Colorado, and did not properly extinguish their barbeque. One day later a wildfire lit up the forest in the Cold Springs Fire, which killed numerous animals, forced 2000 people to evacuate, and destroyed eight homes. The trio were arrested and tried. Their sentence allows them to work during the day, returning to prison at night. It will take them the remainder of their lives to pay for the damages awarded against them. However, eight houses within the burnt area were participating in the Wildfire Partners programme of mitigation measures. These survived. A balance between pushing for self-reliance, local accountability, and national and international management, is required in making the change. Following the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, then Zaire, the author highlights camps set up for refugees on the nearest flatland which happened to be hardened lava until the nearby volcano erupted. The ‘displaced became re-displaced’ further complicating the migration settlement process already vulnerable contending with ongoing conflict — another example of vulnerability by choice with limited options. The author argues resilience is an investment over time. He highlights, weak governance structures, over-exploitation, violence, poverty, marginalisation, corruption and poor infrastructure are some other vulnerabilities the Haitian quake and other disasters suffer, which extends the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change definition of vulnerability. Four concepts hold the book together, awareness of nature’s hazards, stories of vulnerability, vulnerability by choice, and making the change.

communities. This attitude distracts us from the real causes of disasters: humanity's decisions, as societies and as individuals. It stops us accepting the real solutions to disasters: making better decisions. They are manifestations of nature that have occurred countless times over the aeons of Earth's history. The disaster consists of our inability to deal with them as part of nature. We have the knowledge, ability, technology, and resources to build houses which are not ripped apart by 250 mile per hour winds. If we choose to, we can create a culture with warning and safe sheltering. I take the view of turning information and awareness of nature’s hazards to harness change, preparing our built and living environments and acting with providence to vulnerability. Keen not only to respond when hazard turns to disaster, but to also prepare, plan, and be prudent. Which speaks to the quote on the book cover ‘how our actions turn natural hazards into catastrophes’.

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Consequently, in the same way that disasters are not natural, they are not unusual or extreme. They dramatically expose the vulnerabilities with which people live, and are typically forced by others to live, on a daily basis. The New York National Guard loads cars with meals to distribute to those in quarantine due to COVID-19. (Credit: The National Guard)

Disaster By Choice is an odd sort of book. Its very reasonable premise is that people choose to undergo disaster and they don’t have to. But the book is mainly a recounting of numerous disasters – fires, floods, volcanos, tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes, in small detail, following people who struggled, or survived, or died. Stating that natural disasters do not exist because humans cause disasters seems insanely provocative. We witness nature ravaging our lives all the time: from a city underwater after a storm roars off the Atlantic to rows of smouldering houses after a wildfire to the dust rising from the ruins after an earthquake. Why was the infrastructure in and around the capital city so poorly constructed? Why were so many people poor, leaving them with no choice but to live in these buildings without hope of improving them? Why did even many affluent parties, from the country's president to the United Nations to the developers of luxury hotels, not enact basic earthquake safety principles?Home owners can design and maintain their houses and land to reduce the chance of them catching alight during a bushfire. No guarantees ever exist of saving property, but we have seen the difference in Australia this year between those whose dwellings survived and those who sadly lost everything or who tragically perished while staying behind to defend. Even if it's understandable that we feel the need to fight natural forces, Kelman argues, the result is an attitude which distracts us from the fact that the real causes of disasters are the choices we make as societies and individuals, and that the solution is to make better decisions. policy, strategy and practice. Natural disasters are not "natural", they are hazards that are amplified into disasters as a consequence of human actions. Making more intelligent choices about these hazards will reduce our vulnerability. Two, writes Kelman, politics and power games often create and perpetuate systems that make people vulnerable to natural hazards. Those in power often have little interest in opposing e.g. lucrative property development in flood-prone areas or spending money to retrofit existing buildings to make them safer from wildfires or heatwaves. Of course, however they manifest themselves there are myriad factors behind disasters and their consequences. They can arise from political processes dictating where and what we build, and from social circumstances which create and perpetuate poverty and discrimination. If you're more convinced by numbers, it's a phenomenon that lends itself to statistical analysis. The earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 was over a hundred times less powerful than the one that shook Japan in 2011 and its resulting tsunami, for example, yet the death toll was more than ten times greater. The difference lay in the vulnerability of the two communities.