1.1. Disasters and emergencies
Disaster is a sudden, fleeting event that results in loss of human life, injury to human health, destruction of or damage to objects and other material assets of significant magnitude, as well as causing substantial harm to the environment.
Causes
With the development of the human society, in addition to natural disasters caused by natural phenomena (hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, flooding, landslides, mudflows, volcanic eruptions, bush fires, frost, snowfalls, droughts, etc.), man-made disasters directly related to human activities (technological and transport accidents, epidemics, environmental disasters, wars, terrorism) are becoming increasingly important.
In the second half of the twentieth century due to rapid technological progress, we saw a host of new risks of anthropogenic (man-made) disasters emerging. These include, for example, a dramatically increasing number of accidents involving all forms of transport (primarily road transport), industrial accidents (including those at nuclear power plants), shipwrecks (especially non-oil tankers), nuclear tests, increasing environmental imbalance, problems of storage and disposal of various wastes, as well as the threat of using all types of weapons of mass destruction.
All of these and a number of other dangers first appeared and gained importance in recent decades. If we add this to the social conflicts that have existed at all times and are not currently ending or fading, i.e. local wars, as well as international terrorism that has acquired the nature of a most acute global problem in recent years, we have to admit that today no one in the world can be sure that another catastrophe will not affect them personally. People of the most peaceful professions, leading a most ordered life, at any time can become if not victims, but participants of or witnesses to a disaster.