Natural Disasters

For more than a week, the Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada has burned, bringing a halt to up to a quarter of the country’s oil production! Over 100,000 residents of the area have been evacuated and 20 percent of homes have been destroyed in a fire that experts expect to take months to completely put out (BBC, May 8, 2016).

“Robert Glasser, the special representative of the secretary general for disaster risk reduction [of the United Nations], said that with the world already ‘falling short’ in its response to humanitarian emergencies, things would only get worse as climate change adds to the pressure... He also predicted a rise in the number of simultaneous disasters. ‘As the odds of any one event go up, the odds of two happening at the same time are more likely.

Earthquakes are causing increasing concern year after year.