An Israeli friend was asking me about the Oklahoma tornadoes earlier tonight. I tried to explain the concept of “tornado alley” to him, and I believe I was at least somewhat successful. He was incredulous that people would live there, knowing that these tornadoes were common. I asked him, “Where should people live in the U.S.? California has earthquakes, the east coast has hurricanes, and the north has blizzards.”
That got me thinking - where are the places in the world that are least affected by natural disasters?
I’m not sure that a blizzard counts as a natural disaster but maybe that comes from living in the Snow Belt. Blizzards where blizzards normally show up do not rise to the level of disaster.
I guess in America the prize would go to the midland Carolinas. No significant earthquake or blizzards and hurricanes rarely get inland enough to cause major damage. The Midwest has tornadoes, Florida has hurricanes, the Pacific states have some combination of volcanoes and earthquakes, and the Rockies and Appalachians and Northeast have enough blizzards that they would count despite my previous points.
Depends on your definition of “natural disaster.” If earthquakes are on the list, that immediately rules out huge swaths of the earth’s surface. Any place else will almost certainly still be vulnerable to floods, drought, wildfires, hazardous weather, or some combination of all that.
Saudi Arabia gets pretty damn hot and dry, but AFAIK the weather is pretty consistent; I can’t say that I’ve heard of sudden downpours or tornadoes there, and wildfires are unlikely since there’s not a whole lot growing in most places. Seismically active? Don’t know. You’ll have to inquire locally.
Central Panama is pretty free of major natural disasters. We’re outside the path of hurricanes. (They swing north before they reach us.) The center of the country isn’t subject to major earthquakes (we do feel occasional ones, but I haven’t heard of any that have done any damage), although the west and east of the country sometimes get them. The climate is equable without extremes of either heat or cold. It’s too wet for forest fires or other destructive wildfires.
The major kind of disaster we are affected by is flooding due to heavy rains, but even these are usually pretty localized.
Floods are usually less localized than tornadoes, and cause more damage. Is there something unique about the geography of Panama that restricts flooding to very small areas?
The Pacific Northwest is pretty safe, as long as you’re not dumb enough to build in a flood plain. We do get a serious snow storm about once a decade, but those only knock out your power and block the roads for a while.
The most common natural disasters (wildfires and mudslides) out here are the sort of thing you get anywhere people build without thinking(except maybe in deserts and swamps).
Well, except for the earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes.
I live in the PNW and the total ignorance of our potential weaknesses up here is endlessly amazing to me. Here are some examples:
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[li]100,000 people around Puyallup are just waiting to buried under 30 feet of lahars from Mt Rainier (cite, which is from 2001 just to show how long we’ve been ignoring the risk).[/li][li]I think I remember hearing something about that Mt St Helens thing. I’ll let you Google that one.[/li][li]And how about this quote for Earthquake danger: “Since 1870, there have been six earthquakes in the Puget Sound basin with measured or estimated magnitudes of 6.0 or larger, making the quiescence from 1965 to 2001 one of the longest in the region’s history.” (Source)[/li][/ul]
All that said, parts of the PNW can be pretty safe. I’m a fair bit north of Seattle and far enough from the coast that I personally am not likely to be damaged by any of these events, or a flood for that matter. As long as I prepare for disruptions in social services and transportation (such as a good supply of food on hand), I should come through OK.
I seem to have a vague recollection that Australia is supposed to be pretty seismically dead. Stay away from the coast and that would cross a lot of things off the list.
I will hazard a guess that a lot of (not all) places safe from the risks of natural disasters are not desirable places to live. Attractive geography (financial, strategic, and cosmetic, etc.) is caused by active forces of nature. Why else would people choose to live in San Francisco? It has a lot of things to offer and is worth the risk.
I live near Sacramento, CA. It is far from the seismic zones of the Bay Area - a lot of businesses relocated their data centers to this area after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The weather here is pretty boring and predictable. Very low risk of a tornado, altho they sometimes do appear in the region. No hurricaines, no blizzards. We do get the occasional heat wave. Fires are probably the biggest threat.
Portions of the area are prone to flooding, and there is a lot of handwringing about what neighborhoods are in flood zones - some areas are protected by a system of levies and weirs - sounds familiar? But, those areas can be avoided. This is a fairly low risk area for natural disasters.
I guess Ireland is pretty much natural disaster free, no hurricanes or tornadoes here. Hell you cant even get frostbite or sunstroke, unless you fall asleep in a fridge or something. We don’t even have any dangerous flora or fauna, just grass and cows.
The UK is pretty free of natural disasters. The maritime climate keeps us temperate and yet doesn’t spawn any real nasty storms. No extreme droughts or freezes, bush fires are unlikely, earthquakes are rare and minor, all our volcanos are dead.
The only real problem is potential flooding from the sea but even that is limited. Go further north, south or deeper into the continent and temperature extremes become an issue so…possibly it is us?
ETA - just seen bucketybuck’s post and yes, I guess we could extend the thinking to the whole of the British Isles,
Single tornadoes may affect a small area, but there are many tornadoes every year. So the total area affected by tornadoes may be fairly large even if that affected by a single tornado is local. And the area that may be affected by tornadoes in the US is very large.
Panama is very mountainous, and most of the rivers are fairly short. The area affected by flooding includes a few of the largest river basins like the Tuira and Chagres, and some low-lying areas near the coast in Panama and Bocas del Toro provinces. Floods don’t affect too much of the country.
Defining natural disasters as events that kill, maim, or disrupt the lives of many, many people, I’d argue that Chicago has a pretty good record of being free of those things. I’ve lived in the area for many decades, and can remember only a handful of dangerous tornadoes in the surrounding counties, but the city has been pretty much free of these things. There have also been the occasional overflowing river in the suburbs, and that’s a pain, but hardly of natural disaster proportions. No flooding from the lake, and no earthquakes. Nothing that oceans spawn, e.g. hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. It feels pretty much protected from assault by Ma Nature. We clearly have significant political issues but those are unnatural disasters.
Anywhere in the mid-Atlantic would qualify, really. At least, those areas a bit inland.
Yes, we can get unusual rainstorms that might cause flash flooding, and the odd hurricane hit but those are quite rare. Heavy now does happen but not especially often (2009-2010 being a notable exception). Tornadoes certainly can happen but are also highly unusual. We get less of those than the Carolinas anyway (as a Doper found 2 years ago in Fayetteville :().
Of course, we did have that one earthquake, and there are politicians running around which I’m sure spews enough hot air to affect the environment ;).
Blizzards don’t seem like a big deal, because they don’t usually cause much property damage, but they still kill people. A bad blizzard can kill more people than a typical hurricane.
There are only a few places in the world that are not subject to the natural disaster of too much rain or not enough rain. The rest of the world has catastrophic droughts and floods, which are natural disasters that actually make a lot of places uninhabitable at all, and militates against agricultural or economic development comparable to that of the temperate zones.
Very few people in Oklahoma personally know someone whose life has been directly affected by a tornado, and over a lifetime the number who are actually harmed by tornadoes is smaller than those affected by car crashes or civilian crime or being sent off to war or high school sports injuries or domestic violence or falling down the stairs drunk or drowning in a swimming pool or accidentally (or intentionally) shooting each other with firearms…