Modern Japanese building codes reflect a long history of dealing with disasters.
Natural disasters always have occurred. Earthquakes, floods, wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes happened before human activity and likely will happen long afterward. But what really makes a disaster is how humans react to the occurrence of a natural hazard, and disaster management has gone through many changes.
Ancient History
Long before there was an America, Red Cross or FEMA, people were learning to deal with disasters. The Japanese have been keeping accurate records of earthquakes and tsunamis long before contact with Europeans. Some of these records even have been used to help estimate the recurrence interval of known seismic events such as the massive earthquakes on the West Coast, which caused tsunamis across the Pacific Ocean in Japan.
Early America
For a long time in America, disasters were thought of as acts of God, events that mankind had no power to prevent. Moreover, political manipulation prevented many from understanding the true nature of hazards. Real estate moguls in California made sure the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was called "The Great Fire" in newspapers.
People could understand fires; they were commonplace. But for most, to think that the ground wasn't always going to remain still was much harder to relate to. Instead of advocating for better building codes, or using science to better understand the hazard, the real danger was covered up and dismissed as something completely out of human control.
FEMA and Legislative Acts
The idea that disasters are punishment for human sin or simply acts of God that we have no influence over has been replaced by management, policy and practices based on geological and meteorological science. Legislation in the United States that established the Federal Emergency Management Administration set precedence for federal government taking authority in major disasters.
With FEMA in place, once a governor asked for and was granted a presidential declaration of disaster, the resources of the federal government and the National Guard could then be sent to aid in recovery.
The Stafford Act of 1988 further cemented FEMA's rights and responsibilities by giving it the fiscal power to review and grant disaster relief loans. In 2000, the Disaster Mitigation Act helped encourage preventative measures by reimbursing a portion of state's expenditures on disaster planning.
Disaster Risk Reduction
Although having cohesive emergency management practices remains vital to saving lives during a disaster, newer methods of handling disasters attempt to reduce or even eliminate some of the risks long before the earth quakes or rivers flood.
Disaster risk reduction attempts to look back at the root causes of risks and vulnerabilities in a society, state, town or even a single household. Factors can be broad or specific, depending on the scope of risk and vulnerability assessments.
Changing Ideas, Changing Practices
New ideas and methods of preventing disasters always are emerging. Educating people from a young age about natural hazards is a new focus for disaster management, and one that promises to benefit many people down the road. As more people understand that there is no "natural" disaster, rather it is how our society handles a natural hazard that causes disasters, more resilient communities can be built and loss of life prevented.
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