How do you protect our environment from natural calamities?

Answer 1

Natural calamities can be classified into major and minor types depending upon their

potential to cause damage to life and property. While natural calamities like earthquakes,

drought, floods and cyclones could be regarded as major; hailstorms, avalanches,

landslides, building collapse, etc., can be categorised as minor calamities.

Minor calamities also occur without any appreciable degree of forewarning and

cause damage to properties and lives. If we are careful, we can identify such disaster

prone areas and take precautionary measures. What is needed is the general awareness

and ability of local administration to take preventive measures.

Calamities of Meteorological Origin

Parts of India suffer regularly from the effects or results of meteorological hazards,

in the form of cyclones, drought, floods, heatwaves and severe storms. Disasters

caused by these hazards often take a large toll in terms of lives, mainly because India

is densely populated and is not well prepared.

In many cold countries, extreme cold is a major meteorological hazard. In India

too, extreme cold during winter can cause large number of deaths every year. Many

people become vulnerable because they are not well prepared and get trapped in

very cold conditions without adequate protection. Lack of preparedness takes a

heavy toll in summer too! So many lives are lost due to heatwave in summer in

north India every year. We just take it as a routine occurrence and do not take any

preventive measures.(Ravinder Shrivastav)