Post #1

       According to the summary given by Dr. Ana García-García, there are natural processes that occur in the world and will never be labeled as a hazard. To me this makes sense, a hazard is something that is considered dangerous and if there is no one near that can be affected by a natural process it can not be labeled as something that is putting people at risk. However, when there are people around the path of a natural process it then can have an affect on a person and be hazardous. 

       A natural hazard can then be further broken down into two categories that classify the magnitude of the hazard. First, a disaster is a hazard that “ten or more people die, a hundred or more people are affected, a declared state of emergency, or a requested international assistance has been made” (García-García). The other category of hazards is called a catastrophe. In a catastrophe, there is a much bigger disaster that consumes a large amount of money and time spent in order to restore the ares back into it’s original state or one similar. 

The first thing that ever came to my mind when I though of Fiji was an expensive bottle of water. Of course I knew it was an entire country and an island, I did not know much else other than it was beautiful. After some research, I found out that Fiji is located about 1,960 miles from Sydney, Australia in the southwest Pacific Ocean. There are 332 islands that make up the country of Fiji. It’s 849,000 (2010) islanders make up the population living on about 100 of the islands in Fiji. The final fact that I found particularly interesting, was that Fiji did not have it’s independence from Britain until just recently in 1970. (Fiji)

       I have decided that this semester I would take a closer look at the country of Fiji and relate what I have learned in class to the actual events that have happened here. In an article I found, one of the biggest natural processes that occurred in Fiji was in 1931 (Yeo). A hurricane and flood stole the life of approximately 225 people on the island. Because of this is well exceeds the ten people minimum for a natural disaster and took time and money to restore, I would think that this even would be labeled a catastrophe.

Fiji. (n.d.). Retrieved February 03, 2016, from http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/oceania/fj.htm#page

Yeo, S. W. and Blong, R. J. (2010), Fiji's worst natural disaster: the 1931 hurricane and flood. Disasters, 34: 657–683. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7717.2010.01163.x