Hurricane Dean strikes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/caribbean/news/story/2007/08/070817_deanstrikes.shtml

In St Lucia, Martinique, and Dominica, the authorities are counting the cost of the damage inflicted by Hurricane Dean.

The storm strengthened into a Category 4 Hurricane after roaring through the eastern Caribbean.

Parts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, were on hurricane watch on Saturday.

A weekend hurricane watch also remains in place for Jamaica and parts of Cuba.

The British Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico were on tropical storm watch. The US National Hurricane Centre expected this to be discontinued later on Saturday.

Several cataclysms have wrought much damage to this Earth, and rather recently too. Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, the Leyte landslide and the recent Peruvian earthquake stand as testimony to this. Some of these, in fact, have been affected by human interference, or given slow relief.

For example, the response to Hurricane Katrina was shown to be severely slow, with federal aid only coming 5 days after the incident. Preparation was also shown to be lacking, as the main emphasis was placed on evacuation, a plan which did not account for those who could not leave under their own power, such as the elderly or disabled.

It has been theorized that the impact of Hurricane Katrina was multiplied by global warming generating ideal conditions for hurricanes. Mining activities may have caused the Leyte landslide. To be brief, it is not paranoid to say that human activity is responsible for the growing impact of natural disasters. Unpreparedness and global warming are not the only factors.

In the wake of Hurricane Dean, police were forced to step in to stop looting in Mexico. After a disaster, the opportunists will naturally turn up to get what they can. Why do I raise these points? These are to show that the natural disaster is significant, but the human disaster is never to be overlooked.

In my opinion, whenever people see a new disaster on the horizon, preparation for the disaster is as key as the preparation of the aftermath. When disasters strike and preparation is wanting, we have to learn to better avoid such things. When looting is abound, a police task force is sent promptly. However, this is merely attacking the symptoms of a problem and not the cause.

Areas likely to be hit, or to cause problems must be found, and the problems rectified. If global warming is indeed likely to cause future problems with hurricanes and tornadoes, we should try to avoid this bleak future. While many elements of a natural disaster are out of our control, we should aim to prevent them as par as possible, and to deal with the consequences effectively and quickly.