Accidents natural disasters

Electrical Failures and Computer Failures Nuclear Accidents Natural Disasters... 

Exposure to a traumatic event is required for a diagnosis of PTSD. The person must have witnessed, experienced, or have been confronted with a situation that involved definite or threatened death or serious injury, or possible harm to themselves or others. The patient s response to the trauma must include intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Some examples of traumatic events include motor vehicle accidents, natural disasters, rape, being held hostage, child sexual abuse, and witnessing a murder or injury of another. 

Numerous studies and institutions interpret and quantify the vulnerability of chemical sites, processes, and transportation methods to the varied threats of mechanical failure, human error, industrial accident, natural disaster, vandalism, theft, or terrorism, including the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. As a result, most facilities have instituted a combination of voluntary and mandatory security measures to consistently improve their safety record. Nevertheless, it is an incontrovertible fact that no amount of security guards, fences, alarms, or containment structures can entirely eliminate risk at a site that produces, uses, or stores hazardous material. In contrast, when the chemists and engineers responsible for industrial process design seek to modify the process itself, inherently safer conditions can be permanently and irreversibly built into the chemical industry and its facilities. 

Mass casualty incidents (MCI) are defined as situations with a larger number of casualties produced in a relatively short period of time, usually as the result of a single incident such as accidents, natural disasters, or acts of terrorism. These events are also expected to exceed normal capacities of health care systems in terms of logistics, persormel, and maximum achievable individual care (Levi et al. 2002 Arnold et al. 2003). 

Yearly the increase of loss due to the accidents and disasters and natural cataclysms is increasing in 10 — 30%. 

Classes of accidents that can result in financial and personnel losses include more than just natural disasters such as eartliquakes and tornadoes, or occupational personnel inisliaps such as tripping and slipping. These, and several others, tue reviewed in tliis chapter. The section breakdown with respect to content is provided below ... 

Although accidents of these types occur infrequently, they may present a greater potential for loss titan fires, explosions, or spills. Since natural disasters are difficult to predict and prevent, one is obliged to rely more heavily on precautions designed to minimize tlie impact of an occurrence of a natural disaster, such as emergency plamting. 

About 2.5 million tons (2.3 million tonnes) of coal arc burned daily in U.S. power plants. This is equivalent to roughly 21,000 railcars in transit, so it is apparent that coorditiatiiig production and cotistimp-tioii is no easy task. Accidents, rail strikes, natural disasters (e.g., floods that take out bridges and rail lines) and severe weather (e.g., deep river freezes that halt barge traffic) can all severely disrupt deliveries for utility customers dependent on a reliable coal supply for base load plants. Nonetheless, to reduce costs U.S. utilities have significantly reduced typical inventory levels over time. Wliereas a coal inventory of ninety days of supply was once typical, inventories now frequently run in the range of thirty to forty-five days. 

Public accidents are any accidents other than motor-vehicle accidents that occur in the use of public facilities or premises (swimming, hunting, falling, etc.) and deaths resulting from natural disasters even if they happened in the home. 

Emergency response plans (ERPs) are nothing new to chemical industries, since many have developed ERPs to deal with natural disasters, accidents, violence in the workplace, civil unrest, and so on. Because chemical industries are a vital part and ingredient of our way of life, it has been prudent for chemical industries to develop ERPs in order to help ensure the continuous flow of water to the community. However, many chemical industry ERPs developed prior to 9/11 do not explicitly deal with terrorist threats, such as intentional fire, explosion, or contamination. Recently, the U.S. Congress and federal regulators have required chemical industries to prepare or revise, as necessary, an ERP to reflect the findings of their vulnerability assessment and to address terrorist threats. 

The DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for PTSD (cf. Table 5.10) requires that the patient has been exposed to a traumatic stressor. In this context, the concept of traumatic stress is specifically defined as an event involving actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to physical integrity. Such traumatic events include sexual abuse (e.g., rape, molestation), life-threatening accidents, interpersonal violence, natural disasters, and combat. 

Since the appearance of PTSD is directly associated to the occurrence of specific traumatic events, its prevalence will vary significantly in different countries and even within countries. Exposure to war, torture, crime, natural disasters, traumatic social situations, motor vehicle accidents, and other traumatic events will all determine the rate of PTSD. Althongh the risk of experiencing a traumatic event sometime in one s lifetime is over 50%, only one-fifth of those who do so will develop the disorder. Overall, in the United States it is estimated that its lifetime prevalence is about 8% (Kessler et ah, 1995). We would typically look for PTSD in survivors of military combat and sexual assault, but it can also resnlt... 

Risk is the probability of harm or loss and can be considered to be a product of the probability and the severity of specific consequences. Risk, as it relates to hazardous wastes and groundwater contamination, may be defined as the chance that humans or other organisms will sustain adverse effects from exposure to these environmental hazards. Risk is inherent in the life of all organisms—humans, animals, and plants. Tornadoes, landslides, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters carry a risk of injury or death to any living thing in their path. Similarly, human-caused risks such as automobile accidents, plane crashes, and nuclear disasters occur with varying levels of severity. 

In stress-induced anxiety disorders, actual psychological stressors have evoked another version of ongoing limbic alert. And in the wake of severe stress, such patients often can have occasional full-blown panic attacks. These disorders emerge in response to life-threatening stressors (natural disasters, combat, assaults, automobile accidents) and in response to a host of emotional stressors (loss of a job, serious illness in a relative, marital separation). In many cases, the anxiety symptoms can be seen as normal responses (that is, they are not pathological). However, the symptoms can be severe enough to warrant treatment. 

Cormtless thousands of people are exposed to natural disasters and traumatic medical crises, witness deaths or gruesome accidents, or are victims of some form of terrorism. 

The October 2001 anthrax events revealed that terrorist attacks do not have to cause many casnalties to create mass anxiety and disruption (1,4). Other than that experience, however, we have little historic data to tell us how the public will react following a large-scale biologic, chemical or radiological attack (1). Most available information comes from studies of pubhc reactions to natural disasters, conventional terrorist events, such as the Sarin attack in Tokyo and the September 11 attack, and nuclear accidents (1,5,6). Additional information is available from stnd-ies of soldier s reactions to military campaigns involving toxic agents (1). 

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