What is the difference between disaster and catastrophe

In impacted Florida communities after Hurricane Andrew, many social workers had no way of communicating with or being reached by past or possible new users of their services. The general inability to provide usual professional or technical services happens, if at all, only on a very small scale in major disasters, and if it does, lasts only for relatively short periods of time.

Planning which assumes that local community officials should and will take an active work role in the immediate post-impact periods of a major disaster is very realistic and a valid view. This can be assumed. A negative consequence from outsiders having to come in is that the local-outsider organizational friction that only occasionally arises in disasters can become a major problem in a catastrophe.

In Hurricane Katrina the above and related problems have and are surfacing. There was certainly a great deal of work-family role conflict in key emergency organizations.

At least anecdotal stories suggest that only about two-thirds of police officers reported for and remained on duty that there were no such reports about the fire department may indicate additional organizational problems in the police department. Local mental health and welfare agencies also became inoperative.

As outsiders move more and more to the front, there will be inevitable clashes between the locals and those from outside the local community. Help from nearby communities cannot be provided. In many catastrophes not only are all or most of the residents in a particular community affected, but often those in nearby localities are also impacted, This has often happened in the typical typhoons that hit the Philippines, and this also occurred in many areas around Chernobyl after the accident at the nuclear plant there.

In short, catastrophes tend to affect multiple communities, and often have a regional character. This kind of crisis, for instance, can and does affect the massive convergence that typically descends upon any stricken community after a disaster. In a disaster there is usually only one major target for the convergence after a disaster. In a catastrophe many nearby communities not only cannot contribute to the inflow, but they themselves can become competing sources for an eventual unequal inflow of goods, personnel, supplies and communication.

For example, under other circumstances, the devastated small cities in southern Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina could have anticipated a convergence of help and assistance from the major metropolitan city in the area, but of course there was none at all. Most, if not all, of the everyday community functions are sharply and concurrently interrupted.

In a catastrophe, most if not all places of work, recreation, worship and education such as schools totally shut down and the lifeline infrastructures are so badly disrupted that there will be stoppages or extensive shortages of electricity, water, mail or phone services as well as other means of communication and transportation. In such kinds of situations, the damage to residential areas tends to be correlated with similar destruction of nonresidential areas.

Even in major disasters, there is no such massive-across the board disruption of community life even if particular neighborhoods may be devastated, as happened in the Mexico City earthquake of when life in many contiguous areas went on almost normally.

Similarly this was true of the Northridge, Los Angeles earthquake of ; for instance, 12, people went as usual to the horseracing track in that California area the afternoon of the earthquake. In Katrina, there was across-the-board and almost total disruption of community functions. In the absence of systematic studies that will take months to appear, we can only have educated guesses about what happened in the face of the massive disruption.

It appears that one of the earliest consequences was that there was much decentralized decision making, particularly of an emergent nature. This could be seen in the evacuation of the hospitals, in the preparations for impact in many hotels, and in much of what happened in the French Quarter in New Orleans.

As the crisis evolved, decentralized decision-making continued to be the norm in entities ranging from households to organizations. And this continued as the immediate crisis lessened, and different social entities and categories started to return to New Orleans. The idea that there could be any centralized control imposed on these disparate decisions and varying community activities flies in the face of what researchers have found occurs in crises.

The mass media system especially in recent times socially constructs catastrophes even more than they do disasters. All disasters evoke at least local mass media coverage. Some major disasters can attract attention from outside the community media, but usually only for a few days.

In catastrophes compared to disasters, the mass media differ in certain important aspects. There is much more and longer coverage by national mass media. This is partly because local coverage is reduced if not totally down or out. There is even more of a gulf between the content of the electronic media and the print media with the latter focusing on looting and other dramatic visuals.

There is far less of the normal filtering and screening of stories especially in the electronic media. Some of the more important consequences of these kinds of media activity were that in Katrina there was far more diffusion of rumors than occurs in disasters. While looting did occur, which is atypical for disasters, the anti-social behavior was widely depicted as typical when the prosocial behavior was by far the norm it should also be noted that a catastrophic situation is only one condition necessary to have mass looting.

Finally, because of the previous five processes, the political arena becomes even more important. All disasters of course involve, at a minimum, local political considerations. But it is a radically different situation when the national government and the very top officials become directly involved.

Even in very major disasters, a symbolic presence is often all that is necessary. In catastrophes, that symbolism is not enough, particularly for the larger society. Part of this stems from the fact that catastrophes as happened in Katrina force to the surface racial, class and ethnic differences that are papered over during routine times. It is easy to take partisan political advantage of such uncoverings especially when they go against widely held cultural values and norms in democratic societies.

Another reason is that organizational weaknesses of responding organizations come even more to the surface. The structural weakness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA as a result of its subordinate position in the Department of Homeland Security DHS , as some disaster researchers had predicted for at least three years, became a major problem in the response. The isolation in the Bahamas was not so much about distance but geography. Islands that are accessible only by boat or plane become more isolated when docks and airports are not usable.

Each of the categories on the chart can be similarly examined to see what makes Hurricane Dorian a catastrophe not a disaster. Funders should think about how to give now to support relief and early recovery and how to plan to invest again in six months, a year or three years. Before anything can be done, the piles of debris must be removed and the basic infrastructure replaced — electricity, water, roads, telecommunications etc.

In Marsh Harbour alone , it is estimated that there are two million cubic meters or about 1. That is just one community on one island!

Given the small population compared to some urban catastrophes, extensive external help will be needed. Residents of Abaco were mostly employed in service of tourism or of the wealthier residents on Grand Bahama. For them to recover, they are going to need temporary shelter near to their homes, assistance in rebuilding and employment.

When a disaster affects you, your friends or family and your community, we know that it will always feel like a catastrophe.

But we hope this helps provide an understanding of the scope of a catastrophic disaster and why significant funding for recovery efforts is absolutely essential. Tanya Gulliver-Garcia is the director of learning and partnerships at the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. She can be reached at Tanya. Improve this question. Sven Yargs k 30 30 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Interesting question, my perception is that they overlap, but disaster is best suited for one-off events with immediate consequences e.

Don't know how I'd check or back that up, though — user56reinstatemonica8. There is so much overlap in those definitions that distinguishing characteristics are probably impossible. The only nuance I can offer is that calamity is usually something unforeseen and precipitous, but that is not necessarily a requirement. Catastrophe has a very specific meaning, deriving from Aristotle. Paraphrasing him, the catastrophe is an element of a tragedy and comes directly from the hero's realization of his or her tragic flaw.

It represents the demise of that hero and those people around them, and it precipitates the conclusion of the tragedy. Literally, it means an "overturning". We retain mainly this sense of it in contemporary usage. Barmar If you think my comment is not useful, flag it for a moderator or give me meaningful feedback. Otherwise, understand that I am giving the Aristotlean meaning to provide a little context. That in the same way that you might provide some constructive feedback to a person looking for the difference between destroy and decimate.

Barmar, I thought it was nine out of ten. In any event, the classical origins of words are extremely relevant when it comes to trying to explain the nuances between three close synonyms. If you don't care about that sort of thing, you're a thesaurus. Tragedy , for instance, still has a certain air of the theatrical to it. Show 2 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Here is how Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms distinguishes the three words from one another: disaster, calamity, catastrophe, cataclysm are comparable when they denote an event or situation that is regarded as a terrible misfortune.

Here is Hayakawa's discussion of the group as a whole and of the three relevant words: These words refer to misfortunes that result in grave loss or heavy casualties. James Fernald, English Synonyms, Antonyms, and Prepositions offers a view of how the words seemed to differ more than a century ago: A cataclysm or catastrophe is some great convulsion or momentous event that may or may not be a cause of misery to man.

Also of possible interest are the usage frequencies of disaster blue line , catastrophe red line , and calamity green line over the period —, as reflected in this Ngram chart: In , calamity was far more common in published English texts than either of the other two words.

Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. Sven Yargs Sven Yargs k 30 30 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. To me, calamity just doesn't sound as serious as the other two words - maybe that explains its decline in popularity?

Add a comment. Disaster: an unfortunate event causing destruction.