In the social sphere, the word disaster It is used to refer to the episodes in which an event occurs that causes a large part of a city or a country to be destroyed with enormous civil and material losses. People’s capacity to react is overwhelmed, including institutions prepared to react to disasters of this kind.
The natural disasters They are the product of the action of nature, however, sometimes these are due in turn to human activity: the pollution of the environment and the erroneous and irrational exploitation of renewable natural resources produces a number of negative effects on nature. , which has been shown to have an impact on this type of disaster in the long run.
Technological disasters
The technological disasters are those accidents produced from the handling of dangerous equipment, which cause damage to the environment, health, the socioeconomic component and also to the productive infrastructure of a nation or a system. For instance: pipeline explosion in Nigeria, tragedy in Amuay, in Venezuela.
For being about technological advances, it is common for development to take place in a planned way, and equipment to evolve taking into account the possibilities of failure: a technological disaster implies the overcoming of all these alternatives, completely saturating the operation that is expected of the equipment or chemical substances .
Examples of technological disasters
| Methyl isocyanate gas leak in India | The Bhopal disaster in India. |
| Pipeline explosion in Nigeria | Chernobyl explosion. |
| Explosion in a Virginia coal mine. | Fire of a fuel depot in Egypt. |
| Explosion of a French explosives freighter for the First World War. | The Citrarum River, in Indonesia. |
| Explosions at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. | Pollution in the city of Linfen, China. |
| Tragedy in Amuay, in Venezuela. | Explosion of a chemical plant in Germany |
| 2002 Explosion of a munitions depot in Lagos | An oil pipeline explosion in Brazil. |
| The city of Peshawar in Pakistan. | Ammonia explosion in the US |
| The Texas city disaster, in a fire aboard the SS Grandcamp cargo ship. | Garbage Island in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. |
| Pollution in Lake Karachay, Russia | Chain of explosions at an LP gas plant in Mexico |
Prevention and safety
The incidence of technological accidents it was on the rise as technology progressed, above all as a result of the production, storage and use of a greater number of new substances, and due to the invention of new technologies.
This is why much progress has been made in terms of prevention and alert about these situations. Any harmful or harmful material that during some of the stages of its generation may give off fumes, gases, vapors, dusts or fibers of a dangerous nature (due to explosive, flammable, toxic, infectious, radioactive or irritant) is considered a dangerous substance and puts into alerts those who manipulate it.
The industrial Security, the preparation of regulatory documents, the permanent updating of risk studies, drills and supervision in terms of protection against possible technological disasters contribute to giving a better response and therefore to reducing possible risks, so that the Most countries establish regulations in this regard.
While generally the effects of technological disasters are seen directly at the time these disasters occur, there are times when the consequences are long-term. Chemical contamination of water, contamination of the soil, the food chain or common household products, as well as adverse effects on health or the environment can last for years, being the consequence of a disaster of this kind.