Can you stop a disaster? ⏲️ 6 Minute English

Hello. This is Six Minute

English from BBC Learning English

I'm Beth and I am Neil.

Now, depending on how you look at it,

Roy Sullivan was either the luckiest or the unluckiest man alive.

Working as a US park ranger, Roy was struck by lightning

on seven different occasions and survived them all.

But Roy isn't the only victim of an unpredictable natural event,

sometimes called an act of God. In the last decade

an estimated half a million people have died globally

in natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and cyclones.

In 2023 at least sixty thousand people died after earthquakes in Turkey and Syria

and things are predicted to get worse in the future due to climate change

and increasing populations.

So can anything be done to stop natural disasters or like Roy Sullivan

should we accept that some things are beyond our control? In this programme,

we'll be finding out and, as usual,

we will be learning some useful new vocabulary, too.

Throughout history,

floods, when there's too much water, and droughts, when there isn't enough,

have caused most human deaths,

but with climate change, new dangers are emerging. But do you know

Neil, which natural disaster is most responsible for human deaths?

Now, um,

I'm not sure but you do hear a lot

about terrible earthquakes in the news, don't you?

Yeah, probably earthquakes.

Now, in her job as professor of hazard

and risk at Durham University, Lucy Easthope

attends conferences to advise on planning for natural emergencies.

But according to Lucy, describing disasters as natural is a mistake,

as she told BBC Radio Four programme Inside Science.

Probably the worst thing you can do at a disaster conference

is describe it as a natural disaster because that's the hopelessness

right there. The 'natural' implies a sense of fatalism and a sense of

'let's give up now', whereas in fact, these events...

there's huge elements that we have in our grasp to both prevent,

and more importantly perhaps, prevent additional harm.

Professor Easthope thinks calling disasters, 'natural' is fatalistic.

It involves the belief that people are powerless to change events.

Although no one can prevent an earthquake,

there are ways people can reduce the damage done - what Professor Easthope

calls additional harm.

Often, this additional harm,

things like the spread of diseases

or destroyed roads and buildings, are worse than the disaster itself.

Fortunately, ways to limit

the damage are within our grasp.

If something is within your grasp, it is very likely that you will achieve it.

It may be impossible to stop disasters from happening,

but there are ways to limit

the number of deaths. An earthquake in the middle of the ocean

is less of a disaster

than in a populated city.

So one technological solution involves computers

mapping geological movements to identify places at risk.

But low tech solutions can be just as effective.

Bangladesh has seen a hundred-fold decrease in cyclone deaths

since the introduction of its new monitoring and alert system.

Ilan Kelman,

Professor of disasters and health at UCL, has been involved in the project

and told BBC Radio Four's Inside Science, how it worked.

What Bangladesh has done... has realised, we cannot have

one hundred thousand people dying in a cyclone each time.

So, in addition to having people on bicycles

with megaphones going out and saying, 'look a cyclone is coming,

please get to shelter'. People in the danger zones have grown up accepting

that their shelters will be safe, knowing where the evacuation routes are,

but most importantly, that they can return afterwards to their homes

and to their livelihoods because they've built the infrastructure

and they've built their jobs in order to avoid being destroyed by the cyclone.

One low-tech solution

involves people on bicycles

shouting warnings about approaching cyclones into a megaphone,

a handheld cone-shaped device that makes your voice louder

when you speak into it.

Once people know the danger,

they can start the evacuation – moving people from a dangerous place

to somewhere safe.

The Bangladeshis have built shelters which protect everyone:

children, the old and sick,

even animals, so that when the cyclone is over,

they can safely return to their livelihoods – their job

and other activities which give them the things they need to live.

Well, it's great to see people working together to survive cyclones.

Earlier, we were talking about other natural disasters.

We were and I asked you

which disaster you thought caused

most deaths and you said you thought maybe earthquakes which was... the right

answer, which is why these new ideas to save lives are so hopeful.

OK, let's recap the vocabulary

we've learnt from this programme on natural disasters.

Unpredictable events or catastrophes which cannot be controlled by humans

and which are sometimes called acts of God.

Fatalism is the belief that people are powerless to change

the way things happen.

If something is within your grasp, it is likely to be accomplished.

A megaphone is a handheld cone-shaped device that makes your voice louder

when you speak into it so that people can hear you from far away.

Evacuation means moving people from a dangerous place

to somewhere safe.

And finally, livelihood is your job or the work that gives you money

to buy the things you need to live. Once again our six minutes are up.

Goodbye, everyone. Bye.