Why do people choose to live in disaster areas?

4月16日，一场强烈的地震袭击了日本，然后在同一天晚些时候，一次毁灭性地震袭击了厄瓜多尔。在厄瓜多尔，死亡人数目前超过650，对建筑物和基础设施的尚未造成的损害尚无造成的损害。

While such major quakes are thankfully rare,earthquakes on the whole are common。仅去年，就在日本注册了801枚地震，全球有50,000多个地震。

这张照片论文着眼于选择在容易受到地震，火山，飓风和海啸的地区定居的人们的生活，并遇到了一些监视和研究这些地区风险的科学家。

太少的防雷层建筑物

Studies show thatindigneouspeople who lived in what is now called Mexico before the Spaniards’ arrival already talked about earthquakes.

Morelia, in modern-day Mexico, is a city of one million people in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, where geological faults cause regular earthquakes.

每天，72岁的安妮塔·奥多尼斯（AnitaOrdoñez）都想起了她居住的地质不稳定。她的房子越来越偏转，客厅的墙壁上有突出的裂缝。

“Researchers from the university came to see what was going on and promised to come back to help, but never did,” she tellsscidev.net。

“Although there are experts on earthquakeengineeringin Morelia, a very high percentage of housing is not built with the seismic history of the place in mind,” says Víctor Hugo Garduño Monroy, a geologist at the Michoacana University of San Nicolás de Hidalgo, in Morelia.

“It is true that engineering has made great progress in the construction of big and small earthquake-proof buildings, but it is also true that we still don’t build [enough] structures that respond to the geological realities.”

Thirty minutes to evacuate

在厄瓜多尔，国家理工学院地球物理学院的科学家一直在监视Cotopaxi，这是一座5,897米高的火山，距离基托50公里，数十年来。自1738年以来，它爆发了50次以上。

“If there are eruptions of any size from Cotopaxi, the main phenomena that occur and can pose threats to the nearby communities are a rain of ash, mudflows and rocky debris. They can also have a significant impact on the economy, as was the case with the eruptions in August-September last year,” Mario Ruiz, director of the Geophysical Institute, explains toscidev.net。

Silvana Hinojosa是一名27岁的学生，在爆发期间住在基托（Quito），Vivdly回忆起一集：

她说：“那是一个星期六，当时许多人曾经来到市场。”“当局下达了撤离整个城市的命令，称我们只有30分钟。人们到处奔跑 - 这是混乱 - 表明显然没有人准备。”

在飓风的道路上

In the Caribbean, hurricanes happen so regularly that they mark a seasonal cycle.

The region’s hurricane season runs from June to November, with the most severe storms typically arriving from June to October.

牙买加经常被飓风袭击。

“最引人注目的事件包括1951年著名的风暴查理，1988年的吉尔伯特飓风和2004年的伊万，对整个岛屿产生了影响，而其他事件仅影响了岛上的岛屿，无论是沿着南部走廊还是东北走廊的岛屿在某些室内社区中偶尔会发生洪水或滑坡。”罗纳德·杰克逊（Ronald Jackson）Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, tellsscidev.net。

He says that Jamaica’s entire population of nearly three million people is at risk from hurricanes, although the extent of the impact would depend on their level of exposure and vulnerability.

“In 1988, Hurricane Gilbert displaced nearly 800,000 people,” he says. “A storm of a similar nature and trajectory would potentially result in much less displacement now, due to better building techniques and improved preparedness.”

杰克逊说，尽管整个岛上仍有大约470个脆弱的社区，但飓风现在将在100,000至200,000中取代。

According to Jackson, Hurricane Ivan provided a wake-up call in 2004, and preparedness has significantly improved ever since.

“有由国家驱动的准备运动由灾难预防和应急办公室的魔法值gement，以及私营部门驱动的活动，广告，宣传运动。”他说。

Local media broadcasts programmes at the start of the hurricane season to promote awareness and readiness among local people and government agencies.

每年，美国机构国家海洋和大气管理局（NOAA）还邀请居住在容易发生热带气旋的地区，例如飓风和台风Hurricane Preparedness Week，旨在为公民准备这样的风暴袭击土地的活动。

The dock that crossed the Pacific

The magnitude 9 undersea earthquake that struck off northeastern Japan on 11 March 2011, triggered a devastating tsunami that swept away buildings and pieces of infrastructure, including a large dock.

在6月5日following year, the dock washed up on the west coast of the United States, near Newport, Oregon. The city also hosts a NOAA research station and the Hatfield Marine Science Center of Oregon State University, both of which study tsunamis.

Part of the dock was turned into a monument dedicated to those killed by Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.

该码头还提醒纽波特居民，该市的一部分容易受到海啸的影响。

俄勒冈州立大学教授帕特里克·科科伦（Patrick Corcoran）说：“但是码头也加剧了人们对地震总是发生的误解。”

“When I asked people on the beach what they would do if they felt an earthquake right now, they had no idea,” he says. “They were more aware but not prepared.”

Newport lies beside the Cascadia subduction zone, a 1,100-kilometre-long offshore zone where a vast dense chunk of the Earth’s crust is being forced under a less dense section. For this reason, the city is at risk of earthquakes of around magnitude 9 — megaquakes that can create large tsunamis similar to Japan’s in 2011.

“Research now indicates that there have been 41 magnitude 8 and 9 events here in the past 10,000 years. They normally occur once every 250 or 500 years,” Corcoran says, noting that the last event was in 1700 and that there is an estimated 37 per cent chance of a high-magnitude quake within the next 50 years.

Why do people stay?

我为这个故事采访的人分享了他们自己独特的生活经历，这些经历在自然灾害的迫在眉睫威胁下。

Some of them were simply unaware of the risk. But even after having discussed the dangers of living in a certain area, many of them told me that they wouldn’t want to move elsewhere.

美国加利福尼亚州拉古纳海滩的海啸危害标志。信用：德里克·E·贝尔德（Derek E. Baird）。

I asked高科·伊祖米（Takako Izumi）, a researcher at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science at Tohoku University, Japan, why some people choose to live in areas that are prone to natural disasters even when their lives and assets are at risk.

她说，没有明确的答案，尽管最大的问题仍然缺乏意识：“人们不了解潜在的风险。”

Takako also notes that severe disasters are rare, therefore the notion of danger doesn’t easily sink in. If people cannot learn from experience, they do not know how to protect themselves, especially without appropriate early-warning systems. For example, without taking part in an evacuation exercise, people would not know where to go. And even if they knew, Takako adds, often there are no financial subsidies for relocation or reconstruction.

Ultimately, she says, the scientific and political issue of risk reduction boils down to public perception. A severe disaster may occur once every ten, 50 or 100 years, and most people, including politicians, are unwilling to invest in mitigation and preparedness for such rare events.

The cost of reducing risk can also be cultural and emotional. For many, a disaster-prone area is also where their ancestors have been living for generations, and abandoning the place where they grew up would leave them uprooted. Sometimes, the dangerous life is preferable to a loss of place and culture from which there is no recovery.

安娜·克劳迪娅·尼波特（Ana Claudia Nepote）的其他报告。