PubMed · 2726558
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M Pownall. After the horror.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2726558/
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On June 5, 2001, Tropical Storm Allison made landfall on Galveston Island, Texas. During the next 2 days, the system soaked much of southeast Texas and south-central Louisiana with more than 10 inches of rain as it moved slowly northward. On June 7, the storm made a clockwise loop back to the southwest, bringing even more rain to already drenched areas. The record rainfall caused billions of dollars in flood-related damage and approximately 25 deaths and led to a presidential disaster, declaration covering 31 Texas counties (Figure 1) and 28 Louisiana parishes. Harris County, Texas (2000 population: 3,400,578), center of the Houston metropolitan area, was among the hardest hit with some areas receiving up to 37 inches of rain in 24 hours (Figure 2). To evaluate the community's immediate public health needs, the City of Houston Department of Health and Human Services (HDHHS) conducted a rapid needs assessment in the areas most affected by flooding. This report summarizes assessment results, which identified increased illness in persons living in flooded homes, suggesting a need for rapid resolution of flood-related damage and the possibility that residents should seek temporary housing during clean-up and repair. The findings underscore the usefulness of rapid needs assessment as a tool to minimize misinformation, identify actual health threats, and ensure delivery of resources to those with the greatest and most immediate need.
There is a new phenomenon in the global arena: environmental refugees. These are people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with the associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty. In their desperation, these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt. Not all of them have fled their countries, many being internally displaced. But all have abandoned their homelands on a semi-permanent if not permanent basis, with little hope of a foreseeable return. In 1995, environmental refugees totalled at least 25 million people, compared with 27 million traditional refugees (people fleeing political oppression, religious persecution and ethnic troubles). The total number of environmental refugees could well double by the year 2010, and increase steadily for a good while thereafter as growing numbers of impoverished people press ever harder on overloaded environments. When global warming takes hold, there could be as many as 200 million people overtaken by sea-level rise and coastal flooding, by disruptions of monsoon systems and other rainfall regimes, and by droughts of unprecedented severity and duration.
We review the "critical point" concept for large earthquakes and enlarge it in the framework of so-called "finite-time singularities." The singular behavior associated with accelerated seismic release is shown to result from a positive feedback of the seismic activity on its release rate. The most important mechanisms for such positive feedback are presented. We solve analytically a simple model of geometrical positive feedback in which the stress shadow cast by the last large earthquake is progressively fragmented by the increasing tectonic stress.