Geography case studies

Place detail: Irrawaddy delta, Burma 

Date: May 2008

Cost of damage: $4 billion

Primary impacts:

• 450 000 houses destroyed
• 200 000 farm animals were killed, crops were lost, and 40% of food stores were destroyed

Secondary impacts:

• 2-3 million were made homeless 
• Millions of people lost their livelihood

Reasons for the bad impacts:

• There were no emergency or evacuation plans.
• The govermenment refused to accept aid at first and only let aid workers in 3 weeks after the disaster; meaning that more people died because of the lack of help.

Place detail: South east USA 

Date: August 2005

Cost of damage: $300 billion

Primary impacts:

• 300 000 homes were destroyed
• A main route out of New Orleans was closed because the 1-10 bridge was destroyed

Secondary impacts:

• Tens of thousends were made homeless.
• Took longer for aid and help to come because of the closed route meaning that injuries and deaths increased.

Reasons for the impacts:

• Mississippi and Louisiana declared states of emergency, meaning this set up control centres, and stocked up on supplies.
• The coastguard. police and fire service rescued over 50 000 people, reducing the number of people killed.