page_title: Natural disaster
section_title: Hydrological disasters
hierarchical_section_title: Natural disaster / Hydrological disasters
caption_attribution_description: English: Aerial view, extreme long shot, looking down as the Limpopo River winds its way through Southern MOZAMBIQUE, where it recently crested its banks and sent floodwaters rushing through towns and farmland, forcing people from their homes and wreaking havoc with the countries infrastructure. Even though waters have receded over the past week, heavy rains seen in the distance, continue to threaten the region with more flooding. C-130 aircraft (not shown), assigned to the 37th Airlift Squadron at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, fly daily Keen Sage aerial surveillance missions over MOZAMBIQUE to help find stranded flood victims and survey flood levels and damage caused by the flooding in Southern Africa. The 37th Airlift Squadron C-130 aircraft, are deployed to Hoedspruit Air Force Base, South Africa, as part of the United States Operation Atlas Response, humanitarian relief efforts.
context_page_description: A natural disaster is a major adverse event resulting from natural processes of the Earth; examples are floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, and other geologic processes. A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property, and typically leaves some economic damage in its wake, the severity of which depends on the affected population's resilience and also on the infrastructure available.
  An adverse event will not rise to the level of a disaster if it occurs in an area without vulnerable population. In a vulnerable area, however, such as Nepal during the 2015 earthquake, an earthquake can have disastrous consequences and leave lasting damage, which can require years to repair.
  Societies are becoming significantly less vulnerable to extreme weather events. The death toll from natural disasters has declined over 90 percent since the 1920s, according to the International Disaster Database, even as the total human population on Earth quadrupled, and temperatures rose 1.3 degrees centigrade. In the 1920s, 5.4 million people died from natural disasters while in the 2010s, just 400,000 did.
context_section_description: A violent, sudden and destructive change either in the quality of Earth's water or in the distribution or movement of water on land below the surface or in the atmosphere.
caption: The Limpopo River during the 2000 Mozambique flood
exif: {}