Current Events Assignment

Part 1: Finding Disaster Information on the Internet (see due date on syllabus)

The purpose of this assignment is to help you become familiar with the various types of natural disaster information available on the Internet. While the Internet is continuing to evolve and is changing the way people think about information resources, it can also be dangerous. Among the dangers involved are: (1) you can end up wasting a lot of time because you continually find new and interesting places to visit; (2) not all information on the internet is necessarily reliable; (3) there is a chance that you can run into something that you don't want to be exposed to, and (4) Malicious web sites can download and install spyware and parasites that can interfere with the normal operation of your computer. Try to avoid these pitfalls in carrying out the following assignment. Answers to these questions (for Part 1) must be HANDWRITTEN(please write neatly so I can read your writing). It is best to copy and paste this assignment to a word processing program, add some space between each answer and write your answer in the space; you must provide the questions WITH your answers! Provide neat and organized submittals with plenty of room for your answers or you will be marked down).
  1. Using the Web Browser of your choice go to the Google Search Engine: Once in Google, do a search for asteroid and comet impact hazards, by typing in the the following words:
asteroid comet hazards
Make sure to include the spaces.
Google should return a list of sites that contain these words. One of the sites should be the NASA Ames Research Center Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards Page.
On this page notice that there are links to various pages that give further information. For example: a catalog of all known Near Earth Objects (NEOs), reports concerning the possibility of impacts (Government Studies), and a multimedia gallery.
First, read the Introduction and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and answer the following questions
  1. What is the threshold size of an object that would produce a catastrophic disaster if it struck the earth? (1 point)
  2. How often is it expected that an asteroid or comet with a diameter greater than this threshold size strikes the earth? (1 point)
  3. Why would collision with such an object produce more than just a local effect? (1 point)
  4. Have there been any historic examples of a collision with an NEO? If so, when and where? (Note that historic in this context refers to human recorded history) (2 points)
  5. Is there any evidence that a large NEO collided with the Earth at any time in its history? If so, when and where was this impact event, and what were the consequences for the inhabitants of the planet at the time? (hint: look in the multimedia gallery). (2 points)
  1. On December 26, 2004 an earthquake in Indonesia produced a tsunami that resulted in one of the greatest disasters in human history. Use the internet search engine of your choice to answer the following questions about this disaster.
  1. How big was the earthquake that caused the tsunami? (1 point)
  2. What countries were directly affected by the tsunami? (1 points)
  3. What country that was affected was farthest away from the epicenter (source) of the earthquake? (1 point)
  4. What is the estimated death toll from this event? (1 point)
  5. Why was the death toll so high? (1 point)
  6. What could have been done in the years preceding the disaster to mitigate against the large number of deaths? (2 points)

  1. Some Web sites offer News sources and archives that can be searched. One of these is Yahoo News - Use the Advanced search feature on the Yahoo News site to answer the following questions. Note that the Advanced Search feature allows you to not only search for key words, but to eliminate certain words from the search, limit the search by date or ranges of dates and to sort the results in different ways.
  2. Have any floods occurred since January 1, 2013 that caused more than 50 deaths? If so, give the location, date(s), number of casualties, and estimated damage, if available, for each of these events. (Note that there is usually more than one article that reports on any given event, make sure you look at the most recently updated information for the event). (2 points)
  3. Next, find out if any landslides (including mudflows and "mudslides") have caused loss of life or property anywhere in the world since January 1, 2013? If so, give the dates, locations, number of casualties, economic damage, and cause, if available, for these landslides.(2 points)
  4. Is it possible to have an event that causes more than one hazardous process to occur? Give at least one example based on what you learned in answering parts a and b.(1 point)

  1. Some other sources of current up to the minute news are as follows:
ABC News:
CBS News:
CNN News:
USA Today:
MSNBC:
Google News:
Earth Week:
These sources will be helpful when you need to follow a natural disaster that occurs during the course. For now, log on to each one of these sites and see if there is any news on any natural disasters that have occurred since the beginning of this course (Jan 14, 2013). If you find any, be sure to keep track of them for your disaster summary (Assignment 2). Note that some of these services allow you to set yourself up to receive an email informing you each day of any event that has occurred based on a key word. For example, you can set up a "News Alert" at google.com to send you information on any natural disasters that occur, using key words such as "natural disasters", "landslide", "earthquake", "flood", "tornado", etc. Yahoo has a similar service. A service such as this is useful for keeping track of information for your disaster summary.
For this question, provide information on the location, type, dates, casualties, economic damage and cause ofeach natural disaster that occurred since the beginning of the course (Jan 14, 2013) until the due date of Assignment 1 (Feb 26 or 27, 2013). Note that any of these disasters have the potential for being one of the top 10 disasters during the course that you have to keep track for your disaster write-up (Assignment 2).(6 points)
  1. Location, type, dates, casualties, economic damage, cause of natural disasters since beginning of course until due date: (NOTE: keep track of these, they will possibly be in your top ten due under Part II due at the end of the year)-
Part I: 25 Points Possible
Your Score:______/25

Part II: Natural Disaster Tracker (Due at the end of the semester)

This is a current events write-up due at the end of the semester. This disaster paper should only consider natural disasters (those that occur without the influence of people); an example of a human-caused disaster that is not a natural disaster is the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. An airplane crash is not a natural disaster unless caused by, for example, weather phenomenon or a volcanic eruption. Primary causes such as hurricanes that produce secondary events such as storm surges could both qualify as natural disasters (or a meteorite impact that produces destructive fires). If you are unsure about an event, please ask.

The Disaster Tracker write-up will consist of information outlined below on the 10 worst disasters that have occurred during the length of this course. The worst disasters will be those with the greatest number of deaths and/or economic damage. It is possible that each student's write-up of the 10worst disasters will differ since in some cases not enough information is available to determine the actual economic damage (so interpretations can vary). In order to come up with the 10 worst, each student will have to keep track of all disasters throughout the time period of the course, then in the days before the write-up is due, determine which of the disasters are among the worst 10. Helpful hints on how to keep track of the world's disasters using the internet will be provided in Part 1. Still, you should keep in mind that disasters with only one or two casualties and/or one or two damaged structures are not likely to be among the 10 worst, so can probably be safely ignored when you come across such events. It is helpful to use news subscription services such as those available on google.com and/or yahoo.com which send you email based on key words, which is a good way to keep updated on a daily basis on disasters throughout the world. Use key words like disaster, cyclone, hurricane, tornado, sinkhole, landslide, mudslide, eruption, wildfire, earthquake, etc. Although these generate a lot of emails, you can quickly read the summaries to determine which ones have the potential for being among the 10 worst. You can then go to the links for these potentially worst disasters, print the web pages, and keep them for ultimately determining the worst disasters.

Note that not all information on a disaster usually comes out with the first news release. In other words, let's imagine that there is wildfire that begins somewhere on January 14th . On the first day 250 homes are burned resulting in 200 million dollars in property damage, with no lives lost. But the fire continues for another two weeks. Each day the news media reports new events, such as number of new homes burned, number of lives lost, loss estimates in various towns, etc. You should try to keep track of all of this information for your write-up. What you will turn in at the end of the course in your Disaster Tracker Write-up is a summary of the entire disaster, rather than the notes you keep to compile this summary.

Note also that events like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that occur in sparsely populated areas, even though they may be large events, if they don't cause casualties or property damage, are not likely to be among the 10 worst disasters.Disaster like droughts and disease epidemics are also difficult to keep track of because they have no beginning date, a fuzzy ending date, and damage estimates only come out sporadically. Because of this, the summary of the 10 worst disasters should not include droughts and disease epidemics.

Any disaster that is ongoing at the beginning of the semester is to be considered part of the assignment. For any disaster that begins during the semester, but is not completely finished by the end of the semester, you should report as much information that is available up to the deadline to turn in the paper.

The final disaster write-upmust be TYPEWRITTEN and should include the following information

  • Location of the Disaster (be careful here - countries like Indonesia, Russia, and China are large countries, so just reporting the country name is not a sufficient location).
  • Type of Disaster (i.e hurricane, earthquake, eruption, landslide, etc.)
  • Beginning and ending dates and times of the disaster
  • A description of the disaster and a short statement as to the cause of the disaster
  • The total economic loss due to property damage, lost business, downtime, cleanup, and recovery etc., if available (in dollars). If a monetary figure is not available, provide information on such things as the number of structures destroyed, the number of people affected, the number of acres destroyed, number of livestock destroyed, etc.
  • The total number of human casualties (injuries and deaths)
  • Sources of information (Newspaper and magazine articles, television and radio reports, and internet URLs)
  • Mitigation - A well thought out statement of what, if anything that could have been done by humans to have prevented or reduced the economic damage and number of casualties for each disaster. This mitigation statement will be a significant part of your grade on this assignment.

Although you may work with others on this assignment, the final work must be yours, in your own words. Therefore, exact duplicates or summaries that are copied word for word from another person will be given a ‘0’! (that is, zero points, for both people).

The best way to submit this assignment is to copy and paste the bulleted list above 10 times (once for each disaster) and type in your responses to each based on the data you have collected throughout the semester). I must have the questions with your answers so I can find your responses easily and determine if you have adequately answered everything for each disaster!

The Disaster Tracker Write-up must be in chronological order (earliest to latest) as near as possible. Part of the grade will be based on the ease with which the instructor can read and grade the summary - appearance will count.Do not turn in binders or covers. Stapled sheets of paper are all that is required. Use a 12 point type face and make your answers clear using colored font.

Before turning in your disaster paper, the grading sheet below should be copied and pasted onto the last page of the disaster summary.. Points will be deducted if this grading sheet is not included.

Identified Disasters ______/20

Presentation/Appearance ______/5

Descriptions ______/5

Mitigation Statements ______/10

Total Points ______/40

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