health and well-being
society
The word disaster originally contained an astrological referent: the pejorative prefix dis, meaning “away from,” attached to the Latin astrum, meaning “star.” An ill-starred occurrence, much like its synonym “catastrophe” (that also contains the word star), the initial paradigm is that of disaster as a malevolent astral influence. Hence, the notion of disaster as an exceptional event that creates imbalance, a shift in the scales, or better yet, a destruction of the normal order of things. [Source: Encyclopedia of Deception; Disasters]
disasters
mass casualty incidents
relief work
social problems
emergencies
fires
population and environment
man made accidents
concepts
natural disasters
famine
explosions
war