Around 400 disaster events kill more than 100,000 people every year,
with another 120 million people being directly affected. The international
community annually spends $25 billion addressing these events
which include floods, droughts, earthquakes, cyclones, wildfire, and
similar. On a daily basis, people and communities have their lives taken
or destroyed in catastrophic events that humans have little control over.
Each night on our evening news, images are shared of buildings collapsed,
farmlands cracked and parched, rivers swollen, or trees stripped
of foliage by fierce winds. Throughout of all this, we see heroic efforts
of people digging to free those trapped, feeding those that are starving,
giving comfort to those who are bereft, or burying those that have been
killed. Our experience of and response to these disasters is a common
human experience and has been throughout our entire history.