Week 3: City Rising From New Zealand's Deadly Earthquake

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-21/city-rising-from-new-zealand-s-deadly-earthquake-spells-end-for-low-rates.html

A year after New Zealand's worst earthquake in eighty years the city of Christchurch is just starting to rebuild it's high rise buildings. There was over 5700 aftershocks from the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that hampered cleanup and reconstruction. The rebuilding of the cities is going to cause higher interest rates in New Zealand. In the earthquake the 130 year old stone cathedral was destroyed along with 200 other heritage buildings that were either destroyed or damaged. Despite the large project of rebuilding the city, the government is trying to complete the NZ3 billon dollar project by 2014.

Week 2: Avalanches Kill Three in Washington State Ski Resort

Three people were killed of the eight that were reported missing after an avalanche near a popular ski resort in Washington State. Across the West there has been about thirteen avalanche related deaths this year. Experts say that this year has been especially bad for avalanches because of a weak base layer of snow. Avalanche deaths are more common in the backcountry than ski resorts. I think that avalanches are extremely dangerous and that if a warning for an avalanche is in effect, skiers should not go out. Many deaths could have been prevented if people weren't out on the slopes durning the warnings.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/19/avalanche-washington-state-kills-three

Week 1: World Bank Frets Over Urban Flooding in Asia

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/world-bank-frets-over-urban-flood.html?ref=hp

Flooding is the most common Natural Disaster. New statistics show that developing countries of Asia are particularly vulnerable to flooding. In the last thirty years, the seven most destructive floods have occurred in Asia. The main reason these floods in Asia are so destructive are because lately people have been moving from rural areas to big cities located on the coast or by rivers which are prone to flooding. It's extremely difficult to prevent floods because they happen because of many different causes. Using these reports the World Bank will decide how much to support the developmental programs designed to prevent, predict, and clean up after these floods. I think that the most important issue should be to stop the migration of people to these danger areas and try to relocate people to low danger areas.