ABSTRACT

On 1 January 1990 the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the start of the Inter national Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) and, by all accounts, not a minute too soon. The first half of the decade was riddled with unprecedented disasters: earth quakes in Zanjan, Iran (1990), Northridge, California, US (1994) and Kobe, Japan (1995); tropical cyclones and flooding in Bangladesh (1991); volcanic eruptions (Mt Pinatubo in 1991); flooding during 1993 on the Mississippi River (US); and the most costly disaster to the US, Hurricane Andrew (1992), to name just a few.