ABSTRACT
Disasters represent impacts of extreme events on vulnerable people and their activities, vulnerability being those features of societies which make them susceptible to harm. The extent and duration of a disaster depends on the balance between vulnerability and resilience, the latter being those characteristics which enhance the ability of a society to cope. Since the first settlement of the Azores in the fifteenth century until recently, responses to earthquakes, eruptions and related phenomena have been pre-industrial, being locally based and not involving the State to any significant degree. Indeed, it is only from the 1950s, with the eruption and earthquake on Faial in 1957/8, that the State has become a major player in responding to emergencies, with its role becoming progressively more important in subsequent disasters. The first signs of a proactive (i.e. pre-disaster planning) approach, rather than one which merely reacts to extreme events, only became evident from the time of the 1998 Faial earthquake.
