What Is a Catastrophic Illness?
A catastrophic event is an accident that occurs suddenly in the process of people's production and life, violates people's will, forces the activity to be temporarily or permanently stopped, and causes a large number of casualties, economic losses or environmental pollution. The biggest difference from the definition of accident is that catastrophic events can cause a large number of casualties or major economic losses, and natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods are also catastrophic events. In addition to natural disasters, fires, explosions, and poison spills that occur during general industrial production, collapses, roof gangs, gas and coal dust explosions, water inrush accidents that occur during the mining process, and river and sea transportation processes Shipwreck accidents, major traffic accidents, and aircraft crashes usually cause a large number of casualties and economic losses, which are all catastrophic events.
Catastrophic event
- A catastrophic event is an accident that occurs suddenly in the process of people's production and life, violates people's will, forces the activity to be temporarily or permanently stopped, and causes a large number of casualties, economic losses or environmental pollution. The biggest difference from the definition of an accident is that a catastrophic event can cause a large number of casualties or significant economic losses, and
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- Regarding the number of casualties, economic losses, and the degree of environmental pollution that are catastrophic, there are different international opinions, such as the number of deaths is 5, 25, 100 and so on. Chinese scholars have proposed a range and classification method of catastrophic events based on research, that is, they can be divided into 10 levels according to the severity of catastrophic events and economic losses (Table 1-Summary table of disaster accident levels). [1]
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- This classification can be used whether it is a natural disaster or a human accident. The table is explained as follows:
- 1. Each level of disaster includes 3 indicators, but according to the principle of high or low, as long as one of the indicators reaches the standard of that level, it can be counted as a disaster of that level. Specifically, various disaster accidents can be divided into weak, medium and strong grades according to their disaster conditions reaching one to two or three indicators in a certain disaster level. If a disaster causes more than 1,000 deaths, more than 5,000 serious injuries, and more than 1.2 billion yuan in direct economic losses, the disaster is a strong fourth-level disaster. If the disaster causes more than 1,000 deaths, more than 6,000 serious injuries, and 100 million Diversified economic losses, because the direct economic losses did not reach the level 4 disaster, so the disaster as a whole can only be a level 4 disaster. Take real-life disasters as an example. For example, in the Tangshan formation, the earthquake caused more than 240,000 deaths, more than 160,000 serious injuries, and direct economic losses of nearly 10 billion yuan. According to Table 1, it can be classified as a medium-level disaster; Kobe, Japan. Although the stratum is not heavy in casualties, the direct economic losses amount to more than 100 billion U.S. dollars, so it can be called a weak first-level disaster.
- 2. According to the occurrence of specific disasters, the first, second and third-level disasters are mainly large-scale natural disasters such as floods, droughts, strata, typhoons (tropical storms); general natural disasters mostly belong to disasters below the fourth level; generally human-made Accidents and disasters mostly belong to disasters below level 5, but there are a few human-made disasters with very serious damage. The exception is the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in the Soviet Union before 1986, which caused direct economic losses of more than 10 billion US dollars. Weak first-level disaster; China s "Asia-Pacific 2" satellite failed to launch in 1995, although it caused only 6 deaths and 23 injuries, but caused direct economic losses of about 1.4 billion yuan (China Pacific Insurance Company s compensation amounted to 162 million yuan U.S. dollars) can also be counted as a weak fourth-level disaster.
- It should be pointed out that, regardless of the magnitude or severity of the disaster, it is determined in a relatively stable time and space, that is, different historical periods and different countries have different standards for measuring the severity of the disaster. For example, in China, due to the lack of social wealth in history. Even if it is a disaster of the same magnitude, the direct economic loss caused by it will be lower than that of contemporary society; and the personal injury caused by various disaster accidents may be more serious than that of contemporary society due to the disaster prevention capacity and the lack of national awareness of disaster reduction. Therefore, with the passage of time and social and economic development, the criteria for categorizing the degree of disaster or disaster should also be adjusted accordingly. The rule of adjustment will be: the requirements for casualties will be relatively low, and the requirements for direct economic losses will be relatively low. The standard will be higher. In addition, the division of hazards and hazard levels in this section is mainly applicable to macro statistics of various disaster accidents, and the hazard levels can also be divided according to their own characteristics within each hazard.