Safest cities from natural disasters

[schreiwalker]

What are the big cities safest from natural disasters? I mean the least extreme weather (blizzards, hurricanes, tornados, droughts), volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, infestations of evil fuzzy rabbits, etc.

My first thought is London, but I guess they can have storms come flood the city through the thames. Pittsburgh, PA is also pretty safe (or bland, depending on how you look at it), nestled up in a small mountain range with rivers that usually only flood parkland.

[jlshyang]

Kuala Lumpur and all the other cities in Malaysia.

Free from all major disasters [ Earthquakes, Tornados, Cyclones, Tsunamis, Volcanos etc]

[japeto]

Chicago is relatively safe. Blizzards and cold are the only real threats and the city is pretty much ready to deal with them.

[Effer]

Madrid?

[wjfox]

Somewhere in Scandanavia perhaps?

London is quite safe as well, although we are at slight risk of flooding.

[Küsel]

Paris, Curitiba and Berlin maybe: no earthslides, avalanges, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes or serious floodings. Also no severe colds like Moscow.

[Danish_guy]

Originally Posted by wjfox2002

Somewhere in Scandanavia perhaps?

agreed... don´t think there ever have been a natural disaster in Denmark

[Þróndeimr]

Originally Posted by wjfox2002

Somewhere in Scandanavia perhaps?

London is quite safe as well, although we are at slight risk of flooding.

Scandinavia is a safe place, but i don't think many places in Norway is that safe, some places may probably be ranked as some of the most risky places in Europe with the current threat of mountain slides, tsunamies, avalanches, flood, mud slides, blizzards and hurricanes/storms.

[Very Controversial]

Very tough question to answer. Anyway, very interesting thread.

[blackcountryboy]

As wjfox2002 said, London is pretty safe in terms of extreme weather. I'd say that this is the case for most Europe cities, certainly in Western Europe. There's only Italy, Greece and Turkey that suffer badly from Earhtquakes and Europe rarely gets large tornadoes, although Birmingham was struck badly last year by 2 tornadoes that caused around £50million worth of damage.

[London_2006]

The worst London can get is a drought or flood. Even though we're in the most tornado prone country in the world, most are F0-F1 and the strongest are only about F3. We don't get hurricanes at this latitude, and we don't get blizzards or snowstorms. The geology is all sedimentary rocks and there are no volcanoes anywhere near London. Obviously no earthquakes either (although there are occasional mag. 4 earthquakes once every decade or so).

Btw, due to the current drought, the SE region currently has less water per head than Syria.

Worst I can think of are the 1962/63 abnormally cold winter, the heatwaves of 1976, 1995 and 2003, and the storm surges in 1953.

[LordMandeep]

Toronto can face a Tornado once ina blue moon. Its biggets threat is severe thunderstorm or a big blizzard but from anything major like earthquakes or Hurricanes. not really.

[bay_area]

Im jealous of all this safety.

[Azn_chi_boi]

Chicago probably safe from everything except for 5 things I could think of...

Blizzard : however, Chicago is very ready for that...

Tornados : The suburbs of Chicago could be hit, very oftenly, but in the city, we have the lake to make the Tornado go the other direction.

Floods : But we have 29 miles of Parks and open area, so in case if Lake Michigan Flood, the parks could soak up the water but there wouldn't be any floods, maybe except for Navy Pier and Lower Wacker Drive, that has nothing protecting it... except for locks on the river.

Fire : Given, 1871, but that's when Chicago was all wood, but a heat wave could cause a fire(?)

Earthquake : one of the strongest earthquake in U.S. history happen just happen downstate and Missouri (New Madrid in 1812, magnitude 8.0+), that might affect Chicago too

this is what would happen if the earthquake happen today



Parts of Detroit will be damage, Toledo, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, etc in addtion to a direct attack of St. Louis, Cairo, Memphis, and Evansville...

However, most of the 5 things would be so rare, maybe near none at all... that could happen to Chicago.

[DecoJim]

What goes for Chicago mostly applies to Detroit. Detroit had its big fire in 1805 when every structure except for one burned... of course Detroit was just a town then. I am not aware of the Detroit River ever flooding. On the other hand, Detroit is not immune from economic disasters.

Global warming could change the equations in a generation or two. Coastal cities might flood while cities on the Great Lakes could actually run low on water if drought conditions occur in the interiors of continents as some scientists postulate might happen.

[Harkeb]

South Africa in general is safe from any natural disasters (God willing). No volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, the like. However global warming is negatively affecting our rainfall, resulting in city dams drying up (esp in Cape Town).

[Macca-GC]

Alice Springs: No Earthquakes, same as the majority of the rest of Australia. No bushfires, it's surrounded by desert. No floods, the 'river' is usually dry. No tornados. No cyclones, I'd like to see one try and get to Alice Springs. No blizzards, avalanches, hailstorms, volcanoes

Droughts are the only possible thing.

Canberra is immune from all those except bushfires(2002)

It's hard to find places in Australia which would be immune from drought, because they're all in the tropics and therefore prone to cyclones.

[ncon]

Singapore

[OtAkAw]

As far as I am concerned, my city is not. A volcano is just beside our province waiting to be awakened again.

[Mosaic]

Originally Posted by encon

Singapore

really?? do you recall a forest fire smok from Indonesia that time??