Disasters and the poor

"The poor have a natural affinity with disasters. So close is this relationship that one can single out vulnerability to disasters as a major defining element of poverty. Disasters therefore are not so much natural as they are social. That is why social scientists speak of "disaster thresholds'," writes Randy David in his opinion piece in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. In the light of the high number of deaths caused by Typhoon Pablo in the Philippines, he ads that it is not natural disasters that cause the devastation, but rather society's lack of capacity to withstand them.