Guam Hazard Mitigation Plan - Western States Seismic Policy Council

SECTIONFIVERisk AssessmentTable 5-1Guam Historical Hazard Event Database FieldHazardFatalitiesInjuriesProperty Damage ($)DescriptionSourceThe hazard event database was populated in a step-wise manner. The first step was to reviewrecords from HS/OCD, FEMA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and to identifyand enter the events that were declared a disaster or emergency by one or more of the following:• Governor of Guam• President of the United States• Secretary of the USDAIn the second step, additional events were identified and entered. To limit the number of entries,the additional events had to meet one or more of the following criteria:• One or more fatalities• One or more injuries• $50,000 or more in damages or• Significant event, as expressed in historical records or according to defined criteriaThe first three criteria are used to screen the large number of hazard event records from the last20 to 30 years to a manageable number. The fourth criterion enables the inclusion of historichazard events, most of which have relatively little specific information but were consideredsignificant enough to have been noted in the historical records.A summary of the natural hazards that can affect Guam and the number of reported historicaloccurrences are shown in Table 5-2. This table was originally created for the 2005 Guam HMP,was updated for the 2008 Guam HMP, and is again updated for the 2011 Guam HMP. Effortswere made to avoid the double-counting of events by aggregating them into a primary hazardevent. For example, a tropical cyclone/typhoon accompanied by severe wind and flooding wasentered only once under tropical cyclone/typhoon, though the multiple subhazards were noted inthe description of the event. Also, information regarding fatalities, injuries, and property damagewas available for only a small proportion of the hazard events. In most cases, this informationshould not be considered an accurate representation of the potential damage experienced to date.5-2