From the point of view of many humans, the term "natural disaster" is a convenient scapegoat because it allow a person (or a whole nation) to blame nature for their own poor planning. Wherever we find so-called "natural disasters" around the world (such as Bukit Tinggi at the moment), we also usually find a large group of people who have cut down the forests that buffer rainfall, paved over the grasslands that allow rain to soak into the soil, and built their homes, hotels & apartments right in the middle of gullies and natural drainage channels. When the floods come, they look to the sky and curse Mother Nature, shouting, "We got hit by a natural disaster!"
"Evil has appeared on land and sea because of what the hands of men have earned, that Allah may make them taste a part of that which they have done, in order that they may return." Al-Quran, Surah Ar-Rom ayat 41.
Of course, in some cases it really is a natural disaster. When a volcano blows and causes widespread destruction beyond what anyone could have reasonably foreseen -- such as Mt St Helens in the 1980's -- that's a legitimate natural disaster. When an under-the-ocean earthquake causes a fifty-foot tsunami that wipes out a beach town, that's a legitimate natural disaster, too. When a large meteorite slams into the planet with the force of millions of atomic bombs, laying waste to an entire era of unique lifeforms (the dinosaurs, for example), that's a natural disaster.
But getting wiped out by a flood, landslides, tower collapses because you built your house right in the flood path of a local river or on the peak of the hill is not a natural disaster. That's a man-made disaster. Or, more accurately, it's just poor planning on the part of short-sighted humans. And when it comes to disasters, there's plenty of short-sightedness to go around these days.Most "natural" disasters are actually caused by poor human planning. Generally speaking, people don't have a very long-term view of things. They don't consider that the little creek running behind their new luxury hotels & resorts could very easily wind up meandering through their living room after record rainfall.
Even professional city engineers often aren't very bright about all this: They'll design cities with enormous areas of pavement and roads, all while failing to properly consider the fact that what used to be dirt which once absorbed water is now concrete that channels water somewhere else. It doesn't take much rain for a city of pavement to become a flash flood nightmare.
