The Distinction between Disasters and Accidents: Characterization of and Liability for Secondary Events of Natural Disasters

Natural disasters and work safety accidents are not easily confused: the former are triggered by natural factors, while the latter are caused by human production and operational activities. However, in the scenario of secondary events of natural disasters, there are often cases where incidents that should be classified as production safety accidents are recognized as natural disasters. The reasons for this are the compounding of natural and human-technological hazard factors, the lack of criteria for defining the transformation of disasters into accidents, and the dual-track liability system for natural disasters and production safety accidents. Distinguishing the nature of secondary events of natural disasters in different situations requires clarifying the duty of care of production and management units, and constructing specific rules based on the subjective criterion of disaster predictability, the behavioral criterion of violating the duty of precaution, and the outcome criterion of accident avoidability. If they are recognized as production safety accidents, the responsibility of the production and management units should be further measured in terms of three dimensions: the degree of predictability, the possibility of acts, and the severity of the outcome of the damage.