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In order to understand how people are affected by disasters, it is clearly not enough to understand only the hazards themselves. Disasters happen when a natural phenomenon affects a population that is inadequately prepared and unable to recover without external assistance. But the hazard impact happens to people that are at different levels of preparedness (either by accident or design), resilience, and with varying capacities for recovery. Vulnerability is the term used to describe the condition of such people. It involves much more than the likelihood of their being injured or killed by a particular hazard event, and includes the type of livelihoods people engage in, and the impact of different hazards on them.