A disaster is a sudden, terrible event that causes serious damage, destruction, or suffering. When a hurricane floods a city, an earthquake destroys buildings, or a wildfire burns through forests and homes, these are disasters. The word suggests something much worse than ordinary problems: disasters disrupt normal life, often affecting many people at once.

Natural disasters like tornadoes, tsunamis, and blizzards happen because of powerful forces in nature. But disasters can also be caused by human mistakes or accidents, like a major oil spill or a bridge collapse. What makes something a disaster is that it overwhelms people's ability to handle it with their normal resources. The event is so big or destructive that regular help and supplies aren't enough.

People also use disaster informally for smaller catastrophes: you might call a failed science experiment a disaster, or say your attempt to bake cookies was disastrous when they came out burned and inedible. Your room might look like a disaster area after you've searched everywhere for your missing homework. In these cases, you're exaggerating to emphasize how badly something went wrong.

After real disasters strike, communities often pull together to help each other recover, showing that how people respond to a disaster can be just as important as the disaster itself.