Our Story

Disaster Action was formed as a charity following the ‘decade of disasters’ in the UK – a series of preventable tragedies in the 1980s. Bereaved people and survivors from several different disasters came together to form an umbrella organisation focussed on improving accountability, support and prevention in relation to disasters and their management.

Over time our collective experience has widened to embrace disasters as wide-ranging as rail, maritime and air disasters, acts of terrorism, industrial accidents, crowd management failures, tsunamis widespread flooding and large-scale fires.

Every disaster is unique but we have found these human tragedies generate common needs, experiences and concerns among those impacted.

As we continued to highlight and address these our organisation grew; our appeal extended to those supporting affected by both earlier and subsequent disasters, and those professionals working to prepare for and respond to them.

Over the decades we have consolidated our understanding of how to respond to disasters and address people’s needs over time – from the immediate impact and aftermath through to their generational impacts. Today we use this experience to support people directly affected by disasters and professionals addressing human aspects in emergency planning, response and recovery.