In my field study Environment Eng. disaster is used for natural happenings which cause irreparable results in the nature and human beings' lives, but I have seen and read people use them for different or similar matters. Could you please make clear what the correct usage of those terms is?
Learn English – Differences and similarities between “catastrophe” and “disaster”
meaningusage
Best Answer
This website describes the difference between a disaster and a catastrophe as follows:
In my own understanding of the words, I would describe a catastrophe to be a disaster of such high magnitude that you could not have prepared for it, because you would not have expected that something so bad could happen.
EDIT: @J.R. reminded me about the less literal usage of the two words, which you could use to say that things turned out badly, for example:
In this hyperbolic form, I believe that disaster is more common, but you could use catastrophe if you really want to exaggerate.