Poverty is one of the key determinants (along with gender and ethnicity factors), because the poorest communities are the most exposed to the risk of a natural disaster. Moreover, there are specific factors in the social institutional framework and power relations that define the disaster-vulnerability of certain population groups (Shepherd and others, 2013). These elements characterize the dynamic of the risk in each community, which varies according to time and place, owing to the interaction of economic, demographic and sociocultural factors, compounded by an unbalanced development process (for example, rapid and improvised urbanization, and poor management of natural resources, among other things) (IPPC, 2012).