Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. 1 An area that has been the site of a natural disaster that receives an official designation entitling residents and organizations within that area to receive relief and benefits. 2 An area that looks like one that has suffered a natural disaster.
WordNet
n. a region whose population is affected by a general disaster
Wikipedia
A disaster area is a region or a locale, heavily damaged by either natural, technological or social hazards. Disaster areas affect the population living in the community by dramatic increase in expense, loss of energy, food and services; and finally increase the risk of disease for citizens. An area that has been struck with a natural, technological or sociological hazard that opens the affected area for national or international aid.
Usage examples of "disaster area".
He also thought it was an amusing idea to name it after a potential disaster area.
After the third week, the President declared that part of Manhattan a disaster area and sent in the Red Cross to help the survivors.
The help would be the last to show up: choppers food-bombing the disaster area, ground convoys of federal rescue paramedics, bureaucrat refugee managers with their hard-ass official charity of soup-kitchen tents and paper clothes.
They had retreated to the safety of Disaster Area's giant control ship which hung in orbit some four hundred miles above the surface of the planet, and they were testing the sound system from there.
I was brought up to consider it bad manners to refuse any woman who pulls you oot a wrecked swimmin'pool a hundred feet above a major disaster area.
Smith had never quite understood how someone who was as fundamentally good at his job as Maxwell was could be such a walking disaster area, but there it was.
Her social life might be a disaster area, but she was very proud of what she had achieved professionally.