This paper discusses single-scale studies on disaster risk and vulnerability – i.e. urban risk and physical vulnerability – by formulating the progression of vulnerability proposed in the Pressure and Release Model (PAR) as a multi-scalar phenomenon. Disaster and vulnerability studies are often conceived within single-scale units, self-enclosed and delimited into specific spatial foci – urban studies, regional studies – hence, studies tend to neglect the geographical complexity of socio-economic and political processes involved in the production of vulnerability and risk at multiple scales. Attempts for integrating multi-scalar factors and processes – such as the effects of policies or institutional forms – into risk and vulnerability studies are rare, possibly due to the aforementioned complexities. Nevertheless, the implication of macro-processes – e.g. economic models or political regimes – on the causation of disasters is hardly questioned. So, this paper employs recent findings on studies of scale in order to better understand vulnerability as a process produced throughout varied scales. The case of Chaiten, a remote Volcano eruption’s disaster in southern Chile in 2008, is devised in order to illustrate how specific multi-scalar processes, such as institutional forms for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Disaster Risk Management (DRM), are unfolded from major to minor geographical scales. The actions and inactions of national, regional and local officials, as related to DRR and DRM during 2008 and 2013, have largely contributed to the current situation of Chaiten. The unforeseen effects of policies that are unjustly distributed and the population’s uneven exposure to hazards have split the city in two. In summary, this paper seeks to discuss that although hazards, vulnerability and risk are often evident at minor geographical scales – e.g. physical vulnerability, hazard mapping – the causation of disaster and risk production should no be longer considered as single-scale phenomenon, but rather as multi-scalar.