The Worst Natural Disasters We’ve Faced

If we had a way to look far back in time to the birth of our planet, we might be horrified at the sheer level of destruction all around us. Our planet was formed because of one natural disaster after another, many of which still occur to this day. Imagine a world with no mountains or rivers or separate continents, oceans, and seas. No islands or caverns or vast forests. Millions of years ago, massive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and even asteroid and comet impacts molded, shaped, and formed the very ground we now walk on. Without such natural catastrophes, the planet might not have formed at all.

Luckily, humankind did not exist back then to deal with such extreme scenarios, although the other species that once walked the earth didn’t fare as well. Just think of the dinosaurs, which died out approximately 64 million years ago during what is now called one of the five extinction-level events the planet has suffered through.

There are two kinds of disasters or emergency events we face. One is natural, caused by forces such as weather, wind, water, ground movements, eruptions, impacts by space objects, pandemics, and anything else Mother Nature might dish out. The other kind is man-made, such as infrastructure failures, war, nuclear accidents, hazardous waste mishaps, terrorism, mass murder, chemical leaks, and the like. We will start with Mother Nature, because the largest and worst disasters are those she delivers, and often one on top of another.

MASS EXTINCTION EVENTS

Over the course of Earth’s history, there have been five “mass,” or “great,” extinction events, where millions of living creatures perished, whether on land or sea. These events are different from normal extinctions because they involve large numbers of species falling by the wayside and not just the demise of one or two.

Also known as “biotic crises,” these mega jumbo disasters can literally change the face of species diversity and evolution itself by creating population bottlenecks that lead to genetic differentiation and limited breeding options. Extinction rates often don’t take a direct and even course, but great extinction events do seem to happen on a somewhat regular basis, although this includes smaller events that may not have wiped out as much life, but changed some part of genetic history. Scientists actually measure the rate of mass extinctions by looking at marine fossils, which prove to be far superior as a fossil record than land animals because they are often better preserved on the ocean floor.

The causes of such great events can be long-term stressors to life, punctuated by a short-term situation such as an asteroid impact or a global ice age. All extinctions reshape the diversity of life on the planet, dictating the end of some species and the rise of others. Some could then say that extinction-level events have both positives and negatives when it comes to our planet’s evolution.

Though the dinosaur extinction, the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T, is the one most people know about, the complete list of such events is:

1.The Ordovician-Silurian is among the three largest extinction events in the planet’s history, occurring approximately 440–450 million years ago. It was actually two events that were separated by hundreds of thousands of years but, combined, killed approximately 60%–70% of all species, including 27% of major “family” groups of living things. Possible causes are gamma ray bursts, global massive cooling, and a drop in sea levels.

2.The Late Devonian, during which three quarters of all species on Earth died out. There is some question as to whether this occurred over several million years, starting 375 million or so years ago, and may be what is called a series of extinction pulses that happen within a distinct time frame of an overall mass extinction.

3.The Permian-Triassic, or Great Dying, which happened approximately 252 million years ago, and is considered the greatest mass extinction event of all time. Over 96% of all species perished, including 96% of all marine life and 70% of all land species. This was the end of the trilobite and the end as well of reptile dominance on land. Vertebrates took 30 million years to recover from this event. Life on Earth today descends from the 4% or so of species that survived the Great Dying.

4.The Triassic-Jurassic, a three-phase extinction around 201 million years ago, wiped out about 75% of all species at the time, including most large amphibians. Climate change, flood basalt eruptions, and even an asteroid impact are all possible causes for this event.

The mass extinction event with which most people are familiar is the one that occurred about 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs and many other animals and plants were wiped out by a meteor impact.

5.The Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T event, which drove all non-avian dinosaurs to extinction 65–66 million years ago along with 75% of all species on Earth. This was when mammals and birds emerged as the dominant animals on land and was the last extinction event before the one we are currently in. A possible and widely discussed cause is asteroid impact, but supervolcanic eruptions are also a possibility.

6.Yes, there is a sixth, the Holocene Event, also known as the Anthropocene because for the first time an extinction event is being caused by human activity. Though the Holocene is said to have begun in approximately 10,000 to 11,000 B.C.E., land and sea extinctions in this event are occurring at over a thousand times the background extinction rate since 1900 and showing no signs of stopping. Climate change is cause number one, along with overfishing, overhunting, deforestation, pollution and toxins, environmental degradation, and habitat destruction.

Though extinction events of this magnitude don’t occur every day, the fact that we are facing our own possible extinction should be enough to drive every human on Earth to take positive action. In the meantime, though, we do face daily and yearly disasters and emergencies, whether at home or abroad, that we have more immediate control over.

THE MORE RECENT PAST

As humans fast approach a global population of over seven billion and urban and coastal growth skyrockets in many countries, including the United States, it’s only natural that more people are being exposed to a variety of both natural and man-made disasters. According to the U.S. Disaster Statistics on the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) website, growing populations and infrastructures increase the exposure to hazardous situations. The strongest growth is found in coastal areas, where threats of flooding, cyclones, hurricane storm surge, rising sea levels, and tidal waves prevail. Yet in urban areas, there is also more to worry about in terms of flooding, landslides, and collapses of bridges, highways, and sinkholes. And the more people living in those areas, the more potential for damage to both lives and property.

The U.S. Natural Hazard Statistics, also a part of NOAA, stated that the top three disaster-related events involving the weather were flooding, hurricanes, and heat waves. Storms of every size are the biggest threat, responsible for an average of 12.69% of all disasters annually. Second in place are floods at 4.25% and wildfires at 1.76%. Between the years 1985 and 2008, the top ten natural disasters by type, year, and number of lives affected were:

Flood	2008	11,000,000
Storm	2004	5,000,000
Storm	1999	3,000,000
Storm	2008	2,100,000
Storm	1985	1,000,000
Wildfire	2007	640,000
Storm	2005	500,000
Epidemic	1993	403,000
Storm	2005	300,000

Of the lives lost, 90% were lost to storms, 4% to floods, 3% to wildfires, and 2% to epidemics. The economic damage totaled in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And these statistics are only for the United States. Add to that the losses of life and money from global disasters, and it becomes staggering.

In the year 2011 alone, there were 25 natural disasters in the United States. Only China had more that same year, with 29. In 2014, according to the Annual Disaster Statistical Review for the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, there were 324 natural disasters, the third lowest number reported in the last decade. Still, 7,823 people lost their lives.

The countries hit with the most natural disasters over the last decade are China, the United States, the Philippines, Indonesia, and India. These disasters included floods, earthquakes, landslides, megastorms, and droughts. The biggest disasters occurred in countries far from the United States, which may have a lot to do with much more modern U.S. infrastructure, building codes, and preparedness and response measures.

Other fascinating facts about disasters include:

•Between 2000 and 2012, natural disasters caused over $1.7 trillion in damage and affected the lives of over 2.9 billion people.

•In 2011, the world hit a record high of $371 billion in disaster damage and during that year recorded 154 floods, 16 droughts, and 15 extreme heat or cold events.

•The most widespread natural disaster is flooding, followed by wildfires. These disasters occur all over the world and are not limited to one region.

•In 2012, nearly half the reported fatalities from natural disasters involved flooding or hydrological events.

•Earthquakes are among the most severe natural disasters and can also trigger man-made disasters such as infrastructure collapses and gas explosions. Many people die in earthquakes because of gas fires and not the quake itself.

•Tornadoes can have a damage path of over one mile wide and 50 miles (80 kilometers) long.

•In 1975 there were 100 disasters. In 2005 there were 400.

•In the last decade, the number of people affected by disasters increased from 1.6 billion in the previous decade to over 2.6 billion.

•Tornado outbreaks in 2012 numbered over 930 in the United States, and that was a lower-than-normal year.

•Economic costs are fifteen times higher now than they were in the 1950s.

Climate change has resulted in more weather-related disasters recently. They are not only more common but also more damaging. For example, in Santa Barbara, California, fires were followed by rains that caused a rockslide, destroying homes and killing seventeen people in January 2018.

•The countries most exposed to multiple hazards are Taiwan, Costa Rica, Vanuatu, the Philippines, Guatemala, Ecuador, Chile, Japan, Vietnam, and the Solomon Islands, in that order, according to 2005 data from the World Bank.

Most major disasters reach catastrophic levels in terms of lives lost and property damaged based on their location. Obviously, those affecting urban and heavily populated areas are deemed far worse than those that occur in the middle of nowhere. But some areas are just plain prone to natural disasters. Floodplains, Tornado Alley, cyclone zones, any country that borders the notorious, seismically active Ring of Fire, close proximity to active volcanoes or rivers and dams with a history of overflow issues—it does often come down to location, location, location.

No one is immune, though, and with climate change now affecting weather patterns and creating its own disaster-prone scenarios, such as devastating droughts and massive flooding (sometimes in the same regions of the world), we have even more to become aware of.

ONE YEAR ALONE

In 2016 alone, the world suffered numerous major natural disasters. In the American Northeast, the Storm of the Century, also known as Jonas, left forty-eight people dead and large areas buried in record snowfall. Meanwhile, California was burning with a record number of wildfires, so many that over 10,000 firefighters were on the front lines of fourteen active fires, many started by arson, according to Cal Fire.

Louisiana was suffering at the same time from historic flooding that took the lives of thirteen people and caused billions of dollars in damage, with storms dropping over thirty inches (762 millimeters) of rain in some areas during a twelve- to fifteen-hour period. Hurricane Matthew dealt even more destruction with flooding in the southeastern region of the country, most notably in North Carolina.

Major earthquakes struck in central Italy, with a 6.2-magnitude temblor that took over 240 lives; Myanmar was hit with an even larger quake; there was a 7.8 monster in New Zealand’s South Island that caused a tsunami; and a 7.7-magnitude quake hit the Solomon Islands.

So much can happen in a year, and 2016 set a North American record with 160 natural disasters, more than in any other year since 1980. And this doesn’t include smaller disasters or those that happen in unpopulated areas. As the year 2017 got underway, there were large earthquakes in the Philippines; landslides in Indonesia killing 4; landslides in Nepal killing 2; Columbian mudslides leaving 254 dead; Cyclone Debbie, killing 2 in Australia; and a Japanese avalanche that took the lives of 8 people and injured dozens of others.

TOP DISASTERS GLOBALLY

The Internet and media are rife with lists of the top ten or twenty or fifty natural disasters to strike around the world, and it always seems that once a list is published, another, even bigger, disaster occurs worthy of being included. That is the nature of disasters. They often get worse over time and not better, mainly because, as we humans increasingly populate the planet, disasters take a higher toll of life. Huge disasters of yesteryear may have killed dozens, whereas today they kill thousands, even hundreds of thousands.

The following are some of the widely accepted mega-disasters of recent times as well as the loss of life incurred. This list does not include the hundreds of disasters that took fewer lives, ranging from a dozen dead in a wildfire to 90,000 dead in an earthquake.

Event	Location	Lives Lost
Yellow River flood	China, 1931	1,000,000 to 4,000,000 million dead
Yellow River flood	China, 1887	900,000 to 2,000,000 dead
Bhola cyclone	Bangladesh, 1970	500,000 to 1,000,000 dead
India cyclone	India, 1839	300,000 dead
Tangshan quake	China, 1976	650,000 to 800,000 dead
Haiyuan quake	China, 1920	240,000 dead
Indian Ocean quake and tsunami	2004	230,000 dead
Typhoon Nina	China, 1975	229,000 dead
Haiti quake	Haiti, 2010	160,000 dead
Yangtze River flood	China, 1935	145,000 dead
Great Kanto quake	Japan, 1923	143,000 dead
Bangladesh cyclone	Bangladesh, 1991	138,800 dead
Cyclone Nargis	Myanmar, 2008	138,000 dead
Messina quake	Italy, 1908	123,000 dead
Krakatoa eruption	Indonesia, 1883	120,000 dead
Ashgabat quake	Turkmenistan, 1948	110,000 dead
Kashmir quake	Pakistan, 2005	100,000 dead
Hanoi/Red River Delta flood	North Vietnam, 1971	100,000 dead

It’s interesting to note that the largest losses of life due to natural disasters in recent times have involved water and earth movement, either in the form of superstorms, such as cyclones and floods, or earthquakes and even subsequent tsunamis. None of these events occurred in the United States or Europe, but mainly on the larger Asian continent. China and India are such heavily populated countries; disasters often result in massive numbers of lives lost.

Natural disasters are much worse when they strike vulnerable populated regions. Think about it: if an earthquake occurs in the middle of nowhere and no life is lost or buildings damaged, we probably would not categorize it as a disaster at all, just as an earthquake. When a naturally occurring event meets a hazardous location, and the lives of humans and even animals are at risk, along with the dangers to structures and roads, airports and bridges, factories and warehouses, offices and farms—then it becomes a disaster.

As a result of the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, northern India, upwards of 100,000 people died because the area was heavily populated. When disaster hits unpopulated areas, we generally don’t think of them as disasters.

Yet to look at the loss of lives above is not to understand the bigger picture. As the following chapters will show, each different type of disaster takes lives and destroys environments and affects the local, regional, and even national economies where it occurs. And some of the biggest disasters of all are those so mind-bogglingly devastating that they result in the loss, not of millions of lives, but hundreds of millions. Those include famines, droughts, and plagues/pandemics. Such mega-disasters combine both natural and man-made causes and are the most devastating to life, whether human, animal, or plant. We will see just how shockingly catastrophic these events can truly be in a coming chapter.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

The financial impact from natural disasters is often crippling, depending upon where it occurs, what the infrastructure is like, and whether or not an initial disaster triggers something additional, as when a major quake triggers a tsunami. Usually the costs run into the billions of dollars, sometimes hundreds of billions, as money is needed to repair roads, dams, levees, bridges, homes, and buildings and assist survivors in getting the aid they need to rebuild or relocate. Further problems ensue when not all the damaged is covered by insurance.

In 2016 alone, disasters caused over $175 billion in damage, which was a four-year-high global cost according to Charles Riley’s article “Natural Disasters Caused $175 Billion in Damage in 2016” for the January 4, 2017, edition of CNN.com. Ten billion dollars alone was allocated for the damage done by Hurricane Matthew.

According to “Top 5 Most Expensive Natural Disasters in History” by Bo Zhang on AccuWeather.com, the costliest disaster ever was the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, and triggered a man-made disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The World Bank estimates the damage at $235 billion, but the Japanese government claims the number is much higher, at $309 billion.

The other four on Zhang’s list are (all estimates by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the World Bank):

1.Great Hanshin or Kobe earthquake, 1995, Japan: $100 billion as per the World Bank

2.Hurricane Katrina, 2005, United States: $61 billion according to NOAA

3.Northridge earthquake, 1994, Southern California: $42 billion as per NOAA

4.Sichuan earthquake, 2008, China: $29 billion as per the World Bank (other lists estimate this at $100–140 billion)

Other lists include the 2011 Thailand floods, at $46 billion; the Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquake of 2011, at $40 billion; Hurricane Ike in 2008 in the United States, at $30 billion; the Yangtze River floods of 1998 in China, at $26 billion, and 1992’s Hurricane Andrew in the United States, at $25 billion. Even wildfires can run into the billions of dollars of damage, as did the 2003 Cedar Fire in the United States, at $2 billion, and the 2011 Silver Lake wildfire in Canada at $1.8 billion.

Whether loss of life or property, environmental damage, or economic costs for recovery, natural disasters can have an impact that lasts decades after the actual event occurred.

The whole purpose of looking back at past disasters is to try to understand how we could have done a better job of being ready and responding in the manner most appropriate for survival. Emergency management professionals all over the world, as well as civilian groups involved in disaster preparedness and response, can examine the disasters that have happened in the recent past for clues to how communications, warnings, medical response, chain of command, emergency operations, and so many other things can be improved upon, not just for the populace at large, but for individuals and families.

For you, the reader, it helps to pinpoint what hazards exist in your area and gives insight as to the specific threats you and your family may face in the days ahead. Many people only know about major disasters from television shows and movies that sensationalize what really happens. Real information can be hard to come by, and many of us just don’t have the time to do all the research required to separate fact from fiction.

With the advent of the Internet, disaster and emergency information is now at our fingertips, but again, it takes a great deal of time to search for every possible scenario. In the information age, it often helps most to have that information in one place—thus this book and others like it. It’s a lot easier to grab a book when something happens than your computer, laptop, or tablet, and in some cases, there won’t be the power to use those things, should the electrical grid go down.

The next chapters will look at specific disasters and also explore manmade disasters and emergencies, which can be just as dangerous to life and costly to property. The more you know about what you are facing, the more of an edge you have going into preparedness and response.