Historic Natural Disasters

I haven't seen much on this, but could anyone have a tale to tell of historic natural disasters in their home region, such as the worst one in recorded history for a given country or community and even some significant events to which they or immediate family members had been witness to?  For instance, a great flood or drought, an earthquake or a storm.  Given that someone else had posted a topic about great natural disasters that didn't receive much attention (unless the ealier post was largely lost due to the recent server change), I thought that this would be a fitting subject for the general history forum.

We already know about the events of December 26th, 2004 (the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami), but I just saw a recent special on the cable channels highlighting from a few eyewitnesses who related the shock and horror of that day.  This ties in with a "It Could Happen Tomorrow" type special coming on tonight and news of a possible escalation in solar storm activity release earlier in the week.

From my immediate location (the mid-Atlantic coast of North America situated between the tidewater areas of the Delaware and Susquehana rivers), I can recall several significant events over the past few years, but nothing to the scale of the earthquakes and tsunami that struck South Asia within the past year and a half.  My father remembers events going back to his teen years.

What comes to my mind has been the recent flooding that followed a servere drought during which I clearly recall being able to walk across the bed of a large creek within a half-hour drive of my house.  The drought was so servere that I was able to enjoy fishing along the creek bed for basses that were usually pretty far out of reach of my casts.   But, starting with the near-miss by Huricane Floyd in 1998 and again with a series of storm fronts and winters of heavy percipitation, there have been some serious floods along that same creek.  On the instance of Floyd, the foot or so of heavy rain had resulted in one death in my area when a young girl was swept into an open drainage pipe in a flooded culvert (ditch) that she and some friends had taken to swimming in.  In a more recent event, a flood along the Delaware river left many marks, one being the submersion for several days of streets in Trenton, New Jersey and the other being a section of a scenic route along the opposite side of the river upstream being partially undermined by erosion.

My father remembers the time during his high school years when a hurricane actually did pass over the city of Wilmington where he lived and provided him and some friends with something of a thrill (standing in the park shielded by a tree or light post as the wind was howling in from the east, then calm and stars in the sky, then the wind whipping back from the opposite direction).  Considering what we've seen from hurricanes, their coming up this far was something of  a novelty and may be part of a cycle which I'll be experiencing in the next ten years or so.  Unlike my dad in his teens, I think I'll be considering shoring up in a dry, sturdy house for a few hours until the worst has passed.

There have been historical floods along the mid-Atlantic coast where my dad and I have been living, of course.  For instance, both my dad and I have passed by a spot on that scenic route by the Delaware where they've marked off the high water mark for a number of floods.  One may have reached a height of 10 meters or so (15-20 feet) above the road bed in that area, which I think runs an average of 2m (6-10f) above the stage of the river.  I'm thinking that it might've been from the 1930s hurricane that flooded parts of New York City and submerged Providence, Rhode Island, which resulted in hundreds of deaths, particularly along vulnerable coastal communities used to surviving slower-moving and less intense Nor'easter storms during the fall-winter months.  What makes this event even more significant is that the same time this was going on, the southern plains of the United States was in the grip of the "Dust Bowl" drought that became something of a legend since then.

I'm not sure of events before the 20th Century, though.  Could someone point me to historic floods or other disasters which occured in the Delaware and Susquehana valleys in the preceding centuries, especially those recorded by the colonists and the post-colonial United States?  I'd think that with a city like Philadelphia being situated where it is, there'd be at least one event of greater significance that happened.  In over 300 years of written history and some surviving accounts from the indigenous American tribes which previously lived in the area, there has to have been a legendary flood or drought event.

How about those local accounts from around the world?


Edited by YusakuJon3

The biggest distaster in Sarajevo's history was a fire roughly 300 years ago. Two villages on the outskirts of the city survived, nothing else. That wasn't really natural though... may Savoy burn in hell.

I'd say it would have to be one of any of the earthquakes that have hit this region numerous times throughout history. Oddly it's because we have so many earthquakes - two or three per month - that they are generally very weak and do very little damage. But every now and then you just get flattened.

The last major one here was in the 1960s. The destruction in Sarajevo was almost non-existant compared to other cities that were just levelled - like Skopje. Ottoman architecture, somehow, stands up better. Even in Skpje it was the Ottoman-style old town that survived.

That's it really.

South Asia (Northern Pakistan) Earthquake:

The South Asian earthquake was one of the biggest and bloodiest earthquaks up to date.
The earthquake took place at 8:50:38 Pakistan Standard Time on 8th October 2005, with the epicenter in the Pakistan administered region of the disputed territory of Kashmir.
It registered minimum of 7.6 (measured by USA), 7.8 (measured by Japan) on the moment magnitude scale, making it a major earthquake simillar in intensity to the 1935 Quetta and 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

The total death toll declared by Pakistani government's officials was 87,350 where other sources said it reachedover 100,000 people with 106,000 injured.

It basicly damaged Northern Pakistan, Afghanistan, Northern India and Kashmir.

Below are some pictures of what the earthquake left behind.

 

This boy was rescued after spending 3 days and 2 nights under the ruins.

The board (Allied Bank ������ ���) which could be seen, used to be on the balcony of third floor; now grounded.

 

Well, it isn't really like a flood or earthquake or anything, but not long ago we had a massive ice storm that knocked out power to millions, large areas weren't restored for nearly a month. Since alot of people use electric heat and need power to cook, and since their pipes froze and they no longer had running water, it was a bit of a crisis. I was pretty lucky, we had power back over the weekend but not many people had it back that fast.

Also it destroyed alot of our trees, so things like the maple syrup industry was down for a few years, etc.

A few pics to give you an idea of how nasty this particular ice storm was:





But also very pretty: