List of disasters - Definition and Overview

This is a list of world disasters, both natural and man-made.

Prehistoric disasters

• The Snowball Earth hypothesis.
• Various extinction events, some of an undetermined nature.
• Impact events.
• Great prehistoric floods, many brought on by rising sea levels and melting glacial dams at the end of the most recent ice age

Classical antiquity disasters

• Thera volcanic eruption caused tsunamis in the Aegean sea, destroyed Minoan fleet, leaving Crete open to mainland invaders
• Vesuvius volcanic eruption, Italy, 79 AD buried Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae.
• Alexandria earthquake which destroyed the Pharos of Alexandria
• Rhodes earthquake destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes
• (Sodom and Gomorrah which were destroyed in an undetermined Biblical disaster.)
• Climatic disaster of 535 AD, triggered by an Indonesian volcanic eruption; grassland failures spurred migrations of Avars and others; plagues, conjectured collapse of Late Antiquity (David Keys theory, in Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World, 2000. See climate changes of 535-536.

Modern world disasters

• 1755 Lisbon earthquake (November 1st, 1755)
• Mobile magazine explosion (May 25, 1865)
• Krakatoa, Indonesia, volcanic eruption, (August 26, 1883)
• Galveston Hurricane of 1900, Galveston, Texas (September 8, 1900)
• 1887 Nanaimo Mine Explosion, Nanaimo, BC (May 3, 1887)
• 1906 San Francisco earthquake, San Francisco, California (April 18, 1906)
• Great Lakes Storm of 1913, Great Lakes basin region (November, 1913)
• Halifax explosion, Halifax, Nova Scotia (December 6, 1917)
• The Boston Molasses Disaster, Boston, Massachusetts (January 15 1919)
• Tri-State Tornado, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana (March 18, 1925)
• 1931 Huang He floods, China (August 1931)
• The Bombay Explosion, Victoria Dock Bombay, India (April 14 1944)
• Hartford Circus Fire, Hartford, Connecticut (July 6, 1944)
• The Port Chicago Explosion (July 17 1944)
• Texas City Explosion, Texas City, Texas, (April 16, 1947)
• Great Smog of 1952, London, England
• North Sea Flood of 1953, United Kingdom and The Netherlands
• 24 hours of Le Mans disaster, France, (June 11, 1955)
• Escuminac Disaster, Escuminac, New Brunswick, Canada (June 20, 1959)
• Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak, Midwest, United States (April 11, 1965)
• BLEVE explosion at a refinery in Feyzin, France (January 4, 1966)
• Aberfan disaster, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales (October 21, 1966)
• Bhola cyclone in East Pakistan/Bangladesh, (November 13, 1970)
• Second Ibrox disaster, Glasgow, Scotland (January 2, 1971)
• Summerland disaster, Isle of Man (August 2, 1973)
• Super Outbreak, tornadoes in 13 U.S. states (April 3, 1974)
• Flixborough disaster, North Lincolnshire (June 1 1974)
• Tangshan earthquake, China (July 26 1976)
• USA Heat Wave of 1980, (June to September 1980)
• Hyatt Hotel disaster, Kansas City, Missouri (July 17 1981)
• Bradford City Disaster, Bradford, England (May 11, 1985)
• Heysel Stadium disaster, Brussels, Belgium (May 29, 1985)
• Piper Alpha Disaster, North Sea, Scotland, (July 6 1988)
• Spitak Earthquake, Spitak, Armenia (December 7, 1988)
• Hillsborough disaster, Sheffield, England (April 15, 1989)
• Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption (June 15th, 1991)
• Westray Mine Disaster, Plymouth, Nova Scotia, Canada (May 9, 1992)
• Chicago Heat Wave of 1995, Chicago, Illinois
• Kocaeli Earthquake, Kocaeli, Turkey (August 17, 1999)
• Enschede fireworks disaster, Enschede, Netherlands (May 13, 2000)
• Kaprun disaster, Kaprun, Austria (November 11, 2000)
• European Heat Wave of 2003, Europe
• Bam Earthquake, Iran (December 26, 2003)
• 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (December 26 2004)

Dam disasters

• Great Sheffield flood, Sheffield, England (March 11, 1864)
• Johnstown flood, Johnstown, Pennsylvania (May 31, 1889)
• St. Francis Dam disaster, Los Angeles, California (March 12, 1928)
• Vajont Dam disaster, Longarone, Italy (October 9, 1963)
• Banqiao Dam disaster, Henan Province, China (August 8 1975)

Environmental disasters

• Torrey Canyon oilspill in the English Channel (March 18, 1967)
• Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York (1970s)
• Seveso disaster, Italy, 1976
• Bhopal Disaster, Bhopal, India (December 3, 1984)
• Exxon Valdez oil spill, Prince William Sound (March 24, 1989)
• Prestige oil spill, off the Spanish coast, (November 13, 2002)

Mining disasters

• Monongah, West Virginia 362 killed (December, 1907)
• Burns Pit Disaster, Stanley, County Durham, 160+ killed, (February 16, 1909)
• Cherry, Illinois,United States 259 killed (December, 1909)
• Dawson, New Mexico 263 killed (October, 1913)
• Gresford, Wrexham 266 killed (September,1934)
• Springhill Mining Disaster, Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada 125 killed (October 23, 1958)
• Knox Mine Disaster, Port Griffith, United States (January 22, 1959)
• Kellogg, Idaho 91 killed, (May, 1972)

Nuclear disasters

• Three Mile Island, Dauphin County, Penn (March 28 1979)
• Chernobyl nuclear power-plant disaster, Chernobyl, Ukraine (April 26, 1986)
• See also List of nuclear accidents

War disasters

An attack with much collateral damage may be considered a disaster, such as the attack on KdF Ship Wilhelm Gustloff, 1945, the worst or perhaps second worst maritime incident in history, in terms of loss of life in a single vessel (see also note at the end of the article RMS Titanic).

• The Blitz (September 7, 1940 through to May 1941)
• Bombing of Dresden in World War II (February 13-15, 1945)
• Bombing of Tokyo in World War II (February 23, March 9 and May 26 1945
• Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and August 9 1945, respectively)
• Vietnam. Agent orange herbicide sprayed on millions of Vietnam civilians and US troops by the USA during the Vietnam War between 1961 and 1970.

Air disasters

This is a list of disasters involving objects in flight or near-flight. See also: List of space disasters, List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners, Incidents in Aviation

• Hydravion disaster Rio de Janeiro 3 December 1928
• Airship R101 disaster (October 5 1930)
• Hindenburg disaster (May 6 1937)
• Munich air disaster (February 6 1958)
• Staines air disaster (July 18 1972)
• Ermenonville air disaster north of Paris (March 3 1974)
• Tenerife disaster collision between KLM and PanAm Boeing 747's (March 27, 1977)
• Mount Erebus disaster in Antarctica (November 28 1979)
• Boeing 747 shootdown, Korean Air Flight 7 (September 1 1983)
• Air India Flight 182 June 23, 1985
• Japan Airlines Flight 123 (August 12, 1985)
• Challenger space shuttle explosion (January 28 1986)
• Ramstein airshow disaster (August 28, 1988)
• Lockerbie disaster (December 21 1988)
• Kegworth air disaster (January 8 1989)
• Airbus A300 shootdown, Iran Air Flight 655 (July 3, 1988)
• Bijlmerramp disaster, Bijlmerramp, Netherlands (October 4 1992)
• Swissair Flight 111 September 2, 1998
• Ukraine airshow disaster (July 27, 2002)
• Space Shuttle Columbia disaster (February 1, 2004)

Rail disasters

• Abergele train disaster (1868)
• Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster 1876
• Armagh rail disaster (June 12 1889)
• Sunshine station disaster (April 20 1908)
• Wellington avalanche (March 1 1910)
• Tangiwai railway disaster (December 24 1953)
• Granville railway disaster (January 18 1977)
• Eschede train disaster (June 3 1998)
• Ladbroke Grove rail crash (October 5 1999)
• Hatfield rail crash (October 17 2000)
• Potters Bar rail crash (May 10 2002)
• Neyshabur disaster (February 18, 2004)
• Madrid train terror attacks (March 11 2004)
• Ryongchon disaster (April 22 2004)
• "Queen of the Sea" train disaster, Telwatta, Sri Lanka: Approximately 1700 are killed in the world's worst rail disaster to date as a train is overwhelmed by a tsunami created by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (December 26, 2004)

See also: List of rail accidents

Ship and ferry disasters

See also: List of shipwrecks

• General Slocum fire (15 June 1904)
• Titanic sinking (April 15, 1912)
• KdF Ship Wilhelm Gustloff (January 30, 1945)
• Cap Arcona sinking (May 3, 1945)
• Novorossiysk sinking (29 October 1955)
• SS Andrea Doria sinking (July 26, 1956)
• Herald of Free Enterprise (March 6, 1987)
• M/S Estonia sinking (September 28,1994)
• Russian submarine Kursk sinking (August 12,2000)

Road disasters

• A dynamite truck blew up in Thailand, 150+ killed (February 15, 1945)
• 7 ammunition trucks explode in Colombia, 1,200 killed (August 7, 1956)
• Two trucks collided in Togo, 125+ killed (December 6,1965)
• A bus drove into an irrigation canal in Egypt, 127 killed (August 9, 1973)
• A suspension bridge collapsed in Nepal, 148 killed (November 23, 1974)
• A gasoline tanker exploded in Spain, 120+ killed (July 11,1978)
• A gasoline tanker explodes in the Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan, 2,000+ killed (November 3, 1982)
• A bus hit a bridge in Kenya, 106 killed (December,1992)
• An explosion created a hole, in which 100 cars fell in South Korea, 110 killed (April 28,1995)
• A gasoline tanker hit cars and exploded in Nigeria, 150+ killed (November 4 2000)

Fire disasters

Main article: List of historic fires

• Great Fire of London, London, England (September 2-September 5 1666)
• Great Chicago Fire, Chicago, Illinois (October 8, 1871)
• Peshtigo Fire, Peshtigo, Wisconsin (October 8, 1871)

Causes of hypothetical future disasters

• Supervolcano
• Asteroid impact event
• Megatsunami
  • Cumbre Vieja
• Recurrence of Cascadia Earthquake
• Global warming

See also

• List of wars and disasters by death toll
• List of Canadian disasters
• List of United Kingdom disasters by death toll
• List of natural disasters in the United Kingdom