Top 10 deadliest natural disasters in history
https://art.tn/view/1173/en/top_10_deadliest_natural_disasters_in_history/
Reminding us how powerful Mother Nature is.Every year, nearly 100,000 people perish in natural disasters ( earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, wildfires and droughts ) while over 150 million are impacted by them, worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Violent natural disasters have been a fact of human life since the beginning of mankind, but the death counts of the most ancient of these disasters are lost to history.
The 2010 Haiti earthquake
The catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti just northwest of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010, ranks as one of the three deadliest quakes of all time.Haiti's standing as one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and its limited history of large earthquakes left it extremely vulnerable to damages and loss of life.As many as 3 million people were affected by the quake. Death toll estimates were all over the place; initially, the government of Haiti estimated fatalities stood at 230,000 people, but in January 2011, officials revised that figure to 316,000.
The 1970 Bhola cyclone
This tropical cyclone hit what is now Bangladesh on Nov. 12-13, 1970. According to NOAA's Hurricane Research Division, the storm's strongest wind speeds measured 130 mph,making it the equivalent of a Category 4 major hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale. Ahead of its landfall, a 35-foot (10.6 m) storm surge washed over the low-lying islands bordering the Bay of Bengal, causing widespread flooding .The storm surge, combined with a lack of evacuation, resulted in a massive death toll estimated at 300,000 to 500,000 people.
The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake
The deadliest earthquake in history hit China's Shaanxi province on Jan. 23, 1556. Known as the "Jiajing Great Earthquake" after the emperor whose reign it occurred in, the temblor reduced a 621-square-mile. An estimated 830,000 people died as their yaodong cave homes carved into the region's loess plateaus collapsed. The exact magnitude of the quake is lost to history, but modern-day geophysicists estimate it at around magnitude 8.
The 1887 Yellow River flood
The Yellow River (Huang He) in China was precariously situated far above most of the land around it in the late 1880s, thanks to a series of dikes built to contain the river as it flowed through the farmland of central China. Over time, these dikes had silted up, gradually lifting the river in elevation When heavy rains swelled the river in September 1887, it spilled over these dikes into the surrounding low-lying land, inundating 5,000 square miles.As a result of this flood, an estimated 900,000 to 2 million people lost their lives.
The 1931 Yangtze River floods
Excessive rainfall over central China in July and August of 1931 triggered the most deadly natural disaster in world history the Central China floods of 1931.According to "The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood" , the flood inundated almost 70,000 square miles (180,000 square km) and turned the Yangtze into what looked like a giant lake or ocean. Contemporary government numbers put the number of dead at around 2 million, but other agencies, including NOAA, say it may have been as many as 3.7
