The Worst World Disasters of All Time. Kevin Baker
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Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
Disaster Type: Destructive hurricane.
Fatalities: 1,833 deaths.
Resulting Damage: $108 billion dollars worth of mass destruction.
Hurricane Katrina will always be remembered as one of the strongest hurricanes in the history of the United States. It caused the deaths of almost two thousand people, making it the deadliest hurricane in nearly eighty years. In property damage, the total is estimated at around $108 billion, which is triple the amount of damage caused by another famous storm, Hurricane Andrew, in 1992.
The storm started over the Bahamas on August 23rd, 2005 as a tropical depression, at the time called ‘Tropical Depression Twelve’. It did not take long for meteorologists to realize that there was a major storm brewing in the Atlantic. The next morning, on August 24th, it was now bumped up to tropical storm status and given the name Katrina. By August 27th, the storm was already a Category 3 hurricane and evacuations were underway in the danger zones. The next morning it was a Category 5, the highest and deadliest category on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
At its peak, Hurricane Katrina had winds of 175 miles per hour and a central pressure of 902 mbar. The pressure measurement is what makes Katrina the fourth most intense Atlantic hurricane in recorded history.
Katrina made its first landfall after it had been classified as a hurricane for only two hours. It touched down between Hallandale Beach and Aventura in Florida on August 25th. It moved on to the Gulf of Mexico, where it gained most of its strength. Its second landfall was on August 29th, 2005 near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana. It had diminished to a Category 3 by then, with only 120 mph winds.
The storm continued to move inland, moving on to touch down near the Louisiana/Mississippi border, still a Category 3. It then continued strong as it moved into Mississippi, but finally weakened more than 150 miles inland. Katrina was downgraded to a tropical depression, but its lingering effects were still distinguishable in the Great Lakes region on August 31st.
Katrina is most famous for the damage it caused to the city of New Orleans on the morning of August 29th, 2005. Although 80% of the city had been evacuated, there were still tens of thousands of people in their homes when the levees broke and most of the city was submerged in water. About 180,000 homes were underwater during the flood, and all the electrical and water systems ceased to function.
However, Hurricane Katrina affected more than just New Orleans. Its storm surges affected the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama as well. Almost 240 of the deaths caused by Katrina were in Mississippi, although the majority of deaths were in Louisiana, at around 1,500. It destroyed buildings and bridges and lives.
10 – The Killing Fields
Khmer Rouge victims' skulls.
Date: 1975-1979.
Location: Cambodia.
Disaster Type: Genocide.
Fatalities: 2.2 million deaths.
Resulting Damage: 95% of Buddhist temples destroyed, alongside the inhuman political crimes.
Many people have heard about the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian militia who once followed an extreme communist regime, but few know a lot of details involving what these people actually did. The killing fields are perhaps their most dreadful legacy, and refer to both a geographical place and a period in history. If you visit Cambodia, a large number of fields may be pointed out to you as the killing fields, the locations where massacres happened.
The Khmer Rouge was an extremist group who came from the Vietnamese army, mostly from North Vietnam, who established themselves in Cambodia to bring about a new communist future for the country. It was formed in 1968 and by 1975 it ruled the country, until the group was finally driven out by Vietnamese forces after they had attempted to invade back into Vietnam. However, most of their political actions pale when compared with all of the inhuman brutality they were involved in.
Most of what the Khmer Rouge did when they grabbed power was find and arrest anyone who did not swear loyalty to their new regime or were seen as a potential threat. This included everyone from ethnic Vietnamese people, Chinese people, Thai, Christians, Buddhists, to many more groups. In all, over 2 million people were arrested, with the vast majority being killed in what would become one of the biggest genocides of modern times. A recent survey showed that based on the arrangement of tombs, the killing fields alone saw 1.3 million people killed by the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot, the then leader of the group, was sometimes referred to as Cambodia's Hitler. Some believe that over 2.2 million people ended up being killed by this group.
The judicial process when they were in power was fairly simple. There was no court of law; instead the government would issue two warnings for small crimes, and then the person was arrested and killed. Any type of political association or opinion that the Khmer did not approve of meant instant death. The goal was to ‘purify’ the population and remove any element that had any connection to the old regime or to foreign countries. Most of the executions were done using machetes, bamboo sticks or poison, and the dead were buried in mass graves, with the killing fields being by far the most populous ones.
The Khmer Rouge funded themselves using slavery and diamond trafficking. It was not a stable economy, and in just a few years, they collapsed due to a lack of funds. In a last ditch effort, they tried to invade part of Vietnam in order to gather more people to kill or trade into slavery, but they were driven back and forced to disband. In 1997, Cambodia enlisted the UN's help to set up a genocide tribunal, and in 2007, the most senior member of the group still alive, Nuon Chea, was sentenced to 35 years in jail for his involvement in the massacres.
11 – Irish Potato Famine
Famine memorial in Dublin - Image author: AlanMc
Date: 1845-1852.
Location: Ireland.
Disaster Type: Famine.
Fatalities: 1,000,000
Resulting Damage: 25% of the population died or fled Ireland.
What the history books refer to as the Irish Potato Famine is known inside the country simply as the Great Famine, because it was an event so dire and important that there was no point in adding any other qualifier. Between 1845 and 1852, close to a million people died in Ireland because of this famine, and more were forced to emigrate to other countries in order to survive, which caused the total population of the country to fall by around 25%. It was a watershed event in the history of the country, and while it is related to famines elsewhere in Europe, it hit Ireland particularly badly because of various key factors.
Ireland had been under UK control since 1801, under the executive order which gave England complete command over the country. However, even though they had representation in the British parliament, the English government struggled to control Ireland. It was once referred to as a starving country with a missing aristocracy and an alien Church. Most in England saw Ireland as a foreign nation, even though they had fought to bring the country into the United Kingdom. Many laws were passed to restrict the rights of the population, including the Catholics and the local landlords.
Because of the harsh conditions in Ireland, the potato became the bread and butter of their food supply, especially among poor people who could not afford anything of higher value. This dependency deepened during the 17th century. So when the disease Phytophthora Infestans, commonly referred to as the Blight, spread around the world in the early 1840s, it became a major issue. This was a disease that affected only potatoes, and killed over half the crops that got infected.
In 1844, newspapers carried reports in Ireland that this disease had appeared in America and Europe, and the pathogen was traced to Mexico. By 1845 it was described as a relentless issue which destroyed entire crops