It has become a habit now to blame somebody after every natural disaster. Whether it is the earth quake or a tsunami or a tornado or a cloud burst or drought. No doubt man has exploited nature beyond description and has made this a 'sick planet' , but natural disasters make no prior announcements and man is too small before nature's fury. See the history without any worry. ALL BEFORE MAN BECOMING TOO METALIC AND MATERIALISTIC.
Earthquakes and tsunamis
Oct. 5, 1948 - More than 110,000 were killed when a 7.3 quake rolled through the area around Ashgebat in Turkmenistan.
May 22, 1927. A magnitude 7.9 quake near Xining, China, killed 200,000
Sept. 1, 1923. A third of Tokyo and most of Yokohama were levelled when a magnitude 8.3 earthquake shook Japan. About 143,000 were killed as fires ravaged much of Tokyo.
Dec. 16, 1920. China was also the site for the world's third-deadliest quake of the 20th century. An estimated 200,000 died when a magnitude 8.6 temblor hit Gansu, triggering massive landslides.
Dec. 28, 1908. Southern Italy was ravaged by a 7.2 magnitude quake that triggered a tsunami that hit the Messina-Reggio-Calabria area, killing 123,000.
Volcanic eruptions
May 8, 1902. Mt. Pelee erupted on the Caribbean island of Martinique, destroying the capital city of St. Pierre. Up to 40,000 were killed. The day before, a volcano had killed 1,600 people on the nearby island of St. Vincent and five months later Mt. Santa Maria erupted in Guatemala, killing another 6,000.
(Two of the most famous eruptions took place before 1900. In 1883, two-thirds of the Indonesian island of Krakatoa was destroyed when a volcano erupted. A resulting series of tsunamis killed more than 36,000. In 79 CE, Mt. Vesuvius erupted in southern Italy, destroying the ancient Roman city of Pompeii and two other communities. Thousands died.)
Hurricanes, cyclones and floods
Aug. 5, 1975. At least 85,000 were killed along the Yangtze River in China when more than 60 dams failed following a series of storms, causing widespread flooding and famine. This disaster was kept secret by the Chinese government for 20 years.
August 1971. An estimated 100,000 died when heavy rains led to severe flooding around Hanoi in what was then North Vietnam.
Nov. 13, 1970. The Bhola cyclone in the Ganges delta killed an estimated 500,000 in Bangladesh. Some put the complete death toll as high as one million.
June, 1938. Nationalist Chinese soldiers, under the direction of Chiang Kai-Shek, blew up dikes around the Yellow River to stop Japanese troops from advancing. More than half a million people died in the resulting flood.
May-August 1931. Massive flooding of China's Yellow and Yangtze rivers led to almost four million deaths from drowning, disease and starvation. The flooding of the Yangtze also killed an estimated 100,000 in 1911 and 140,000 in 1935.
Hurricane Galveston - Sept. 8, 1900
Galveston was known at the end of the 19th Century as the "Jewel of Texas" until the single deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history wiped away much of what had been a booming future. The bustling island community had been the hub of the cotton trade and Texas' largest city. Progress bred complacency though, which became apparent when city officials and residents decided against building a seawall to protect the city. When the category 4 hurricanewith estimated 135 mph winds made landfall in the early morning, buildings crumbled under the force of 15-foot-high waves. By late afternoon, the entire island was submerged. An estimated 8,000 people perished. Although the city was successfully rebuilt, it never regained the prosperity that earned it a reputation as the "New York of the south.
Dust Bowl - Early 1930's
Prior to the early 1930's, the Great Plains was a farmer's paradise. Rising demands for wheat spurred settlers to plow much of the southern plains' grassy soil to meet this need. The land was eventually exposed to erosion, since grass and tree roots that had held the moist soil in place during dry times were replaced by cash crops. A decade-long drought transformed the loose topsoil into dust, which windstorms swept up and blew eastward, darkening skies as far away as the Atlantic Coast. With most of the area’s crops decimated, a third of the farmers turned to government aid, while around half a million Americans were left homeless.
keechobee Hurricane - September 16, 1928
When the evacuated residents of Lake Okeechobee learned that a hurricane hadn't arrived on schedule, many returned home thinking that they had been spared. The storm, however, slammed ashore later on the evening of September 16th with sustained 140 mph winds. Such intensity broke a small dike at the lake's south end, resulting in weeks of heavy flooding that claimed at least 2,500 lives.
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