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US History Encyclopedia: Disasters

In the modern world, the traditional view of natural disasters as punishments for human wickedness has given way to the scientific study of the causes of seemingly unpredictable acts of nature. In recent years, however, scholars have placed more emphasis on the roles played by greed and indifference to potential human suffering in many seemingly "natural" disasters. The following is a selective list of natural and man-made disasters that have occurred in the United States. It should be noted that disaster statistics are often approximations, at best. Not only do contemporary news accounts frequently differ, but there are no standards by which to judge whether deaths and injuries were directly caused by a cataclysmic event.

Aviation

17 September 1908. The first airplane crash involving a fatality took place at Fort Myer, Virginia. A plane flown by Orville Wright and Thomas E. Selfridge was thrown out of control when it hit a bracing wire. Wright was badly injured and Selfridge was killed.

2 July 1912. The first U.S. DirigibleAkron blew up over Atlantic City, New Jersey, at an altitude of 2,000 feet; the builder of the Akron and four crewmembers were killed.

21 February 1922. The Italian-built hydrogen-filled U.S. dirigible Roma exploded in Hampton, Virginia, killing thirty-four of the crew of forty-five. After the disaster, hydrogen—which is much cheaper than helium but highly flammable—was no longer used in U.S. airships.

6 May 1937. The 803-foot-long German dirigible Hindenburg—the largest airship ever built—exploded in midair at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, just thirty-two seconds after dropping rope mooring lines to the ground. The airship, filled with highly flammable hydrogen gas, crashed in flames, killing thirteen passengers, twenty-two crewmembers, and one ground handler. The cause of the crash was never determined. Leading theories suggested either an electrical discharge in the atmosphere or sabotage (for which there was no evidence).

28 July 1945. The pilot of a B-25 bomber lost his bearings and crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City between the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth floors, setting fire to the upper part of the building. The three military men in the plane and eleven people in the building were killed; twenty-six people were injured.

30 June 1956. A TWA Lockheed Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 collided at an estimated angle of thirty degrees over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 people onboard both planes. The planes had left Los Angeles, California, within minutes of each other and were flying at 300 MPH at 21,000 feet. The captains had chosen to fly in airspace not controlled by Air Route Traffic Control Centers. A result of the crash was the 1958 Federal Aviation Act, establishing an independent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to modernize air traffic control and expand controlled airspace.

16 December 1960. A United Airlines DC-8 jet bound for Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport with eighty-four passengers and crew, and a TWA Super Constellation bound for La Guardia Airport with forty-four passengers and crew collided in midair over Staten Island, New York, during a snowstorm. The United plane crashed in a Brooklyn tenement district, the TWA plane, in Staten Island harbor. All 128 people in the planes, and six people on the ground, were killed. As a result, the FAA drastically reduced speed limits for aircraft entering terminals and assigned extra traffic controllers to airports with high flight volumes.

1 March 1962. An American Airlines Boeing 707 crashed in Jamaica Bay, New York, shortly after takeoff. All ninety-five people aboard were killed.

3 June 1963. A chartered military airplane vanished near southeast Alaska. Of the 101 people aboard, no survivors were ever found.

4 September 1971. A Boeing 727 carrying 111 persons crashed into a mountainside while approaching the airport at Juneau, Alaska, and fell into a deep gorge; everyone aboard died.

29 December 1972. An Eastern Airlines L-1011 TriStar jumbo jet crashed in the Florida Everglades during its landing approach. Wreckage from the 350,000-pound craft was strewn over a 15,000-foot area. Of the 176 people aboard, 101 died.

24 June 1975. An Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 jetliner crashed in flames at the edge of Kennedy International Airport in New York City while attempting to land during an electrical storm. Of the 124 passengers and crew, 112 died.

25 September 1978. A private plane and jetliner collided near San Diego, California, killing 144 people.

25 May 1979. In one of the worst air disasters in history, a U.S. DC-10 jetliner bound for Los Angeles, California, crashed on takeoff at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago after one engine and its support pylon fell off. All 258 passengers and thirteen crew were killed.

9 July 1982. A Pan American jetliner crashed in Kenner, Louisiana, killing all 146 on board and eight on the ground.

2 August 1985. A Delta jetliner crashed in a storm near the Dallas–Fort Worth Airport, killing 134 people.

16 August 1987. A Northwest Airlines jet bound for Phoenix crashed after takeoff from Detroit, killing 156 people.

11 May 1989. ValuJet Airlines flight 592 crashed in the Florida Everglades, a few minutes after taking off from Miami, killing 110 passengers and the crew. Investigators determined the plane was carrying illegally stored oxygen generators that apparently fanned a fire, causing the crash.

8 September 1994. A USAir Boeing 737 was approaching Pittsburgh when it crashed into the woods northwest of the airport, killing all 132 aboard.

17 July 1996. Trans-World Airlines Flight 800 exploded shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 passengers and crew. Investigators concluded that air conditioners cooling the plane had turned the fuel in the nearly empty fuel tank into combustible vapors that ignited from a tiny spark in the electrical wiring. (See TWA Flight 800.)

31 October 1999. Cairo-bound Egyptair Flight 990, a Boeing 767-300, left New York with 217 passengers and crew. A half-hour later the plane plunged into the Atlantic off the coast of Massachusetts.

12 November 2001. Minutes after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport, American Airlines Flight 587, bound for the Dominican Republic, crashed into the town of Belle Harbor in Queens, New York, killing all 260 people onboard and five on the ground.

Building and Dam Collapses

31 May 1889. The Conemaugh Lake in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flooded after a forty-eight-hour storm and burst through South Fork Dam, sending 20 million tons of water into the valley below in less than forty-five minutes. The man-made lake, built as a reservoir, had been purchased in 1852 by a group of industrialists as a private fishing pond. They removed the dam's discharge pipes to keep the water level high and partially blocked the spillways to keep the fish from escaping. These actions had the effect of removing the dam's pressure valve. As many as 3,000 people were killed by the flood or the fire that broke out on a thirty-acre island of floating wreckage blocked by a stone bridge. This was one of the most severe floods in U.S. history (see Johnstown Flood).

28 January 1922. The roof of the 1,800-seat Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C., collapsed during a performance, killing ninety-five (some accounts say 120) and injuring more than 100.

13 March 1928. The collapse of St. Francis Dam, in San Francisquito Canyon, California, forty-five miles north of Los Angeles, sent billions of gallons of water racing through the sixty-mile-wide floodplain at 500,000 cubic feet per second. The death toll was 350; most of the victims were crushed by boulders and debris.

26 February 1972. A coal-refuse dam in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, collapsed, spreading water and sludge into the valley below; 118 died and 4,000 were left homeless.

17 July 1981. Two of the three concrete walkways at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta collapsed, killing 114 people and injuring nearly 200. An investigation revealed that the wrong configuration of metal rods was used in the construction of the walkways.

Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions

15 December 1811. A strong earthquake in New Madrid, Missouri, the first of many over a nearly two-month period, destroyed the town and several others nearby. While few casualties were reported, the earthquakes could be felt over a 1.5-million-square- mile area. They destroyed forests, opened large ravines, and even changed the course of the Mississippi River for several months.

31 August 1886. An earthquake shook the Eastern United States from Boston to Charleston, North Carolina, and from Milwaukee to New Orleans, killing 110 people in Charleston.

18 April 1906. San Francisco Earthquake. One of the most devastating natural disasters in the recorded history of North America, this earthquake and the subsequent fires killed 700 people and ravaged the city.

27 March 1964. One of the most powerful earthquakes to strike anywhere in the world (measuring up to 8.4 on the Richter scale) hit southern Alaska, killing at least 115 and causing over $350 million in damage.

18 May 1980. Mount St. Helens in southwest Washington erupted in the first of a series of explosions 500 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Advance warning and evacuations kept the death toll at sixty-one. The eruption felled 130,000 acres of forest, and buried 150 miles of rivers and twenty-six lakes. Across the Northwest, nearly 6,000 miles of roadway were covered with ash; a cloud of ash 500 miles long and 100 miles wide moved eastward over Montana and Idaho.

17 October 1989. With an epicenter ten miles northeast of Santa Cruz, California, the Loma Prieta earthquake (which measured 7.1 on the Richter scale) was responsible for sixty-three deaths, 3,767 injuries and $6 billion in property damage in the Los Angeles area.

17 January 1994. Measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter twenty miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, the Northridge earthquake killed fifty-seven people, severely injured 1,500, and caused an estimated $15 to $30 billion in damage.

Epidemics

Fall 1793. A Yellow Fever epidemic killed thousands in Philadelphia.

Mid-August–October 1878. A yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee, killed 5,000 residents; 25,000 people fled, spreading the disease elsewhere in the South, increasing the overall death toll to 14,000.

1918–1919. The worldwide Influenza pandemic first appeared in the United States at the Fort Riley and Camp Funston army training camps in Kansas, where forty-six died. At the height of the outbreak, in October 1918, more than 21,000 U.S. deaths were attributed to the disease. Total U.S. fatalities were said to be 550,000, more than ten times the number of American casualties in World War I.

1931. A diphtheria epidemic killed about 17,000 children in the United States.

1981–. A virus believed to have originated in Africa in the 1950s, possibly in monkeys, was first documented in humans in the United States in 1981. The infecting agent of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV), which spreads primarily through sexual contact and injected-drug use. As of mid-2001, AIDS deaths in the United States totaled 457,667; an estimated 800,000–900,000 persons are infected with HIV/ AIDS. While new drug formulations have kept HIV-infected individuals alive for increasingly longer periods, and the new AIDS cases and deaths have declined, the rate of HIV infection remains about 40,000 annually.

Fires

16 December 1835. In New York City, 674 buildings burned in a fire.

14 July 1845. A fire that started on a New York City street spread to a building where saltpeter (used in manufacturing gunpowder) was stored. An unknown number of people were killed, and 1,000 buildings were destroyed.

8–9 October 1871. The Chicago Fire left 300 dead and 90,000 homeless, with property loss at $200 million.

8–14 October 1871. After months of drought, hot, dry gale-force winds whipped forest fires into an inferno that destroyed Peshtigo, Wisconsin, killing 1,152 of its citizens as well as about 350 people from neighboring towns. Nearby swamps produced methane gas, which exploded in the intense heat even before the fires reached town. Many sought refuge from the airborne chunks of burning debris on the bridge over the Peshtigo River, which ignited and collapsed. More than 4 million acres of forests and grasslands burned. Yet the fire received minimal news coverage because the Chicago fire, caused by the same dry winds, began on the same day.

5 December 1876. A fire that apparently started when a lamp ignited a backstage curtain in the Brooklyn Theater in Brooklyn, New York, killed 295.

4 June 1892. Flaming oil from a storage tank was carried by rushing floodwaters into Oil City and Titusville, Pennsylvania. Both towns were destroyed; the death toll was 130.

1 September 1894. A forest fire in eastern Minnesota spread to Hinkley (population 1,200), destroying it and more than twelve other neighboring towns. The death toll was more than 600. Hinkley's survivors took refuge in a gravel pit filled with stagnant water or in a lake several miles out of town, where they had fled on a train that caught fire.

30 December 1903. A fire started by a stage light that ignited gauze draperies resulted in tragedy at the new, 1,602-seat Iroquois Theater in Chicago. Stagehands waited too long to lower the fireproof safety curtain, and the fire exits led to only one narrow passageway. Of the 602 deaths, 400 were caused by a massive stampede for the exits. A new fire code for public theaters in Chicago was instituted after the disaster.

7 February 1904. A strong wind turned a fire in a dry goods warehouse in Baltimore into an out-of-control blaze that raged for two days and caused $85 million in property damage, the second worst fire to date in U.S. history. Yet only one person, a fireman, was killed.

4 March 1908. An overheated furnace burst into flame at the Lake View School in Collinwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, killing 171 of the 360 children and nine teachers.

25 March 1911. Triangle Shirtwaist Fire killed 145, mostly young women, in a garment factory.

12 October 1918. Forest fires near Duluth, Minnesota, and northern Wisconsin destroyed twenty-one towns, killing 800, and leaving 12,000 homeless.

21 April 1930. Fire broke out at a construction site in the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus and spread to the tarpaper roof of the prison. Most of the prisoners were kept in their cells until escape from the flames was impossible. The prison, designed to hold 1,500 inmates, had a population of 4,300; 317 died and 231 were injured.

18 March 1937. A gas leak caused a violent explosion near the end of the school day at the schoolhouse in New London, Texas. Parents waiting to collect their children watched in horror as 294 children and teachers were killed by the explosion or crushed under debris.

23 April 1940. A dance hall fire in Natchez, Mississippi, killed 198.

28 November 1942. Lack of exit doors, doors that opened inward, and a great deal of flammable material contributed to the death by fire of 474 people (or 493; accounts differ) at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston. Fire had broken out in the basement bar and spread quickly up to the dance floor.

6 July 1944. A Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus tent, weatherproofed with a highly flammable substance, caught fire and collapsed in Hartford, Connecticut. Blocked exits prevented escape for many of the 7,000 people attending the show. The fatalities numbered at least 163; injury statistics range from 174 to 261.

7 December 1946. Fire broke out early in the morning in a corridor of the fifteen-story Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, which had been classified as "fireproof" in a safety inspection despite having no sprinkler system or fire escapes. Of the 280 guests, 119 died; those who perished had barricaded themselves in their rooms or could not be reached by firemen, whose ladders extended only to the tenth floor. Ninety other guests suffered serious injuries.

1 December 1958. A fire at Our Lady of the Angels parochial school in Chicago killed 93 children and nuns. The disaster prompted the establishment of new safety regulations, fire drills, and fire fighting equipment in many U.S. schools.

28 May 1977. A supper club fire in Southgate, Kentucky, killed 164.

21 November 1980. A fire that broke out in the kitchen of the twenty-one-story MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, killed 85 and injured more than 600, mostly from smoke inhalation. There were no sprinklers on many floors, flammable synthetics were used in building materials, and self-locking doors on stairwells trapped guests. The tragedy accelerated updating of fire codes to emphasize smoke control and provide for the special needs of high-rise buildings.

Industrial: Chemical Spills, Explosions, and Mining

1 May 1900. An underground explosion at a Scofield, Utah, mine killed 201 miners.

19 May 1902. A mine at Coal Creek, Tennessee, exploded, killing 184 workers.

6 December 1907. In two adjoining Monongah, West Virginia, coal mines owned by the Consolidated Coal Company, runaway mining cars filled with coal created an electrical fire (probably by crashing into an electrical line) that ignited highly explosive coal dust. The explosion—the worst U.S. mining disaster ever—killed 362 miners. Only four escaped; recovery of the bodies took more than three weeks.

19 December 1907. An apparent gas explosion at the Darr Coal Mine in Jacob's Creek, Pennsylvania, killed 239 of the 240 miners.

13 November 1909. Bales of hay caught fire near the entrance to a mine at Cherry, Illinois, and spread to the mineshaft, killing 259.

22 October 1913. An explosion caused by a buildup of coal dust in a mine owned by the Stag Canyon Fuel Company in Dawson, New Mexico, filled the mine with deadly gases and sealed off the exits. Only five miners were rescued; 263 died.

18 May 1918. A TNT explosion blew up the Aetna Chemical Company plant in Oakdale, Pennsylvania, killing about 200 people.

17 July 1944. Explosions at two ammunition dumps killed more than 300 in Port Chicago, California.

30 September 1944. Liquid gas tanks exploded in Cleveland, Ohio, setting off a fire that spread over a fifty-block area. Property damage was estimated at $10 million, about 100 people lost their lives, and more than 200 were injured.

20 October 1944. Another liquid gas tank exploded in Cleveland; 121 died and hundreds were left homeless.

19 May 1928. A coal mine explosion at Mather, Pennsylvania, killed 195 miners.

1942–1980. More than 20,000 tons of chemical waste, including dioxin, buried between 1942 and 1953 by the Hooker Electrochemical and Olin corporations in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York, began to seep into backyards and basement walls in the mid-1970s. Residents had far greater than normal occurrences of cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and other serious health problems. Studies helped focus public attention on the problem of toxic waste and led to passage of the Emergency Response (Superfund) Act in 1980, making owners and operators of hazardous waste dumps liable for clean-up costs.

2 May 1972. A fire in the nearly 5,000-foot-deep Sunshine Silver Mine in Kellogg, Idaho, spread flames and carbon monoxide fumes, blocking hoist exits; ninety-one perished. Two miners were found alive after seven days.

5 December 1982. When the Meramec River in Times Beach, Missouri, thirty-five miles southwest of St. Louis, overflowed its banks, it spread oil that had been sprayed on the roads to control dust. The oil contained dioxin, the most toxic chemical known, producing adverse health effects at all tested levels. Virtually the entire town of 300 was evacuated, and more than $33 million was spent on cleanup.

24 March 1989. The tanker Exxon Valdez, loaded with crude oil, struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 10.8 million gallons over a 500-square-mile area. Cleanup efforts were hampered by frozen ground and the remoteness of the site.

Marine

31 October 1837. The side-wheeler Monmouth collided with the Tremont on the Mississippi River near Profit Island, killing 300.

13 January 1840. Near Eaton's Neck, New York, the steamboat Lexington caught fire, killing 140.

9 August 1841. Containers of turpentine stored near the boilers on the steamboat Erie exploded soon after it left Buffalo, New York, for Chicago. The newly painted and varnished ship immediately caught fire, killing 242, many of whom were immigrant passengers trapped in the steerage section.

17 June 1850. A fire aboard the steamer Griffith on Lake Erie took the lives of all 300 aboard.

24 December 1853. En route to California, the steamer San Francisco foundered off the Mexican coast; of its 700 passengers, 240 drowned.

13 November 1854. The wreck of an immigrant ship, the New Era, en route to New York from Bremen, Germany, killed more than 300 off the New Jersey coast.

12 September 1857. The side-wheel steamer Central America was bound from Havana, Cuba, to New York City with miners transporting about three tons of gold bars and coins when it was struck by a hurricane and began leaking. As soon as the last lifeboats left with women and children, a giant wave pushed the steamer to the bottom of the ocean, about 160 miles off the South Carolina coast. Only 153 of the 575 passengers and crew were saved. The wreck was finally located in 1987; after three years of litigation, a federal judge awarded the gold to a salvage group.

7–8 September 1860. The steamer Lady Elgin collided with the schooner Augusta on Lake Michigan; 287 of the 400 passengers and crew drowned.

25 March 1865. The General Lyon, a propeller-driven steamship, caught fire and sank off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, killing some 400 passengers and crew.

27 April 1865. The coal-burning Mississippi steamer Sultana, licensed to carry 376 persons, left New Orleans on 21 April en route for Cairo, Illinois. On 23 April, while the ship docked at Vicksburg, Mississippi, for boiler repairs, the roughly 100 passengers and eighty crewmen were joined by 2,134 Union soldiers paroled from Confederate prisons. (The ship's owners stood to earn $5 for each enlisted man and $10 for each officer transported north.) At 2 A.M. on 27 April, less than an hour after sailing from Memphis, the ship's boilers burst, hurling hundreds into the Mississippi. The steam's twin smokestacks collapsed, crushing men underneath. An upper deck fell, spilling passengers into the burning boiler. The fire spread, causing hundreds of soldiers to jump over-board into dangerously crowded waters. Fire ruined the lifeboats or made them impossible to reach. The dead officially numbered 1,547; some estimates put the toll higher. Although this was one of the worst ship disasters of all time, newspaper coverage was minimal because of coverage of the funeral of President Abraham Lincoln, assassinated on 15 April.

3 October 1866. En route to New Orleans from New York City, the steamer Evening Star foundered at sea; 250 were lost.

26 November 1898. A rainstorm that swept the New England coast and Long Island, New York, destroyed or damaged 213 vessels. The Portland, a side-wheeler, had sailed from Boston before the storm and disappeared the next day, far south of its course. It is believed that the Portland collided with another ship near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and sank.

30 June 1900. A steamship and pier at Hoboken, New Jersey, caught fire, killing 326 persons and causing over $4 million in property damage.

15 June 1904. On the paddle wheel excursion steamer General Slocum a paint locker (or a stove in the galley; accounts differ) caught fire just 300 yards from a New York City pier. Yet Captain William van Schaick kept steaming up the East River into a strong northeast wind that fanned the flames and crashed the boat into North Brother Island. Of the 1,500 passengers, mostly parents, teachers, and children, 1,021 burned to death, drowned, or were caught in the churning paddle wheels. The inexperienced crew opened hatchways that allowed the fire to spread to the upper decks. Even worse, lifeboats were tied down with wire, fire hoses were full of holes, and the life preservers had been filled with sawdust and metal rods to bring them up to mandatory weight. Many of those who perished were drowned or caught in the paddle wheels in an attempt to leave the burning ship; more than half the dead were children. This was the worst harbor disaster in U.S. history. Van Schaick was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison, but President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned him after only two years, citing his age (sixty-three).

11 February 1907. The schooner Harry Knowlton crashed into the side-wheel Joy Line steamer Larchmont, en route from Providence, Rhode Island, to New York, punching a hole in its port side. The Larchmont sank in fifteen minutes. A lifeboat rescued only nine survivors, including the captain. The other 332 passengers and crew drowned in the freezing waters, were fatally scalded by steam from a ruptured steam line, or froze to death on a life raft.

24 July 1915. An excursion steamer, the Eastland, capsized while in port in Chicago, killing over 800.

24–25 October 1918. The Canadian-Pacific steamship Princess Sophia struck a reef west of Juneau, Alaska, to no apparent ill effect—rescuers responding to distress calls decided evacuation was unnecessary—but a subsequent storm dashed the ship against the reef and killed all 398 aboard, a tragedy witnessed by the powerless men in the rescue boats.

8 September 1934. A fire that broke out in the writing room of the cruise ship Morro Castle off the New Jersey coast left 137 (some accounts say 134) dead of the 562 people aboard. The captain had died suddenly the previous evening, and the ship—returning from Havana to New York—was commanded by the chief officer, William Warms. He wasn't informed of the fire until after he steered the ship into a twenty-knot wind, which created a raging inferno. No passenger drills had been held on the ship, and some of the hydrants had been capped to avoid leakage. Of the first ninety-eight people to evacuate in lifeboats, ninety-two were crew. Warms and the chief engineer were found guilty of negligence, and the Cuba Mail Steamship Company received the maximum ($10,000) penalty.

16 April 1947. Fire broke out on the freighter Grand camp at Texas City, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico. Loaded with highly flammable ammonium nitrate, the freighter blew up and set fifty tankers in the harbor ablaze. The death toll was estimated as at least 500, perhaps as high as 800.

25 July 1956. On a foggy morning off the coast of Massachusetts, the captain of the Stockholm, owned by the Swedish–American Line, misinterpreted radar signals and plowed into the Italian Line flagship Andrea Doria. Forty-three passengers and crew on the Doria died, mostly from the collision (survivors were rescued by nearby ships); three Stockholm crewmembers disappeared and others died later of injuries.

10 April 1963. About 220 miles off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the U.S.S. Thresher, a nuclear-powered sub-marine, mysteriously sank during a routine dive with 129 aboard (see Thresher Disaster).

29 July 1967. The U.S. aircraft carrier Forrestal broke into flames off the coast of North Vietnam following a flight deck explosion; 134 died and 100 others were injured. Sixty planes and helicopters were destroyed or badly damaged. Total damage was estimated at $135 million.

Railroads and Bridges

8 November 1833. The earliest recorded train wreck involving passenger deaths occurred when a Camden and Amboy train derailed and crashed near Hightstown, New Jersey. Two people were killed and twenty-four injured. Former president John Quincy Adams was on the train but escaped unhurt.

29 December 1876. A train bridge spanning a gorge in Ashtabula, Ohio, collapsed in a blizzard. Overturned heating stoves set fire to the passenger cars of the Pacific Express after the train fell into the freezing creek. Ninety-two of the 150 passengers were killed.

10 August 1887. A seventeen-car excursion train packed with about 900 passengers was unable to stop in time to avoid crossing a burning wooden bridge in Chat-sworth, Illinois. The dead numbered 82; about 270 were seriously injured.

2 March 1910. An avalanche in Wellington, Washington, threw two trains that had been stranded for a week in a blizzard into a 300-foot canyon; 118 perished.

1 November 1918. A crowded Brighton Beach commuter train operated by an inexperienced motorman crashed into the barrier at the Malbone Street tunnel in Brooklyn, New York; ninety-two died.

6 February 1951. A Pennsylvania Railroad commuter train fell through a temporary overpass at Wood-bridge, New Jersey, that had opened only three hours before, killing eighty-five. Injured passengers numbered 330 (or 500, according to other reports). The cause of the wreck was attributed to the motorman, who confessed to speeding across the trestle at 50 mph. The trestle was replaced with a 2,000-ton bridge and automatic speed-control devices were installed on the trains.

15 December 1967. The Silver Bridge over the Ohio River connecting Gallipolis, Ohio, and Point Pleasant, West Virginia, collapsed during the evening rush hour, plunging seventy-five cars and trucks into the river; forty-six people were killed. The Federal Highway Administration found "corrosion fatigue" to be a contributing factor. As a result, new bridge inspection standards were developed, and U.S. bridges were systematically inspected for the first time, resulting in drastic reductions in posted speed and load limits.

Space Exploration

27 January 1967. The pressure-sealed Apollo 1 spacecraft caught fire doing a routine test at Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing astronauts Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee. The tragedy exposed the need for higher design, workmanship, and installation standards at NASA.

28 January 1985. The space shuttle Challenger exploded seventy-four seconds after takeoff from Cape Canaveral; all seven crewmembers were killed. It was the worst accident in the history of the U.S. space program. The Rogers Commission study identified two primary causes: faulty design of the rubber O-rings joining sections of the solid-rocket boosters and the unusually cold temperature on the day of the launch (see Challenger Disaster).

Terrorism

26 February 1993. A bomb in the underground garage of the World Trade Center in New York City killed six people and injured more than 1,000 (see World Trade Center Bombing, 1993). The explosion tore through steel reinforced floors on three levels and left a crater with a 150-foot diameter. In 1994, four followers of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman of Egypt were convicted of roles in the bombing. Reported mastermind Ramzi Ahmed Yousef was captured in 1995 and convicted in 1997.

19 April 1995. A bomb in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killed 169, including children in a day-care center, and injured 500. Timothy McVeigh was convicted of murder and conspiracy in 1997 and sentenced to death. The following year, Terry Nichols received a life sentence for conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter. (See Oklahoma City Bombing.)

11 September 2001. Two hijacked planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 A.M. and 9:03 A.M. EST, killing an estimated 2,823 people—including those who perished in the towers, 157 passengers and crew in the planes, and New York City firefighters and other rescue personnel. At 9:41 A.M., a third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing 189. A scant twenty minutes later, a fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killing all forty-five on board. Both trade center towers collapsed as well as a third trade center building. This was the worst disaster in American history, with a death toll in excess of 3,000. The mastermind of the attacks, carried out by 19 hijackers, is believed to be Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, head of the Islamic terrorist organization Al Qaeda. (See 9/11 Attack.)

Weather: Avalanches, Droughts, Floods, Storms, and Tornadoes

17–21 November 1798. New England houses were buried by massive snowdrifts; hundreds of people died.

19 February 1804. Tornadoes stretching from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico killed 800.

10 September 1811. A tornado flattened much of Charleston, South Carolina. The death toll was not recorded, but estimates run as high as 500 or more.

7 May 1840. Tornadoes whipped through Natchez, Mississippi, capsizing a steamboat, the Natchez ferry, and sixty other flatboats on the Mississippi River. The death toll was 317.

September 1841. A hurricane wiped out Saint Jo, Florida (near today's Apalachicola), killing 4,000.

16 June 1842. Another deadly tornado hit Natchez, Mississippi, killing about 500.

10 August 1856. Île Dernier (Last Island), a popular resort off the southern coast of Louisiana, became a desolate beach after a hurricane that killed more than 250 of the island's 300 inhabitants.

27 August 1881. A hurricane flooded lowlands, knocked down buildings, and killed about 700 people from Florida to the Carolinas.

19 February 1884. A cyclone moving up from the Gulf of Mexico devastated Georgia and the Carolinas, killing about 800 people.

11–13 March 1888. A blizzard immobilized New York City, with snowdrifts up to eighteen feet. About 15,000 people were stranded on elevated trains stopped between stations. The storm lashed the East Coast from Washington, D.C., to Boston. As many as 800 people died, 200 in New York City.

28 August 1893. A hurricane in Georgia and South Carolina wiped out coastal towns from Savannah to Charleston and killed about 1,000 people.

1 October 1893. A hurricane struck the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, killing an estimated 2,000 people.

27 May 1896. St. Louis and East St. Louis were struck by a tornado that killed 306, injured 2,500, left 5,000 homeless, and caused damage estimated at $13 million.

26–27 November 1898. A blizzard brought heavy snow and gale-force winds to the East Coast from New York to Maine, wrecking more than 100 ships and killing 455 people.

8 September 1900. Galveston, Texas, hurricane.

31 May 1903. The Kansas, Missouri, and Des Moines rivers overflowed, drowning 200, leaving 8,000 homeless, and causing over $4 million in property damage.

26 May 1917. Tornadoes that swept through Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and Arkansas killed 249 and injured more than 1,200.

12–14 September 1919. A hurricane in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana caused 488 to drown at sea; 284 more were killed on land. The devastation included $22 million in property damage.

18 March 1925. Thirty-five towns in Missouri, Illinois, and Alabama were destroyed by a five-hour onslaught of tornadoes, the deadliest tornado attack in U.S. history. As many as 792 died; the injured numbered more than 2,000 (one estimate was as high as 13,000). Property damage estimates ranged as high as $500 million, 15,000 were left homeless.

18 September 1926. Florida's east coast, between Miami and Palm Beach, was hit by a hurricane that killed at least 373, made 40,000 homeless, and caused $165 million damage; the injured numbered as many as 6,000.

Late April 1927. Flooding of the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois, southward after a severe rainstorm inundated 26,000 square miles, leaving 313 dead and $300 million in damages. Afterward, a new system of river management was instituted, included large reservoirs and spillway channels.

16–17 September 1928. The Lake Okeechobee area of Florida, near West Palm Beach, was struck by a hurricane on its way from Puerto Rico. Despite timely warnings of the storm's path, 2,500 died. Many were farm workers living in shantytowns. An estimated 350,000 were left homeless. The federal government later sponsored a $5 million flood control program for the area and built an eighty-five-mile-long rock levee to replace the mud dikes that had collapsed.

29 September 1927. In a mere five minutes, a tornado that struck Saint Louis, Missouri, killed eighty-five and injured 1,300, leaving $40 million of property damage in a six-square-mile area.

1932–1937. Drought and poor farming practices in the Great Plains produced huge dust storms; known as the Dust Bowl. The phenomenon forced 500,000 to abandon their homes and farms.

2 September 1935. Florida was struck by a hurricane that killed at least 376 and caused property damage estimated at $6 million, including the railroad from Key West to Florida City.

5–6 April 1936. Tornadoes in five southern states killed 421.

January 1937. Record flooding in Ohio and the mid– Mississippi River valleys killed 137 and caused $418 million in property damage.

21 September 1938. The combined forces of a hurricane, ocean storm, and flooding struck Long Island, New York, and New England, killing 680 and causing an estimated $500 million in damages; nearly 2,000 were injured.

21–22 March 1952. Mississippi, Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee were hit by tornadoes that killed 239 and injured 1,202.

8 June 1953. Michigan and Ohio were hit by a series of tornadoes that killed 139 and injured nearly 1,000.

12–18 October 1954. Hurricane Hazel began in Haiti, hit North Carolina and moved up the East Coast, hitting New York and Canada; ninety-nine were killed in the United States and over $100 million in damages was reported.

17–19 August 1955. Hurricane Diane struck six northeastern states, causing heavy floods in southern New England; 191 died, nearly 7,000 were injured. Property damage was $457 million.

26–28 June 1957. Hurricane Audrey and a tidal wave hit Texas and Louisiana, wiping out the town of Cameron, Louisiana, leaving 531 dead or missing, and causing $150 million property damage.

11 April 1965. Thirty-seven tornadoes in six Midwestern states left 242 dead and $250 million in damages.

9–10 February 1969. New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were hit by a two-day snowstorm that left more than fifteen inches of snow; 166 died in the storm and loss of business was estimated at $25 million.

17–20 August 1969. Hurricane Camille struck the southern United States, mainly in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia, killing at least 258, leaving nearly 100,000 homeless, and causing $1.5 billion in damages.

12 February 1971. Tornadoes hit Mississippi and Louisiana, killing 115, injuring 500, and causing $7.5 million in damages.

9–10 June 1972. Heavy rains in the Black Hills of South Dakota caused Rapid Creek to flood, killing 235 and knocking out railroads, bridges, roads, and communications. Damages totaled $100 million. 15–25 June 1972. Hurricane Agnes, which began in Cuba, hit Florida and then the rest of the Atlantic coast up to New York with heavy rains. The death toll for Cuba and the United States was 134, with $60 billion in damages to homes and businesses.

3 April 1974. Nearly 100 tornadoes struck eleven southern and Midwestern states and Canada during an eight-hour period, killing more than 324 and causing property damage estimated as high as $1 billion.

31 July 1976. A violent flashflood in Big Thompson River, Colorado, sent fifty tons of water rushing down the canyon at 200 times the normal flow, killing 145 people, and destroying 600 buildings.

29 August–7 September 1979. Hurricane David left at least 1,000 dead in the southeastern United States and Caribbean.

23–25 August 1992. Hurricane Andrew hit southern Florida and Louisiana, and generated rainstorms in the Middle Atlantic states and as far north as Maine. The storm killed 65 people and caused an estimated $20–$30 billion in damages. As many as 250,000 people lost their homes.

12–14 March 1993. A powerful snowstorm hit the East Coast. More than 270 deaths were attributed to the storm; total damage cost exceeded $6 billion.

7–8 January 1996. The "Blizzard of '96" brought record snows to the Northeast, causing more than 100 deaths.

18 April 1997. The Red River broke through its dike and flooded Grand Forks, North Dakota, and its sister city, East Grand Forks, Minnesota. More than 58,000—nearly the entire population—evacuated. No deaths were reported, but damages exceeded $1 billion. More than 11,000 homes and businesses were destroyed.

3 May 1999. In eleven Oklahoma counties more than forty tornadoes—one of which reached 318 mph, a record—raged for five hours, leaving 44 dead and at least 500 injured. More than 3,000 houses and 47 businesses were destroyed. In neighboring Kansas, three died and more than 1,000 buildings were destroyed.

Bibliography

Alexander, David. Confronting Catastrophe: New Perspectives on Natural Disasters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Barry, John M. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

Flexner, Stuart, and Doris Flexner. The Pessimist's Guide to History. New York: Quill, 2000.

Hewitt, Kenneth, ed. Interpretations of Calamity from the Viewpoint of Human Ecology. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Karplus, Walter J. The Heavens Are Falling: The Scientific Prediction of Catastrophes in Our Time. New York: Plenum, 1992.

Platt, Rutherford H. Disasters and Democracy: The Politics of Extreme Natural Events. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999.

Ross, Andrew. Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in an Age of Limits. London and New York: Verso, 1991.

Schlager, Neil, ed. When Technology Fails: Significant Technological Disasters, Accidents, and Failures of the Twentieth Century. Detroit: Gale, 1994.

Smith, Roger. Catastrophes and Disasters. Edinburgh and New York: Chambers, 1992.

Steinberg, Ted. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Wade, Nicholas. The Science Times Book of Natural Disasters. New York: Lyons, 2000.

—Cathy Curtis

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disaster

Classification

Natural Disasters

Man-made hazards

Disaster management

Causes of hypothetical future disasters

See also

References

External links

United States

Other