Notable Natural

Disasters
 MAGILL’S C H O I C E

Notable Natural
Disasters

Volume 1

Overviews

Edited by
Marlene Bradford, Ph.D.
Texas A&M University

Robert S. Carmichael, Ph.D.

University of Iowa

SALEM PRESS, INC.

Pasadena, California Hackensack, New Jersey
 Copyright © 2007, by Salem Press, Inc.

All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or re-
produced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any in-
formation storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the
copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews or in the copying of images deemed to be freely licensed
or in the public domain. For information address the publisher, Salem Press,
Inc., P.O. Box 50062, Pasadena, California 91115.

∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National

Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-
1992 (R1997).

These essays originally appeared in Natural Disasters (2001). New essays

and other material have been added.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Notable natural disasters / edited by Marlene Bradford, Robert S.

Carmichael.
p. cm. — (Magill’s choice)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58765-368-1 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-369-8
(vol. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-370-4 (vol. 2 : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-58765-371-1 (vol. 3 : alk. paper) 1. Natural disasters. I. Bradford,
Marlene. II. Carmichael, Robert S.

GB5014.N373 2007
904’.5—dc22
2007001926

printed in canada
Contents
Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

■ Overviews
Avalanches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Droughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Dust Storms and Sandstorms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Earthquakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
El Niño . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Epidemics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Explosions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Famines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Fires. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Floods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Fog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Heat Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Icebergs and Glaciers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Lightning Strikes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Meteorites and Comets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Smog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Tornadoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Tsunamis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Volcanic Eruptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Wind Gusts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

■ Indexes
Catetory List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

v
Publisher’s Note
Some books about natural disasters focus on science, using exam-
ples of events or lists without extended descriptions. Disaster chro-
nologies list events and generally do not provide a comprehensive
look at underlying scientific principles and other general concerns.
Notable Natural Disasters addresses both aspects of natural disasters in
an accessible manner that is scholarly, not sensationalized. This
three-volume set combines clearly explained scientific concepts with
gripping narrative details about 100 memorable disasters in history.
In addition, Notable Natural Disasters is illustrated with 170 photo-
graphs, maps, tables and diagrams to aid the reader.
This affordable subset of Natural Disasters (2001) has been rear-
ranged and thoroughly updated with new bibliographic sources and
entries on recent disasters: the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic, the 2003
Europe heat wave, the Fire Siege of 2003 in Southern California, the
2003 Bam earthquake in Iran, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004,
Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Kashmir earthquake of 2005, and the
2006 Leyte mudslide in the Philippines.

■ DEFINITION AND SCOPE

For this set, a natural disaster is defined as an event caused, at least
in part, by uncontrollable forces of nature. For example, the over-
views on “Fog” and “Icebergs and Glaciers” discuss collisions and
crashes in which those natural conditions were a factor, although hu-
man error played a role. Similarly, “Explosions” addresses only acci-
dental ignitions. Decisions were also made regarding scope and fo-
cus. For example, only wildfires affecting cities or whole regions are
addressed in the “Fires” overview and among the events, rather than
tragic blazes in single buildings such as hotels or theaters.
In selecting the 100 events covered here, further questions were
asked. Is a “great” disaster measured by numbers of people killed and
injured, or by the amount of disruption caused? When does a local
tragedy become an event of broader significance? Why are some di-
sasters more heartbreaking or spectacular, and thus more memora-
ble, than others?

vii
 Notable Natural Disasters

■ OVERVIEWS
Volume 1 begins with disaster overviews by type:

Avalanches Heat Waves

Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, Hurricanes, Typhoons, and
and Hail Cyclones
Droughts Icebergs and Glaciers
Dust Storms and Sandstorms Landslides, Mudslides, and
Earthquakes Rockslides
El Niño Lightning Strikes
Epidemics Meteorites and Comets
Explosions Smog
Famines Tornadoes
Fires Tsunamis
Floods Volcanic Eruptions
Fog Wind Gusts

Each essay explains the disaster in scientific terms. First, a few sen-
tences define the natural phenomenon and its importance. Then the
factors involved (animals, chemical reactions, geography, geological
forces, gravitational forces, human activity, ice, microorganisms,
plants, rain, snow, temperature, weather conditions, wind) and the
regions affected (cities, coasts, deserts, forests, islands, lakes, moun-
tains, oceans, plains, rivers, towns, valleys) are listed.
Several subsections of text follow. “Science” explains the science
behind the phenomenon in general terms understandable to the
layperson. “Geography” names and describes the continents, coun-
tries, regions, or types of locations where this disaster occurs. “Pre-
vention and Preparations” describes any measures that can be taken
to prevent or predict the disaster. The steps that can be taken in ad-
vance to avoid or minimize loss of life and property are discussed, in-
cluding drills, warning systems, and evacuation orders. “Rescue and
Relief Efforts” explains what is done in the aftermath of the disaster
to find and treat casualties. The typical wounds received and any spe-
cial challenges faced by rescue workers are addressed. The efforts of
relief organizations and programs are highlighted. “Impact” de-
scribes the typical short-term and long-term effects on humans, ani-
mals, property, and the environment of these disasters.

viii
 Publisher’s Note

Most overview essays also include a section called “Historical

Overview,” offering a broad sense of the disaster type beginning with
the first recorded occurrences and offering highlights of notable
events up to the present day, and a box called “Milestones,” listing
major events, such as significant disasters, relevant scientific discover-
ies, and establishment dates for programs, organizations, and classifi-
cation systems. All overviews end with an annotated bibliography of
further sources for readers to consult.

■ THE DISASTERS
The overviews are followed by entries on the 100 worst disasters
in history. These narrative-style essays offer facts, figures, and inter-
esting stories. Events were chosen based on loss of life, widespread
destruction, and notable circumstances. They range in time from
65,000,000 b.c.e. to 2006 and cover five continents.
Each event entry begins with a year and a general description of
location or the popular designation for the disaster. Then the most
accurate date and place for the event is identified. Magnitude on the
Richter scale, either official or estimated, is given for earthquakes.
The best speed estimate is listed for hurricanes, if available. For tor-
nadoes, the most reliable F-rating is offered. Measure on the Volcanic
Explosivity Index is provided for some eruptions. Estimated tempera-
ture in Fahrenheit or Celsius is listed for heat waves. “Result” lists the
best figures for total numbers of dead or injured, people left home-
less, damage, structures or acres burned, and so forth.
Each entry then provides readers with an account—before, dur-
ing, and after—of the disaster, including both broad scientific and
historical facts and narrative details. A section at the end of each en-
try entitled “For Further Information” lists books, chapters, maga-
zines, or newspapers offering specific coverage of that particular
event.

■ SPECIAL FEATURES
At the back of volume 3, a Glossary defines essential meteorologi-
cal and geological terms, a Bibliography offers sources for more ma-
terial about natural disasters, a list of Organizations and Agencies
provides information about warning and relief efforts. The Time
Line records major disasters and related milestones. The Category

ix
 Notable Natural Disasters

List breaks the 100 events into disaster types, and the Geographical
List organizes the events by region, country, or state. A comprehen-
sive subject Index concludes the volume.
All articles are written by experts in the various fields of meteoro-
logical and geological studies; every essays is signed, and their names
and affiliations are also listed in the front matter to volume 1. Special
acknowledgment is extended to the Consultants, Marlene Bradford,
Ph.D., and Robert S. Carmichael, Ph.D. for their knowledge and en-
thusiasm.

x
Contributors

Amy Ackerberg-Hastings Gordon Neal Diem

Iowa State University ADVANCE Education and
Richard Adler Development Institute
University of Michigan-Dearborn Margaret A. Dodson
David Barratt Boise Independent Schools, Idaho
Asheville, North Carolina Colleen M. Driscoll
Mary Etta Boulden Villanova University
Middle Tennessee State University John M. Dunn
Marlene Bradford Forest High School
Texas A&M University Ocala, Florida
John A. Britton Mary Bosch Farone
Francis Marion University Middle Tennessee State University
Jeffrey L. Buller Bonnie L. Ford
Georgia Southern University Sacramento City College
Edmund J. Campion Soraya Ghayourmanesh
University of Tennessee Nassau Community College
Robert S. Carmichael Sheldon Goldfarb
University of Iowa University of British Columbia
Nicholas Casner Nancy M. Gordon
Boise State University Amherst, Massachusetts
Gilbert T. Cave Robert F. Gorman
Lakeland Community College Southwest Texas State University
Paul J. Chara, Jr. Daniel G. Graetzer
Loras College University of Washington Medical
Center
Monish R. Chatterjee
Binghamton University, SUNY Hans G. Graetzer
South Dakota State University
Jaime S. Colome
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Don M. Greene
Obispo Baylor University
M. Casey Diana Johnpeter Horst Grill
University of Illinois at Urbana- Mississippi State University
Champaign Irwin Halfond
McKendree College

xi
 Notable Natural Disasters

C. Alton Hassell Lauren Mitchell

Baylor University Pasadena, California
Charles Haynes William V. Moore
University of Alabama College of Charleston
Diane Andrews Henningfeld Otto H. Muller
Adrian College Alfred University
Mark C. Herman Anthony Newsome
Edison Community College Middle Tennessee State University
Jane F. Hill Robert J. Paradowski
Bethesda, Maryland Rochester Institute of Technology
William Hoffman Nis Petersen
Fort Myers, Florida New Jersey City University
Robert M. Hordon Erika E. Pilver
Rutgers University Westfield State College
Raymond Pierre Hylton Steven J. Ramold
Virginia Union University University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Karen N. Kähler Donald F. Reaser
Pasadena, California The University of Texas at Arlington
Victor Lindsey Betty Richardson
East Central University Southern Illinois University,
Donald W. Lovejoy Edwardsville
Palm Beach Atlantic University Edward A. Riedinger
David C. Lukowitz Ohio State University Libraries
Hamline University Charles W. Rogers
Dana P. McDermott Southwestern Oklahoma State
Chicago University
Michelle C. K. McKowen Billy Scott
New York City Fordham University
Louise Magoon Rose Secrest
Fort Wayne, Indiana Chattanooga, Tennessee
Carl Henry Marcoux James B. Seymour, Jr.
University of California, Riverside Texas A&M University
Howard Meredith R. Baird Shuman
University of Science and Arts of University of Illinois at Urbana-
Oklahoma Champaign
Randall L. Milstein Gary W. Siebein
Oregon State University University of Florida

xii
 Contributors

Donald C. Simmons, Jr. Robert D. Ubriaco, Jr.

Mississippi Humanities Council Illinois Wesleyan University
Roger Smith Rosa Alvarez Ulloa
Portland, Oregon San Diego, California
David M. Soule Winifred Whelan
Compass Point Research St. Bonaventure University
Kenneth F. Steele, Jr. Edwin G. Wiggins
University of Arkansas Webb Institute
Joan C. Stevenson Mary Catherine Wilheit
Western Washington University Texas A&M University
Dion C. Stewart Richard L. Wilson
Adams State College University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Toby R. Stewart Lisa A. Wroble
Adams State College Redford Township District Library,
Eric R. Swanson Michigan
University of Texas at San Antonio Jay R. Yett
Sue Tarjan Orange Coast College
Santa Cruz, California

xiii
Complete List of Contents
Volume 1
Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

■ Overviews
Avalanches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Droughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Dust Storms and Sandstorms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Earthquakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
El Niño . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Epidemics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Explosions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Famines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Fires. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Floods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Fog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Heat Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Icebergs and Glaciers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Lightning Strikes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Meteorites and Comets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Smog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Tornadoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Tsunamis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Volcanic Eruptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Wind Gusts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

■ Indexes
Category List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

xv
 Notable Natural Disasters

Volume 2
Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii
Complete List of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix

■ Events
c. 65,000,000 b.c.e.: Yucatán crater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
c. 1470 b.c.e.: Thera eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
430 b.c.e.: The Plague of Athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
64 c.e.: The Great Fire of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
79 c.e.: Vesuvius eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
526: The Antioch earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
1200: Egyptian famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
1320: The Black Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
1520: Aztec Empire smallpox epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
1657: The Meireki Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
1665: The Great Plague of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
1666: The Great Fire of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
1669: Etna eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
1692: The Port Royal earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
1755: The Lisbon earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
1783: Laki eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
1811: New Madrid earthquakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
1815: Tambora eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
1845: The Great Irish Famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
1871: The Great Chicago Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
1872: The Great Boston Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
1880: The Seaham Colliery Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
1883: Krakatau eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
1889: The Johnstown Flood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
1892: Cholera pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
1900: The Galveston hurricane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
1900: Typhoid Mary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
1902: Pelée eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505

xvi
 Complete List of Contents

1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . 512

1908: The Tunguska event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
1908: The Messina earthquake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
1914: The Eccles Mine Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
1914: Empress of Ireland sinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
1916: The Great Polio Epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
1918: The Great Flu Pandemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
1926: The Great Miami Hurricane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
1928: St. Francis Dam collapse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
1928: The San Felipe hurricane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
1932: The Dust Bowl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
1937: The Hindenburg Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 . . . . . . . . 609
1946: The Aleutian tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615
1947: The Texas City Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620
1952: The Great London Smog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627
1953: The North Sea Flood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
1957: Hurricane Audrey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 636
1959: The Great Leap Forward famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
1963: The Vaiont Dam Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648
1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
1965: The Palm Sunday Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
1966: The Aberfan Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 662
1969: Hurricane Camille . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
1970: The Ancash earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680

■ Indexes
Category List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXI
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXVII

xvii
 Notable Natural Disasters

Volume 3
Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xli
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xliii

■ Events
1970: The Bhola cyclone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687
1974: The Jumbo Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 694
1976: Ebola outbreaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
1976: Legionnaires’ disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
1976: The Tangshan earthquake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711
1980’s: AIDS pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729
1982: El Chichón eruption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741
1982: Pacific Ocean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 747
1984: African famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 750
1985: The Mexico City earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 756
1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
1988: Yellowstone National Park fires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
1988: The Leninakan earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780
1989: Hurricane Hugo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
1991: Pinatubo eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803
1991: The Oakland Hills Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 810
1992: Hurricane Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816
1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993 . . . . . . . . . 828
1994: The Northridge earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 835
1995: The Kobe earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 847
1995: Ebola outbreak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 854
1995: Chicago heat wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 861
1996: The Mount Everest Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 866
1997: The Jarrell tornado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 873
1997: Soufrière Hills eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 880
1998: Papua New Guinea tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 885
1998: Hurricane Mitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 888
1999: The Galtür avalanche . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 897
1999: The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . 903
1999: The Ezmit earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 909

xviii
 Complete List of Contents

2002: SARS epidemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 921

2003: European heat wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 928
2003: The Fire Siege of 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 934
2003: The Bam earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 940
2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 946
2005: Hurricane Katrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954
2005: The Kashmir earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963
2006: The Leyte mudslide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 970

■ Appendixes
Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 976
Time Line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 995
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1019
Organizations and Agencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1039

■ Indexes
Category List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXXIX
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XLV
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LV

xix
Avalanches
Factors involved: Chemical reactions, geography,
geological forces, gravitational forces, human
activity, ice, plants, rain, snow, temperature, weather
conditions, wind
Regions affected: Cities, forests, mountains, towns,
valleys

Definition
An avalanche is a large amount of snow, ice, rock, or earth that be-
comes dislodged and moves rapidly down a sloped surface or over a
precipice. Avalanches are generally influenced by one or several nat-
ural forces but are increasingly being initiated by human activities.
Landslide avalanches are defined as the massive downward and out-
ward movement of some of the material that forms the slope of an in-
cline. Unqualified use of the term “avalanche” in the English lan-
guage, however, most often refers to a snow avalanche and generally
refers to movements big and fast enough to endanger life or prop-
erty. Avalanche accidents resulting in death, injury, or destruction
have increased tremendously in direct proportion to the increased
popularity of winter recreational activities in mountainous regions.

Science
The term “avalanche” relates to large masses of snow, ice, rock, soil,
mud, and/or other materials that descend rapidly down an incline
such as a hillside or mountain slope. Precipices, very steep or over-
hanging areas of earth or rock, are also areas prone to avalanche ac-
tivity. Landslide avalanches are downward and outward movements
of the material that forms the slope of a hillside or mountain. Gen-
eral lay usage of the term “avalanche” often relates to large masses of
snow or ice, while the term “landslide” is usually restricted to the
movement of rock and soil and includes a broad range of velocities.
Slow movements cause gradual damage, such as rupture of buried util-
ity lines, whereas high-velocity avalanches require immediate evacua-
tion of an area to ensure safety.
A landslide avalanche begins when a portion of a hillside weakens

1
Avalanches

Milestones
218 b.c.e.: Hannibal loses 20,000 men, 2,000 horses, and several ele-
phants in a huge avalanche near Col de la Traversette in the Italian
Alps.
1478: About 60 soldiers of the Duke of Milan are killed by an ava-
lanche while crossing the mountains near Saint Gotthard Pass in the
Italian Alps.
September, 1618: An avalanche kills 1,500 inhabitants of Plurs, Swit-
zerland.
1689: A series of avalanches kills more than 300 residents in Saas,
Switzerland, and surrounding communities.
January, 1718: The town of Leukerbad, Switzerland, is destroyed by
two avalanches that leave more than 55 dead and many residents seri-
ously injured.
September, 1806: Four villages are destroyed and 800 residents are
killed when an avalanche descends Rossberg Peak in the Swiss Alps.
July, 1892: St. Gervais and La Fayet, Swiss resorts, are destroyed when
a huge avalanche speeds down Mont Blanc, killing 140 residents and
tourists.
March, 1910: An avalanche sweeps through the train station in Wel-
lington, Washington State, destroying 3 snowbound passenger trains
and killing 96.
December, 1916: Heavy snows result in avalanches that kill more than
10,000 Italian and Austrian soldiers located in the Tirol section of the
Italian-Austrian Alps.
January, 1951: A series of avalanches leaves 240 dead; the village of
Vals, Switzerland, is completely destroyed.
January, 1954: In one of the worst avalanches in Austrian history, 145
people are killed over a 10-mile area.
1962: Melting snow rushes down the second-highest peak in South
America at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, killing around
4,000 in Peru.
April, 1970: A hospital in Sallanches, France, is destroyed by an ava-
lanche that kills 70, most of them children.
1971: An earthquake unleashes a huge avalanche of snow and ice,
killing 600 and destroying Chungar, Peru, and surrounding villages.

2
 Avalanches

1982: Thirteen students and teachers are killed by an avalanche in

Salzburg, Austria.
June, 1994: An earthquake in the Huila region of Colombia causes av-
alanches and mudslides that leave 13,000 residents homeless, 2,000
trapped, and 1,000 dead.
November, 1995: A series of avalanches kills 43 climbers in Nepal.
March, 1997: A park geologist and a volunteer are killed by an ava-
lanche while working on a project to monitor Yellowstone National
Park geothermal features.
1998: Three avalanches in southeastern British Columbia, Canada,
leave 8 dead and several wounded.
February, 1999: The Galtür avalanche in Austria kills 38 and traps
2,000.

progressively to the point where it is no longer able to support the

weight of the hillside itself. This weakness may be caused when rain-
fall or floodwater elevates the overall water content of the slope, thus
reducing the sheer strength of the slope materials. Landslides are
most common in areas where erosion is constantly wearing away at
the local terrain, but they can also be initiated by events such as earth-
quakes and loud noises. Some landslides move only sporadically—
during certain seasons of the year—and may lie dormant for de-
cades, centuries, or millennia; their extremely slow movements may
go unnoticed for long periods of time. Slow-moving landslides are
distinguished from creep—the slow change of a mountain’s or hill’s
dimensions from prolonged exposure to stress or high tempera-
tures—in that they have distinct boundaries and have at least some
stable ground.
Natural avalanches can be triggered when additional stressors are
provided in the form of the added weight of additional snow, either
fresh snowfall or windblown snow, or when the cohesive strength of
the snowpack naturally decreases, which serves to weaken the bonds
between particles of snow. Artificial avalanches may be triggered
when humans, animals, or machinery begin the downslide, due to
their contribution of additional stress to the snow. Many avalanches
in outdoor recreational areas are triggered by the weight of a single

3
Avalanches

skier or the impact of small masses of snow or ice falling from above.
Explosives can also trigger an artificial avalanche, either intentionally
or unintentionally. When explosives are detonated to knock down
potentially dangerous snow at a prescribed time and location, such as
for maintenance of highways or ski areas, the public is temporarily
evacuated from the area.
Ground that has remained relatively stable for as little as one hun-
dred years or possibly as long as tens of thousands of years may begin
to slide following alteration of the natural slope by human develop-
ment, such as during grading for roads or building projects on hill-
sides. Landslide avalanches can also be started by deep cutting into
the slope and removal of support necessary for materials higher up
the slope, or by overloading the lower part of the slope with the exca-
vated materials. Some have occurred where development has altered
groundwater conditions.

Geography
Snow avalanches require a snow layer that has the potential for insta-
bility and a sloped surface that is steep enough to enable a slide to
continue its downhill momentum once it has started. Slopes with in-
clines between 25 and 55 degrees represent the broadest range for av-
alanche danger, but a majority of avalanches originate on inclines be-
tween 30 and 45 degrees. Angles above 55 degrees are generally too
steep to collect significant amounts of snow, as the snow tends to roll
down the hillside very rapidly without accumulating. Slope angles of
less than 25 degrees are generally safe, except for the remote possibil-
ity of very slow snow avalanches in extremely wet conditions.
When a layer of snow lies on a sloped surface, the constant force of
gravity causes it to creep slowly down the slope. When a force im-
posed on a snow layer is large enough, a failure is triggered some-
where within the snow, thus stimulating the avalanche to begin to
move rapidly downhill. There are two distinct types of failures that
can occur within the snow prior to an avalanche. When a cohesion-
less snow layer rests on a slope steeper than its angle of repose, it can
cause a loose snow avalanche, which is often also called a point-re-
lease avalanche. This can actually be triggered by as little as one grain
of snow slipping out of place and dislodging other grains below it,
causing a chain reaction that continues to grow in size as the accumu-

4
 Avalanches

lated mass slips down the hill. The point-release avalanche generally
appears as an inverted V shape on the snow and is typically limited to
only the surface layer of snow cover. In this type of avalanche, the
snow has little internal cohesion, no obvious fracture line, and no
clear division where the sliding snow separates from the layers under-
neath.
In contrast, when snow fails as a cohesive unit, an obvious brittle
fracture line appears and an entire layer or slab of snow is set in mo-
tion. Because creep formation causes the snow layer to be stretched
out along the slope, the fracture releases stored elastic energy. The
release of this energy may cause the fracture to spread across an en-
tire slope or basin. Failure may occur deep within the snow layer, al-
lowing a good portion or nearly all the snow to be included in the ava-
lanche. Slab avalanches are often larger and more destructive than
point-release avalanches and can continue to slide on weaker layers
underneath or actually upon the ground itself.
The specific shape of the slope may reflect the level of avalanche
danger, with hazards being highest when snow accumulates on
straight, open, and moderately steep slopes. One classic law of ava-
lanches for mountaineers is that they face the least danger while mov-
ing on ridges, somewhat more danger while moving on the valley
floor, and the most danger when moving directly upon the slope it-
self. Snow on a convex slope is more prone to avalanches, as it comes
under tension because it tends to stretch more tightly over the curve
of the hill. When coming down a convex slope, mountaineers may
not know how steep the slope is until they pass the curve that tempo-
rarily obstructed their view and then discover that they are farther
down on the face than is safe. Bowls and cirques (steep-walled basins)
have a shape that tends to accumulate snow deposited by the wind.
Once an avalanche begins, it most often spreads to the entire face
and dumps large quantities of snow into the area below. Couloirs
(mountainside gorges) are enticing to climbers because they offer a
direct route up a mountain, but they are susceptible to snow move-
ment because they create natural chutes. Forested slopes offer some
avalanche protection, but they do not guarantee safety. While slides
are less likely to originate within a dense forest, they have been
known to crush through even very high-density tree areas. Shattered
trees provide clear evidence that a previous avalanche has occurred

5
Avalanches

on the mountainside. A slope that has only bushes and small trees
growing on it may indicate that the incline has experienced ava-
lanches so often that the timber is not being given a chance to
regrow.
While avalanches can occur anywhere in the world where snow
falls on slopes, some countries and regions are prone to such events.
In Europe, the Alps—a mountain range stretching through Italy,
Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and France—has experienced many
devastating avalanches. The Andes mountain range in South Amer-
ica has produced avalanches in Peru. In North America, areas of the
Pacific Northwest—particularly Washington State, British Columbia,
and Alaska—are most often affected.

Prevention and Preparations

Snow avalanches are among the main hazards facing outdoor winter
sports enthusiasts who drive through a mountain pass in an automo-
bile or snowmobile, or hike, climb, snowshoe, hunt, or ski along a
mountainside. The relative level of avalanche hazard and the condi-
tions that occur to create the hazard at any given time are relatively
easy for a trained professional to identify. The local news media gen-
erally report avalanche danger in heavily populated and well-traveled
recreational areas. Unfortunately, there currently is no completely
valid and reliable way to predict precisely where and when an ava-
lanche will occur. Novice mountaineers can certainly benefit by be-
ing able to recognize the formation of different types of snow crystals
and hazardous terrain and weather. They should keep in mind that
avalanches can sweep even on perfectly level ground for more than
1 mile after the snow has reached the bottom of a slope.
Avalanche hazards can be assessed by examining the snow for new
avalanches in the area. Cracks in hard snow may outline an unstable
slab as snow settles with the weight of a person moving on it. The
sound of a loud thump may indicate that a hard slab is nearly ready to
release. Snow stability can be tested by probing with a ski pole to feel
for layers of varying solidity or by digging a pit to examine the layers
for weakness. Some excellent advice for winter travelers is to always
stop to rest or set up camp outside the potential reach of an avalanche.
Avalanche research has consistently shown that approximately 80
percent of avalanches occur during or just after a storm. Avalanche

6
 Avalanches

Peru’s Mount Huascarán during an avalanche. (National Oceanic and Atmo-

spheric Administration)

danger escalates when snowfall exceeds a level of 1 inch per hour or

an accumulation of 12 inches or more in a single storm. Rapid
changes in wind and temperature also significantly increase ava-
lanche danger. Storms that begin with a low ambient temperature
and dry snow on the ground and are followed immediately by a rap-
idly rising temperature are more likely to set off avalanche condi-
tions. Snow that is dry tends to form poor chemical bonds and thus
does not possess the strength to support the heavier, wet snow that
rapidly accumulates on the surface. Rainstorms or spring weather

7
Avalanches

with warm winds and cloudy nights creates the possibility of a wet
snow avalanche and causes a “percolating” effect of the water into the
snow.
The manner in which the sun and wind hit a slope can often pro-
vide valuable clues regarding potential avalanche danger. In the
Northern Hemisphere, slopes that face south receive the most sun.
The increased solar heat makes the snow settle and stabilize more
quickly than on north-facing slopes. Generally speaking, south-facing
slopes are safer in winter, but there are certainly many exceptions to
this rule as determined by local factors. South-facing slopes also tend
to release their avalanches sooner after a storm. Thus, slides that be-
gin on southern slopes may indicate that slopes facing other direc-
tions may soon follow suit. As warmer days arrive near the end of win-
ter, south-facing slopes may actually become more prone to wet snow
avalanches, making the north-facing slopes safer. North-facing slopes
receive very little or no sun in the winter, so consolidation of the
snowpack takes much longer, if it occurs at all. Colder temperatures
may create weak layers of snow, thus making northern slopes more
likely to slide in midwinter. It is important to note that these guide-
lines should be reversed for mountainous areas south of the equator.
Windward slopes that face into the snow tend to be safer because
they retain less snow—the wind blows it away. The snow that remains
tends to become more compact through the blast of the wind. Lee
slopes, which face the same direction the wind is blowing, collect
snow rapidly during storms and on windy days as the snow blows over
from the windward slopes. This results in cornice formation on the
lee side of ridges, snow that is deeper and less consolidated, and the
formation of wind slabs that can be prone to avalanches. Snow for-
mation often indicates the prevailing wind direction, following the
general rule that cornices face the same direction that the wind is
blowing.
Attempts have been made to prevent avalanche damage by build-
ing artificial supporting structures or transplanting trees within an-
ticipated avalanche zones. The direct impact of an avalanche has
been effectively blocked by diversion structures such as dams, sheds,
and tunnels in areas where avalanches repeatedly strike. Structural
damage can be limited by the construction of various types of fencing
and by building splitting wedges, V-shaped masonry walls that are de-

8
 Avalanches

signed to split an avalanche around a structure located behind it.

Techniques have been developed to predict avalanche occurrence by
analyzing the relationships between meteorological and snow-cover
factors, which are often reported through the media. Zones of known
or predicted avalanche danger are generally taken into account dur-
ing commercial development of a mountainous area. The avalanche
danger of unstable slope accumulations is often prevented through
detonation, from explosives similar to grenades to the sending out of
controlled acoustic waves.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Search and rescue experts recommend that, when individuals know
they are about to become caught in an avalanche, they should make
as much noise as possible and discard all equipment, including packs
and skis. They should try to avoid being swept away by grabbing onto
anything stable, such as large rocks or trees. Those who become
caught in a slide should attempt to stay on the snow surface by mak-
ing swimming motions with the arms and legs or by rolling. It is also
recommended to attempt to close the mouth in the event that the
head begins to fall below the snow surface. If victims anticipate be-
coming completely buried and no longer moving with the snow, they
should attempt to create a breathing space by putting their hands
and elbows in front of their faces and inhaling deeply before the
snow stops in order to expand the ribs. All available oxygen and en-
ergy should be conserved if victims anticipate that rescuers will soon
begin making appropriate search and rescue efforts.
Avalanche search and rescue efforts should begin as soon as possi-
ble by companions of the victim, who should generally anticipate that
there will not be time for professional help to arrive. Despite the
shock of the moment, rescue procedures should begin immediately
by noting and marking—with an object such as a ski pole—three crit-
ical positions on the snow. These positions include the point where
the victim was first caught in moving snow, the point where the victim
disappeared beneath the snow surface, and the point where the mov-
ing surface of the avalanche eventually stopped. Accurately noting
these three areas greatly reduces the area that needs to be searched,
thus providing an increased chance of a successful search. Rescue
beacons, small electronic devices which should be secured to all per-

9
Avalanches

sons traveling together in a winter excursion party, have proven to be

very effective tools in finding buried victims. The beacons can be
switched to either transmit or receive signals at a radio frequency that
is set to the transmit mode during the initial movement. Searchers
who switch their beacons to receive mode immediately after an inci-
dent can often locate a buried victim in just a few short minutes. Pro-
cedures for avalanche rescue, such as setting up a probe line, have
been established by search and rescue organizations and should be
reviewed prior to a trip by all persons participating in winter activities
within a potential avalanche zone.

Impact
The impact pressures resulting from high-speed avalanches and land-
slides can completely destroy or harm human and animal life and
property. About one-third of avalanche victims die from the impact;
the remaining two-thirds die from suffocation and hypothermia.
Movement of snow and other debris is most destructive when it is
able to generate extremely high speeds. Small to medium avalanches
can hit with impact pressures of 1 to 5 tons per square meter, which is
generally enough force to damage or destroy wood-frame structures.
Larger avalanches can generate forces that can exceed 100 tons per
square meter, which is easily enough to uproot mature forested areas
and destroy large concrete structures.
Measurements have shown that highly turbulent dry snow or dry
powder creates avalanche speeds averaging 115 to 148 feet (35 to 45
meters) per second, with some velocities being clocked as high as 223
to 279 feet (68 to 85 meters) per second. These high speeds are possi-
ble only in dry powder avalanches because these avalanches incorpo-
rate large amounts of air within the moving snow, thus serving to re-
duce internal frictional forces. Wet snow avalanches comprise liquid
or snow that is very dense, which creates less turbulent movement
once the slide begins. With a reduction in turbulence, a more flowing
type of motion is generated, and speeds are generally reduced to ap-
proximately 66 to 98 feet (20 to 30 meters) per second.
Persons who do not live in mountainous regions might mistakenly
believe that damage caused by an avalanche is minimal when com-
pared to the destruction caused by other environmental hazards
such as tornadoes and floods. However, the frequency of accidents

10
 Avalanches

resulting in destruction, injury, or death has risen tremendously in

direct proportion to the increased popularity of winter recreational
activities in mountainous areas. An estimated 150 to 200 avalanche-
related deaths occur per year, but it should be noted that these ava-
lanche data are systematically and accurately recorded mainly in de-
veloped countries in North America, Europe, and northern Asia.

Historical Overview
Considered one of the greatest military commanders in the history of
the world, Hannibal and his North African army were no match for
the natural forces unleashed in 218 b.c.e. when an avalanche de-
scended upon his invading army of thirty-eight thousand soldiers,
eight thousand horsemen, and thirty-seven elephants. The rapidly
moving snowmass, which wreaked havoc at Col de la Traversette pass
in the Italian Alps and claimed nearly 40 percent of Hannibal’s fight-
ing force, dealt the general one of the most devastating losses of his
entire military career. The historic and horrendous tragedy experi-
enced by Hannibal was also one of the first documented avalanches
in European history.
Like so many before and since, Hannibal either was unaware of
the dangerous physical environment created by the heavy snows or
chose to ignore the danger. Thousands of avalanches occur annually
worldwide, but most cause little damage. Each year, however, ava-
lanches consistently claim about 150 lives and cause millions in prop-
erty losses.
The European Alps, where the lives of Hannibal’s troops were
claimed, have been the site of the most deadly avalanches in re-
corded history, although the greatest number occur in the much
more sparsely populated Himalayas, Andes, and Alaska. During World
War I an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 soldiers were killed and maimed
in the Alps by avalanches caused by the sounds and explosions of
combat.
Such massive loss of life, however, is not representative of ava-
lanche disasters. In a more typical year the country of Switzerland,
for example, has an average avalanche death rate of fewer than 25.
An 1892 avalanche that destroyed the Swiss resort towns of St. Gervais
and La Fayet, killing 140 residents and tourists, was considered a
fairly deadly and unusual occurrence. As one of the most avalanche-

11
Avalanches

prone nations, Switzerland committed considerable resources after

the early 1900’s to identify ways to avoid the loss of property and life.
The leading avalanche research center in Europe is the Swiss Federal
Snow and Avalanche Research Unit, which takes considerable pride
in its successful Avalanche Warning System. Similar research pro-
grams are located in the United States, Japan, and other countries.
Despite the best efforts and intentions of warning systems, ava-
lanches continue to claim the lives of unsuspecting victims each year.
Even the most highly trained and skilled scientists are often vulnera-
ble to the deadly force of avalanches. Many of the individuals killed
by the 1980 Mount St. Helens volcanic explosion and the resulting
250-mile-per-hour avalanche, the largest in recorded history, were
scientists on location to study the volcano. In March, 1997, a park ge-
ologist and a volunteer were killed by an avalanche while working on
a project to monitor Yellowstone National Park geothermal features.
As a result of years of research and data collection, however, scien-
tists have identified ways of diminishing the potential for destruction
and loss of life resulting from avalanches. Federal, state, regional,
and local governments may coordinate efforts to detect and identify
potentially unstable snow-covered slopes by monitoring weather con-
ditions; geographic data available through photogrammetry, the sci-
ence and art of deducing the physical dimensions of objects from
measurements on photographs; and satellite imagery.
Daniel G. Graetzer
Donald C. Simmons, Jr.

Bibliography
Armstrong, Betsy R., Knox Williams, and Richard L. Armstrong. The
Avalanche Book. Rev. and updated ed. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum,
1992. An excellent text highlighting the damage assessment of all
major avalanches in North America.
Cupp, D. “Avalanche: Winter’s White Death.” National Geographic 162
(September, 1982): 280-305. A documentation of the March,
1982, avalanche tragedy at California’s Alpine Meadows ski resort
that claimed seven lives, with heroic rescuers saving the lives of
four others. Also reports on how science attempts to deal with ava-
lanches and to rescue quickly those caught in their paths.
Ferguson, Sue, and Edward R. LaChapelle. The ABCs of Avalanche

12
 Avalanches

Safety. 3d ed. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2003. This very read-

able applied science text discusses different types of avalanches,
how they form, and where they can be predicted to occur, in ad-
dition to giving general guidelines on safety when traveling in
mountainous regions.
Fredston, Jill. Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches. Orlando, Fla.: Har-
court, 2005. The author, an avalanche expert with the Alaska
Mountain Safety Center, writes from her own experiences with
forecasting, prevention, education, and rescue.
Graydon, E. Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hill. Seattle: Mountain-
eers Books, 1992. A presentation of both introductory and ad-
vanced information on the sport of mountaineering, with much
practical information on avalanches and other hazards of snow
travel and climbing.
Jenkins, McKay. The White Death: Tragedy and Heroism in an Avalanche
Zone. New York: Random House, 2000. Jenkins uses a description
of the deaths of five climbers in Wyoming in 1969 to frame his nat-
ural history of avalanches.
Logan, Nick, and Dale Atkins. The Snowy Torrents: Avalanche Accidents
in the United States, 1980-86. Denver: Colorado Geological Survey,
Department of Natural Resources, State of Colorado, 1996. This
government document examines avalanche occurrences in the
United States between 1980 and 1986.
Mears, Arthur I. Avalanche Forecasting Methods, Highway 550. Denver:
Colorado Department of Transportation, 1996. In this booklet
Mears discusses avalanche control and his studies in Colorado
performed in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administra-
tion.
National Research Council Panel on Snow Avalanches. Snow Ava-
lanche Hazards and Mitigation in the United States. Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press, 1990. Edited by committee chair D. B.
Prior and panel chair B. Voight, this government report assesses
avalanches and other related natural disasters in the United States
and the efficiency of relief efforts by the government.
Parfit, M. “Living with Natural Hazards.” National Geographic 194
(July, 1998): 2-39. An excellent write-up on natural hazard areas
within the United States and some personal histories of persons
whose lives have been affected by them.

13
Avalanches

USDA Forest Service. Snow Avalanche: General Rules for Avoiding and
Surviving Snow Avalanches. Portland, Oreg.: USDA Forest Service,
Pacific Northwest Region, 1982. Provides general guidelines for
both recreational and serious outdoor enthusiasts for avoiding
and surviving snow avalanches.

14
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice
Storms, and Hail
Factors involved: Geography, gravitational forces,
ice, rain, snow, temperature, weather conditions,
wind
Regions affected: Cities, coasts, deserts, forests,
islands, lakes, mountains, plains, towns, valleys

Definition
Blizzards, freezes, ice storms, and hail are significant weather events
that occur infrequently. When they do occur, they may seriously dis-
rupt or curtail transportation, business, and domestic activities; de-
stroy agricultural produce; cause tens of millions of dollars in dam-
ages; and result in significant loss of life to humans and animals.
Blizzards, freezes, and ice storms are winter storms, while hail and
hailstorms occur in the warmer weather of late spring, summer, and
fall.

Science
Blizzards, ice storms, and hail are significant weather events associ-
ated with dynamic interactions between masses of air. These interac-
tions are influenced by altitude, latitude, temperature, moisture, ge-
ography, geology, cyclonic rotations, and the jet streams, as these air
masses and the jet streams move from place to place.
Blizzards are severe winter storms that may occur when tempera-
tures are 10 degrees Fahrenheit or lower, when winds blow at a mini-
mum of 35 miles per hour, and when there is sufficient blowing or
newly fallen snow to reduce visibility to less than 0.25 mile for at least
three hours. Blizzards are produced by strong frontal cyclones that
bring low temperatures and blowing snow. Blizzards in the Arctic,
Antarctic, mountainous regions, or the continental tundra may have
winds that blow in excess of 100 miles per hour, with subzero tem-
peratures creating the legendary blizzards of the polar seas and polar
areas.
Blizzard snow as well as the perpetual snow cover often found on

15
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

Milestones
1643-1653: Europe experiences its severest winters after the Ice Age.
July 13, 1788: A severe hailstorm damages French wheat crops.
early October, 1846: An early blizzard in the Sierra Nevada traps the
Donner Party.
January 23, 1867: The East River in New York City freezes.
March 11-14, 1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888 strikes the eastern
United States; 400 die.
February 17, 1962: Major storms blanket Germany; 343 are killed.
January 29-31, 1966: The worst blizzard in seventy years strikes the
eastern United States.
February 4-11, 1972: Heavy snow falls on Iran; 1,000 perish.
December 1-2, 1974: Nineteen inches of snow falls on Detroit in the
worst snowstorm in eighty-eight years.
January 28-29 and March 10-12, 1977: Blizzards ravage the Midwest;
Buffalo reports 160 inches of snow.
January 25-26, 1978: A major snowstorm strikes the midwestern
United States, with 31 inches of snow and 18-foot drifts.
February 5-7, 1978: The worst blizzard in the history of New England
strikes the Northeast; eastern Massachusetts receives 50 inches of
snow, and winds reach 110 miles per hour. All business stops for five
days.
January 12-14, 1979: Blizzards in the Midwest yield 20 inches of snow,
with temperatures at -20 degrees Fahrenheit; 100 die.
February 18-19, 1979: Snow blankets the District of Columbia.
March 1-2, 1980: The mid-Atlantic region experiences a blizzard.
February 5-28, 1984: A series of snowstorms strikes Colorado and
Utah.
March 29, 1984: A snowstorm covers much of the East Coast.
January 7, 1996: The East Coast is hit by another big snowstorm.
May 10-11, 1996: A sudden and intense blizzard on Mount Everest,
Earth’s highest peak, traps climbers, killing 9 and leaving 4 others
with severe frostbite.
April 1, 1997: The April Fool’s storm strikes the Northeast.
January 5-12, 1998: A major ice storm covers northeastern Canada.

16
 Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

February-March, 1999: Heavy snowfall in the Alps triggers avalanches.

January 20-24, 2005: A heavy blizzard blankets New England with
snow up to 40 inches in some places, shutting down Logan Interna-
tional Airport in Boston.
January 12-16, 2007: A freezing winter storm moves across the United
States causing extensive power outages and 65 related deaths, many
of them in Oklahoma.

high mountaintops, even in the tropics, results from the condensa-

tion and freezing of moisture contained within air masses that are
forced up and over the mountains in a process called orographic lift-
ing. Snow may also form when mid-Atlantic cyclones and upper-air
troughs move over mountainous locations.
A ground blizzard is one in which previously fallen snow is blown
around, often accumulating in large snow drifts that may exceed 10
feet in height. A whiteout is an especially dangerous type of blizzard
in which visibility may be reduced to the point where the horizon,
one’s surroundings, and the sky become indistinguishable. During
such blizzards, exposed humans and animals often suffer from disori-
entation and loss of the sense of direction.
There are several meteorological mechanisms that produce snow,
potentially resulting in blizzards. There must be a constant inflow of
moisture to feed growing ice crystals within appropriate clouds in the
upper atmosphere. Convection may lift some of the moisture to
higher, cooler regions of the atmosphere, where condensation may
produce snow—or rain that will become snow—as it falls through cold
atmospheric regions. Ice crystals falling from higher clouds may
“seed” lower clouds, resulting in snowfall. Polar air masses from the
north pick up significant quantities of moisture when they blow across
relatively warmer bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes. This mois-
ture may then dissipate into huge volumes of snow downwind, on land,
creating blizzards. The Pacific Ocean is the source of moisture for
most snowfalls and blizzards west of the Rocky Mountains; the Gulf of
Mexico and the tropical portion of the north Atlantic Ocean are gen-
erally the sources of moisture for snowfalls and blizzards in the central
and eastern portions of the United States and Canada.

17
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

When deep low-pressure systems (hurricanes) form over the east-

ern United States and approach the Atlantic Ocean, they can grow ex-
plosively as they are moving offshore, parallel to the coastline. Because
winds around a hurricane generally blow in a counterclockwise direc-
tion, snow or rain, or both, will be accompanied by strong northeast
winds, creating in winter a type of blizzard known as a northeaster. In
summer the same systems can bring torrential rains, which may last for
many days. Most major snowstorms and blizzards of the mid-Atlantic
and New England states come from northeasters. If the system as it
moves parallel to the coast should move slowly, or stall completely, the
affected land areas may be battered for hours—or even days—by bliz-
zard conditions and large amounts of snow or rain.
Ice storms are among the most destructive of all winter storms.
They are caused by rain (liquid water) falling from an above-freezing
layer of upper air to a layer of below-freezing air on or near the
earth’s surface. The freezing rain coats everything with a layer of ice,
called glaze. If the rain continues to fall, and continues to freeze,
staggering amounts of ice may build up on roads, bridges, trees, util-
ity poles, transmission towers, power lines, and buildings. The ice
may vary in thickness from 0.04 inch to as much as 6 inches. Upon
slight warming by the sun, ice on superstructures of bridges, build-
ings, power lines, and trees may loosen and fall in chunks or very
large pieces known as ice slabs. This falling ice threatens the safety of
anyone or anything below. Roads and bridges are generally closed
when this danger exists. Ice storms cripple all modes of transporta-
tion, cause roadways and other thoroughfares to be closed, and cre-
ate extremely hazardous conditions for humans and animals.
Hail is sometimes confused with sleet; they are not the same thing.
Sleet is made of frozen raindrops that fall during winter storms. Hail
is composed of balls of ice of varying shapes and sizes that fall from
the interior of cumulonimbus clouds during thunderstorms. Thun-
derstorms are necessary for the production of hail. Atmospheric in-
stability associated with thunderstorms creates the powerful updrafts
and downdrafts necessary for the production of hail. Hail and hail-
storms occur not during the winter but rather during the late spring,
summer, and fall. During these seasons, heating of the earth’s surface
by the sun creates warm, rising air currents called thermals or up-
drafts, in a process called convection. The rising air masses contain

18
 Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

moisture, salt particles from ocean spray, particles of kaolinite clay,

volcanic dust, sulfur oxides, and other kinds of particles, which are
collectively called aerosols.
As the rising air masses encounter the lower temperatures of the
upper atmosphere, the moisture condenses, forming cumulonimbus
clouds. Within these clouds are residual moisture present in a liquid,
supercooled state; ice crystals; and aerosols. Supercooled water is
water that remains in a liquid state at temperatures below which it
would usually freeze. The name cumulonimbus means “heaped
cloud which may produce precipitation.” These clouds, also called
thunderheads, are towering, often extending vertically thousands of
feet into the atmosphere. To the observer on earth they often appear
puffy and lumpy and, because of upper-level wind shear, develop an-
vil-shaped tops. Their undersides often look dark and foreboding.
Cumulonimbi are the clouds of greatest vertical extent, often mea-
suring 10 miles or more from top to bottom.
Drops of atmospheric moisture brought by updrafts into the cold
interiors of cumulonimbus clouds become supercooled and may be-
gin to coalesce with and freeze around existing ice crystals or aero-
sols. Ice tends to freeze around particulate matter or other ice crys-
tals, both of which serve as freezing nuclei, or nucleating agents. A
nucleating agent is a substance that catalyzes the freezing of super-
cooled water into ice. Aerosols serve as nucleating agents. Updrafts
within the clouds may lift the newly formed ice pellets to higher,
cooler levels containing more supercooled water, which freezes them
further, making them larger and heavier. When they are heavy
enough for their movement to overcome the strength of the updraft,
and the downward acceleration of gravity becomes the predominant
force, they fall out of a cloud as hailstones. Downdrafts within a cloud
may also push hailstones out and downward. Prior to exiting a cloud,
hail may be bounced in trampoline fashion up and down within a
cloud by competing updrafts and downdrafts. With each ascent,
more supercooled water may freeze onto the ice pellets, making
them still larger and heavier. Hailstones freeze in layers that look
much like those of an onion. An examination of a cut hailstone shows
these concentric layers. The number of layers provides a record of
the number of times the hailstone was tossed up and down within the
parent cloud. Hail may pass through several developmental stages

19
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

and appear in pea-sized pieces called graupel, or soft hail. Hailstones

may also be the size of baseballs or grapefruit.
The most frequent time for the production of hail is between 3
and 4 p.m., with almost all hailstorms occuring between 2 and 6 p.m.,
times that correspond to the period of maximum heating of the
earth’s surface by the sun. The development of the largest hailstones
requires powerful updraft velocities and many trips up and down
within a cloud. The largest documented hailstone fell in Coffeyville,
Kansas, in September of 1970. It had a circumference of almost 18
inches and weighed almost 2 pounds. An updraft velocity of almost
400 miles per hour would be required to create a hailstone that size.
In the United States, weather observers and reporters report hail-
stone sizes either in inches or in descriptive terms such as “quarter”
(1 inch), “chicken egg” (2 inches), and “softball” (4.5 inches).
No one knows the maximum potential size of a hailstone. There
are undocumented reports of basketball-sized hail having fallen in
Manhattan, Illinois. Downdrafts from clouds may be powerful
enough to slam the surface of the earth with wind gusts that exceed
hurricane force, damaging property and causing airplane crashes.
Powerful downdrafts are called microbursts, and they are second
only to pilot error as the leading cause of airplane crashes. The
amount of hail produced at any one time can be staggering. There
are confirmed records of hail accumulations several feet deep, cover-
ing many square miles. It is not uncommon for snowplows to be used
during the summer to clear haildrifts from roads. Melting hail is re-
sponsible for stream flooding and extensive property damage in
many areas subject to hailstorms.
There are periodic reports of falling hail containing unusual
items such as toads, frogs, snakes, worms, peaches and other fruits,
fish, and even ducks. An explanation for such events suggests that
powerful updrafts in appropriate places could be strong enough to
sweep up and convectively transfer these objects from the surface of
the earth into cumulonimbus clouds, where they would be coated
and recoated with ice prior to falling to earth.

Geography
Blizzards occur in regions where there is an abundance of moisture
that can be transformed into snow and where temperatures are low

20
 Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

enough to both encourage snow production and sustain falling or

previously fallen snow. Additionally, blizzard-prone areas are affected
by jet-stream-accompanied cyclonic events, such as cyclonic vorticity,
troughs, and severe frontal cyclones, which may develop in conjunc-
tion with jet streams, causing higher-than-usual winds. These systems
create storms at other times of the year; however, during winter
months they result in heavy snowfall and other blizzard conditions.
Blizzards occur most often in Canada, the northeastern U.S. plains
states, the mid- and north Atlantic states, and downwind of the Great
Lakes. Blizzards also occur in polar areas and at high altitudes at or
near the summits of mountains, particularly in north, central, east-
ern, and western Europe.
Ice storms generally occur in a broad belt stretching from Ne-
braska, Oklahoma, and Kansas eastward into the mid-Atlantic and
northeastern states. They can occur in any other places that experi-
ence winter weather. Ice storms are among the most devastating and
deadly of all winter storms. A 1952 ice storm covered Louisiana, Ar-
kansas, and Mississippi. It lasted from January 28 to February 4 and
killed at least 22 people. During such storms an icy glaze of varying
thickness coats all exposed surfaces and objects. During a November,
1940, storm in northeastern Texas, ice coatings of 6 inches and more
were reported. Coatings 6 inches thick were also reported in a De-
cember, 1942, storm in New York State.
In February of 1994, an ice storm in the southeastern United
States caused 9 fatalities and over $3 billion in economic damages.
During that same storm, up to 4 inches of ice accumulated in some
locations from Texas to North Carolina. Some utility customers were
without power for a month; coping with lengthy power outages may
create serious, life-threatening situations for the elderly, the very
young, and the ill. An April, 1995, ice storm in Chicago resulted in
the closing of Michigan Avenue, a main thoroughfare, because of
great ice slabs falling from buildings and other high-rise structures.
Ice storms also cause trees to become overburdened with the
weight of the ice, causing them to collapse onto power lines or other
structures. When utility poles, transmission towers, and other such
structures collapse because of accumulations of ice on trees, the
fallen trees and utility poles and similar structures must be removed
before any work on restoring power can begin. Lack of power seri-

21
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

ously interferes with or shuts down computers, elevators, escalators,

heating systems, and hospital operations, among other things. Freez-
ing rain and ice storms occur an average of twelve days per year
around the Great Lakes and the northeastern United States. Such
storms also occur in Canada and Europe.
Almost 5,000 hailstorms strike the United States each year, with
perhaps 500 to 700 of them producing hailstones large enough to
cause damage and injury. Hail forms in thunderstorms, but not all
thunderstorms produce hail. The state of Florida has the greatest an-
nual number of thunderstorms but has the lowest hail rate in the
United States. Hail is most frequently found in “Hail Alley,” a region
that covers parts of eastern Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Hail
is also common in the high plains, the Midwest, and the Ohio Valley.
Cheyenne, Wyoming, is the so-called U.S. hail capital. The Pacific
shorelines of the United States have the least hail. Hail in that region
is produced by thunderstorms that blow on shore during winter
storms. Northern India has the greatest frequency of large hail

Brattleboro, Vermont, is blanketed by snow during a 1941 blizzard. (Library of Con-

gress)

22
 Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

events. India also has the greatest number of human fatalities from
hail. Hail belts around the world are generally found at mid-latitudes,
downwind of large mountain ranges.
Hail occurs in Canada, central Europe, the Himalayan region,
southern China, Argentina, South Africa, and parts of Australia. The
highest documented frequency of hailfalls on earth has been in
Keriche, Kenya, which averages more than 132 days of hail per year.

Prevention and Preparations

Humans cannot prevent blizzards, ice storms, or hail. In 1948 the
work of scientist Vincent Schaefer showed that adding finely divided
dry ice crystals to cold clouds could induce precipitation. Further
studies showed that, in addition to dry ice, crystals of either silver io-
dide or sodium chloride added to appropriate clouds would also spur
precipitation. Each of these techniques was used in major efforts to
suppress hail formation and/or modify the storm-producing poten-
tial of clouds. However, much of this work was terminated because of
the lack of consistent positive results. Some states, from Texas to
North Dakota, would continue modest efforts to control hail produc-
tion, funded by the states themselves or jointly with federal agencies.
There are several steps that may be taken to lessen damage, injury,
and loss of life from blizzards, ice storms, and hail. A very common
response by many people to impending severe weather is to ignore it
or assume that they will not be directly affected. This attitude should
be replaced with one of greater respect and appreciation for these
winter events, which can kill and cause hundreds of millions of dol-
lars in damages. Information and forecasts about impending severe
weather events for any area are readily available, well publicized, and
continuously updated by radio and television weather services. These
events often last for considerable periods of time, cause power out-
ages, and make local or long-distance travel extremely difficult or im-
possible. For these reasons, prior to the onset of severe weather one
should ensure that sufficient food, medical supplies, auxiliary light-
ing devices, water, snow shovels, and ice-melting aids are on hand.
Automobiles should be fueled and should contain emergency items,
even though travel or driving within or through the impacted areas
should be avoided.
The occurrence of blizzards, ice storms, and hail is often unpredict-

23
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

able. Before the onset of such weather, one should be certain that in-
surance policies are in place to cover damages to personal property,
agricultural produce, and livestock. Anyone caught outdoors during
such events should seek immediate shelter. If one is trapped within an
automobile, the chance of survival is increased by remaining with the
vehicle, unless a safe place is visible outside. One should keep hazard
lights on, make certain of adequate ventilation within the automobile,
and make certain that snow or ice does not clog the exhaust pipe.
Mountain climbers and skiers often protect themselves from vio-
lent blizzards by digging holes in the snow, crawling in, and curling
up in a fetal position to conserve body warmth. Snow is an excellent
insulator. There can be a temperature difference of as much as 50 de-
grees 7 inches below the surface of the snow.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Severe blizzards, ice storms, and hail may arise suddenly and be sig-
nificantly more violent, extensive, or involved than previously fore-
cast. Blizzards are one of the greatest potential killers of humans, live-
stock, and wildlife. They are often accompanied by freezing rain,
hail, and sleet. During such events, humans, domestic animals, and
livestock may be trapped away from adequate, safe environments and
may require rescue and relief efforts from outside sources. Except for
cases of the direst emergencies, rescue and relief efforts are generally
mounted after the severe weather has subsided. Typical problems en-
countered during the storms are blocked, impassable roads and side-
walks; power outages; children, the elderly, and sick persons trapped
in unheated dwellings; and travelers trapped in vehicles.
Most municipalities located within winter storm belts have dedi-
cated public officials assigned to coordinate snow, ice, and hail re-
moval and rescue efforts. Law enforcement agencies maintain law
and order and prevent looting. Service organizations such as the Na-
tional Red Cross and Salvation Army often have representatives avail-
able to assist in providing food, clothing, and shelter for those suffer-
ing from the effects of winter storms. When storm effects are very
widespread, state governors may request that the president of the
United States declare a state of emergency in the impacted area, mak-
ing people and businesses in that area eligible for federal disaster re-
lief funds. The National Guard is frequently called upon to aid travel-

24
 Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

ers and others who face peril from blizzards and other severe winter
storms. The Guard helps to maintain order and prevent looting. It
also combats accumulations of snow, ice, and hail.
A 1979 blizzard that dropped more than 18 inches of snow in
Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Denver, Colorado, moved eastward at a
time when many people were traveling for Thanksgiving. The bliz-
zard killed 125 people, and the National Guard rescued more than
2,000 travelers. Many were rescued by helicopter, while others were
stranded in automobiles, hotels, motels, National Guard armories,
and public buildings and auditoriums. An Ohio blizzard in January,
1978, stranded about 6,000 motorists. A state of emergency was de-
clared, and the National Guard moved in to aid stranded motorists
and exhausted utility repairpersons.
The most common hazards associated with severe winter storms
are hypothermia, frostbite, broken bones, and other injuries caused
by slips, falls, and vehicle accidents. Each year thousands of Ameri-
cans, especially the elderly, motorists, and hikers, die from exposure
to cold. Although relatively uncommon, concussive injuries from fall-
ing hail are sometimes reported. In July, 1979, at Fort Collins, Colo-
rado, an infant was killed in his mother’s arms as she tried to shield
him from falling hail. A 1953 hailstorm in Alberta, Canada, killed
65,000 ducks. Rescue and relief efforts must be directed not only to-
ward humans but also toward livestock and other animals. Failure to
do so may result in staggering losses.

Impact
Blizzards, ice storms, and hail cause hundreds of millions of dollars in
damages; they also kill and injure hundreds of people each year. These
storms can bring big-city traffic to a complete standstill, ground air-
planes, make it difficult or impossible to get to or from work or school,
and create power outages and food and fuel shortages. Additional
hardships may result from heavy rains and flooding that often follow
such storms. The impact on traffic is enormous. More than 85 percent
of all ice storm deaths result from traffic accidents.

Historical Overview
Throughout history, including modern times, blizzards and ice storms
have been a serious threat to travelers. Travelers crossing the Alps

25
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

have been trapped by sudden and unexpected snowstorms; this was

the likely cause of death of a prehistoric man whose well-preserved
remains were unearthed in the high Alps in the 1990’s. The famous
St. Bernard dogs, trained by the friars of the hospice founded around
982 c.e. by St. Bernard of Menthon, have rescued many travelers
trapped in the mountain passes of Switzerland by sudden and unex-
pected snowstorms.
In the early fall of 1846, an unexpectedly early snowstorm in the
Sierra Nevada trapped the Donner Party, a group of emigrants from
the East seeking to reach California. The early storm was followed by
many additional snowfalls, leading to the deaths of most of the mem-
bers of the party. Some were believed to have resorted to cannibalism
to relieve their hunger in the weeks immediately preceding their own
deaths from starvation.
In the seventeenth century, Europe experienced what has been
described as the most severe winters after the end of the Ice Age, par-
ticularly in the years 1643 to 1653. In the eighteenth century, severe
weather played its part in initiating the French Revolution: A hail-
storm damaged much of France’s wheat crop in the summer of 1788,
sparking strong inflation in the price of bread and rousing the anger
of the working class.
Hailstorms occur mostly in the summertime as a result of unusual
temperature inversions, and the threat they usually pose is the de-
struction of agricultural crops. The growth of major transportation
capabilities has enabled the world to alleviate the risks of local starva-
tion caused by such storms, but they can be devastating to local econ-
omies, particularly in parts of the world where the standard of living
is low.
The nineteenth century experienced a period of lower average
temperatures in winter that led to some startling developments. The
lower temperatures and early frosts are believed to have played a part
in the decline of agriculture in the Northeast. As evidence of the
lower temperatures, the East River in New York City froze over in Jan-
uary of 1867. People used sleds for winter travel, and the frozen rivers
and ponds provided ice that was cut, stored, and shipped south in the
spring and summer in an era before mechanical refrigeration devel-
oped in the 1870’s. The most striking event associated with this pe-
riod of lower temperatures was the Great Blizzard of 1888, in which

26
 Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

Cattle in a Blizzard on the Plains, drawn by Charles Graham from a sketch by

H. Worrall. This drawing appeared in Harper’s Weekly on February 27, 1886.
(Library of Congress)

more than 400 people died as a result of being trapped outside or in

unheated buildings. All travel came to a halt for several days.
Nevertheless, modern technology enticed several adventurers to
believe they could overcome the enormous risks involved in explor-
ing the world’s coldest continent, Antarctica. Although a Norwegian
explorer, Roald Amundsen, had managed to travel overland to the
South Pole and return safely in 1911, the following year another ex-
plorer of the Antarctic, Robert Falcon Scott, together with four com-
panions, who managed to reach the South Pole a month after Amund-
sen, lost his life in a series of blizzards encountered on the return trip
from the South Pole. People continuing a series of scientific expedi-
tions and scientific observations carried out in Antarctica have due
regard for the risks of winter weather.
In the middle of the twentieth century, colder weather hit the
Northern Hemisphere, resulting in several blizzards of note. In Feb-
ruary of 1962, a major storm centered in Germany led to the deaths
of 343 people. Four years later, in January of 1966, the worst blizzard
in seventy years struck the eastern United States. In 1972 heavy snow
fell in Iran, a country whose climate normally does not experience

27
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

such events except in the mountains to the north and east.

The development of predictive capabilities helped significantly to
reduce the toll of such life-threatening storms. In 1960, the deploy-
ment of the first weather satellite made it possible to view the weather
over large areas of the globe. These images enabled weather services
all over the world to see major snowstorms and blizzards coming, and
to alert travelers to the risks of travel. In 1967, the National Oceano-
graphic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began making
public its maps of snow and ice cover all over the world. These maps
later revealed that in the early 1970’s the snow and ice cover had be-
gun to grow, and by 1973 it exceeded by 11 percent its extent in 1970.
Scientists began learning about the earth’s climate and weather
from the ice cores extracted from Greenland glaciers as early as 1966.
These were analyzed by Danish scientists, as well as climatologists
from other countries, and revealed that snowfall has been a variable
event throughout history. It is concentrated, however, at high lati-
tudes and high elevations. The lower temperatures that occurred in
late medieval times, for example, wiped out the Norse settlers who
had established a colony in Greenland around 1,000 c.e. Thanks to
ice cores, scientists now have a clear chronological picture of snowfall
over the entire period since the end of the last ice age, some twelve
thousand years ago.
Between 1978 and 1980, the United States was hit by a series of
blizzards. The Midwest was blanketed in late January of 1978, and in
early February of that year the northeastern part of the country was
targeted. There was another blizzard in the Midwest the following
January, and in February of 1979 more than 18 inches of snow piled
up in the District of Columbia, bringing traffic to a halt. Washington,
D.C., had not received that much snow since 1922. In March of 1980,
the mid-Atlantic region was the victim of a blizzard. Twenty-eight
inches of snow fell in tidewater Virginia, more than at any time in the
preceding eighty-seven years. In April, 3 feet of snow fell in Colorado
and Utah. The same storm became a blizzard in New England. An-
other year of heavy snowfall was 1984. In March, much of the East
Coast was hit by heavy snows, leading to 8 deaths. The great popular-
ity of skiing for recreation put many people at risk in these storms.
In January, 1985, a blizzard hit the Midwest, reaching as far south
as San Antonio, Texas, which had a record snowfall of 13.5 inches. In

28
 Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

November and again in December the Midwest experienced a series

of blizzards, leading to 33 deaths. In 1986, it was Europe’s turn. In the
last week in January deep cold and snow caused many rivers and ca-
nals to freeze, and 33 people died. In January, 1992, an unusual snow-
storm hit the Middle East, where it rarely snows except in the moun-
tains. Jerusalem received as much as 18 inches of snow; 2 feet of snow
fell in Amman, Jordan. In 1993 winds of 109 miles per hour (the
Weather Service defines a blizzard as a snowstorm in which winds ex-
ceed 35 miles per hour) powered a blizzard along the entire East
Coast, from Florida to Maine. The storm caused 213 deaths.
In 1996, a snowstorm covered much of the East Coast, and many
highways were closed for as much as two days. Seventeen inches of
snow fell on the District of Columbia, and the federal government
shut down for two days. Parts of Pennsylvania received 31 inches of
snow in this storm, and a few areas in New Jersey were blanketed by
up to 37 inches of snow. The elevated trains in New York City had to
shut down for a time.
On April 1 of the following year, what became known as the April
Fool’s snowstorm hit the Northeast. A sudden change in the path of
this storm caught weather predictors by surprise. In May of 1997, 7
climbers on Mount Everest perished in a blizzard as they neared the
peak of the mountain. Nine climbers had been killed the previous
May in similar circumstances. The severe weather of 1996-1997 also
proved fatal to at least 240 Hindu pilgrims attempting a pilgrimage to
a cave in Kashmir; they were caught in a freak snowstorm on August
25, 1996.
What was termed a once-in-a-century ice storm devastated much of
the Northeast as well as eastern Canada between January 5 and Janu-
ary 12, 1998. The storm dragged down power lines in much of the re-
gion, and crews had to be imported from southern states to help repair
the damage. Many residents were without power for several weeks. The
ice storm of 1998 was described as the most destructive storm in Cana-
dian history. The Adirondacks in New York, as well as northern Ver-
mont, New Hampshire, and Maine, were also hit. Damages in Canada
exceeded a half billion dollars, and insurance claims totaling more
than $1 billion were filed in both countries. Seven people died in
Maine as a result of this storm and 4 in New York State.
The threat posed by snow and ice was transferred to Europe in the

29
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

early months of 1999. Heavy snows in the Alps in February and

March, the heaviest in fifty years, triggered avalanches that trapped a
number of skiers and other tourists. At least 31 people died in Austria
and 18 in France. The lives lost in these events made it clear that peo-
ple have yet to learn to heed the warnings that the weather services of
the world are now able to provide: Travel remains a risky proposition
under snowy and icy conditions.
Billy Scott
Nancy M. Gordon

Bibliography
Allaby, Michael. Dangerous Weather: Blizzards. Rev. ed. New York: Facts
On File, 2003. Intended for students. Discusses the origins and
history of severe winter storms. Includes helpful diagrams.
Battan, Louis J. Weather in Your Life. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1983.
An introduction to meteorology and weather written for the lay-
person. Describes how the atmosphere influences humans and
human behavior. Topics include weather forecasting; social impli-
cations of weather modification; and effects of blizzards, ice
storms, and hail on air transport, agriculture, and human health.
Christian, Spencer, and Tom Biracree. Spencer Christian’s Weather
Book. New York: Prentice-Hall General Reference, 1993. A weather
primer written for laypersons. Briefly introduces readers to major
weather-related topics, including storms, atmospheric dynamics,
weather reporting, and forecasting. Provides information for stu-
dents and any others who might want to pursue a career in meteo-
rology or weather reporting.
Eagleman, Joe R. Severe and Unusual Weather. 2d ed. Lenexa, Kans.:
Trimedia, 1990. A detailed and thorough text that describes
meterological phenomena that cause various kinds of storms. An
excellent companion textbook to accompany courses in general
meteorology or the earth sciences.
Erikson, Jon. Violent Storms. Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab Books,
1988. A story of weather through the ages, written in general
terms. Discusses weather folklore, weather and the development
of agriculture, inadvertent weather modification, rainmaking,
and other aspects of voluntary weather modification. Provides a
list and discussion of significant historical weather events.

30
 Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

Ludlum, David M. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North Ameri-

can Weather. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. A field guide for ob-
serving and forecasting weather. Contains more than 300 color
photographs of cloud types, storms, and weather-related optical
phenomena. The book has thumb-tab references, visual keys, and
images of historic weather occurrences.
_______. The Weather Factor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. A collec-
tion of little-known facts about how weather and winter storms
have influenced Americans from colonial times to modern times.
Detailed accounts are provided about when and where storms oc-
curred and descriptions of weather impact on events such as polit-
ical campaigns, wars, sports events, and air transport.
Lutgens, Frederick K., and Edward J. Tarbuck. The Atmosphere: An In-
troduction to Meteorology. 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 2004. Explores basic principles and concepts of science for
beginning students of meteorology.
Lyons, Walter A. The Handy Weather Answer Book. Detroit: Visible Ink
Press, 1997. Contains photographs and tables to illustrate and ex-
plain items and events described in the text. Uses a question-and-
answer format to introduce general weather-related topics.

31
Droughts
Factors involved: Animals, geography, human
activity, plants, temperature, weather conditions,
wind
Regions affected: Cities, coasts, deserts, forests,
islands, lakes, mountains, plains, rivers, towns, valleys

Definition
A drought is an extended period of below-normal precipitation. It is
a dry period that is sufficiently long and severe that crops fail and
normal water demand cannot be met.

Science
Drought can be defined as a shortage of precipitation that results in
below-normal levels of stream flow, groundwater, lakes, and soil mois-
ture. It differs from other geophysical events such as volcanic erup-
tions, floods, and earthquakes because droughts are actually non-
events—that is, they result from the absence of events (precipitation)
that should normally occur. Drought also differs from other geophys-
ical events because it has no recognizable beginning (as opposed to
an earthquake) and takes time to develop. Drought may be recog-
nized only when plants start to wilt, wells and streams run dry, and
reservoir shorelines recede.
Most droughts occur when slow-moving subsiding air masses dom-
inate a region. Commonly, air circulates in continental interiors,
where there is little moisture available for evaporation, thereby pro-
viding little potential for precipitation. In order for precipitation to
occur, the water vapor in the air must be lifted so that it has a chance
to cool, condense into dust particles, and eventually, if conditions are
favorable, precipitate. Clearly, there is little opportunity for these
conditions to occur when the air is dry and descending.
Another climatological characteristic associated with droughts is
that, following their establishment within a particular area, they tend
to persist and even increase in areal extent. Air circulation is in-
fluenced by the drying-out of soil moisture and its unavailability for
precipitation further downwind. Concurrently, the state of the atmo-

32
 Droughts

Milestones
1270-1350: A prolonged drought in the U.S. Southwest destroys Ana-
sazi Indian culture.
1585-1587: A severe drought destroys the Roanoke colonies of En-
glish settlers in Virginia.
1887-1896: Droughts drive out many early settlers on the Great Plains.
1899: The failure of monsoons in India results in many deaths.
1910-1915: First in a series of recurring droughts affects the Sahel re-
gion in Africa.
1932-1937: Extensive droughts in the southern Great Plains destroy
many farms, creating the Dust Bowl, in the worst drought in more
than three hundred years in the United States.
1960-1990: Repeated droughts occur in the Sahel, east Africa, and
southern Africa.
1977-1978: The western United States undergoes a drought.
1982-1983: Droughts affect Brazil and northern India.
1986-1988: Many farmers in the U.S. Midwest are driven out of busi-
ness by a drought.
1998: A drought destroys crops in the southern Midwest and causes
ecological damage on the East Coast.
1999: A major drought strikes the U.S. Southeast, the Atlantic coast,
and New England.
2002: A severe, long-term drought begins in Australia. Urban areas
begin to feel its effects by 2006, as major cities pass heavy restrictions
on water usage and Perth constructs a desalination plant.

sphere that produces the unusual circulation associated with droughts

can induce surface temperature variations that in turn foster further
development of the unusual circulation pattern. As a result, the pro-
cess feeds on itself, making the drought last longer and intensify until
major atmospheric circulation patterns change.
Drought-identification research has changed over the years from
a time when the size of the precipitation deficit was the only factor
considered, to the present, when sophisticated techniques are ap-
plied to the quantitative assessment of the deviation of the total envi-

33
Droughts

ronmental moisture status. These techniques facilitate better under-

standing of the severity, duration, and areal extent of droughts.
Early in the twentieth century, drought was identified by the U.S.
Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service) as any period of
three weeks or more when the precipitation was 30 percent or more
below normal. (Note that normal is defined as the average for a
thirty-year period, such as 1951-1980 or 1961-1990.) The initial selec-
tion of three weeks for defining a drought was based entirely on pre-
cipitation. Subsequent research has shown that the moisture status of
a region is affected by other factors besides precipitation.
Further developments in drought identification during the mid-
twentieth century involved examination of the moisture demands
that are related to evapotranspiration, the return of moisture to the
atmosphere by the combined effects of evaporation and plant tran-
spiration. Some drought-identification studies have examined the
adequacy of soil moisture in the root zone for plant growth. The ob-
jective of this research is to determine drought probability based on
the number of days when the moisture storage in the soil is zero. The
U.S. Forest Service used evapotranspiration in developing a drought
index for use by fire-control managers. The index was used to pro-
vide an indicator of flammability that could lead to forest fires. It had
limited applicability to nonforestry users as it was not effective for
showing drought as a measure of total environmental moisture stress.
W. C. Palmer developed a drought-identification index in 1965
that became widely adopted. The Palmer Drought Index (PDI) de-
fines drought as the period of time, generally measured in months or
years, when the actual moisture supply at a specified location is always
below the climatically anticipated or appropriate supply of moisture.
Evapotranspiration, soil moisture loss, surface runoff, and precipita-
tion are the required environmental parameters. The PDI values
range from +4.0, for an extremely wet moisture status, to −4.0, for ex-
treme drought. Normal conditions have values close to zero. Al-
though the PDI has been used for decades and recognized as an ac-
ceptable procedure for including evapotranspiration and soil
moisture in drought identification, it has been criticized. For exam-
ple, the method determines a dimensionless parameter ranging
from +4.0 to −4.0 that cannot be compared to variables such as pre-
cipitation, which are measured in units (inches) that are immediately

34
 Droughts

recognizable. In addition, the index is not very sensitive to short

drought periods, which can negatively affect crops.
In order to overcome these problems with the PDI, other re-
searchers have used water-budget analysis to identify changes in envi-
ronmental moisture status. The procedure is similar to the Palmer
method, as it includes precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil
moisture. However, the values for moisture status deviation are di-
mensional and expressed in the same units as precipitation—inches.
Drought classification using this method yields values ranging from
approximately +1.0 inch, for an above-normal moisture status, to −4.0
inches, for extreme drought. As in the PDI, the index is close to zero
for normal conditions.

Geography
Many regions of the world have regularly occurring periods of dry-
ness. Three different forms of dryness have a temporal dimension;
they are known as perennial, seasonal, and intermittent. Perennially
dry areas include the major deserts of the world, such as the Sahara,
Arabian, Kalahari, and Australian Deserts. Precipitation in these
large deserts is not only very low (less than 10 inches per year) but
also very erratic. Seasonal dryness is associated with those parts of the
world where most of the precipitation for the year occurs during a
few months, leaving the rest of the year rainless. Intermittent dryness
pertains to those areas of the world where the total precipitation is re-
duced in humid regions or where the rainy season in wet-dry climates
either does not occur or is shortened.
The major problem for humans is a lack of precipitation where it
is normally expected. For example, the absence of precipitation for a
week where daily precipitation is the norm is considered a drought.
In contrast, it would take two or more years without any rain in parts
of Libya in North Africa for a drought to occur. In those parts of the
world that have one rainy season, a 50 percent decrease in precipita-
tion would be considered a drought. In other regions that normally
have two rainy seasons, the failure of one could lead to drought con-
ditions. Thus, the very word “drought” itself is a relative term, since it
has different meanings in different climatic regions. The deficiency
of precipitation in one location is therefore not a good indicator of
drought, as each place has its own criteria for identifying drought.

35
Droughts

Prevention and Preparations

Droughts cannot be prevented, but their effects may be ameliorated.
There are two main options for managing droughts: increasing the
supply of water and decreasing the demand.
There are several supply enhancement measures that can be insti-
tuted. For example, reservoir release requirements can be relaxed.
This occurred on the Delaware River during the severe drought of
the early 1960’s, when the required flow of 3,000 cubic feet per sec-
ond at Trenton could not be met without jeopardizing the water-
supply needs of New York City. Accordingly, the reservoir releases in
the upper Delaware were temporarily relaxed. Many states require
low flow or conservation flows to be maintained in the channel below
a reservoir for waste assimilation and aquatic health. If a drought is
severe enough, the conservation flows can be temporarily reduced or
even eliminated. Other measures include the temporary diversion of
water from one source, such as a recreational lake, to a water-supply
reservoir. Interconnections with other water-supply purveyors may
be encouraged or mandated. New sources of water could also be ob-
tained from buried valleys that contain stratified glacial deposits with
large amounts of groundwater.
Demand reduction measures include appeals for voluntary con-
servation. If these do not work, then mandatory water-use restric-
tions can be imposed. Bans on outside uses of water, such as lawn wa-
tering and car washing, are common.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Drought in the developed world affects crops and livestock but gen-
erally does not pose a threat to life, as it does in the developing world.
Industrialized societies have existing transportation networks that
enable supplies and foodstuffs to be shipped to affected regions. If
there are crop and livestock losses, governments can provide disaster
relief in the form of low- or no-interest loans to affected farmers, as
happened in the eastern United States in the summer of 1999.
The situation in the developing world is much grimmer. Govern-
ments often lack the money and resources to distribute supplies to
rural populations. Food supplies coming from overseas donors may
not reach the intended victims because of inadequate transportation
infrastructures. Some relief efforts that could be successful include

36
 Droughts

drilling of deeper wells so as to tap undeveloped water sources. This

takes much time, but the extra water may inadvertently encourage
more people to stay in an area that may not be sustainable.

Impact
Droughts have had enormous impacts on human societies since an-
cient times. Crop and livestock losses have caused famine and death.
Drought has caused ancient civilizations to collapse and forced many
people to migrate. Water is so critical to all forms of life that a pro-
nounced shortage can decimate whole populations.
The effects of drought are profound, even during modern times.
For example, the dry conditions in the Great Plains in the 1930’s in
conjunction with intensive farming resulted in the Dust Bowl, which
at one time covered more than 77,000 square miles, an area the size
of Nebraska. An estimated 10 billion tons of topsoil was blown away,
some of it landing on eastern cities. The Sahel region south of the Sa-
hara in Africa had a severe drought from 1968 to 1974, which deci-
mated local populations. Famine and disease killed several hundred
thousand people (100,000 in 1973 alone) and 5 million cattle that
were the sole means of support for the nomadic populations.

Historical Overview
Drought is the absence of precipitation. It is a problem particularly
where precipitation is marginal, usually because of topographic fac-
tors. For example, precipitation is less than 20 inches a year over
much of the Great Plains of the United States; the area farther west,
until the Rocky Mountains are reached, normally has less than 10
inches per year. In this case, precipitation is low because the Rocky
Mountains exist between the Great Plains and the Pacific Ocean:
Oceans are the source of moisture that becomes precipitation—
either rain or snow. The mountains force most rain clouds to drop
their moisture before the clouds have passed over the mountains.
This is why rainfall is high in the Pacific Northwest and low in the re-
gion to the east of the Rocky Mountains.
Precipitation is often marginal in areas where rainfall is seasonal.
This condition prevails in much of Africa and in Asia, where precipi-
tation occurs in the form of seasonal monsoons. For central Asia, pre-
cipitation that should come in the form of monsoons is interrupted

37
Droughts

by the Himalaya Mountains, which lie between central Asia and the
Indian Ocean, the source of moisture in that region.
Precipitation is also affected by long-term climatic trends. In gen-
eral, when the climate is warmer, it tends also to be drier; when the
climate is colder, it tends to be wetter. Some climatologists believe
that the recurring droughts in northern and eastern Africa reflect a
warming trend in the climate. Mean temperatures in the 1990’s were
higher than any recorded after the end of the Ice Age. These climato-
logical trends are believed to be responsible for a prolonged drought
in the American Southwest that undermined the Anasazi Indian cul-
ture of that region beginning in the thirteenth century. It is also pos-
sible that a comparable drought in central Asia led to the wave of
Mongol invasions of Europe in the thirteenth century and the Turk-
ish invasions of the fourteenth century.
While droughts occur with fairly regular frequency in areas of
marginal precipitation, they represent an important historical event
when they last more than one year. This was the case of the droughts
believed to be responsible for the elimination of the early English
colonies in Virginia in the sixteenth century. Droughts played a
somewhat similar role in the late nineteenth century in the Great
Plains of the United States, where farming settlement had been
heavily promoted by the government through low-cost sales of public
land. The process of moving the roving Native American tribes to res-
ervations had been predicated on the assumption that they would be
replaced by permanent white settlers. However, after droughts hit
the newly established farms between 1887 and 1896, many of the set-
tlers abandoned their residences.
The twentieth century saw repeated recurring droughts in the
sub-Saharan portion of Africa. One that occurred between 1910 and
1915 led many of the pastoral tribes inhabiting the area to move onto
marginal land at higher elevation, land less able to support the tribes
as their numbers grew. This same area was subjected to recurring
droughts in the second half of the twentieth century, which spread to
eastern Africa. Because this area has many subsistence farmers, who
are unable to survive a lost harvest, the drought problem led to much
unrest, with large numbers of people migrating in search of food.
The conditions in the Sudan and in Somalia and Ethiopia resulted in
repeated calls for emergency food supplies.

38
 Droughts

In South America, drought is not uncommon along the Pacific

coastline, particularly in Chile and Peru. Because the winds tend to
blow from east to west, little moisture is moved over the Pacific coast-
line of South America, and the Andes Mountains prevent moisture
that arises from the Atlantic Ocean from reaching the lands to the
west of the mountains. Droughts also affect parts of Brazil that are
well inland from the Atlantic. Droughts in this area have been in-
creasing since the seventeenth century; at least 8 occurred in the
twentieth century.
Many parts of Australia also suffer from recurrent droughts. The
continent is located outside the main global circulation patterns that
bring clouds and rain to inland areas, with the result that only the
fringes of the continent are used for intensive cultivation. Most of
Australia is suited only to grazing herds that can utilize the sparse veg-
etation and then move on. In 2002, a severe, long-term drought be-
gan in Australia. By 2006, urban areas had begun to feel its effects.
Major cities passed heavy restrictions on water usage and debated
gray-water recycling programs. Alternate sources of water were
sought. Brisbane hoped to set up larger dams and a pipeline, and
Perth constructed a desalination plant.
Probably the most famous drought in American history was that
which hit the southern part of the Great Plains region in the early
1930’s. Lands that even under the best of conditions receive only
marginal precipitation had been “broken to the plough” in the first
two decades of the twentieth century. When precipitation failed to
materialize in the early 1930’s, many subsistence farmers were driven
from the land in what came to be known as the Dust Bowl, as winds
blew the unprotected soil off the land.
Another drought affected the Great Plains, even the northern
Great Plains, in the late 1980’s. Many farmers who had borrowed
money to extend their farms were unable to pay back the loans and
lost their farms when their crops failed. Another drought hit the
southern Great Plains in 1998, destroying a large portion of the cot-
ton crop in Texas. In 1999 the drought conditions moved to the
southeastern United States, devastating crops in that region. Cou-
pled with high temperatures, this drought captured public attention.
Robert M. Hordon
Nancy M. Gordon

39
Droughts

Bibliography
Allaby, Michael. Droughts. Rev. ed. New York: Facts On File, 2003. In-
tended for students. Discusses the origins and history of droughts.
Includes helpful diagrams.
Benson, Charlotte, and Edward Clay. The Impact of Drought on Sub-
Saharan African Economies: A Preliminary Examination. Washington,
D.C.: World Bank, 1998. A look at the effects of often-occurring
droughts on African life.
Bryson, Reid A., and Thomas J. Murray. Climates of Hunger: Mankind
and the World’s Changing Weather. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1977. A descriptive discussion of the profound effect of cli-
mate on human societies, going back to ancient times.
Dixon, Lloyd S., Nancy Y. Moore, and Ellen M. Pint. Drought Manage-
ment Policies and Economic Effects in Urban Areas of California, 1987-
92. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1996. This report examines the im-
pacts of the 1987-1992 drought in California on urban and agri-
cultural water users.
Frederiksen, Harald D. Drought Planning and Water Resources: Implica-
tions in Water Resources Management. Washington, D.C.: World Bank,
1992. This short report of thirty-eight pages contains two papers on
drought planning and water-use efficiency and effectiveness.
Garcia, Rolando V., and Pierre Spitz. Drought and Man: The Roots of Ca-
tastrophe. Vol. 3. New York: Pergamon Press, 1986. Food insecurity
and social disjunctions caused by drought are discussed, using
case studies from Brazil, Tanzania, and the Sahelian countries.
Tannehill, Ivan R. Drought: Its Causes and Effects. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1947. A classic technical but non-
mathematical book on the climatology of droughts.
Wilhite, Donald A., ed. Drought and Water Crises: Science, Technology,
and Management Issues. Boca Raton, Fla.: Taylor & Francis, 2005.
Explains the role of science, technology, and management in re-
solving the issues associated with drought management.
Wilhite, Donald A., and William E. Easterling, with Deborah A.
Wood, eds. Planning for Drought: Toward a Reduction of Societal
Vulnerability. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987. A collection of
37 short chapters on the large number of issues pertaining to
drought, including social impacts, governmental response, and
human adaptation and adjustment.

40
Dust Storms and
Sandstorms
Factors involved: Geological forces, human activity,
plants, rain, weather conditions, wind
Regions affected: Deserts, plains, valleys

Definition
Dust storms and sandstorms are composed of airborne and wind-
blown clouds of soil particles, mineral flakes, and vegetative residue
that impact climate, air temperature, air quality, rainfall, desertifica-
tion, agricultural productivity, human health, and human habitation
of the land.

Science
Dust storms result from wind erosion, desertification, and physical
deterioration of the soil caused by persistent or temporary lack of
rainfall and wind gusts. Dust storms develop when wind velocity at 1
foot above soil level increases beyond 13 miles per hour, causing sal-
tation and surface creep. In saltation, small particles are lifted off the
surface, travel 10 to 15 times the height to which they are lifted, then
spin downward with sufficient force to dislodge other soil particles
and break down earth clods. In surface creep, larger particles creep
along the surface in a rolling motion. The larger the affected area,
the greater the cumulative effect of saltation and surface creep, lead-
ing to an avalanche of soil particles across the land, even during mod-
erate wind gusts. The resulting soil displacement erodes the struc-
ture and texture of the remaining soils, reduces the moisture content
of the soil, exposes bedrock, and limits the type of vegetation sustain-
able on the remaining soil.
Dust storms remove smaller and lighter soil particles, leaving be-
hind the larger and denser particles and granular minerals associ-
ated with deserts, and erode rock surfaces, creating dust and granu-
lar particles. As soils become drier and more dense, and as ground
cover is reduced, the number and intensity of subsequent dust storms
increases. Arid or semiarid soil eventually becomes desert. Atmo-

41
Dust Storms and Sandstorms

A dust storm approaches a Kansas town in 1935. (National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration)

spheric dust increases soil and air temperature by trapping heat in

the lower atmosphere. Dust may also reduce soil and air temperature
by reflecting the sun’s heating radiation back into space. Changes in
air temperature, coupled with dust in the atmosphere and drier land
surfaces, reduce local rainfall, encouraging desertification.
Dust storms result from the dislodging of small, light soil particles,
mineral flecks, and decomposing vegetation matter. Dust storms rise
miles into the atmosphere and have both local and global impacts.
Sandstorms result from dislodging larger, heavier particles of soil
and rock. They tend to occur in conjunction with desert cyclones.
Sandstorms remain close to ground level and have primarily local im-
pacts. Dust and sandstorms may occur simultaneously.
There are many types of dust storms. Haze reduces visibility to
three-fourths of a mile or less and results from persistent wind gusts
across arid soils or across temporarily dry or disturbed semi-arid soils.
Dust devils lift silt and clay particles several hundred yards into the
air. Tornadoes generate local vortices that lift silt, clay, mineral flecks,
and vegetation residue more than a mile high and transport it hun-
dreds of square miles. Cyclones form at the leading edge of thunder-

42
 Dust Storms and Sandstorms

storm cells, extending across a front of several hundred miles, gener-

ating winds up to 150 miles per hour, and lifting particles and debris
several miles into the upper atmosphere and jet stream for distribu-
tion around the globe.

Geography
Dust storms and sandstorms of global significance originate in the
arid deserts and semiarid lands covering 36 percent of the earth’s
land surface. Major deserts are located in northern Africa, northeast
Sudan, southwest Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, southwest Asia, the
Middle East, northern and western China, central Australia, south-
west North America, parts of southern and western South America,
the Caucasus of Russia, central Spain, and the southern coast of the
Mediterranean Sea. In addition, dust storms arise when normally
semiarid lands periodically become arid, undergo abnormally strong
windy periods, or have their vegetation removed by humans or na-
ture. These areas include sub-Saharan Africa, the U.S. Midwest, the
northern coast of the Mediterranean, the steppe of central Asia, and
all lands immediately adjacent to deserts.
Globally significant storms cover areas of several hundred to sev-
eral thousand square miles and transport dust from one continent to
another. Locally significant dust storms originate in overly cultivated
agricultural fields, residential or commercial developments denuded
of ground cover, major road construction sites, and any lands experi-
encing a temporary drought. Local storms are often confined to only
a few square miles in area.
Locales with the highest frequency of dust storms are Mexico City
and Kazakhstan in central Asia, with about 60 storms per year; west-
ern and northern China, with 30 storms each year; West Africa, with
20 storms; and Egypt, with 10 storms. Storms of the longest known
duration occurred in the southwestern United States, with a storm of
twenty-eight days in Amarillo, Texas, in April, 1935, and a storm of
twenty-two days in the Texas Panhandle in March of 1936.

Prevention and Preparations

The number and intensity of dust storms and sandstorms are re-
duced through soil conservation practices, such as covering the soil
with vegetation, reducing soil exposure on tilled land, creating wind

43
Dust Storms and Sandstorms

barriers, installing buffer strips around exposed soils, and limiting

the number and intensity of soil disturbing activities on vulnerable
arid and semiarid soils. Vegetative cover slows the wind at ground
level, protects soil particles from detachment, and traps blowing or
floating soil particles, chemicals, and nutrients. Because the greatest
wind erosion damage often occurs during seasons when no crops are
growing or when natural vegetation is dormant, dead residues and
standing stubble of the previous crop often remain in place until the
next planting season. Planting grass or legume cover crops until the
next planting season, or as part of a crop rotation cycle or no-till
planting system, also reduces dust.
No-till and mulch-till planting systems reduce soil exposure to wind
erosion. No-till systems leave the soil cover undisturbed before insert-
ing crop seeds into the ground through a narrow slot in the soil.
Mulch-till planting keeps a high percentage of the dead residues of
previous crops on the surface when the new crop is planted. Row crops
are planted at right angles to the prevailing winds to absorb wind en-
ergy and trap moving soil particles. Crops are planted in small fields to
prevent avalanching caused by an increase in the amount of soil in par-
ticles transported by wind as the distance across bare soil increases.
Because wind breaks slow wind speeds at the surface of the soil,
good wind barriers include tree plantings, cross-wind strips of peren-
nial shrubs, and high grasses. The protected area is ten times the
height of the barrier. Alley cropping is used in areas of sustained high
wind; crops are planted between rows of larger, mature trees.
Strip farming reduces field width, thereby reducing wind erosion.
Large fields are subdivided into narrow cultivated strips. Planting
crops along the contour lines around hills is called contour strip
cropping. Planting crops in strips across the top of predominant
slopes is called field stripping. Crops are arranged so that a strip of
hay or sod, such as grass, clover, alfalfa, or a close-growing small
grain, such as wheat or oats, is alternated with a strip of cultivated row
crop, such as tobacco, cotton, or corn. In areas of high wind, the
greater the average wind velocity, the narrower the strips. Blown dust
from the row-crop strip is trapped as it passes through the subsequent
strip of hay or grain, thereby reducing dust. Contour strip cropping
or field stripping can reduce soil erosion by 65 to 75 percent.
Limiting land-disturbing activities by humans on highly vulnera-

44
 Dust Storms and Sandstorms

ble arid and semiarid soils reduces the number and intensity of both
dust storms and sandstorms. Deserts are especially vulnerable to im-
pacts of animal herds and motor-vehicle traffic. Many fragile desert
plants, shrubs, and trees are easily destroyed by animal or human ac-
tivity, especially foraging and vehicle traffic. The surface of the desert
consists of a thin layer of small and microscopic plants, microorgan-
isms, and insects, whose combined activities produce a thin crust that
limits the impact of wind on the surface of the desert. When this crust
is broken by surface traffic, the underlying sands and minerals are
vulnerable to wind erosion. Natural repair to the broken crust and
natural revegetation processes may take decades or centuries.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Little can be done to protect humans, buildings, or crops from the im-
pact of dry wind tornadoes or cyclones producing major dust storms
or sandstorms, but soil conservation measures reduce the number and
intensity of these storms. The effects of these storms on humans is
partly ameliorated by remaining indoors, by wearing heavy clothing or
remaining inside vehicles when outdoors, and by covering the nose
and mouth to prevent the ingestion of dust, spores, and pollens.

20
18
16
14
12
10 8 ≥ 10 Dust storms
6
4 ≥ 20 Dust storms
2
The number of dust storms occurring in March, 1936, during the Dust Bowl years.

45
Dust Storms and Sandstorms

Impact
Sandstorms and dust storms have moved sufficient soil particles over
the centuries to reshape continents; alter the distribution of plant and
animal life; alternately heat and cool the earth; and silt rivers, lakes,
and oceans. The volume of annual wind-blown dust is approximately
equal to the volume of soil transported each year through water ero-
sion. Approximately half a billion tons of dust is borne aloft each year,
with more than half that dust deposited in the world’s oceans.
The desertification processes associated with sandstorms and dust
storms impacted the historic rise and fall of many civilizations, in-
cluding the early Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest, the
Harappan civilization of southwest Asia, the city-states of Arabia, and
the caravan empires of sub-Saharan Africa. Dust storms on agricul-
tural lands cause soil nutrient loss, reduce the moisture-retaining ca-
pacity of the soil, and concentrate salts and fertilizer acids in the soil,
thereby reducing agricultural production. Efforts to replace lost top-
soil with fertilizers have proven futile. Crop yields are reduced by up
to 80 percent.
Sandstorms kill people and animals and damage, destroy, or bury
roads, buildings, machinery, and agricultural fields. Many people
and animals are killed each year by the force of the storms or by in-
gestion of wind-borne particles. In 1895, more than 20 percent of the
cattle in eastern Colorado died of suffocation in a particularly in-
tense dust storm.
Dust storms are a major source of air pollution and a major distri-
bution vehicle for mold spores, pollens, and other harmful airborne
particles. One pathogen causing “valley fever” or “desert rheuma-
tism” kills approximately 120 people each year in the United States
alone. Sandstorms and intense dust storms contribute to traffic acci-
dents and disrupt mass-transportation systems. In many southwest-
ern American states, dust storms are responsible for up to 20 percent
of all traffic accident fatalities.
Gordon Neal Diem

Bibliography
Morales, Christer, ed. Saharan Dust: Mobilization, Transport, Deposition.
Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 1979. The editor pre-
sents numerous scientific papers and recommendations from a

46
 Dust Storms and Sandstorms

workshop held in Sweden sponsored by the Scientific Committee

on Problems in the Environment.
Pewe, Troy L., ed. Desert Dust: Origin, Characteristics, and Effect on Man.
Boulder, Colo.: Geological Society of America, 1981. This collec-
tion of scientific papers provides detail on the causes and effects of
sandstorms and dust storms.
Stallings, Frank L. Black Sunday: The Great Dust Storm of April 14, 1935.
Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 2001. A collection of newspaper reports
and the eyewitness accounts of more than 100 people about this
devastating dust storm.
Sundar, Christopher A., Donna V. Vulcan, and Ronald M. Welch. Ra-
diative Effects of Aerosols Generated from Biomass Burning, Dust Storms,
and Forest Fires. Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, 1996. This book discusses global heating and
cooling from dust storms.
Tannehill, Ivan R. Drought: Its Causes and Effects. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1947. Discusses the effects of drought
on dust storms.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Crop Residue Management to Reduce
Erosion and Improve Soil Quality. Conservation Research Reports 37-
39. Washington, D.C.: Author, 1994-1995.
_______. Soil Erosion by Wind. Agriculture Information Bulletin Num-
ber 555. Washington, D.C.: Author, 1989. These public informa-
tion booklets, as well as a variety of Conservation Practice Job Sheets,
describe appropriate soil conservation measures to limit dust
storms.
Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930’s. 25th an-
niversary ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Describes
the dust storms of the southwestern United States.

47
Earthquakes
Factors involved: Geological forces, gravitational
forces
Regions affected: Cities, coasts, deserts, forests,
islands, mountains, plains, towns, valleys

Definition
Earthquakes often cause violent shaking that can persist for several
minutes. This shaking can destroy buildings, bridges, and most other
structures. It also can trigger landslides, tsunamis, volcanic erup-
tions, and other natural disasters.

Science
Earthquakes are produced by sudden slips of large blocks of rock
along fractures within the earth. This abrupt displacement generates
waves that can travel vast distances and cause immense destruction
when they reach the surface of the earth.
To get an idea of how this occurs, imagine a man trying to slide a
very heavy crate across the floor. At first, it will not budge at all. He
pushes harder and harder, until, quite suddenly, the crate slips across
the floor a few inches before coming to rest again. This motion is
called strike-slip motion and is thought to be the way in which most
earthquakes occur. Next, imagine what would have happened if, in-
stead of pushing directly on the crate, the man had instead pushed
on a big spring, compressing it further as he pushed harder. When
the crate suddenly slid across the floor, the spring would have ex-
panded again, continuing to push the crate, even though the man
was standing still. The energy stored in the spring is called elastic
strain energy. Major earthquakes usually result from the accumula-
tion of a great deal of elastic strain energy as plates move past each
other with relative velocities of a few centimeters per year. After a
number of decades, the accumulated elastic strain energy is suffi-
cient to cause a sudden slip. With the crate example, the slip surface
is between the bottom of the crate and the floor. Within the earth, it
is a fracture in the rock called a fault.
Many faults are vertical fractures, which come to the surface of the

48
 Earthquakes

Milestones
May 29, 526: The Antioch earthquake in Syria (now Turkey), esti-
mated at magnitude 9.0, kills 250,000.
January 23, 1556: 830,000 people die in Shaanxi, China, the greatest
death toll from an earthquake to date.
November 1, 1755: An earthquake during church services on All
Saints’ Day kills worshipers in Lisbon, Portugal, in stone cathedrals or
in the accompanying tsunamis; as many as 50,000 perish.
December 16, 1811; January 23 and February 7, 1812: In the sparsely
settled region of New Madrid, Missouri, the largest historic earth-
quakes in North America to date rearrange the Mississippi River and
form Reelfoot Lake.
January 9, 1857: The San Andreas fault at Fort Tejon, California, in
the northwest corner of Los Angeles County, ruptures dramatically.
Trees snap off near the ground, landslides occur, and buildings col-
lapse into rubble.
April 17, 1889: The first teleseism is recorded in Potsdam, Germany,
of an earthquake on that date in Japan.
April 18, 1906: The San Andreas fault slips 20 feet near San Francisco.
Much of the city is severely damaged by the earthquake, and a fire
starts when cinders escape a damaged chimney, leveling the city.
December 28, 1908: The Messina earthquake kills 120,000 and de-
stroys or severely damages numerous communities in Italy.
1910: American geologist H. F. Reid publishes a report on the 1906
San Francisco earthquake, outlining his theory of elastic rebound.
September 1, 1923: 143,000 people die as a result of the Great Kwanto
Earthquake, centered in Sagami Bay, Japan.
Early 1930’s: Charles Richter, working with Beno Gutenberg at the
Seismological Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology,
develops the Richter scale.
1958: H. Jeffreys and K. E. Bullen publish seismic travel time curves
establishing the detailed, spherically symmetrical model of the earth.
May 22, 1960: A large earthquake, measuring 8.5, strikes off the coast
of Chile, making the earth reverberate for several weeks. For the first
time, scientists are able to determine many of the resonant modes of
oscillation of the earth.

continued

49
Earthquakes

Milestones (continued)
March 27, 1964: The Good Friday earthquake near Anchorage,
Alaska, with a magnitude of 8.6, causes extensive damage near the
southern coast of Alaska and generates tsunamis that damage vessels
and marinas along the western coast of the United States.
May 31, 1970: The magnitude 7.7 Ancash earthquake in northern
Peru leaves 70,000 dead, 140,000 injured, and 500,000 homeless.
February 9, 1971: In the first serious earthquake to strike a densely
populated area in the United States since 1906, a moderate (mag-
nitude 6.6) earthquake causes $1 billion in damage in Sylmar, Cali-
fornia.
February 4, 1976: A slip over a 124-mile stretch of the Motagua fault
in Guatemala kills 23,000.
July 28, 1976: The magnitude 8.0 Tangshan earthquake in northeast-
ern China kills an estimated 250,000 people and seriously injures
160,000 more; almost the entire city of 1.1 million people is de-
stroyed.
May 18, 1980: An earthquake occurs beneath Mount St. Helens,
Washington, which causes a large landslide high on that mountain.
This landslide exposes a pressurized magma chamber, which ex-
plodes with a north-directed lateral blast.
September 19, 1985: A magnitude 8.1 earthquake near Mexico City
kills 10,000 people, injures 30,000, and causes billions of dollars
worth of damage.
December 7, 1988: The Leninakan earthquake in Armenia leaves
60,000 dead, 15,000 injured, and 500,000 homeless; it destroys
450,000 buildings, including thousands of historical monuments,
and causes $30 billion in damage.
October 17, 1989: An earthquake in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in the
vicinity of Loma Prieta, California, kills 67 and produces more than
$5 billion worth of damage in the San Francisco-Oakland area.
January 17, 1994: A moderate earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.7,
strikes the northern edge of the Los Angeles basin near Northridge,
California. There are 57 deaths, and damage is estimated at $20 bil-
lion.
January 17, 1995: The most costly natural disaster to date occurs
when an earthquake strikes Kobe, Japan. The death toll exceeds
5,500, injuries require 37,000 people to seek medical attention, and
damage is estimated at $50 billion.

50
 Earthquakes

August 17, 1999: More than 17,000 die when a magnitude 7.4 quake
strikes Ezmit, Turkey.
December 26, 2003: An earthquake in Bam, Iran, kills more than
26,000 and leaves 75,000 homeless.
October 8, 2005: A powerful earthquake rocks Kashmir in Pakistan.
More than 90,000 are dead and about 106,000 are injured; 3.3 million
people are made homeless, and the damage is estimated at $5 billion.
May 26, 2006: A 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Java, Indonesia, kills
more than 6,000 people, injures nearly 40,000, and leaves 1.5 million
homeless.

earth and are readily apparent from the offsets they produce in
rivers, mountain ranges, and anthropogenic structures. The San
Andreas fault in California is a well-known example. More often,
earthquakes occur on faults that are not vertical but have a substan-
tial slope to them. The quakes may occur along a segment of such a
fault, which is buried deep beneath the surface of the earth. Often
these faults can be followed up to the surface, using geological and
geophysical methods, where their surface exposures can be mapped.
Sometimes the faults do not extend to the surface; these are called
hidden faults.
A portion of the energy released by slippage is transmitted away
from the site in the form of elastic waves (waves that travel through a
material because of its ability to recover from an instantaneous elastic
deformation). Within the interior of the earth, there are two types of
waves: P waves and S waves. A P wave is a sound wave, consisting of al-
ternating regions of compressed and rarefied media. All materials—
solids, liquids, and gases—transmit P waves. An S wave distorts the
material through which it is trying to travel. If that material is capable
of recovering from a distortion, the S wave will travel through it.
Solids are defined as materials with this capability. As P waves and S
waves reach the surface of the earth, they can generate surface waves
there. These surface waves, which are also elastic waves, are consider-
ably more complex, travel more slowly, and are usually much more
damaging than P waves or S waves.
As elastic waves travel through different materials, they are filtered

51
Earthquakes

and transformed. Sometimes, particularly when traveling through

mud or unconsolidated materials, the energy can be concentrated in
waves with a period of a second or two. Many buildings resonate at
such low frequencies, and the effect of a long series of these waves
passing under such a building is like pushing someone on a swing:
Each additional push is very small, but because the timing of the
push is in harmony with the swinging, each push adds to the amount
the swing moves. Because of this, regions far from an earthquake, if
they are underlaid by mud, may experience much greater devasta-
tion than areas closer to the earthquake that are underlaid by bed-
rock.
Any major earthquake produces a series of elastic waves that can
be detected just about anywhere on earth. From these waves scientists
can determine the location and size of the earthquake. The location
on the surface of the earth above the point where the earthquake is

Graphic Representation of the Richter Scale

9
10
Amplified Maximum Ground Motion (Microns)

8.9 New Madrid,

Missouri, 1812

Alaska, 1964

Great San Francisco, 1906

8
10 8

Major Great Devastation

and Many
Fatalities Possible
7
10 7
6
Strong
10 6
Moderate
5 Damage Begins
104
10 2 4 5 Small Fatalities Rare
10 1 2 3 Minor
10 -1 0 1 Not Felt
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Magnitude

Source: © 1989 by V. J. Ansfield. All Rights Reserved

52
 Earthquakes

Powerful earthquakes can topple entire buildings within seconds. (National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Administration)

thought to have happened is called the epicenter. Seismic data mea-

sure the size of an earthquake using some form of the Richter scale.
Useful from a scientific perspective, such seismically determined
sizes do not tell the whole story. If the epicenter is in an uninhabited
area, even a large earthquake may cause no fatalities and produce lit-
tle damage. In contrast, if the epicenter of a small earthquake is in a
densely populated region characterized by thick accumulations of
mud, death and destruction may be great. Another measure of earth-
quake size, the Modified Mercalli scale, calculates the intensity of
shaking at the surface. Observations of damage and perceptions of
witnesses are used to estimate this intensity.
In traveling from their source to the seismograph that records
them, seismic waves propagate through regions of the earth about
which little is known. Differences in composition, temperature, and
other factors within a particular region of the earth may result in ei-
ther early or late arrivals for waves moving through that region. Be-
cause the same region will be traversed by waves from many earth-
quakes, careful studies, compiling large sets of data acquired over
decades of work, have been able to decipher much about the interior

53
Earthquakes

of the earth. Through the 1960’s these different regions were repre-
sented as depth ranges. This produced a model for the earth in which
properties varied as a series of spherical shells. As more sophisticated
digital instruments came into use, lateral variations could be ad-
dressed. The computations required are similar to those in medicine
in a computed tomography (CT or CAT) scan and form the basis for
the field of seismic tomography.

Geography
Earthquakes are not randomly distributed on earth: Most occur
along tectonic plate boundaries. The surface of the earth is made up
of a dozen or so tectonic plates, which are about 62 miles thick and
persist with little deformation within them for hundreds of millions
of years. Tectonic plates comprise the crust (either oceanic or conti-
nental crust) and a portion of the earth’s mantle beneath it. The
boundaries between them are named according to the relative mo-
tions between the two plates at that boundary. Plates diverge from
each other along ridges (generally beneath the oceans, but occasion-
ally running through a continent, such as the East African Rift Val-
ley). Plates move past each other along transform faults, such as the
San Andreas fault in California. They also converge, with one plate
moving beneath the other, along subduction zones.
The forces driving these motions are among the most powerful on
earth and have been moving the plates around for at least the last five
hundred million years. Discovering and understanding this tectonic
system was one of the principal achievements of the earth sciences
during the latter half of the twentieth century.
Many geographic features are the result of interactions between
the plates. Most subduction zones occur near coastlines, have a
trench lying offshore, and have a string of volcanic mountains a little
way in from the shore. This geography dominates the western coast
of Central and South America. Often a chain of islands develops if
the subduction zone involves two plates carrying oceanic crust. The
Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska are a good example of this
phenomenon. Most of the Pacific Ocean is surrounded by subduc-
tion zones, which are responsible for the earthquakes and volcanoes
of the “Ring of Fire,” a dramatic name given to this region before
plate tectonics was understood. (One early theory held that the

54
 Earthquakes

Three Main Types of Fault Motion

Strike slip
(lateral fault) Fault scarp

Reverse fault

Normal fault Horst block

Graben

(Courtesy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Moon had been ejected from the Pacific Ocean, and the Ring of Fire
was the wound that remained in the earth.)
A plate carrying a continent subducting beneath another conti-
nental plate may create gigantic mountain ranges and immense up-
lifted regions such as the Himalayas. They were formed as the sub-
continent of India drove into the southern edge of the Eurasian
plate. In the process, wedges of crust were forced out to the side,
forming some of the eastern portions of China and Indochina. The
compression, occurring in a north-south direction, ejected these
wedges to the east, much as a watermelon seed squeezed between the
thumb and forefinger may be squirted across a table. Hence this pro-
cess is called “watermelon-seed tectonics.” Other places where it is
thought to occur are Turkey and the Mojave Desert in California.
Although most earthquakes occur along plate boundaries, a few, in-
cluding some very large ones, take place in plate interiors. The cause
of these intraplate earthquakes is not well understood. It is generally
believed, however, that future earthquakes will occur where earth-
quakes have occurred in the past, and these locations are considered
to have substantial seismic risk. The very southeastern corner of Mis-

55
Earthquakes

souri, near the city of New Madrid, is one such area, having had a series
of violent earthquakes in 1811 and 1812. Charleston, South Carolina,
is another, as it was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1886.

Prevention and Preparations

Earthquakes are caused by the intermittent motion of tectonic plates
past each other. Any attempt to stop the motion entirely is doomed to
failure, as it only ensures greater motion at some later time. The only
other way to prevent earthquakes is to increase their frequency,
thereby avoiding a huge, damaging earthquake by inducing a large
number of smaller, less harmful ones. Various scenarios have been
proposed in which two sections of a fault are temporarily “locked”
and the region between them is encouraged to slip, releasing the ac-
cumulated strain energy a little bit at a time. Because the risks in-
volved in such an undertaking are great, and because the confidence
in either locking or unlocking a section of the fault is small, such sce-
narios are rarely taken very seriously.
As prevention seems unlikely, preparation is of particular impor-
tance. Efforts here involve understanding the science, identifying
places at particular risk for earthquakes (forecasting), and identify-
ing and then observing precursory phenomena (which may lead to
predicting impending earthquakes).
There are two premises on which forecasting is based: If there
once was a damaging earthquake at some location, there is likely to
be another one there at some time, and if that place recently had a
big earthquake, it is unlikely that another one will occur there soon.
Understanding faults, plate tectonics, and the earthquake process
permits incorporation of these two premises into a concept of seismic
gaps: Faults are identified in areas where damaging earthquakes have
occurred in historic times. That portion of each fault which slipped
during each historic earthquake is then mapped out. Segments that
have had large strain-releasing earthquakes in the past, but not for
the last thirty years or so, can then be picked out as the locations most
likely to have damaging earthquakes in the near future. These seis-
mic gaps represent places where there is a gap in the release of seis-
mic energy and that are thus “due” for an earthquake. Although obvi-
ously useful, such forecasts are not specific enough for extensive
preparations.

56
 Earthquakes

Comparison of Magnitude and Intensity

Richter Magnitude Mercalli Intensity

2 and less I-II Usually not felt by people

3 III Felt indoors by some people
4 IV-V Felt by most people
5 VI-VII Felt by all; building damage
6 VII-VIII People scared; moderate damage
7 IX-X Major damage
8 and up XI-XII Damage nearly total

An earthquake prediction states a time, place, and magnitude for

an expected earthquake. Scientists use a variety of precursors to give
them clues about when and where future earthquakes will occur. Labo-
ratory experiments during which rock samples are made to fracture
and slip under controlled conditions have revealed some interesting
phenomena. Just prior to failure, the volume of the sample being com-
pressed actually increases. Sensitive microphones glued to the rock
can detect a number of tiny noises inside the samples; tiny cracks
within the sample grow longer and open wider. As they grow longer
they fracture the rock just ahead of their tips, making the noises. As the
cracks open wider they make the volume of the sample increase. When
they grow sufficiently to interconnect, the rock fails. This behavior is
called dilatancy and explains a number of precursory phenomena.
Ground deformation occurred prior to the Nigata, Japan, earth-
quake of 1964. Although dilatancy had not yet been discovered, the
survey data revealed this deformation previously existed. Similarly,
anomalous radon fluctuations were observed prior to earthquakes in
the Garm District of Russia during the early 1960’s. Dilatancy can ex-
plain these, too, as the opening cracks draw water in from surround-
ing regions at an enhanced rate, increasing the levels of radon in the
springwater.
Dilatancy also affects seismic waves. The P wave velocity is affected
by the amount of water in the growing cracks, whereas the S wave ve-
locity is not. A drop in the ratio of the velocities of these two waves can
indicate growing cracks. The length of time that this ratio remains

57
Earthquakes

depressed can indicate the size of the impending earthquake. The

eventual rise in this velocity can indicate when the earthquake will oc-
cur. In 1971 this approach led to the first successful prediction of an
earthquake, in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State.
Unfortunately, not all earthquakes are preceded by indications of
dilatancy. If it does occur, however, it may provide a prediction of a
major earthquake as much as a year or two in advance of the event.
With that much warning, much could be done to reduce the number
of people killed and injured by the earthquake. Most important,
water levels in reservoirs behind dams could be lowered. Large meet-
ings and conventions could be rescheduled. Emergency service per-
sonnel and volunteers could be trained, and people could be evacu-
ated or schooled in earthquake survival.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Earthquakes damage and destroy buildings, infrastructure, and lines
of communication. Because the crucial connections between the af-
fected area and the outside world, often called lifelines, may be sev-
ered, rescue and relief operations are likely to depend on local re-
sources. Setting up reserves of water, fuel, and generators is an
obvious prudent step, which most communities in earthquake-prone
areas take. Less apparent is the need to identify human resources, on
a neighborhood scale, who can help in such a disaster. As an exam-
ple, a person who was trained as an army cook might be invaluable in
a neighborhood field kitchen.
As in any mass casualty incident, triage will be essential—and un-
pleasant. In triage, treatment is allocated to victims based on how se-
verely they are hurt and how likely they are to survive if given treat-
ment. Because resources are limited, some living, badly hurt victims
will not be treated, effectively being left to die. The triage officer
making these decisions must be medically trained yet cannot actively
treat patients. Such unpleasant work requires considerable training
and discipline.
Once treatment has begun, additional complications may be an-
ticipated. Normal protocols often call for radio communications be-
tween Emergency Medical Service (EMS) personnel and medical
doctors or hospital staff. After an earthquake this is likely to be im-
possible: Too many radios trying to transmit crowd the airwaves. Hos-

58
 Earthquakes

pitals are likely to fill quickly. Ambulances may be used as first-aid sta-
tions, at least during the early stages of the rescue effort.
Fatalities are likely to be from head or chest injuries or from respi-
ratory distress brought on by burial under debris. Those with com-
promised cardiovascular systems, caused by disease, age, or injuries,
will be at greatest risk. Cultural and temporal variables can be impor-
tant. A major earthquake during rush hour in Los Angeles might re-
sult in deaths and injuries from collisions on, and collapses of, the
freeways. This could result in retired people being relatively spared.
An earthquake at night in an economically depressed area in South
America might kill most victims as their heavy adobe homes collapse
on them. In this case, infants young enough to sleep next to their
mothers are sometimes sheltered from falling debris and have a
better chance of survival than the rest of their family members.
The extrication of victims from collapsed and damaged buildings
after an earthquake presents some special problems. Big earthquakes
are usually followed by a series of smaller earthquakes called after-
shocks for days after the initial event. A large initial earthquake will
have sizable aftershocks, some of which are capable of producing
extensive damage to undamaged buildings. A major earthquake
damages many buildings structurally, without causing their collapse.
Weakened and then subjected to aftershocks, they represent death
traps for rescue personnel. Great care must be taken to put as few of
these people at risk as possible. Trained, organized groups—profes-
sional or volunteer—will most likely be more disciplined than the
general population.
Plaintive cries for help, adrenaline coursing through the blood-
stream, and the overwhelming sense of powerlessness engendered by
a massive disaster can combine to put more people at risk. Debris
may be pulled off a pile covering a whimpering child, who is scared
but unhurt, and unwittingly added to another pile, burying a seri-
ously hurt and unconscious individual.
As lifelines are restored, additional assets can be brought in to as-
sist with extrication and medical services. To be effective, these need
to be deployed where they are most needed, and priorities need to be
established. Prior planning can anticipate many of the needs that will
develop, but an overall command system must be in place to ensure
that the right tools end up in the right places. Immediately after an

59
Earthquakes

earthquake, neighborhoods and localities need to be able to func-

tion as independent entities, but eventually the rescue operation
needs to evolve into a well-coordinated regional effort.

Impact
The impact of a devastating earthquake is profound, widespread, and
long-lasting. Rescue efforts bring media attention, which in turn en-
courage assistance for the victims in the form of funds, clothes, and
other materials. Sometimes the media portrays a disaster as an un-
folding human interest story; much of the critically important work is
less likely to make the news. Governments also often provide relief,
but, more important, they restore the lifelines necessary for every-
one’s survival and the infrastructure required to return life to “nor-
mal.” It is sobering to consider how much time may be needed to ac-
complish this. Electricity and phone service, taken for granted by
most people, need wires and poles if they are to be delivered. After an
earthquake in which landslides occur, many of those lines and poles
are destroyed, as are many of the roads needed to bring in new lines
and poles from outside the affected region. The roads that are in ser-
vice are needed first to transport victims, rescue personnel, and
equipment. Water and sewer distribution systems are other obvious
high-priority systems to restore. Less apparent is the need for effec-
tive transportation if a modern metropolitan area is to remain viable.
Elaborate networks of expressways, subways, rapid transit, trains, and
buses are especially vulnerable to disruption by earthquakes and re-
quire enormous amounts of money and time to rebuild.
The financial resources necessary for recovery will not be avail-
able within the affected region, and they may not be immediately
available within the country. As governments borrow money to ac-
complish the tasks immediately required, credit may tighten else-
where, having serious consequences for the economy as a whole. For
example, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is thought by many to
have been an important contributing factor to the Panic of 1907.
The productivity and economic viability of the affected area are
likely to remain depressed for a long time. Small companies, unable
to afford a period of inactivity, may fail. Larger companies may trans-
fer personnel and contracts to other localities. Industrial facilities
may be so expensive to rebuild that other alternatives, such as re-

60
 Earthquakes

locating offshore, might become attractive. More significant, and

much more difficult to predict, will be the long-term effect an earth-
quake has on the reputation of the area in which it occurs. Businesses
dislike uncertainty. The extent and duration of earthquake-caused
disruptions will be considered when companies evaluate the region
in future decisions concerning location.
Earthquakes will also have an impact on how residents evaluate
their own situation. Fear and the presence of danger will motivate
some people to move away. For others, the quality of life will never en-
tirely recover: Although people may remain in the area, concerns
and worries about seismic risks will add stress to their lives. Such im-
pacts may be very long-lasting.
A technologically advanced society is very fragile. Many systems
are interdependent, and an entire economy depends on their work-
ing together. A serious earthquake interferes with this, killing and in-
juring some and inconveniencing and frightening nearly everyone.
Perhaps the greatest impact of the next big earthquake will be the re-
alization of this fact, suddenly thrust upon the population by events
entirely beyond its control.

Historic buildings were destroyed in the 2004 San Simeon quake in Paso Robles, Cali-
fornia. (FEMA)

61
Earthquakes

Historical Overview
Most cultures have oral histories describing earthquakes, and some
have myths or legends attributing their cause to such sources as gods,
catfish, or frogs. The Chinese history of earthquakes goes back at
least to a device that could detect earthquakes, made by the Chinese
scholar Chang Heng in about 132 c.e. However, the written record of
a scientific approach to earthquakes, which is generally available to
Western students, begins in the eighteenth century. A major earth-
quake occurred in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755, which caused many
scholars to begin thinking about earthquakes.
Scientific academies sponsored expeditions to Italy after several
major earthquakes there. Investigators plotted damage to try to pin-
point where the events had occurred. In general they found concen-
tric patterns, with the greatest damage in the center, but sometimes
there were isolated pockets of intense damage far from the rest. This
early work has been developed over the centuries, leading to the con-
struction of maps showing what is now called the intensity of shaking,
and using a scale, usually the Modified Mercalli scale, to try to quan-
tify the event. Less successfully, the early investigators tried to plot the
directions in which fallen pillars were aligned, in order to determine
the directions in which the earth moved. Current knowledge sug-
gests that the surface motions and building responses are far too
complex for such an approach to have much value.
In 1872 a huge earthquake in Owens Valley, California, near the
Nevada border, raised the Sierra Nevada as much as 23 feet (7 me-
ters) along a fault. American geologist Grove Karl Gilbert, on observ-
ing the field evidence, concluded that the earthquake was the sud-
den release of accumulated elastic energy that had built up across the
fault for a considerable period of time. When the frictional resistance
along the fault was exceeded, an abrupt movement would occur, re-
sulting in an earthquake. This was the first time the association of
earthquakes with faults was recognized.
Additional information was sought on the frequency, timing, and
duration of earthquakes, so scientists developed instruments. During
the latter half of the eighteenth century, many different designs were
used in the construction of many seismographs. Attention was di-
rected at local events until 1889, when a recording made at Potsdam,
Germany, showed a distinct earthquake, but no earthquakes had

62
 Earthquakes

been felt in the vicinity. It turned out that an earthquake had oc-
curred in Japan on that date, and that the seismic waves had traveled
thousands of miles before being recorded in Germany. Waves that
have traveled such distances are called teleseisms.
Because a great deal of theoretical work on the theory of elasticity
had already been done, the understanding of how and why these
waves traveled such great distances developed rapidly. Recognizing
the value of the information these waves might provide to the study
of the interior of the earth, scientists expended considerable efforts
to refine, redesign, build, and deploy seismographs in laboratories
throughout the world, particularly in the United States and Japan.
By 1906, British geologist Richard Dixon Oldham had established
the existence of the earth’s core, correctly interpreting the absence
of certain waves at certain points on earth as being the result of a
fluid interior. Also in 1906, a great earthquake and subsequent fire
had devastated San Francisco; movement on the San Andreas fault
was obvious. In some places the offset reached almost 20 feet (6 me-
ters).
American geologist Harry Fielding Reid examined the field evi-
dence and used several survey results to determine how the relative
motion decreased with distance from the fault. His results quantified
Gilbert’s conclusions, let him estimate when the last important strain-
relieving earthquake had taken place, and even let him guess when
the next earthquake might occur along this segment of the fault. This
has become known as the theory of elastic rebound.
By the early 1930’s entire laboratories had been constructed to
study earthquakes and their elastic waves. To permit workers to com-
pare data, American scientist Charles Francis Richter, working with
American seismologist Beno Gutenberg, suggested that they should
all use a particular kind of seismograph, a logarithmic scale, and the
same equations for how seismic wave amplitudes decreased with dis-
tance from their source. This was the basis for the Richter scale,
which has evolved considerably but is still in use.
After World War II, the Cold War developed, with the Soviet
Union and the United States building and testing nuclear warheads.
To detect underground nuclear tests anywhere in the world, the
United States deployed a network of sensitive seismographs that
vastly increased both the quality and quantity of seismological data

63
Earthquakes

available to scientists all over the world. The same earthquake would
now be recorded at dozens of locations, and details of the earth’s in-
terior were gradually revealed.
By 1958 the general model of the earth had been defined. By aver-
aging the results from many earthquakes, recorded by many seismo-
graphs, scientists Sir Harold Jeffreys and Keith Edward Bullen com-
piled a graph of travel time curves. From these the seismic velocities
within the earth could be determined as a function of depth. With
additional constraints provided by other knowledge of the density
distribution, reasonable estimates for the pressure, temperature, and
composition of the earth were derived.
At the same time, geologists were shifting their attention to the
ocean floor. By the 1960’s a picture was emerging of a planet with an
outer surface made up of a dozen or so plates that moved past each
other, and sometimes over the tops of each other, at rates on the or-
der of centimeters per year. This plate tectonic model provides the
source of the deformation ultimately responsible for earthquakes.
Movement of the plates past each other occurs in a spasmodic fash-
ion, with elastic energy gradually building up until the strength of the
material and the friction-resisting motion on a fault are overcome;
then, a sudden displacement occurs, producing earthquakes.
When a gong or a cymbal is struck, vibrations occur at many differ-
ent frequencies. The same thing can happen to the earth if it is struck
by a large enough earthquake. This happened in 1960, when an
earthquake off the coast of Chile made the earth resonate for several
weeks. Scientists detected these very low frequencies, which have pe-
riods of about an hour, using instruments called strain meters. These
data further refined our understanding of the earth.
With advances in electronics, communications, and computers,
a new generation of digital seismographs was developed and de-
ployed. New mathematical developments such as the Fourier trans-
form permitted scientists to interpret the data these seismographs
obtained. It became possible to examine how seismic velocities var-
ied from place to place at the same depth. These studies, called seis-
mic tomography, revealed that the internal structure of the earth
was more complex than just a series of spherical shells with different
seismic properties.
Otto H. Muller

64
 Earthquakes

Bibliography
Bolt, Bruce A. Earthquakes. 5th ed. New York: W. H. Freeman, 2006. In
a manner suitable for a beginning student, this popular book pre-
sents the knowledge and wisdom of a man who studied earth-
quakes for decades. While technical details are generally not
developed at length, the author’s familiarity with all types of seis-
mological information is apparent.
Brumbaugh, David S. Earthquakes, Science, and Society. Upper Saddle
River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1999. This book covers earthquakes and
their impact on society with a thorough, yet easily understood, ap-
proach. It explains the physics underlying earthquakes and seis-
mology with unusual clarity. Seismic tomography, seismic refrac-
tion, and internal reflections are treated well.
Coch, Nicholas K. “Earthquake Hazards.” In Geohazards: Natural and
Human. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995. A good treat-
ment of the subject at an introductory level. Generally restricted
to earthquakes within the United States, but it also includes good
discussions of tsunamis.
Heppenheimer, T. A. The Coming Quake: Science and Trembling on the
California Earthquake Frontier. New York: Times Books, 1988. This
very readable book describes the study of earthquakes from a hu-
man perspective. The author narrates a history of scientific devel-
opments, giving details of the people involved and their emo-
tional involvement in their work.
Keller, Edward A., and Nicholas Pinter. Active Tectonics: Earthquakes,
Uplift, and Landscape. 2d ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 2002. Looking at earthquakes from the perspective of how
they alter the landscape, this book provides some uncommon in-
sights. Although it requires little in the way of background knowl-
edge from its readers, it manages to develop considerable under-
standing of fairly complex technical material. Little attention is
paid to the impact of earthquake disasters on society.
Kimball, Virginia. Earthquake Ready. Rev. ed. Malibu, Calif.: Round-
table, 1992. This book details much of what can be done to pre-
pare for and survive an earthquake. Its technical adviser was Kate
Hutton, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, California.
Lundgren, Lawrence W. “Earthquake Hazards.” In Environmental Ge-

65
Earthquakes

ology. 2d ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1999. In-
cludes case studies of five earthquakes that occurred between
1975 and 1995.
Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle, and Donald Theodore Sanders. Earthquakes in
Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Seismic Disruptions. Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005. Describes how earth-
quakes are produced and analyzes their effects on societies and
cultures across history.

66
El Niño
Factors involved: Geography, rain, temperature,
weather conditions
Regions affected: All

Definition
El Niño is a recurring weather phenomenon involving large-scale al-
terations in sea surface temperatures, air pressure, and precipita-
tion patterns in the Pacific Ocean. It can cause severe storms and
droughts in the bordering continents and has effects worldwide.

Science
The Spanish words El Niño (the boy) allude to the infant Christ. It is
the traditional term used by Peruvian fishermen to refer to a slight
warming of the ocean during the Christmas season. Scientists bor-
rowed the name and reapplied it to abnormal, irregularly recurring
fluctuations in sea surface temperature, air pressure, wind strength,
and precipitation in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. These conditions
are part of a weather phenomenon that scientists call the El Niño-
Southern Oscillation (ENSO). El Niño conditions can last up to two
years.
Under normal conditions westward-blowing trade winds push
water in a broad band along the equator toward Indonesia and north-
ern Australia. A bulge of water builds up that is about 1.5 feet higher
than the surface of the eastern Pacific. The western Pacific is also
warmer, as much as 46 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius), and
the thermocline, the border between warm water and cold water, is
much deeper. The air above this vast pool of warm water is moist, and
evaporation is rapid. As a result, clouds form and rain falls abun-
dantly. The average air pressure is low. Meanwhile, in the eastern Pa-
cific, off the South American northern coast, the sea surface is cold as
water wells up from the depths. Evaporation is slow, and there is little
cloud formation or rain. The air pressure is high.
Sometimes the trade winds weaken. Scientists do not fully under-
stand why this happens, although weather patterns to the north and
south are known to influence the change. The trade winds can no

67
El Niño

El Niño storms in 1998 caused the Rio Nido mudslides in Northern California.
(FEMA)

longer hold back the bulge of warm water in the western Pacific. It
flows eastward, generally within 5 degrees of latitude north and south
of the equator. As the water bulge flows into the central Pacific, two
sets of huge subsurface waves, Kelvin waves moving east and Rossby
waves moving west, are created. They move slowly. The Kelvin waves
take as long as two and a half months to cross the ocean to South
America, and the Rossby waves reach the western Pacific boundary
after six to ten months. As they spread, the Kelvin waves deepen the
shallow central and eastern thermoclines as much as 98 feet (30 me-
ters) and help propel the band of warm water, while the Rossby waves
raise the deep western thermocline slightly.
An El Niño begins when the long finger of warm water extends to
South America, raising the average surface temperature there. Scien-
tists gauge the severity of an El Niño by the amount of temperature
rise. A moderate El Niño involves an increase of 36 to 37 degrees
Fahrenheit (2 to 3 degrees Celsius) above the normal summer and
autumn temperatures for the Southern Hemisphere, a strong El
Niño has a 37 to 41 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 5 degrees Celsius) in-

68
 El Niño

crease, and a severe El Niño can warm the sea surface nearly 46 de-
grees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius).
The effects of the warm water are relatively rapid and dramatic.
The warm layer blocks the normal upwelling of cold water near Peru
and Ecuador, diverting it southward. The increased surface tempera-
ture accelerates evaporation. The coastal air turns more humid, and
as it rises, the water vapor injects tremendous thermal energy into the
atmosphere. As clouds form from the vapor, winds are generated that
push the clouds inland in large storms. The storms bring downpours
to regions that are normally desert. There is a rise in the sea level be-
cause of the warm water, which is less dense; that rise, together with
high waves from the storms battering the coast, causes beaches to dis-
appear in some areas and pile up in others. A huge low-pressure sys-
tem settles in the central Pacific, centered approximately on Tahiti.
In the Australia-Indonesia region, conditions are nearly the re-
verse. The air pressure becomes abnormally high—in fact, this large-
scale variation from low to high air pressure makes up the Southern
Oscillation part of ENSO. Drought strikes areas that normally receive
substantial rainfall. Sea levels fall, sometimes exposing coral reefs.
There are further abnormal weather conditions in more distant re-
gions, which scientists call teleconnections to El Niño.
When the Kelvin waves hit the South American coast and the
Rossby waves reach the westernmost Pacific, they rebound. The west-
ern thermocline is deepened, and the eastern thermocline rises.
This action begins the reversal of El Niño effects. The warm water re-
treats westward, pushed back by strengthening trade winds. Even-
tually, normal weather patterns resume.
If these oscillations came regularly, El Niños would simply be the
extreme of a pattern. However, the period is not regular. For at least
the last five thousand years, scientists believe, an El Niño occurred ev-
ery two to ten years. Sometimes a decade, or even several decades,
passes without one. Some, but not all, events are separated by abnor-
mally cold weather in the eastern Pacific, a phenomenon known as
La Niña, anti-El Niño, or El Viejo.

Geography
El Niños profoundly influence weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean.
In addition to increasing rainfall along the northwestern South

69
El Niño

American seaboard, the warm water can increase the number of Pa-
cific Ocean hurricanes, which can strike Central and North America
and the Pacific islands. Above-normal water temperatures also have
been recorded along the California coast of North America. Accord-
ingly, there is more precipitation, causing coastal flooding and piling
up large snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada. The Pacific Northwest,
southern Alaska, the north coast of China, Korea, and Japan have
above-average winter air temperatures. Australia and the maritime
area of Indonesia and Southeast Asia suffer coastal and inland drought
as rainfall is sparse throughout the western equatorial Pacific.
Teleconnections disrupt normal weather patterns throughout
much of the Southern Hemisphere. Sections of the eastern Amazon
River basin experience drought, and the monsoons in northern In-
dia may be short or fail entirely. Low rainfall occurs in southeastern
Africa and drought in Sahelian Africa, particularly Ethiopia. There
are also indications that El Niños affect Atlantic Ocean weather pat-
terns. Northern Europe can be unusually cold, while across the At-
lantic mild conditions prevail along the eastern seaboard of the
United States, and the American Southeast has a wet winter. During
the Atlantic hurricane season, fewer and weaker hurricanes arise.

Prevention and Preparations

No El Niños are identical because external weather forces cause vari-
ations in the development, duration, and severity of each. Moreover,
El Niños do not recur regularly. Predicting them is therefore diffi-
cult. Since the late 1950’s, however, intensive basic scientific research
has identified the dynamics of the phenomena, and technological
developments have made prediction and tracking of El Niños ever
more reliable, allowing potentially affected areas to prepare for
harsh weather.
Weather stations in the western and eastern Pacific look for
changes in air pressure and signs of declining precipitation. The
Tropical Atmosphere-Ocean (TAO) array comprises hundreds of
buoys; most monitor water temperature and atmospheric conditions,
but some also measure the depth of the thermocline. Weather satel-
lites can use infrared imaging and laser range-finding to follow the
path of expanding warm waters and to gauge sea surface level. Data
from all such sources is fed into computers with special software that

70
 El Niño

compares the information with past El Niños and fits it into empiri-
cally derived formulas in order to model the potential development
of a new event.
While computer modeling is not foolproof, it is accurate enough
that Pacific-bordering nations make preparations based upon the
forecasts. Disaster relief agencies, such as the United States Federal
Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), stockpile food,
medicines, and sanitation and construction supplies in anticipation
of floods and hurricanes. Some governments, as well as the World
Meteorological Organization, maintain Web sites with the latest in-
formation on El Niños so citizens can make preparations of their
own. Governments of countries in potential drought areas have
staved off disaster by encouraging farmers to plant drought-resistant
crops or those that mature before the El Niño season. Moving people
away from canyons and low-lying lands that are subject to flooding
can sometimes save lives.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

El Niños do not directly threaten life and property. Instead, the
storms that they spawn do the damage. The chief danger comes from
flash floods in deserts, such as those in coastal Peru and Ecuador,
flooding from rain-swollen rivers, and high winds from tropical
storms. Since it is difficult to predict exactly where one of these con-
ditions will occur, emergency workers usually respond only after a cri-
sis develops. Their efforts follow the pattern for all flooding and
windstorms: Move residents out of the area of danger and institute
searches for those swept away by flash floods or caught in collapsed
buildings.
Because flooding can be sudden, serious, and widespread, some-
times appearing simultaneously in widely separate locales, a substan-
tial danger exists to public health from polluted drinking water. This
is particularly true in areas that lack sewer systems, but even sophisti-
cated city sewers can overflow. In such cases, water-borne diseases,
such as cholera and typhoid, may wreak far greater harm to the popu-
lace than flooding or winds. Rescue workers must therefore provide
clean water and treat outbreaks as they appear.

71
El Niño

Impact
Because an El Niño prevents nutrient-rich cold water from rising
near the coast of South America, fish must change their feeding
grounds. Important commercial species, such as the anchoveta, seek
cooler water to the south. This is a boon to Chilean fishers, but the
fisheries of Peru and Ecuador are drastically reduced. Fishing boats
make few, small catches, and the crews suffer economically, as do in-
dustries dependent upon them, such as fishmeal production. Sea-
birds that feed on the fish also suffer; large-scale die-offs have been
recorded. Similar alterations in fishing patterns off the coasts of Cen-
tral and North America occur, forcing fishers to travel farther for
their catches and causing starvation among birds and seals.
Severe storms can decimate crops and kill livestock in the eastern
Pacific nations, while drought does the same in Australia and the
western Pacific. In Indonesia, dry forests often ignite and burn out of
control, lifting smoke into the atmosphere and destroying property.
The economic damage of a severe El Niño can easily exceed $1 bil-
lion on the West Coast of the United States alone, and many times
that amount worldwide. The death toll from windstorms, flooding
and attendant disease outbreaks, and drought-caused famine may
reach into the thousands, principally in South America. Scientists
suspect that global warming may make future El Niños more power-
ful, raising the potential for yet greater destructiveness.
Roger Smith

Bibliography
Allan, Rob, Janette Lindesay, and David Parker. El Niño Southern Oscil-
lation and Climatic Variability. Collingwood, Australia: CSIRO,
1997. Offers a scholarly introduction to the history of El Niño
studies, the oceanic-atmospheric forces behind the phenomenon,
and forecasting methods, followed by hundreds of color graphs
displaying data on conditions during El Niños from 1871 to 1994.
Arnold, Caroline. El Niño: Stormy Weather for People and Wildlife. New
York: Clarion, 1998. Intended for young readers, a richly illus-
trated explanation of the mechanics of El Niño, its effects, and
forecasting methods. A clear introduction for general readers who
are science-shy.
Babkina, A. M., ed. El Niño: Overview and Bibliography. Hauppauge,

72
 El Niño

N.Y.: Nova Science, 2003. Analyzes this weather pattern, including

stronger events such as the El Nino of 1982-1983. Provides a de-
tailed overview, as well as comprehensive title, author, and subject
indexes.
D’Aleo, Joseph S. The Oryx Resource Guide to El Niño and La Niña. West-
port, Conn.: Oryx Press, 2002. Chronicles the basic causes and ef-
fects of El Niño and La Niña, including their historical, meteoro-
logical, ecological, and economic impacts.
Fagan, Brian. Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civi-
lization. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Following a popular expla-
nation of El Niño, Fagan examines evidence of its influence on an-
cient civilizations, concluding with an overview of the 1982-1983
and 1997-1998 episodes.
Glantz, Michael H. Currents of Change: El Niño’s Impact on Climate and
Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Glantz, an en-
vironmental scientist, outlines the natural causes of El Niños for
nonscientists and discusses the phenomenon’s effects on society
at length.
Lyons, Walter A. The Handy Weather Answer Book. Detroit: Visible Ink
Press, 1997. Explains the fundamental science of weather systems
and describes forecasting and the instruments used to gather me-
teorological data. A chapter address El Niños and climate change.
The question-and-answer text is simple and clear, accompanied by
illustrations.
Nash, J. Madeleine. El Niño: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-
Maker. New York: Warner Books, 2002. Nash describes how genera-
tions of scientists and explorers helped unravel the mystery of the
El Niño weather phenomenon.
Philander, S. George. Is the Temperature Rising? The Uncertain Science of
Global Warming. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Intended for college students, an enjoyable survey of the science
behind climatic phenomena, with a lucid chapter on ENSO.
_______. Our Affair with El Niño: How We Transformed an Enchanting
Peruvian Current into a Global Climate Hazard. Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 2004. Philander discusses the scientific, po-
litical, economic, and cultural developments that shaped the per-
ception of the El Niño current.

73
Epidemics
Factors involved: Animals, human activity,
microorganisms, plants, temperature, weather
conditions
Regions affected: Cities, forests, islands, towns

Definition
An epidemic is the spreading of an infectious disease over a wide
range of a human population that historically leads to a dramatic loss
of life. Preventive measures, which include aggressive sanitation pro-
cedures, have reduced the impact of epidemics on human life, but
new threats have emerged.

Science
Contagious or communicable diseases are those transmitted from one
organism to another. Living microorganisms, also known as parasites,
such as bacteria, fungi, or viruses, may invade or attach themselves to a
host organism and replicate, thus creating infectious diseases. A dis-
ease that affects a large human population is called an epidemic.
In a disease situation the host organism serves as the environment
where the parasite thrives. With many diseases, such as syphilis, the
parasite remains present throughout the lifetime of the host unless it
is destroyed by treatment. Generally, the parasite appears to have a
degree of specificity with regard to the host. Thus, microorganisms
adapted to plant hosts are rarely capable of attacking an animal host
and vice versa. However, a given parasite may attack different types of
animal hosts, including both vertebrates and invertebrates.
Many times the parasite emigrates from one host to another by
means of an insect carrier or other vector. In other cases the parasites
may spend one part of their life in an intermediate host. This may en-
hance or decrease the harmful effect the parasite will have on the
host, as the intermediate host may or may not interact constructively
with the parasite. As a result geographic or seasonal differences in
the disease outbreak are very likely to occur.
Occasionally, diseases are spread among rodents by an intermedi-
ate host, such as fleas. The rodent-flea-rodent sequence is called

74
 Epidemics

enzootic, meaning the infection is present in an animal community

at all times but manifests itself only in a small fraction of instances.
However, once the environmental conditions are favorable the con-
dition becomes epizootic, and a large number of animals become in-
fected at the same time. As the rodent population is reduced by
death, fleas from the dead animals fail to find other host rodents and
begin infecting other animals that are present in the immediate area,
including humans. The overall infestation is slow at the beginning
but quickly explodes, with a devastating number of victims. The hu-
man involvement in this progression is therefore more coincidental
than programmed.
Most pathogenic parasites adapt comfortably to their hosts and do
not survive the conditions outside the host’s tissues. Exceptions to
this case are those microorganisms whose lives involve a resistant-
spore stage. Such examples include the Coccidioides fungus, which is
responsible for desert fever and the anthrax bacillus that affects cows,
sheep, goats, and even humans. An animal disease that can also be
transferred to humans is called zoonosis.
Epidemiology is the medical field that studies the distribution of
disease among human populations, as well as the factors responsible
for this distribution. Contrary to most other medical branches, how-
ever, epidemiology is concerned more with groups of people rather
than with the patients themselves. As a result, the field relies heavily on
statistical patterns and historical trends. Its development arose as a re-
sult of the great epidemics of the last few centuries that led to an im-
measurable loss of human lives. Scientists at the time began looking
into the identification of the high risk associated with certain diseases
in an attempt to establish preventive measures. Epidemiological stud-
ies are classified as descriptive or analytic. In descriptive epidemiology,
scientists survey the nature of the population affected by the disorder
in question. Data on factors such as ethnicity, age, sex, geographic de-
scription, occupation, and time trends are closely monitored and re-
corded. The most common measures of disease are mortality, which is
the number of yearly deaths per 1,000 of population at risk; the inci-
dence, which is defined as the number of new cases yearly per 100,000
of population at risk; and prevalence, which is the number of existing
cases at a given time per 100 of population at risk.
In analytic epidemiology, a careful analysis of the collected data

75
Epidemics

Milestones
11th century b.c.e.: Biblical passage Samuel I tells of the Philistine
plague, a pestilence outbreak that occurred after the capture of the
Ark of the Covenant.
7th century b.c.e.: Assyrian pestilence slays 185,000 Assyrians, forcing
King Sennacherib to retreat from Judah without capturing Jeru-
salem.
451 b.c.e.: The Roman pestilence, an unidentified disease but proba-
bly anthrax, kills a large portion of the slave population and some in
the citizenry and prevents the Aequians of Latium from attacking
Rome.
430 b.c.e.: The mysterious Plague of Athens early in the Peloponne-
sian War against Sparta results in about 30,000 dead.
387 b.c.e.: According the records of Livy, a series of 11 epidemics
strikes Rome through the end of the republic.
250-243 b.c.e.: “Hunpox,” or perhaps smallpox, strikes China.
48 b.c.e.: Epidemic, flood, and famine occur in China.
542-543 c.e.: Plague of Justinian is the first pandemic of bubonic
plague that devastates Africa, Asia Minor, and Europe. The first year
the plague kills 300,000 in Constantinople; the infection resurfaces
repeatedly over the next half century.
585-587: The Japanese smallpox epidemic, probably the country’s
first documented episode of the disease, infects peasants and nobility
alike. Because it occurs after the acceptance of Buddhism, it is be-
lieved to be a punishment from the Shinto gods and results in burn-
ing of temples and attacks on Buddhist nuns and priests.
1320-1352: Europe is stricken by the Black Death (bubonic plague),
claiming over 40 million lives.
1347-1380: The Black Death kills an estimated 25 million in Asia. A re-
ported two-thirds of the population in China succumbs.
1494-1495: French army syphilis epidemic strikes in Naples and is
considered the first appearance of this venereal infection in Europe.
1507: Hispaniola smallpox is the first recorded epidemic in the New
World, representing the first wave of diseases that eventually depopu-
late America of most of its native inhabitants. In the next two centu-
ries, the population plunges by an estimated 80 percent.

76
 Epidemics

1520-1521: About 2 to 5 million die in the Aztec Empire when they

contract smallpox during the Spanish conquest and colonization of
Mexico.
1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic results in over 100,000 cases
and 20,000 deaths, particularly in Memphis, Tennessee.
1892-1894: A cholera pandemic leaves millions dead but confirms the
theory that the disease is caused by bacteria in contaminated water.
1900-1915: “Typhoid Mary” Mallon, a cook, spreads typhoid fever to
more than 50 people, causing at least 3 deaths.
1916: The Great Polio Epidemic affects 26 states, particularly New
York, prompting quarantines and resulting in 27,000 reported cases
and at least 7,000 deaths.
1918-1920: The Great Flu Pandemic sweeps the globe, killing 30 to 40
million, perhaps the largest single biological event in human history.
1976: 221 American Legion veterans contract a mysterious type of
pneumonia at a hotel in Philadelphia, and 29 of them die; the media
names the illness “Legionnaires’ disease.”
1976: An Ebola virus epidemic in Zaire kills 280 people and proves
one of the deadliest diseases of the late twentieth century.
1981: U.S. epidemic reported by U.S. Centers for Disease Control in
June and given the name acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
(AIDS). In some regions of Africa the infection touches 90 percent of
the population and poses a constant pandemic threat.
1995: An outbreak of Ebola virus in Kitwit, Zaire, leaves 245 dead.
1999: 7 die in an epidemic of encephalitis in New England and New
York.
2002: A virulent atypical pneumonia, dubbed severe acute respira-
tory syndrome (SARS), spreads quickly through China and then in-
ternationally, infecting at least 8,422 victims and causing 916 known
deaths.

is made in an attempt to draw conclusions. For instance, in the

prospective-cohort study, members of a population are observed over
a long period of time, and their health status is evaluated. The ana-
lytic studies can be either observational or experimental. In observa-
tional studies, the researcher does not alter the behavior or exposure
of the study subjects but instead monitors them in order to learn

77
Epidemics

whether those exposed to different factors differ in disease rates. On

the other hand, in experimental studies the scientist alters the be-
havior, exposure, or treatment of people to determine the result of
intervention on the disease. The weighted data are often statistically
analyzed using t-tests, analysis of variance, and multiple logistic re-
gression.
An epidemic that takes place over a large geographical area is
known as a pandemic. Its rise and decline is mainly affected by the
ability of the infectious invading agent to transfer the disease to the
susceptible individual host. Interestingly enough, the population of
infected individuals that survives the parasite usually acquires a type
of immunity. This immunity diminishes the epidemic and prevents it
from reoccurring within a certain time period in the same geo-
graphic area. As a result the invading parasite is unable to reproduce
itself in this immunity-equipped host population. This may be the
reason that areas that have exhibited the Ebola epidemic for several
months with a death rate of almost 95 percent suddenly display a sup-
pressed outbreak.
Within a certain time frame, however, the host’s susceptibility to
the invader may be reproduced due to several factors. These include
the removal of the immune generation by death, the deterioration of
the individual immunity by external conditions, and the birth of off-
spring who do not have the ability to naturally resist the disease.
In some cases, such as syphilis, the disease severity appears to be
less now than a few centuries ago. One theory suggests that the ability
of the parasite to infect as many hosts as possible has produced a neg-
ative effect on the parasite itself. Eliminating all hosts steadfastly will
lead to the extinction of the parasite itself. Therefore, once the adap-
tation of the parasite to the host has become close, the tendency for
the disease outbreak appears less severe. Ecological studies suggest,
however, that it is incorrect to assume that the host-parasite antago-
nism will reduce in intensity and that the continuous fight for domi-
nance remains in full force.

Geography
Epidemics can take place anywhere on earth as long as the conditions
allow it. Historically these conditions favor an isolated environment
with animal or insect carriers, unsanitary conditions, and large human

78
Types of Viral Infection
Family Conditions

Respiratory and eye

Adenoviruses
infections

Arenaviruses Lassa fever

Coronaviruses Common cold

Cold sores, genital herpes,

chickenpox, herpes zoster
Herpesviruses (shingles), glandular fever,
congenital abnormalities
(cytomegalovirus)

Orthomyxoviruses Influenza

Papovaviruses Warts

Paramyxoviruses Mumps, measles, rubella

Poliomyelitis, viral hepatitis

Picornaviruses types A and B, respiratory
infections, myocarditis

Cowpox, smallpox
Poxviruses (eradicated), molluscum
contagiosum
AIDS, degenerative
Retroviruses brain diseases,
possibly various
kinds of cancer

Rhabdoviruses Rabies

Togaviruses Yellow fever, dengue,

encephalitis

79
Epidemics

populations. The infectious disease can be spread easily to other areas

and have an equally strong impact there. Rodents have long served as
one of the primary factors in spreading diseases to people, especially if
the human population is contained. The tsutsugamushi disease (also
known as scrub typhus) is transmitted by the bite of a rat mite.
One of the first epidemics in history that involved infected rats oc-
curred at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in Greece (431-404
b.c.e.), in which the rats were transferred by ships. The Athenians,
who were the dominant naval force in the conflict, were besieged by
the Spartan army inside Athens. The infected rats were brought into
the city unintentionally via ships that were transporting food from
Egypt. The ensuing Plague of Athens led to the decline of the Pericles
regime and tilted the scales of the war toward the Spartan army.
The historically devastating bubonic plague in Europe occurred
in the fourteenth century, almost two centuries after the so-called
Black Death originated in Mesopotamia. The mass spreading of rats
is greatly attributed by many historians to the onset of the Crusades
and led to an estimated 25 million lives lost in Europe alone. France
was particularly affected (1348-1350), with many cities losing about
one-third of their populations. Nothing appeared to check the dis-
ease in populations without immunity: neither bonfires to disinfect
air, nor demonstrations of penitence, nor persecutions of Jews and
Gypsies. Oceangoing ships also appear to have been responsible for
the epidemic in China during the end of the nineteenth century.
It is believed by many scholars that the origins of venereal syphilis
were in America, since historical accounts of the outbreak first ap-
peared in Europe after Christopher Columbus’s return trip from the
New World at the end of the fifteenth century. Moreover, skeletal re-
mains of pre-Columbian American Indians indicate the presence of
the Treponema pallidum spirochete, which is responsible for the dis-
ease. Among the victims of that disease were England’s king Henry
VIII and several members of the Italian Borgia family in the middle of
the sixteenth century.

Prevention and Preparations

There seems to be a variable degree of natural susceptibility to a spe-
cific disease among different people. This occurs because the out-
come of the interaction of parasite and host is variable in each indi-

80
 Epidemics

vidual case. As a result individuals who have low resistance quickly

show symptoms of the disease and easily display the infection. On the
other hand, people with strong resistance do not show the symptoms,
and the infection is not recognizable.
Most diseases seem to be preventable unless they are idiopathic
(particular to the individual), such as inherited metabolic defects.
Diseases that are caused by environmental factors may be avoided
by eliminating or greatly reducing the effectiveness of the factors re-
sponsible. The various epidemics in Europe, such as the Black
Death and the London plague, had much less impact on the upper
classes. More affluent groups that had sufficient land or wages that
would allow for the replacement of tools and isolation from the in-
fected areas suffered much less. On the other hand, the poor, who
had very few possessions and a lack of sanitation and pure water,
were forced to live under miserable conditions that allowed diseases
to thrive.
Transmission of infection may be avoided by preventing contact
between the susceptible host and the parasite. Historically, the easiest
application of this principle has been quarantine, which in several
cases had very limited success. It is nearly impossible to prevent dis-
eases from spreading across borders because of airborne factors,
such as mosquitoes infected with malaria and flies carrying the
plague. Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which is believed to have orig-
inated in the northwestern part of the United States but spread to
Mexico, South America, and Africa, is transmitted to humans via tick
bites and is native to many rodents.
Syphilis would not have been so devastating in Europe if prosti-
tutes did not spread the disease to their patrons. The consequences
would not have been as severe if mercury treatment, the most popu-
lar method of combating syphilis at the time, was given to prostitutes.
However, the expense, together with the social belief that such
women were not worth the treatment, prohibited the remedy.
The last two cases of the plague in European urban areas were in
Marseilles, France (1720), and Messina, Italy (1740), which were not
as destructive as previous plagues because of more elaborate and or-
ganized methods of quarantine. The same was true during the last
months of the Great Plague of London (1665). Some historians give
credit for the containment of epidemics to the isolation of lepers,

81
Epidemics

many of whom modern scientists believe were carrying communica-

ble diseases other than leprosy. Another way to prevent the spread of
disease is to exterminate animals that may carry the infectious fac-
tors, which has taken place as late as the 1990’s, in the case of bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, commonly called mad cow disease.
The spreading of plagues is greatly confined by controlling rat
populations, particularly those on ships, and by preventing rodents
from landing at uninfected ports. One plague bacillus can infect as
many as 80 rodents, giving rise to the sylvatic plague. Using sprays to
eliminate mosquitoes reduces outbreaks of malaria, which occur es-
pecially in swampy areas. Louse-borne typhus may be regulated in hu-
mans by strong disinfecting methods. Typhus has become virtually
nonexistent in industrialized societies through the extermination of
lice and fleas, while typhoid fever has been eliminated by the use of
sanitized water. Examples of this involve the chlorination of water in
swimming pools and municipal water sources, as well as pasteuriza-
tion of milk. Despite the fact that plague epidemics have come under
control in recent centuries, there still exist many foci of infection.
The explosive development of medical technology after World
War II led to the synthesis and administration of significant medica-

Transmission of Plague

ground
Yersinia pestis rats squirrels

flea

gophers chipmunks
Humans may become
The bacterium responsible Rats, ground squirrels, infected if they enter
for the disease, Yersinia prairie dogs, chipmunks, plague-affected areas
pestis, circulates among and gophers are all when fleas, carrying
rodents and their fleas in examples of rodents. the disease bacterium,
many parts of the world. transfer from dead
rodents to humans.

The bacterium Yersinia pestis, which causes plague, follows a path from fleas to ro-
dents to humans.

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 Epidemics

tions, such as antibiotics and vaccines, which led to the decisive con-
trol of epidemics. Developing an artificial immunity, such as through
vaccination, is extremely effective because the infecting agent cannot
inhabit the organism after the virus has been administered to it. This
was demonstrated with the diphtheria, smallpox, and poliomyelitis
(polio) vaccines that were designed for children after World War II.
The polio vaccine against infantile paralysis is a combination of the
killed virus, which is injected, and the attenuated or weakened virus,
which is given orally.
In the early 1980’s the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
(AIDS) epidemic appeared. During this decade many thousands,
possibly millions, of people died all over the world. Although quaran-
tine is generally not possible in the society of industrialized countries,
other measures of prevention are lessening the disease’s spread. The
use of prophylactics during sexual contact, extensive screening of
blood transfusions, and education about the impact of the virus all
seem to have had a positive effect on the number of people affected.
To a much lesser degree the various forms of hepatitis have claimed a
large number of victims. Although not as much in the public eye as
AIDS, the disease is communicable, and municipal health depart-
ments have tried to control its spread by monitoring the sanitation
conditions of restaurants.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Throughout history, epidemics have been controlled by the destruc-
tion of the organisms responsible. The fact that the Great Plague of
London never reappeared is attributed, according to some scholars,
to the great fire that burned the city in September, 1666. In the eigh-
teenth century, bodies were often buried with caustic bases. The pio-
neering work of English scientist Joseph Lister in the nineteenth cen-
tury introduced doctors to antiseptics, and detergents were used
more frequently.
The various laboratory procedures that were developed in the
twentieth century provided first the detection of the disease and then
the prescribed routes for cure. Thus, the eradication of syphilis
started with the development of the serological test for syphilis
(STS), which detects syphilis reagin and the treponemal antibody,
two antibodies formed by the organism once the bacteria have in-

83
Epidemics

vaded it. Penicillin and other antibiotics helped curb the number of
syphilis victims. American doctor Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine in the
1950’s gave all children the chance to walk without crutches. The
wide availability of quinine has saved millions of people from ma-
laria. A vaccine against the plague is currently available and is being
used in areas where the epidemic continues to flourish.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was set up in 1948 to in-
crease the international effort toward improved health conditions,
particularly in poor areas of Africa, Asia, and South America. The
WHO was the successor of the Health Organization of the League of
Nations, established in 1923, and the Office International d’Hygiene
Publique, created in 1907. Unlike the other two organizations, whose
duties included quarantine measures, drug standardization, and epi-
demic control, WHO undertakes the task of promoting the highest
possible conditions for universal health to all populations. Its respon-
sibilities include the revising and updating of health regulations, sup-
port of research services, and the dissemination of information that
concerns any potential pestilent-disease outbreak. The organization
also collaborates and shares information with all member countries
on the latest developments in nutrition research, updated vaccina-
tions, drug addiction, cancer research, hazards of nuclear radiation,
and efforts to curb the spread of AIDS.
Much credit has been given to the WHO for its mass campaign
against infectious diseases, which led to the control of a large number
of epidemics. As a result, smallpox has been eradicated, cholera and
the plague have been practically eliminated, and most other diseases
have been substantially reduced. Intensive programs that have pro-
vided pure water, antibiotics, pesticides, primary health care fa-
cilities, and clean sanitation systems to underdeveloped countries
helped to reduce infant mortality and increase the average life span
in these places.
During the late 1980’s and throughout the 1990’s a concentrated
effort was coordinated by the WHO enlisting the governments of its
member countries in the war against AIDS. Data collection, educa-
tion campaigns, promotions encouraging safe sex, continuous re-
search, health-care providers, and infection control were employed
to overcome dangerous and unsanitary practices in the underdevel-
oped world.

84
 Epidemics

It should also be noted that many of the countries that are vulnera-
ble to natural disasters, such as floods, mudslides, earthquakes, torna-
does, and typhoons, face the menacing problem of refugees and
homeless people after these events. The lack of sanitary conditions
and an efficient way to remove the dead, a reduced number of medical
supplies and personnel, and poverty increase the casualty count in
many disasters. The WHO has been helped in these situations by other
international relief organizations, such as the Red Cross and the Peace
Corps, together with the voluntary contributions of other countries.

Impact
Epidemics have played a role in checking the human population.
The Great Plague of London claimed more than 75,000 of a total
population of 460,000 and forced the king and his court to flee to the
countryside for more than eight months, while the Parliament kept a
short session at Oxford. The outbreak in Canton and Hong Kong left
almost 100,000 dead. Severe epidemics of poliomyelitis have been re-
ported in many parts of the world, especially during the twentieth
century. About 300,000 cases were recorded in the United States
alone during the 1942-1953 period. Western Europe, and especially
Germany, Belgium, and Denmark, as well as Japan, Korea, Singa-
pore, and the Philippines, also suffered many casualties in the early
1950’s.
When the carriers of the epidemic are rodents, the economic
damage to the afflicted area is also immense. Norway rats, black rats,
and the house mouse had devastating effects as they devoured crops
of wheat, sugar beets, and potatoes in Germany at the end of the
World War I, Russia in 1932-1935, and especially France in 1790-1935,
where at least 20 mouse plagues have been reported.
Epidemiological studies and comparisons have shown that the
twentieth century was pivotal in transforming the patterns of fre-
quent death from disease to the lowest in human history. Infant and
child mortality were reduced dramatically, cases of famine and epi-
demic were lessened, and modern science shifted many of its efforts
to degenerative diseases that affect the elderly. Many countries still
faced epidemics of relatively minor proportions in areas where civil
strife occurred, especially Somalia, Rwanda, the Sudan, even into the
1990’s. The aftermath of the hurricanes in Bangladesh and the Ca-

85
Epidemics

ribbean in that decade proved that epidemics were not fully elimi-
nated from society.
During the twentieth century, the epidemiologic transition of the
human race shifted. Until the early part of that century the pattern of
mortality and disease afflicted infants and children as well as younger
adults and was related to bacteriological epidemics. In contrast, by
the late twentieth century, with the exception of AIDS and occasional
outbreaks of epidemics in underdeveloped countries, most diseases
were human-made and degenerative, such as the ones attributed to
drug use, smoking, and drinking. As a result the average life span in-
creased sharply, by almost twenty-five years after the early 1960’s. This
holds true for industrialized countries; however, the pattern is only
slowly changing in developing countries, which have not had the
same socioeconomic development as industrialized countries. Never-
theless, the twentieth century decline in mortality in developing
countries was significantly more rapid than that of the nineteenth
century in countries now classified as industrialized.

Historical Overview
Epidemic diseases are the greatest destructive force in human his-
tory. Epidemics have killed millions across continents and even more
so influenced cultural, economic, and political institutions. Great
empires, powerful armies, and a host of human endeavors have
crumbled under the weight of disease and, likewise, factored in sub-
sequent societal changes. Epidemics are contagious diseases that
spread rapidly and extensively through a community, region, or
country. When they sweep across the globe they are referred to as
pandemics. Prior to the introduction of vaccination and antibiotics,
viral and bacterial infections posed a constant and often widespread
threat to human existence.
The history of epidemics dates from the earliest written records, an
influence upon human life throughout time. In Western culture an
epidemic is often referred to as a pestilence, which is symbolized in the
Bible’s book of Revelation as one of the three great enemies of human-
ity, along with famine and war. Characterized as the Horsemen of the
Apocalypse, these three serve as a convoy for a fourth rider, Death.
Peoples throughout ages, regions, and religions explained illness
and death as divine judgment for the sins of humanity, psychologi-

86
 Epidemics

cally interlacing poor health with their own moral depravity. Illness
was punishment; cast from the hands of God, disease tortured indi-
viduals and often entire populations with more than the hardships of
sickness. Modern medical science, together with the social sciences,
has since revealed secular connections between social disorder and
the spread of contagious infections. Still, many cultures maintain the
belief that sickness and death are a form of divine retribution. How-
ever, medical theory also has ancient roots.
Healers and medical practitioners speculated on the origins of dis-
ease and epidemics throughout recorded history. The Greeks devel-
oped a more formalized framework for understanding the causes of
illness and periodic epidemics, rejecting the idea of divine retribu-
tion. Hippocrates (c. 460-370 b.c.e.) is considered the “father of
medicine” and the most prominent physician of the ancient world.
His name is associated with the high ideals of medical practice. The
Corpus Hippocraticum, a collection of nearly sixty treatises written by
his students following his death, established the foundation of medi-
cal knowledge, especially relating to endemic and epidemic diseases.
The most notable treatise, Airs, Waters, and Places, discusses the links
between the environment and disease. It states that some diseases
maintain a constant presence in a population and are referred to as
“endemic.” Other diseases flare infrequently but with deadly force;
these are termed “epidemics.” We still employ these terms today.
Less enduring were early notions of the body, which, according to
Hippocratic doctrine, consisted of four humors: blood, phlegm, yel-
low bile, and black bile. Good health meant keeping the humors in
balance through proper diet, temperament, and correction of bodily
deficiencies. Disease occurred when the humoral balance was upset,
and epidemics resulted from excesses in the natural environment.
In the latter, changing seasons and atmospheric conditions corre-
sponded to the prevalence of vast instances of contagious diseases.
Thus, drastic changes that upset the natural environment produced
widespread sickness in humans. The ideal for human health was to
live a balanced and unstressed life within a harmonic environment.
Hippocratic doctrine related epidemics as a natural force in nature
without understanding the role of microorganisms.
It was only within the last one hundred years that science ex-
panded upon the Hippocratic doctrine to understand the mechanics

87
Epidemics

of disease, how it spreads, and how it may be prevented or cured. The

outbreak of an epidemic is dependent upon a variety of factors, some
of which are seemingly unrelated to the actual spread of contagious
infections. Among the important factors to consider in the formation
of an epidemic are the general health of a population; living con-
ditions, including hygiene and sanitation practices; immunity to a
particular disease; access to medical treatment; community public
health responses; and environmental conditions. Less obvious fac-
tors favoring the spread of disease may include economic disarray;
the introduction of new people or products, especially after a period
of isolation; a massive disruption resulting from war or natural disas-
ters, such as earthquakes, famines, and floods; or an explosion in in-
sect or rodent populations. Thus, epidemics are often dependent on
a variety of factors that may work independently or in tandem to
cause widespread destruction.
Historical references to epidemics are found in a variety of ancient
texts. The Gilgamesh Epic (2000 b.c.e.) mentions the impact of natural
disasters, floods in particular, and affirms the destructive force of the
god of pestilence. The ancient writings illustrate how disease can have
far more extensive effects than simply reducing populations. Histories
of the great civilizations in Babylon, China, and Egypt document a host
of diseases and widespread sickness. Many of these, such as bubonic
plague, diphtheria, smallpox, and typhus, have paralleled human exis-
tence into the modern world. Other population-decimating diseases
are difficult to define clearly given the lack of precise descriptions. For
example, the last plague of Egypt, recounted in Exodus, offers little sci-
entific evidence for identification of a specific disease other than that it
killed the firstborn children.
Similarly, the Plague of Athens in 430 b.c.e., which struck during
the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, not only influ-
enced the outcome of an important historic event but also produced
a turning point in world history. Athenians were infected by an epi-
demic that killed 25 percent of the population. Thucydides, the
Greek historian and witness to the plague and war, described the ail-
ment as causing “violent sensations of heat in the head,” sneezing
and hoarseness, unquenchable thirst, and death in seven to ten days.
He also described the collapse of morality within the city where with-
out the “fear of gods or law of men there was none to restrain them.”

88
 Epidemics

The plague, a disease without clear identification, in this case length-

ened the war and thereby facilitated the eventual downfall of the
Athenian Empire.
The Roman Empire also experienced several epidemics with sig-
nificant consequences. Malaria may have been endemic in the Medi-
terranean region during much of antiquity and produced major
problems in the Roman Empire from 100 b.c.e. The vastness of the
empire, which extended from the African Sahara to Scotland and
from the Caspian Sea to Spain, meant that infections from the hinter-
land found easy transportation to vulnerable populations. For exam-
ple, the Plague of Antonius attacked the Empire between 164 and
189 c.e. and produced a ghastly mortality rate. Galen, the famous Ro-
man physician, described victims with high fevers, throat inflamma-
tion, diarrhea, skin eruptions after a week of illness, and then death.
Medical scholars maintain that this may have been one of the first
smallpox epidemics in Western history. The disease may have started
in Mongolia and moved eastward into the Germanic tribes, with
whom the Romans were at war.
Of historical importance, the Antonius plague helped stimulate the
acceptance and spread of Christianity within the Empire. Christianity
provided hope for believers in miraculous cures, resurrection, and
eternal salvation. In addition, the teachings of Christ, which stressed
care for the sick, fit perfectly into an era marked by widespread ill-
nesses. The establishment of charitable hospitals for the sick and indi-
gent became a foundation of the faith. During the fourth century, a
woman named Fabiola founded the first such hospital in Rome and in-
stitutionalized through medical care the religion’s tenets, which have
lasted into the twenty-first century. The epidemic in this instance pro-
moted a religion that beforehand was of little significance.
Powerful epidemics not only devastated populations but also shat-
tered the authority of governments, religions, and economic systems.
The Black Death of the fourteenth century offers the best example of
the destructive force of epidemics or, in this case, pandemics, be-
cause the affliction spread from Central Asia to East Asia and west to
Europe. Fleas served as the vector, or agent that carries a pathogen,
from rats to humans. In this manner, the causative bacillus Pasteurella
pestis or Yersinia pestis spread through the movement of rats along car-
avan routes and accompanied the Mongol invasions in Central Asia.

89
Epidemics

The regions suffered massive devastation. In Europe the bubonic

plague swept urban and rural communities in huge waves, claiming
perhaps 50 percent of the population. The loss of life fractured the
feudal economic and social order, splintered control of the Roman
Catholic Church’s dominance, and helped usher in a new political
order. The plague continued as a serious threat to Europeans into
the eighteenth century. In other parts of the world, especially Asia,
the plague flared, frequently with enormous loss of life and institu-
tional destruction.
In 1911 an epidemic of bubonic plague swept the Manchurian re-
gion of northern China. The death toll, perhaps 60 percent of the
population, could have been much worse had modern public health
initiatives not held the disease in check. Chinese people traditionally
believed that heaven sends a natural disaster as a sign of the end of an
empire. The decaying Qing Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty in
China’s history, collapsed under the combined weight of social dis-
ruption and the force of the epidemic.
In the twentieth century, epidemics were checked by the develop-
ment of antibiotics, widespread inoculations, and international pub-
lic health measures. Still, the so-called Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918,
arguably the greatest single biological event in human history, killed
30-40 million people worldwide, 600,000 in the United States alone.
In the modern age, where an infected person can travel the globe in a
few hours, a potential exists for natural disasters of giant proportions.
Thus, government health organizations, such as the United States
Public Health Service and the World Health Organization continu-
ally monitor disease and varying social and environmental condi-
tions to prevent the outbreak of epidemics.
In November, 2002, many thought that these fears had been real-
ized with the spread of a virulent atypical pneumonia, dubbed severe
acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), through China and then inter-
nationally. At least 8,422 people were infected, and 916 known deaths
occurred before the epidemic ended the following July. Subsequent
concerns have been centered on the threat posed by avian influenza,
often termed “bird flu,” which sometimes affects humans and could
mutate into a strain transmitted between people.
Soraya Ghayourmanesh
Nicholas Casner

90
 Epidemics

Bibliography
Bollet, Alfred J. Plagues and Poxes: The Impact of Human History on Epi-
demic Disease. New York: Demos, 2004. Focuses on specific diseases
and their historical effect. Intended for general readers.
Ernester, Virginia L. “Epidemiology.” In McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of
Science and Technology. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997. This
article discusses epidemiology and its branches, including de-
scriptive and analytic approaches, with emphasis on observational
and experimental studies.
Farrell, Jeanette. Invisible Enemies: Stories of Infectious Diseases. 2d ed.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. Intended for young peo-
ple. Explores humankind’s struggle against dangerous diseases.
Karlen, Arno. Man and Microbes: Disease and Plagues in History and
Modern Times. New York: Putnam, 1995. Describes the history of
communicable diseases, such as cholera, leprosy, AIDS, viral en-
cephalitis, lethal Ebola viruses, and streptococcal infections.
Lampton, Christopher F. Epidemic. Brookfield, Wis.: Millbrook Press,
1992. This text, designed for young adults, discusses how epidem-
ics begin and spread and what can be done to prevent them. Em-
phasis is on the Black Death and AIDS.
McNeill, William Hardy. Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, N.Y.: Double-
day, 1998. Topics include the impact of the Mongol Empire on
transoceanic exchanges and the ecological impact of Mediterra-
nean science after 1700.
Ranger, Terence, and Paul Slack, eds. Epidemics and Ideas: Essays in the
Historical Perception of Pestilence. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1997. This book views medicine and disease as conceived by
different civilizations, including those of classical Athens, the
Dark Ages, Hawaii, and India.
Thomas, Gordon. Anatomy of an Epidemic. Garden City, N.Y.: Double-
day, 1982. Analysis and causes of epidemics are thoroughly investi-
gated by the author.
Watts, Sheldon J. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power, and Imperialism.
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. This book dis-
cusses the human response to plagues in Europe and the Middle
East from 1347-1844, with special chapters on leprosy, smallpox,
syphilis, cholera, and yellow fever.

91
Explosions
Factors involved: Chemical reactions, human activity
Regions affected: Cities, towns

Definition
The detonation of pipes or storage tanks containing fuel and grain
dust in silos occurs with little warning and often in densely populated
areas, so that the explosions have devastating, although localized, ef-
fects on life and property.

Science
For an explosion to occur, three conditions must exist. First, a fuel
must be present in sufficiently concentrated form. Industrial society
is awash with volatile materials—the hydrocarbons of petroleum and
natural gas used for power, volatile chemicals for processing and fab-
rication, and the residue of manufacturing and agriculture. Second,
there must be an ignition source. Third, oxygen must be present, and
it is, except under special conditions, everywhere humans live.
When a fuel and an oxygen-bearing agent, or oxidant, react to
produce heat, light, and fire, they are combusting. Explosions are
fast combustion. More precisely, an explosion is combustion that ex-
pands so quickly that the fuel volume (and its container, if there is
one) cannot shed energy rapidly enough to remain stable. The en-
ergy from the chemical reactions spreads into surrounding space.
This runaway reaction, or self-acceleration, produces two types of ex-
plosions. If the rate is slower than the speed of sound, the reaction
spreads outward as burning materials ignite the materials next to
them. The process is called deflagration, and explosives that defla-
grate are known as low explosives. If the rate is faster than the speed
of sound, a shock wave progressively combusts materials by compress-
ing them. This process is called detonation and occurs in high explo-
sives.
Ignition starts an explosion. All materials have some minimum
temperature, called a flash point, at which a combustible mixture of
air and vapor exists, and increasing the pressure on the materials may
lower this point. Beyond the flash point, the fuel awaits only an igni-

92
 Explosions

Milestones
June 3, 1816: The steamboat Washington explodes on the Ohio River.
May, 1817: The steamboat Constitution explodes on the Mississippi
River.
April 27, 1865: 1,500 die in the explosion of the steamboat Sultana on
the Mississippi River.
September 8, 1880: A mine explosion at the Seaham Colliery in
Sunderland, England, kills 164.
April 28, 1914: An explosion in the Eccles Mine in West Virginia
leaves 181 dead.
December 6, 1917: Munitions ships in Halifax, Nova Scotia, harbor
explode and burn; 2,000 die.
May 6, 1937: The German zeppelin Hindenburg explodes into a mas-
sive fireball as it tries to land in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36.
July 17, 1944: Two ammunition ships in Port Chicago, California, ex-
plode, killing 300.
March 25, 1947: A mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois, kills 111.
April 16, 1947: The French vessel Grandcamp explodes in Texas City,
Texas, killing 581.
April 25-26, 1986: 32 are killed when a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl,
Russia, explodes.
July 6, 1988: The explosion of Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea
kills 167.
June 8, 1998: A Kansas grain elevator explodes, killing 6.
April 22, 2004: In Ryongchon, North Korea, a train carrying flamma-
ble cargo explodes at the railway station, killing 54 people and injur-
ing 1,249.

tion source—electric spark, sharp blow, static electricity, or friction—

to start the explosion. Some materials, in fact, combust spontane-
ously if they are sufficiently hot, as is the case, for instance, with oil-
soaked rags. Most often the fuels are liquid, but many gases will also
explode when the vapor forms a sufficiently dense cloud. Fuels that
explode when ignited by a nonexplosive source are known as pri-
mary explosives. Additionally, some explosions occur when pressur-

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Explosions

ized equipment, such as steam boilers, rupture, although these ex-

plosions are seldom catastrophic on their own.
The most common and easily obtainable commercial explosives
in the United States are mixtures of ammonium nitrate (also used as
fertilizer) and fuel oil mixtures (ANFOs), accounting for 95 percent
of commercial applications. Unfortunately, late in the twentieth cen-
tury ANFOs also became weapons in the form of car bombs used by
terrorists.
Dust constitutes a special, important category of explosive materi-
als. About 80 percent of industrial dusts are explosive, as is all the
dust produced by milling and storing grain. All that is necessary for
an explosion, in addition to an ignition source, is that the dust be dry,
concentrated, mixed with air, and in a confined space. Under these
conditions, dust that is only the thickness of a coin is explosive.
The power of commercial explosives is usually measured on a
scale comparing them to trinitrotoluene (TNT), where TNT equals
100. Most primary explosives have a rating of about 50. The alumi-
num nitrate in ANFOs on its own, for instance, has a rating of 57,
which rises considerably in the presence of fuel oil. Almost univer-
sally, however, the power of an accidental explosion is expressed as
equivalent to tons of TNT.
After ignition, a shock wave continues beyond the initial flash
point into the surrounding environment and gives the explosion its
power to shatter and crush, or brisance. Following the shock wave is a
region of vacuum, followed in turn by high pressure—a pair of ef-
fects called backlash. The shock wave and backlash together may pro-
duce subtle but serious damage. The shock wave can knock walls and
supports out of place, and then the backlash can move them back
into place, but in dangerously weakened condition. The damage is
difficult to detect. Heat (often in the form of fire) also spreads out
from the explosion, extending its impact with secondary detonations
and deflagrations, while flying debris and ground vibrations worsen
the damage.

Geography
Explosions are phenomena of industrial civilization—especially its
energy production. About 80 percent of explosions in the United
States take place in industrial plants. Because most industry is located

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near metropolitan areas, explosions are most likely to occur in cities.

Naturally, facilities making or transporting commercial or military
explosives run a high risk of accidental explosions, but petroleum re-
fineries; storage tanks for natural gas; and liquefied petroleum gas,
propane, and gasoline are also at risk and are more likely to occupy
the outskirts of a city. Moreover, terrorists usually target heavily popu-
lated areas, especially those associated with a symbol of power or
wealth, such as military headquarters or corporate offices.
Towns likewise suffer explosions from fuel processing and storage.
In addition, agricultural communities in grain-producing regions
store the grain in large silos. If the grain dust is ignited, the silos ex-
plode with spectacular, deadly violence.
The arteries of communication between inhabited areas also see
explosions. Tanker trucks on highways and tanker cars on railways
may explode if they rupture during a wreck, and leaks in pipelines
conveying natural gas and petroleum products can also lead to explo-
sions. Human-caused explosions in wilderness areas are rare, usually
the by-product of an airplane crash or military accident.

Prevention and Preparations

Preventing accidental industrial or residential explosions first re-
quires that the three minimum conditions for an explosion do not
exist. Fuels must be used, stored, and moved at conditions well below
their flash points, and ignition sources, especially sparks from ma-
chinery, must be eliminated. In some cases, oxygen levels can be low-
ered.
Additionally, the design of fuel-handling buildings and equip-
ment can ward off accidents or reduce their effects. Reinforcing
buildings, locating hazardous equipment in the center of rooms, in-
stalling water systems to douse flames, venting rooms to the outside
environment, and installing grating rather than solid decks all can
serve to contain, suppress, or dispel an explosion’s destructive force.
Locating critical structures, such as storage tanks and processing
plants, far from one another prevents secondary explosions. Auto-
matic shutdown sensors on pipelines and temperature sensors in ov-
ens, boilers, and processing machinery can eliminate the conditions
for an explosion.
Government agencies, insurance companies, public utilities, and

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Explosions

private contractors offer risk analysis of existing structures and equip-

ment and may recommend safety improvements. Experts point out,
however, that technology alone cannot prevent accidents. Human er-
ror accounts for about 60 percent of accidental explosions. Proper
training in handling and storing materials is therefore essential, both
for workers on the job and people at home. Especially important is
knowing how to avoid an accidental ignition.
Because explosive materials are usually highly toxic, preventive
measures must also safeguard pollution of the environment. Fuels—
in gas, liquid, or solid form—ejected from an explosion can poison
wildlife and even lead to further explosions. For this reason, thor-
ough cleanup of a disaster site is important.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Immediately following a disastrous explosion, rescue workers have
three paramount tasks: stopping fires, ensuring the injured are lo-
cated and receive adequate medical care, and evacuating anyone
who is threatened by the explosion’s aftermath. All three tasks in-
volve substantial risks.
An explosion of petroleum products or a natural gas leak often
leaves some of the fuel unignited. This can form pools or, if it is a gas,
collect in sewers or low-lying areas. Fires started by the initial detona-
tion may then ignite the leftover fuel after rescuers have entered the
disaster zone, placing them in peril. Likewise, buildings damaged in
the explosion may look safe but then suddenly collapse as rescue
workers search for survivors. Digging survivors from building rubble
poses similar hazards and must be conducted with utmost care. De-
bris, disturbed by digging, may suddenly settle or shift, killing those
trapped below and injuring rescuers.
Most industrial plants and surrounding cities maintain evacuation
plans for disasters. The plans prescribe the areas to be cleared of resi-
dents in an emergency; who is to perform the evacuation; and places
to set up emergency medical facilities, temporary lodging, and kitch-
ens. Rescue officials allow residents back into the area only after thor-
ough inspection shows that all fires have been put out and buildings
are safe.
For small explosions, local police and firefighters conduct the res-
cue work, while medical personnel in area facilities take care of the

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 Explosions

injured. In large disasters, police, firefighters, and medical personnel

from surrounding areas may be called. In the United States, state po-
lice, the National Guard, and federal armed forces, all coordinated
by state or federal agencies, may become involved.

Impact
While uncommon, explosions cause great damage, and do so spec-
tacularly. Between January of 1995 and July of 1997, for instance, 39
industrial explosions occurred, causing an average of almost $1.5
million in damage each. In 1998, the 18 grain-dust explosions alone
cost about $30 million and killed 7 people. ANFOs have caused some
of the worst disasters in American history. In 1947, a fire broke out in
the Grandcamp, a cargo ship docked near the Monsanto Chemical
Company factory in Texas City. The crew could not extinguish it, and
2,500 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in its hold, also igniting
the same cargo in a nearby ship. The factory was destroyed, as well as
two-thirds of the buildings in Texas City. More than 500 people died.
ANFOs also appeal to terrorists because they are cheap and relatively
easy to obtain. In 1995, a truck full of ANFOs tore apart the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 169 people.
Because of industrial accidents, state and federal legislators en-
acted regulations designed to minimize the danger of explosions
and, should one occur, to safeguard life and property. The building
codes, procedures, and technological measures that implement the
regulations increase immediate production costs to industry but, by
reducing the number of accidents, save money in the long run.
Likewise, to guard against terrorist bombs, increased control of
explosive materials, security in public buildings and airports, and
surveillance costs taxpayers billions of dollars. Measures to protect
against accidental or terrorist explosions, critics maintain, make soci-
ety ever more dependent upon technology and security forces, and
to some degree affect individual liberty.

Historical Overview
Explosions occur when there is a pressure differential on either side
of a barrier or when inherently unstable chemicals ignite. A few ex-
plosions are entirely a result of natural situations. This is the case with
volcanoes, a portion of whose cone may explode upon eruption, as

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Explosions

was the case when Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, but
most are the consequence of human-made structures. The startling
increase in human ability to create artificial structures since the onset
of the Industrial Revolution is responsible for most of the memorable
explosions in history.
Among the earliest explosions that caused a significant loss of life
were those occurring in mines, especially coal mines, where large ac-
cumulations of coal gas could arise. When most coal mining was at or
near the surface, this was not a problem, but as mines were sunk
deeper into the earth, as happened in the nineteenth century, the
risk of explosion increased. Explosions in British coal mines killed
1.2 miners for every 1,000 employed between 1850 and 1870. How-
ever, the introduction of new machinery and government regulation
dramatically reduced the number of accidents and fatalities in British
mines in the twentieth century.
Coal mining in the United States expanded less quickly than in
Great Britain because the United States had ample wood fuel for a
longer period of time. However, from the middle of the nineteenth
century, coal production grew rapidly, especially for industrial uses.
Between 1900 and the U.S. entrance into World War I in 1917, there
were 14 mine disasters in the United States in which more than 100
people died. One of the worst mining disasters in U.S. history oc-
curred in March, 1947, in Centralia, Illinois, when 111 miners were
killed. In the United States, the shift to other fuels in the years after
World War II, as well as the shift away from shaft mining to open-face
mining, dramatically reduced the risk in coal mining. Coal mining in
underdeveloped countries is highly labor intensive, and when explo-
sions occur the loss of life is substantial. An explosion at the Chasnala
coal mine in India on December 27, 1975, killed 431 miners.
Among the most spectacular explosions occurring in the United
States in the early years of the nineteenth century were those on
steamboats, especially those plying the midwestern rivers. The first
major steamboat disaster on the midwestern river system occurred in
1816, when the Washington blew up on a trip between Wheeling, West
Virginia, and Marietta, Ohio. The second occurred in May, 1817,
when the Constitution blew up on the lower Mississippi River. Most
steamboat explosions were attributed at the time to the preference
for high-pressure steam engines on these rivers, but the fascination of

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 Explosions

the public with the speed of travel they provided (compared to horse-
drawn land transportation) led to much overcrowding on the steam-
boats, partly accounting for the high number of casualties when ex-
plosions occurred. In 1848, the U.S. Commissioner of Patents esti-
mated that 110 lives had been lost annually to steamboat explosions
since l830.
After the introduction of regulation of steamboats by the federal
government in l852, the number of explosions dropped somewhat.
Still, a catastrophic explosion occurred in April of 1865, when the
Sultana blew up near Memphis, Tennessee, taking the lives of l,500
people. This was the worst steamboat explosion in U.S. history. After
that, as railroads replaced steamboats, casualties dropped dramati-
cally.
The increase in the use of military explosives from the middle of
the nineteenth century onward led to many explosions of munitions.
The most spectacular munitions explosion occurred during World
War I, when two munitions ships collided in the harbor of Halifax,
Nova Scotia, Canada; the resulting explosion and fire killed about
2,000 people. A similar event in July, 1944, in Port Chicago, Califor-
nia, killed more than 300. In 1947, an explosion of a Norwegian ves-
sel carrying nitrate outside Brest, France, killed 20 people and in-
jured 500. An explosion at a naval torpedo and mine factory in Cadiz,
Spain, also in 1947, killed 300 to 500 people. The same year, on April
16, a French vessel exploded in Texas City, Texas, killing 581.
The oil and gas industry has also experienced some major explo-
sions. One of the most deadly was an explosion on the Piper Alpha oil
rig in the North Sea, July 6, 1988; 167 people died. In September of
1998 an explosion at a gas plant in Australia killed only 2 persons but
shut down the plant and cut off gas supplies to the entire state of Vic-
toria for more than a week.
Although casualties have generally been few because few workers
are involved, periodic explosions occur in grain elevators. On June 8,
1998, a Kansas grain elevator exploded, killing 6 workers trapped in a
small tunnel.
The most fearsome explosion of the twentieth century was the
meltdown at the Russian atomic-energy plant at Chernobyl on April
25-26, 1986. Several explosions blew off the steel cover on the reactor,
permitting the release of large amounts of radioactive material into

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Explosions

the atmosphere. Prevailing winds carried this radioactive material

over much of Eastern Europe. The entire reactor was shut down after
the accident; 32 people were killed in the explosion.
Roger Smith
Nancy M. Gordon

Bibliography
Bodurtha, Frank. Industrial Explosion Prevention and Protection. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. For readers sophisticated in science, this
book offers a technical discussion of how industrial products—
mainly gases—can ignite and how to prevent accidents.
Brown, G. I. The Big Bang: A History of Explosives. Gloucestershire, En-
gland: Sutton, 1998. Brown summarizes the history of explosives
and their use, from gunpowder to nuclear bombs.
Cleary, Margot Keam. Great Disasters of the Twentieth Century. New York:
Gallery Books, 1990. A somewhat grisly picture book (mostly
black-and-white photographs) of natural and human-caused disas-
ters, accompanied by descriptive text.
Crowl, Daniel A. Understanding Explosions. New York: Center for Chem-
ical Process Safety of the American Institute of Chemical Engi-
neers, 2003. Explains the many different types of explosions and
offers practical methods to prevent them from occurring.
Davis, Lee. Man-Made Catastrophes: From the Burning of Rome to the
Lockerbie Crash. New York: Facts On File, 1993. Brief descriptions of
various types of disasters illustrating, according to the author, how
human folly and carelessness wreak havoc.
Fires and Explosives. Vol. 7 in The Associated Press Library of Disasters.
Danbury, Conn.: Grolier Educational, 1998. Drawn from the story
and photograph files of the Associated Press, this volume, written
for young readers, tells about famous explosions worldwide.
Rossotti, Hazel. Fire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. A com-
pellingly written history of fire and explosives that explains the ba-
sic science and discusses types of disasters, as well as practical uses.

100
Famines
Factors involved: Geography, human activity, rain,
temperature, weather conditions
Regions affected: All

Definition
Famines recur periodically in many parts of the world, most devastat-
ingly in heavily populated arid and semiarid regions that rely on rain-
fall for the production of food. Famines are less deadly in modern
times because of transportation improvements and international re-
lief capacities.

Science
The most common cause of famine is drought, although other
weather conditions can cause famine conditions by inhibiting pro-
duction of food. Severe cold late into a planting season, for instance,
can reduce harvests substantially, as can excessive rains during the
planting, growing, and harvesting seasons. Excessive rain tends to
stimulate the growth of molds and blights, which can severely dam-
age food crops. The Irish potato famine of 1845-1849 is an example
of this kind of phenomenon. More often than not, however, weather-
induced famines are a function of lack of precipitation, whether in
the form of snow or rain, in nonirrigated areas that rely on seasonal
precipitation for cultivation.
Research has shown that regional and global weather patterns
are responsible for cyclical periods of drought in many parts of the
world. The El Niño and La Niña phenomena, for instance, are
known to affect weather patterns throughout the world. When the
Pacific Ocean heats up, as it does in fairly regular cycles along the
equator several hundred miles off the western coast of South Amer-
ica, moisture evaporates into the atmosphere and surges to the east
in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing moisture-laden storms in its
wake. Moisture in the Southern Hemisphere tends to head away
from South America. In 1997, flooding related to El Niño struck as
far away as the horn of Africa, where unseasonably heavy rains
caused considerable damage in Somalia. El Niño periods are fol-

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Famines

Milestones
c. 3500 b.c.e.: The first known references of famine are recorded in
Egypt.
436 b.c.e.: Thousands of Romans prefer drowning in the Tiber to
starvation.917-918 c.e.: Famine strikes northern India as uncounted
thousands die.
1064-1072: Egypt faces starvation as the Nile fails to flood for seven
consecutive years.
1200-1202: A severe famine across Egypt kills more than 100,000;
widespread cannibalism is reported.
1235: An estimated 20,000 inhabitants of London die of starvation.
1315-1317: Central Europe, struck by excessive rains, experiences
crop failures and famine.
1320-1352: Europe is stricken by the bubonic plague, which induces
famine, claiming more than 40 million lives.
1333-1337: Famine strikes China, and millions die of starvation.
1557: Severe cold and excessive rain causes famine in the Volga re-
gion of Russia.
1769: Drought-induced famine kills millions in the Bengal region of
India.
1845-1849: Ireland’s potato famine leads to death of over 1 million
and the emigration of more than 1 million Irish.
1876-1878: Drought strikes India, leaving about 5 million dead.
1876-1879: China experiences a drought that leaves 10 million or
more dead.
1921-1922: Famine strikes the Soviet Union, which pleads for interna-
tional aid; Western assistance saves millions, but several million die.
1932-1934: Communist collectivization schemes in the Soviet Union
precipitate famine; an estimated 5 million die.
1959-1962: As many as 30 million die in Communist China as a result
of the Great Leap Forward famine.
1967-1969: The Biafran civil war in Nigeria leads to death of 1.5 mil-
lion Biafrans because of starvation.
1968-1974: The Sahel drought leads to famine; international aid lim-
its deaths to about a half million.

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 Famines

1975-1979: Khmer Rouge policies of genocide provoke famine in

Cambodia; more than 1 million die of starvation.
1984-1985: Drought in Ethiopia, the Sahel, and southern Africa en-
dangers more than 20 million Africans, but extensive international
aid helps to mitigate the suffering.
1992-1994: Civil war sparks famine in Somalia, where hundreds of
thousands die before international efforts restore food supplies.

lowed by La Niña. The waters of the equatorial Pacific cool down,

and, where once moisture-laden storms coursed across the land,
sunbaked days follow.
Although drought is a natural phenomenon that lies beyond the
control of human science and policy, the activities of human beings
combine with natural conditions to worsen droughts. For instance,
deforestation reduces the capacity of foliage and land to absorb
water, which leads to silting of rivers. The wind and water erosion
brought about by deforestation deplete topsoil needed for cultivation.
The loss of land for agriculture inhibits growth of the food supply,
placing populations at risk, especially during prolonged droughts.
Similarly, when land is overcultivated or overgrazed, it becomes less
productive. In Bangladesh, where extensive deforestation has oc-
curred, especially in the Himalayas, large-scale death occurs because
of both floods and drought, whereas in the Philippines, where defor-
estation has been less extensive, mortality is not nearly as great, al-
though the frequency of monsoons is about the same for both coun-
tries.
Apart from patterns of cultivation and deforestation, which are
human-made contributing factors to drought, other human-made
factors sometimes operating alone or in concert with drought condi-
tions can cause famine. International and civil wars, for example, can
inhibit production of food. A prolonged war can wreak havoc on agri-
cultural production, inducing a largely human-made famine. Gov-
ernment policies that increase food prices can cause localized famine
in regions where people have too little money to buy food. Govern-
mental export of food crops is known to have caused famines by re-
ducing domestic food resources.

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Famines

Geography
Almost any part of the globe can be subject to famine, but some areas
are more prone than others. Famines rarely occur, despite periodic
drought, in the Western Hemisphere. Centuries ago, the populations
of North and South America were predominantly nomadic. When
faced with localized drought, nomads responded by migration. When
widespread and prolonged drought occurred in the American South-
west, the thriving Anasazi people eventually migrated elsewhere. Gen-
erally, peoples in the Americas relied on a variety of crops, some fairly
resistant to drought, for food. Moreover, the Americas were sparsely
populated, so that widespread famine was less likely. Many areas were
well watered, and rivers rising from mountain ranges provided water
resources to the widely scattered populations, even in arid regions.
Historically, the continents most susceptible to drought include
Europe, Asia, and Africa, where larger concentrations of population
often subsisted on arid or semiarid lands more prone to drought.
With larger populations, overcultivation of land and deforestation
are more common, and these regions became even more susceptible
to drought. Several consecutive years of poor rains could provoke
widespread and devastating famine. Today, Europe, though still lia-
ble to drought, rarely experiences famine. Owing to its highly devel-
oped economies with agriculturally diverse production and extensive
transportation capacities, famine has been eliminated as a major con-
cern in Europe. Asia and Africa, however, remain highly susceptible
to both drought and famine. Asia is heavily populated, and successive
years of drought can severely limit food production. North Korea
in the late 1990’s experienced severe drought and famine. Africa,
though less heavily populated than Asia, has seen dramatic popula-
tion growth for several decades, and in semiarid zones, such as the
Sahel region, overcultivation and overgrazing has placed extensive
areas of land into highly fragile, drought-prone zones. Coupled with
this, Africa, like parts of Asia, has experienced widespread political
instability and civil war, which have exacerbated drought-related con-
ditions and contributed to famine.

Prevention and Preparations

Although it is not yet possible for humans to prevent drought or to
manipulate weather conditions that lead to drought, it is possible to

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 Famines

predict droughts, to prepare for them, and to prevent famine. Be-

cause famine is normally a function of prolonged drought, there is
usually plenty of warning before famines begin. The same satellite
technology that allows meteorologists to predict weather can be used
to prepare long-term forecasts. Remote-sensing satellite imagery can
document the progress of deforestation and predict crop produc-
tion.
Social science also comes to humanity’s aid. When drought has ex-
isted for a year, farmers and livestock owners tend to sell off herds in
order to buy food. Similarly, the next year’s seed may be consumed in
the first year of a drought by farmers who then sell livestock for the
purchase of more seed. Yet another year of drought can put produc-
ers at immediate risk of starvation.
Migration patterns also suggest where the effects of drought are
being felt most acutely. By paying close attention to these indicators,
governments and international agencies are in a good position to
know when famine is likely to make an appearance. If a country is fur-
ther troubled by civil wars or regional violence, then famine is likely
to be more acute and possibly highly localized.
Given the well-documented factors that contribute to famine and
the attention the international community has given to early warning
in the past several decades, there is no reason for famine to break out
unannounced. Predicting the localities of famine is one thing, how-
ever, and taking steps to prepare for a famine is quite another. Often,
local governments or neighboring governments are reluctant to ask
for food and other emergency supplies for fear of precipitating popu-
lation movements that might be forestalled with good rains. Some-
times, governments are quite willing to overlook famine conditions
in areas of their countries controlled by opposition rebel groups. In
addition, well-meaning international food aid can actually depress
prices for homegrown foods, thereby giving local farmers even less
incentive to produce much beyond their subsistence needs. While
governments take the primary responsibility for prevention of fam-
ine, international agencies have been established within the United
Nations system to monitor famine emergencies. The United Nations
Disaster Relief Organization did so until the early 1990’s, and it was
succeeded by the U.N. Department for Humanitarian Affairs and
later by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Af-

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Famines

fairs (UNOCHA), which coordinates a variety of intergovernmental,

governmental, and nongovernmental agencies dedicated to provi-
sion of disaster aid. There is increasing awareness, however, that all
such measures are highly remedial and that the most significant fac-
tor in preventing famine is the broader development of national
economies.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

The existence of U.N. organizations for the prevention and mitiga-
tion of humanitarian disasters such as famine, when coupled with the
phenomenal growth of private humanitarian agencies and the re-
sources of wealthier donor nations, has substantially reduced mor-
tality in modern droughts and famines. In the latter half of the twen-
tieth century, despite the fact that global population more than
doubled, mortality during famines rarely exceeded a few hundred
thousand, whereas in previous decades and centuries famine often
claimed millions of lives. This decline in famine-related deaths is due
in large part to the global nature of modern communication and
transportation systems, wider public awareness of famine emergen-
cies, the existence of agencies dedicated to the prevention of famine,
and to the emergence of disaster mitigation agencies within and
among governments.
Within the U.N. system, apart from UNOCHA, the United Na-
tions High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) often provides as-
sistance to people who have fled persecution and natural disasters
such as drought and famine. The United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) is also very active in famine situations, providing food and
medical attention to children who are victims of famine; the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP) is similarly involved in fam-
ine detection and prevention programs. The World Food Program
(WFP) provides food aid to areas experiencing food deficits, and
a private agency, the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) often provides relief in famine areas, especially those where
civil war is a factor.
Nongovernmental organizations such as Oxford Committee for
Famine Relief (Oxfam), Cooperative for American Relief to Every-
where (CARE), Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Save the
Children, and countless other agencies are heavily engaged in the

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 Famines

provision of both long-term development and humanitarian aid. The

U.S. government’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and
its parent organization, the U.S. Agency for International Develop-
ment, are engaged in the provision of emergency famine aid and pro-
longed development assistance. Likewise, the U.S. Department of
States Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration provides
emergency assistance to populations in distress. Most governments
have similar kinds of agencies to provide managerial capacity for re-
sponse to famine emergencies. Sometimes the military establish-
ments of countries are in a position to bring their logistical capabili-
ties to bear when famines rage out of control and demand immediate
and extensive food delivery. With a truly global famine mitigation sys-
tem now in existence, there is little reason, other than political ne-
glect, for famine to cause extensive starvation and death.

Impact
Famines affect more people than any other form of disaster. Al-
though fewer people die from famine today than in previous centu-
ries, it is still not unusual for a famine in a very poor country or in a
country experiencing civil war to affect millions and kill hundreds of
thousands. Famines can wipe out whole villages and destroy regions.
The impact of prolonged famines and civil discontent is felt much
more strongly in poor countries than in wealthy ones, where capaci-
ties and infrastructure to respond to localized drought is far more de-
veloped. Famine kills people in poor countries, not rich ones, which
leads most scholars to conclude that long-term economic develop-
ment is the single most effective way to prevent famine and mitigate
its effects.

Historical Overview
Famine has occurred with great regularity and deadliness through-
out history. Even in ancient times, it was greatly feared. Along with
death, war, and pestilence, famine is portrayed in the Bible as one of
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the New Testament book of
Revelation, where the rider on the black horse carries scales to indi-
cate the scarcity of grain and the need for it to be carefully weighed.
References to famine are also frequently found in the Old Testa-
ment. Genesis describes famine as reasons for Abraham, Isaac, and

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Famines

Jacob at different times to migrate from Canaan to Egypt, and the

story of Jacob’s son, Joseph, indicates that famine had also struck
Egypt. Ancient Egyptian records and art indicate that famine was a
noteworthy reality of the land along the Nile. It is common even to-
day, when famines attain great magnitude, to speak of a famine of
“biblical proportions.”
Famines occur when a widespread shortage of food causes malnu-
trition, starvation, and death. Famines are commonly associated with
civil wars and conflicts in which food supplies are interrupted, as well
as with prolonged droughts that limit food production. A population
facing famine and malnutrition is often highly susceptible to disease.
Thus, the biblical association of famine with war, pestilence, and
death is based on empirical reality. The historical record testifies to
this association.
The earliest known reference to famine was in Egypt around 3500
b.c.e. Egypt is situated in a very arid zone, and it depends on the reg-
ular flow of the Nile and the seasonal flooding that permits regular
planting and harvesting, which in turn depends upon monsoonal
rains in the highlands of East Africa. When the rains fail, so does the
regular flow of the Nile, thus threatening agriculture. Parts of China,
India, the great steppes of Russia, and the Sahel region of Africa are
likewise prone to periodic droughts, and thus to famine. Even areas
that are normally well watered can be subject to occasional drought,
however, and they may put local populations at risk of famine. A tra-
ditional means of coping with localized drought and famine is migra-
tion to areas where food is more plentiful. This, in turn, has provoked
conflict among migrants, however.
The consistently largest and most frequent famines have occurred
in China and India, countries that have always had very large popula-
tions. Areas with large populations that rely heavily on monsoonal
rains for agricultural production are particularly vulnerable to large-
scale famine when several successive years of drought occur. The
most devastating famines in modern times have occurred in China.
As many as 13 million people perished in the great famine of 1876-
1879, during which people sold their children or resorted to canni-
balism. During about the same time span, an estimated 5 million peo-
ple died in India from famine, as drought affected much of Asia. In
the twentieth century, famine related to Communist China’s Great

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Leap Forward occurred between 1959 and 1962, when it is estimated

by some that as many as 30 million died. The largest death toll owing
to famine in history occurred during the Black Death of 1320-1352,
in which over 40 million are estimated to have perished either from
disease or from starvation resulting from disrupted agriculture.
While drought is a major cause of famine, sometimes too much
rain can lead to famine by interrupting harvests or destroying crops.
This was the case in Europe from 1315 to 1317; bad weather in Ire-
land from 1845 to 1847 contributed to the blight of the potato crop,
the death of 1 million Irish, and the migration of more than 1 mil-
lion. The Great Irish Famine was also a function of British economic
policy, because wheat exports continued from Ireland to Great Brit-
ain during the potato famine, and little was done to divert such food
stocks to the starving.
Famine rarely occurs in modern times in wealthy, industrialized
countries. Rather, it tends to be associated with poverty in the Third
World, where subsistence farming is still the means of livelihood for
millions. Thus, Africa and Asia still experience much famine, which
is also a result of their being prone to political instability and civil war.
Diverse food sources and less extensive population in much of South
America and the Western Hemisphere generally prevent these re-
gions from being prone to famine. Moreover, the emergence of in-
ternational assistance agencies and foreign food aid have mitigated
famine emergencies even in the more drought-prone areas of Africa
and Asia in modern times, thus substantially reducing mortality.
Robert F. Gorman

Bibliography
Aptekar, Lewis. Environmental Disasters in Global Perspective. New York:
G. K. Hall, 1994. This is a trim and useful volume concerning the
definition of natural disasters and their prevention and mitiga-
tion.
Cuny, Frederick C. Famine, Conflict and Response: A Basic Guide. West
Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press, 1999. Cuny, a noted humanitar-
ian relief worker who disappeared in Chechnya in 1995, offers
long-term solutions to famine by identifying its causes and pro-
moting the efficient use of resources during a crisis.
Curtis, Donald, Michael Hubbard, and Andrew Shepherd. Preventing

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Famines

Famine: Policies and Prospects for Africa. London: Routledge, 1988.

An anthology of case studies, this book draws largely from African
settings concerning the early detection and prevention of famine.
Field, John Osgood, ed. The Challenge of Famine: Recent Experience, Les-
sons Learned. West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press, 1993. This is
a fine collection of critiques of famine responses in several African
cases.
Varnis, Stephen. Reluctant Aid or Aiding the Reluctant: U.S. Food Aid Pol-
icy and Ethiopian Famine Relief. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction,
1990. This volume combines balance and careful documentation
of the political obstacles preventing timely famine relief.
Von Braun, Joachim, Tesfaye Teklu, and Patrick Webb. Famine in Af-
rica: Causes, Responses, and Prevention. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1999. Presents the results of field work and other
research from various regions. Explains the factors that cause fam-
ines and assesses efforts to mitigate and prevent them.

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Fires
Factors involved: Chemical reactions, geography,
human activity, weather conditions, wind
Regions affected: All

Definition
Fires occur throughout the world as a result of many causes. They can
inflict devastating damage to natural environments, cities, and build-
ings, causing billions of dollars in damage. Large fires may be accom-
panied by many deaths and injuries to people and animals.

Science
Fire occurs through the process of combustion. Combustion is an
exothermic, self-sustaining, chemical reaction usually involving the
oxidation of a fuel by oxygen in the atmosphere. Emission of heat,
light, and mechanical energy, such as sound, usually occurs. An exo-
thermic reaction is one in which the new substances produced have
less energy than the original substances. This means that there is en-
ergy in various forms produced in the reaction. In fires, the energy is
released primarily as heat and light.
A fuel is a material that will burn. In most environments, carbon is
a constituent element. Many typical fuels must undergo a process
called pyrolysis before they will burn. Wood, for example, exists in
many buildings in the form of furniture and framing to support the
walls and roof. In its normal condition, wood does not burn. It must
be broken down through the application of heat into its constituent
elements before it can be oxidized. This is the process of pyrolysis.
Oxidation is a chemical reaction in which an oxidizing agent and a
reducing agent combine to form a product with less energy than the
original materials. The oxygen is usually obtained from the air. The
fuel is the reducing agent. For the process to begin, a source of heat
must be applied to the fuel. This heat is needed to raise the tempera-
ture of the material to its ignition point, or the lowest temperature at
which it will burn. Ignition can occur from a variety of natural and hu-
man sources. Electric wires or appliances can come in contact with com-
bustible materials, raising their temperature. Natural sources such as

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Fires

Milestones
64 c.e.: Much of the city burns during the Great Fire of Rome.
March, 1657: The Meireki Fire destroys Edo (now Tokyo), Japan, kill-
ing more than 100,000 people.
1666: In the Great Fire of London, about 436 acres of the city burn,
eliminating the Great Plague.
1679: Fire burns portions of the city of Boston.
1788: New Orleans burns.
1812: Moscow is set on fire by troops of Napoleon I.
1814: Washington, D.C. is burned by occupying British troops.
1842: Most of the city of Hamburg, Germany, burns, leaving 100
dead.
May 4, 1850: Fire burns large portions of the city of San Francisco.
May 3-4, 1851: San Francisco again experiences large fires; 30 die.
December 24, 1851: The Library of Congress is burned.
October 8, 1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire affects a large area in north-
ern Wisconsin; 1,200 are killed, and 2 billion trees are burned.
October 8-10, 1871: The Great Chicago Fire leaves 250 dead and
causes $200 million in damage.
November 9-10, 1872: The Great Boston Fire kills 13, destroys 776
buildings, and causes $75 million in damage.
April 18-19, 1906: A fire follows the magnitude 8.3 earthquake in San
Francisco.
November 13, 1909: A fire breaks out in the Cherry Mine in Illinois,
trapping and killing 259 miners.
1910: Wildfires rage throughout the U.S. West in the most destructive
fire year in U.S. history to date.
March 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occurs in New
York City; 145 employees, mostly young girls, die.
November 28, 1942: The Cocoanut Grove nightclub burns in Boston,
killing 491.
July, 1943: Hamburg, Germany, is destroyed, mostly by fires caused by
incendiary bombing; 60,000-100,000 are killed.
1945: A large section of Oregon forest ignites in the third in a series of
wildfires known as the Tillamook burn.

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 Fires

February 13, 1945: 25,000 die in the firebombing of Dresden.

March 9, 1945: Incendiary bombs destroy 25 percent of Tokyo.
November 21, 1980: A fire in the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas kills
84.
Summer, 1988: Fires affect some 1.2 million acres in Yellowstone Na-
tional Park and other western forests.
September, 3, 1991: A chicken-processing plant in North Carolina
burns, killing 25 workers.
October 19-21, 1991: Wildfires burn much of Oakland Hills, Califor-
nia; 25 die.
April 19, 1993: A cult compound in Waco, Texas, is destroyed by fire.
July 4-10, 1994: A Glenwood Springs, Colorado, forest fire kills 14
firefighters.
April 15, 1997: A fire at a tent city outside Mecca, Saudi Arabia, costs
300 lives.
January-March, 1998: Large forest fires burn in Indonesia, sickening
thousands; 234 die in a Garuda Indonesia plane crash caused by poor
visibility from smoke.
October 21-November 4, 2003: Warm winds fuel at least 12 wildfires
that burn simultaneously across Southern California; 22 die, 80,000
are displaced, and 3,500 homes are destroyed.

lightning can start wildfires. People can deliberately start fires using an
accelerant; arson is responsible for many fires throughout the world.
Three factors are necessary for a fire to begin. They are illustrated
as the fire triangle of heat, fuel, and oxygen. A fire with these three el-
ements will be a glowing fire. For self-sustaining combustion to occur,
a fourth factor, a chain reaction, must be added to the original three
factors. This converts the fire triangle to a fire tetrahedral, or four-
sided pyramid. A chain reaction occurs when the heat produced by
the fire is enough not only to burn the fuel but also to preheat the
next segment of fuel so that the fire can grow. As long as the rate of
heat production is greater than the rate at which heat is dissipated to
the surroundings, more fuel can be ignited and the fire will spread.
When the heat produced by the fire is dissipated to the surroundings,
the fire will gradually decay.

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Fires

A fire will continue until the available fuel is consumed, the avail-
able oxygen is used, the flames are extinguished by cooling, or the
number of excited molecules is reduced. Fire extinguishment and
prevention strategies are aimed at breaking or removing one leg of
the fire triangle or tetrahedral.
In most fires, either the action of a person or an act of nature, such
as a lightning strike or earthquake, are required to bring the factors
together for a fire to start. The act of a person may be deliberate, as in
the case of arson; accidental, as in the case of someone falling asleep
in bed with a lighted cigarette; or an act of omission, such as a build-
ing not being constructed in a safe manner.
There are two basic kinds of fires. A fuel-controlled fire is one that
has an adequate amount of oxygen but has limited contact with fuel.
A ventilation-controlled fire has access to adequate amounts of fuel
but has limited contact with oxygen. The National Fire Protection
Agency (NFPA) has classified four types of fires. Type A fires involve
ordinary combustibles such as wood, paper, cloth, or fiber; they can
be extinguished with water or foam. Type B fires involve flammable
liquids, such as hot grease, paints, thinners, gasoline, oil, or other liq-
uid fuels; they can be extinguished with a chemical foam or carbon
dioxide. Type C fires, electrical fires, can be extinguished with a
nonconducting extinguishing agent such as carbon dioxide or a dry
chemical. Type D fires involve flammable metals, such as magnesium
or sodium alloys, and they can be put out by smothering with a dry
powder with a sodium chloride or graphite base.
Four basic mechanisms of heat transfer are involved in fires. Con-
vection is heat transfer within a fluid. In most fires, this occurs within
the air. As a fluid is heated, its molecules become less dense and rise.
Air at normal density will move into the area of heat, replacing the
less dense air that has risen. As this air is heated, it will also rise. This
explains the natural movement of fire gases and smoke from lower
areas to higher ones. Conduction is heat transfer between two bodies
in direct contact with each other. Heat can be transferred through
the molecules in a wall by conduction.
A combination of convection and conduction occurs between a
solid and a fluid at their boundary. Radiant heat transfer involves
heat transfer by electromagnetic waves across distances. A surface,
such as a wall, that has been heated by a fire can transfer radiant heat

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across the room to heat another wall surface or a person’s skin even if
there is no direct contact. This process occurs in the same way that
the heat energy from the sun is transferred to the earth across mil-
lions of miles of space. The fourth form of heat transfer involved in
fires is latent heat transfer. Latent heat is the heat that is involved in
the change of state of a substance. In a fire, water used as an extin-
guishing agent will be converted to steam, absorbing large quantities
of heat energy as it changes from a liquid to a gas.
A conflagration is a fire that spreads over some distance, often a
portion of a city or a town. A large group fire spreads from building to
building within a complex of buildings. The number of conflagra-
tions and large group fires were substantially reduced in the twenti-
eth century. This decrease is attributed to building codes that require
fire-resistant construction of the exterior walls and roofs of buildings
in cities, modern fire-department capabilities to extinguish fires, ade-
quate urban water systems that have large quantities of water avail-
able for fire extinguishment, and limits on openings between build-
ings that are located close to one another.
Three main types of conflagrations have occurred since 1950. The
first are urban/wild land interface fires. An urban/wild land inter-
face is the area where an urban or suburban area adjoins the natural
or undeveloped environment. Fires may start in the wild land and be
driven by strong winds and available combustibles into residential or
urban areas over a large fire front that cannot be extinguished. The
Oakland Hills fire of 1991 is an example of this type of fire. These
fires were the most prevalent type of conflagration in the 1990’s.
Conflagrations also occur in “congested combustible districts.”
These fires are typical of urban conflagrations before the 1900’s,
when the need for streets wide enough for automobiles changed the
character of cities around the world. The congested combustible dis-
trict is one with narrow streets lined with continuous buildings. The
Great Boston Fire of 1872 is an example of this type of fire.
Third, conflagrations can be driven by strong winds among
houses with wood shingles or other flammable roofing materials.
These fires often occur in the southwestern United States. Last, large
group fires often occur in old manufacturing districts, where the
buildings are abandoned or are poorly maintained. The fire in
Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1908 is an example of this type of fire.

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Fires

Geography
Fires occur in all geographic regions of the world. Air as a source of
oxygen is available in all environments that support human habita-
tion. Fuels are also present in every environment. The trees and
grasses in natural environments will become fuels for wildfires; the
furnishings in homes, the materials used in the construction of many
buildings, and the clothes people wear are all potential fuels in the
presence of heat.
Most fires occur outdoors. These are often called wildfires or
brushfires. Fires can occur in forests, grasslands, and farms (crop
fires). Wildfires can be started either by an act of nature, such as a
lightning strike, or by human actions. Many wildfires are started by
accident or by carelessness. Examples of this include leaving a camp-
fire unattended or discarding smoking materials through the win-
dow of a car into a natural area.
Trash fires, or the burning of debris in land clearings, can also
spread beyond the point of origin. Forest management personnel of-
ten direct controlled burns in natural areas to burn underbrush, con-
sume fallen limbs and dead plants, and rejuvenate the forest eco-
system. This practice is thought to reduce the hazard of wildfires
because a large amount of fuel is consumed in a controlled manner.
There are dangers, however, as in the May, 2000, fire in Los Alamos,
New Mexico, in which a controlled burn grew into a major con-
flagration and destroyed hundreds of homes.
Most deaths and injuries from fire occur in homes and garages.
Historically, there have also been large numbers of deaths and inju-
ries in public buildings, such as theaters, assembly buildings, schools,
hospitals, stores, offices, hotels, boardinghouses, dormitories, and
other community facilities. Modern building codes and construction
practices have reduced the number and severity of these fires.
The industrial environment poses many serious fire hazards. In-
dustry includes storage, manufacturing, defense, utility, and other
large-scale operations. The presence of large amounts of potential
fuel or volatile materials such as solvents in an industrial plant in a
large open building constitute a potential fire threat.
Fires may also occur in structures that are not buildings, such as
bridges, tunnels, vacant buildings, and buildings under construction.
While much public fear and awareness of fire is centered on large

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fires in public buildings, most people who are killed in fires in the
United States die in their homes or cars. Approximately 80 percent of
fire deaths and 70 percent of fire injuries occur in homes and cars.
The mobile environment is composed of trains, automobiles, air-
planes, and other transportation vehicles. Many people die or are in-
jured from fires that occur after vehicles crash or are otherwise in-
volved in accidents. However, it is important to note that only one-
sixth the number of people die in vehicle fires as die in home fires
each year.
The dangers of fire to people and property are omnipresent.
Therefore, strategies for design, fire protection, and fire prevention
must reach everywhere. Significant progress appears to have been
made in reducing fires that result in multiple deaths and large prop-
erty losses.

Prevention and Preparations

Fires can be prevented by attacking each leg of the fire triangle or tet-
rahedral. Sources of heat, particularly open flames, must be isolated
from fuels. This can be accomplished in several ways. Rooms that
contain sources of heat, such as boiler rooms, mechanical plants, and
shops, are usually built with fire-resistant enclosures to contain or
compartmentalize the building. Electric wires and electrical appli-
ances must be adequately insulated so the heat produced cannot es-
cape to building materials or furnishings.
Fuels must be limited in wild lands and buildings. Controlled
burns, described earlier, provide a method of decreasing fuels in the
natural environment. Buildings can be constructed of and furnished
with materials that are noncombustible. The amount of fuel in a
building is often expressed as the amount of combustible materials
by weight compared to an equivalent amount of wood. This is known
as a fuel load. Products used in homes and commercial buildings can
be redesigned to reduce their fire risk.
Most fires are the result of either careless or deliberate human be-
havior. Therefore, educating people about fire risks and appropriate
fire-prevention strategies is an essential element in fire prevention.
Educating the general public could potentially have the greatest im-
pact on reducing the number and severity of fires, but it is perhaps
the most difficult strategy to implement. Fire-protection authorities

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Fires

believe that to modify the behavior of the American public with re-
gard to fires requires more than a brief exposure to fire-safety educa-
tion. The NFPA has produced the “Learn Not to Burn” curriculum
material for use in schools across the United States, which consists of
a series of exercises with which teachers may teach children of the
dangers of fire, fire-prevention strategies, and methods of protecting
themselves and their families in the event of a fire. The NFPA re-
ported that in the 1990’s only a small percentage of schools actually
used this material, however.
The NFPA and many municipal fire departments regularly con-
duct community meetings and demonstrations of fire protection and
prevention techniques, distribute brochures and educational kits,
and conduct open houses during Fire Prevention Week activities.
These efforts have been aimed at emphasizing actions to prevent
fires and appropriate behaviors during fires.
Preparation for fires and protection during a fire can take several
forms. Preparing for a fire consists of maintaining buildings to have
limited fuels and heat sources. Fuels should be stored in protected ar-
eas, and electrical systems and other potential sources of heat must
be properly maintained. Access to volatile substances should be lim-
ited. A fire-detection system, such as smoke detectors with audible
and visible alarms that notify building occupants during the earliest
stages of a fire, is an essential preparation component. If the detec-
tion system is attached to an automatic suppression configuration,
such as a sprinkler system, the fire can be extinguished before it
moves beyond the area of origin, reducing its threat to people and
property. Providing fire extinguishers, standpipe systems, and other
opportunities for manual fire suppression in buildings is also neces-
sary. The fire-detection, alarm, sprinkler, and standpipe systems are
called active fire protection systems.
Maintaining a fire department with adequate personnel and equip-
ment is necessary if fires do start and are not suppressed by automatic
equipment. A community emergency notification system, such as the
911 telephone line, is required to contact the fire department quickly
to ensure that personnel can arrive at the scene with enough time to
suppress a fire and rescue people.
Buildings are required to be designed to confine fires to the area
of origin by a series of fire and smoke barriers that subdivide a build-

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ing into a series of compartments. The use of fire- and smoke-resis-

tant walls to confine fire spread is called a passive fire protection
method. Other passive fire protection strategies include limiting the
use of materials that contribute to fire growth and limiting the size of
buildings based on the relative combustibility of their construction
systems and contents.
Providing safe ways for people to leave a burning building is an es-
sential method of fire protection. The path from a point inside a
building to safety outside the building is called the means of egress.
The means of egress consists of three components. The exit access is
the unprotected path from any point in a building to an exit. This dis-
tance is limited in all buildings so people can move quickly to an exit.
An exit is a fire-resistant, smoke-resistant enclosure that leads one
from an exit access to the exit discharge, the opening that takes one
from an exit to the safety of the “public way.” An exit may be a fire
stairway in a tall building, a horizontal corridor, or doors that lead di-
rectly out of a building in a small, one-story structure. The number
and size of exits are determined by how many people will use the
building.
It is essential that the exits do not become overly congested during
fire evacuations. Fire exits must be illuminated with lights connected
to an emergency power source so that when the normal electric ser-
vice in a building is interrupted during a fire, people can still find the
exits in smoke-filled corridors. In very large buildings or in structures
such as hospitals, where people cannot be moved out of the building,
places of refuge are provided. A place of refuge is an area in a build-
ing that is protected from fire and smoke where people can move to
await rescue. Conducting fire drills in homes, schools, workplaces,
and other buildings is essential so people know how to react in the
event of a fire. Many large buildings have voice systems for someone
to provide evacuation instructions to occupants through loudspeak-
ers on each floor.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Three hazards are posed by fire: smoke inhalation, burns, and build-
ing collapse or explosion. Some of the gases present in a fire, such as
carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and carbon dioxide, are narcot-
ics or materials that cause pain or loss of consciousness. Particles and

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Fires

Firefighters monitor a wildfire carefully in order to predict its path and distribute re-
sources wisely. (FEMA)

other gases can cause irritations of the pulmonary system or eyes, ears,
and nose. Other gases, such as hydrogen chloride, are toxic in the
quantities created during a fire. The combined effects of breathing
these gases is called smoke inhalation. It is treated by removing people
to a safe environment with clean air and administering oxygen.
Injuries and death in fires are primarily caused by the effects of
smoke inhalation. Smoke consists of airborne solid and liquid partic-
ulates and gases that result from pyrolysis and combustion. The com-
bustion process is never fully complete, so there are also a number of
unburned fuel particles and gases in the smoke as well. Many of the
particles are about the same size as the wavelength of visible light.
Light is scattered by the smoke particles, making vision very difficult
in smoke-filled rooms.
Heat is another major product of the combustion process. Typical
building fires exceed temperatures of 1,000 to 1,500 degrees Fahren-
heit. Human beings cannot survive temperatures of this magnitude.

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 Fires

The skin will receive second-degree burns when exposed to tempera-

tures of 212 degrees Fahrenheit for fifteen seconds. People will go
into shock as a result of exposure to heat, irritants, and oxygen defi-
ciency experienced even at the periphery of fires. This condition can
lead to elevated heart rates that can bring on heart attacks.
Burns are classified as first, second, and third degree depending
upon the damage done to the skin. First-degree burns are character-
ized by redness, pain, and sometimes a swelling of the outermost lay-
ers of the skin. Second-degree burns usually penetrate deeper into
the skin than first-degree burns. Fluids accumulate beneath the skin,
forming blisters. The skin becomes moist and pink. Third-degree
burns result in dry, charred skin that exposes the layers beneath.
Third-degree burns are life-threatening and require special treat-
ment.
People can also be injured or die in fires as a result of collapse of
burning buildings and explosions. In some fires in large buildings
there have been reports of panicked behavior contributing to fire
deaths. The NFPA defines panic as a sudden and excessive feeling of
alarm or fear, usually affecting a number of people, which is vaguely
apprehended, originates in some real or supposed danger, and leads
to competitive, fear-induced flight in which people might trample
others in an attempt to flee. Fire investigators state that this type of
panic does not occur in many fires.
It is often very difficult for fire rescue workers to remove people
trapped in a building. In tall buildings, people must be evacuated by
ladders or helicopters to areas of safety, where initial medical evalua-
tion and treatment can occur. Rescue workers require special fire-
resistant clothing and self-contained breathing apparatus to move
into a fire scene to remove people without injuring themselves in the
process. Fire-department personnel and emergency medical techni-
cians are specially trained to remove people from fires and provide
initial first aid. For those suffering from severe smoke inhalation or
third-degree burns, special treatment is required. Many hospitals in
large metropolitan areas have special burn centers to treat severe in-
juries. There have been incidents reported in which people have
walked away from a fire scene only to die within a few days as a result
of exposure to toxic gases.
Fire department personnel stay at a fire scene until the combus-

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tion process has stopped. In a large fire, smoldering can continue un-
der a top layer of ash for some time after the fire has been apparently
extinguished, only to restart at a later time when a wind blows some
of the ash into contact with a new fuel.

Impact
The short-term effects of fire include damage to and destruction of
property, including both buildings and natural lands; injury and
death of people and animals; and a loss of homes or workplaces,
which can have a lasting impact on a community. In the United States
there are over 2.4 million reported fires each year. Many estimate that
the actual number of fires is much greater than this. There are more
than 6,000 deaths and 30,000 injuries each year from fires, resulting
in over $5.5 billion in fire losses. While there was a decrease in fire
deaths in the 1970’s and 1980’s, attributed to requirements for the in-
stallation of smoke detectors in residences, the rates remained rela-
tively constant after that time. The fire death rates in the United
States and Canada are almost twice those of other developed coun-
tries. Fire remains the second most prevalent cause of accidental
death in homes. It is the primary cause of death among children and
young adults. Most of the 6,000 fire deaths in the United States each
year occur in two segments of the population: the very young and the
elderly.

Historical Overview
Throughout the history of civilization, humans and fire have been in-
timately intertwined. Mastery of fire provided a boon to prehistoric
humans, and they used it to shape their environment. Primitive peo-
ples used fire to “drive the game,” that is, to force wild game into a
small area of concentration, where the kill was much easier. As long
as humans remained hunter-gatherers, use of fire was central to sur-
vival. Indeed, it has been suggested that the growing ability of such
people to control the wild game population led to the extinction of
many species.
When humankind converted from hunting to agriculture, fire was
equally essential, for domestic fire was needed to convert the har-
vested grains into edible food for humans. The use of fire was at the
heart of the growth in technology as well, for the manipulation of raw

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materials nearly always depended on fire: Pottery needed to be

baked to make it usable as containers, and metals needed to be
heated at ever higher temperatures to make the fluid metal that
could be transformed into usable items.
Fire is a tricky tool and requires proper management. All too of-
ten, fire escapes from the control of the humans wielding it and cre-
ates devastation. A vast number of escaped fires were certainly never
recorded: Little is known of the fire usages of Mesoamericans prior to
the arrival of Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century, although
there is archaeological evidence of their use of fire, probably in reli-
gious ceremonies. They also used it to manufacture jewelry from the
gold they found in the mountains.
One of the earliest recorded instances of uncontrolled fire was the
fire that burned much of the city of Rome during the reign of the Em-
peror Nero, in 64 c.e. Part of Nero’s unsavory reputation comes from
the story that he amused himself while the city burned and destroyed
the homes of hundreds of thousands of its citizens: “Nero fiddled
while Rome burned.”
Countless unrecorded fires must have taken place during the col-
lapse of the ancient civilization of Rome. At the time, wood was the
universal building material, especially for domestic use, and many
homes must have burned down when a cooking fire raged out of con-
trol. Occasionally such escaped domestic fires had their uses, notably
when a large portion of the city of London burned in 1666: The city’s
population had just been decimated by an epidemic of bubonic
plague, carried by rats. When the houses burned down in the Great
Fire of London, the rats burned with them, and the plague was
ended.
It is known that the indigenous peoples in America used fire ex-
tensively, both to heat their dwellings and, particularly, to modify the
environment. They used fire to clear the underbrush in the eastern
United States, where otherwise forest cover dominated the land-
scape. Fire enabled them to rid a small portion of land of trees that
they had girdled and of the brush that grew up when the trees died,
leaving them a clearing where they could plant the corn, beans, and
squash that formed an important part of their diet. They also burned
the land to eliminate underbrush within the forest, making travel
through it, as well as hunting, easier. These practices were adopted by

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Fires

the European settlers who, in any case, brought with them a tradition
of the use of fire for land management.
Fire also shaped the environment without intervention by humans.
In the parts of America where rainfall is scarce, lightning often strikes,
especially during the summer. The grasslands of the Great Plains are
believed to be largely the product of frequent widespread fires that
burned over the land often enough to prevent trees from developing.
As more American Indians were concentrated on the Great Plains, fire
was used by them to manage the great herds of buffalo that grazed
there. It was only as the Europeans began to establish settlements on
the Great Plains that efforts were made to contain the grass fires.
Meanwhile, fire had become an important tool in warfare. In an-
cient times, barricades were generally made of wood, and many at-
tempts were made to burn them by tossing burning brands into the
area under siege. The development of what came to be known as
Greek fire—material that would burst into flame on contact—made
possible a more potent use of fire in sieges. In addition, it became the
practice of conquering armies to set fire to urban centers they con-
quered. Napoleon I’s army burned Moscow in 1812, and Washing-
ton, D.C., was burned by the British in 1814. In World War II, fire
started by aerial bombardment became an important tool. Many fires
were begun in London from 1940 through 1945 as a result of Ger-
man bombardment. The Allies retaliated by setting fire to both Ham-
burg, in 1943, and Dresden, in 1945. That same year, incendiary
bombs rained down on Tokyo, burning large portions of the city.
As urban concentrations grew, the risk of fire grew with them. Por-
tions of the city of Boston burned as early as 1679. In 1788, the city of
New Orleans burned, as did the city of Hamburg in 1842. In 1850 and
again in 1851, the city of San Francisco burned. Chicago burned in
1871, allegedly when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a kerosene lan-
tern. In 1894, a part of the grounds and structures of the World Co-
lumbian Exposition in Chicago burned. Much of San Francisco
burned again following the devastating earthquake of 1906.
A number of fires in individual buildings became major disasters.
Perhaps the most infamous was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in
1911, when 145 trapped workers died. On November 28, 1942, the
Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston burned, causing 491 deaths. The
MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas burned in 1980, and 84 people died. A

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 Fires

A helicopter douses a forest fire with water, one of many methods of combating the
spread of flames. (FEMA)

chicken-processing plant in North Carolina burned on September 3,

1991, killing 25 workers. Eighty-six people died in 1993, following an
extended siege by federal agents at a cult compound in Waco, Texas.
In 2003, 100 people were killed when pyrotechnics ignited sound-
proofing foam at a club in Rhode Island during a concert.
Although the number of victims of building fires in the United
States has declined, a number of such disasters continued to occur
abroad in which the death toll exceeded 100. In 1960, a mental hospi-
tal in Guatemala City caught on fire, and 225 died. A movie theater in
Syria burned the same year, with a loss of 152 persons. The following
year, a circus caught fire in Brazil, killing more than 300. In 1971 and
1972, fires in a hotel and nightclub in South Korea and Japan, respec-
tively, each claimed more than 100 victims, as did a department store
fire in Japan in 1973.
Large congregations of people are particularly at risk. In 1975 a
fire in a tent city in Saudi Arabia resulted in the loss of 138 individu-
als; 300 pilgrims to Mecca lost their lives in a similar fire in 1997. In
1977, 164 people were killed in Kentucky when a nightclub burned,

125
Fires

as did 100 people attending a Great White concert in Rhode Island in

2003 when pyrotechnics ignited soundproofing foam. A fire at a nurs-
ing home in Jamaica resulted in the deaths of 157. In 1994, a fire in a
toy factory in Thailand killed 213 people, and the same year a theater
in China burned, with some 300 losing their lives.
Besides localized fires in buildings, wildfires have been consistent
causes of disaster, even though the loss of life has been much less dra-
matic. The most famous of these was the fire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin,
in 1871, when at least 1,200 died. Large forest fires burned the same
year in Minnesota and Michigan. In 1881 large portions of the north-
ern half of the lower peninsula of Michigan were engulfed in forest
fires. In 1894 fires broke out again in the northern, forested sections
of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, reappearing in 1908. All
these fires were a product of the heavy logging that had taken place
in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century and the first decade
of the twentieth. By 1910 the north woods of the Great Lakes states
were logged out, and the problem was transferred to the heavily tim-
bered regions to the west.
In 1910, wildfires raged throughout the West and the Midwest;
more than 6 million acres of national forestland burned, destroying
large acreages of privately owned forestland as well. That year was the
worst year in history of losses to forest fires, though it was to be rivaled
by the years 1945, 1988, and 1996.
In the dry regions of the United States, as well as elsewhere in the
world, forest and brushfires are common in drought years. Nearly ev-
ery year there are brushfires in California and in the arid Southwest,
where the brush accumulations grow rapidly. The spread of settle-
ment into these regions has heightened the risk of disaster, and there
is some evidence that arson plays a part. Aerial surveillance has
helped to reduce the risk to individuals, and local and national agen-
cies have developed new tools for fighting such conflagrations. Even
so, tragedies sometimes occur: In July of 1994, 14 firefighters lost
their lives in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, when a sudden wind gust
moved a forest fire uphill at a rate of more than 100 feet per second.
The huge forest fires that burned in and around Yellowstone Na-
tional Park in 1988 attracted the attention of the world through tele-
vision broadcasts. The United States Forest Service, which had for
more than fifty years followed a policy of fire suppression, from the

126
 Fires

massive burns of 1910 until the late 1970’s, had then changed its pol-
icy. It had become clear that, at least in the West, fire suppression, as-
sociated with the popular icon, Smokey Bear, had the effect of allow-
ing large quantities of tinder to build up in the forest. Once a fire got
started, the large amounts of fuel made it easy for the fire to expand
into a major disaster. Thus the forest service had taken a “let burn”
policy, allowing fires that did not threaten people to burn, hoping to
keep down the accumulation of brush. However, in 1988 the fires got
away from the officials in control, and the public was outraged when
more than 1 million acres burned around Yellowstone, America’s
most-visited national park.
Huge forest fires in Alaska the same year drove the total of burned
acreage to more than 3.5 million, and federal officials were forced to
revise their fire policy. There was, after 1988, a greater use of what is
called controlled burning, deliberately set fires that are confined to a
limited area, designed to eliminate the buildup of combustible mate-
rials before they create massive conflagrations.
Forest fires will continue to be a problem, especially wherever
drought conditions exist. In 1998, drought conditions in Indonesia
led to extensive wildfires, some of them escaped fires that had been
set by cultivators to open up new areas for farming. The smoke and
haze from these fires spread all over Southeast Asia. In 1996, 6 mil-
lion acres of U.S. forestland burned, the worst fire year since 1951,
when the last of the four wildfires in Oregon known collectively as the
Tillamook burn took a heavy toll.
One of the worst fire seasons in history occurred in 2000. As many
as eighty forest fires were burning at a time in thirteen states in the
western United States. Dry summer thunderstorms ignited vegeta-
tion that had not seen rain in months. Fires were responsible for
more than 6.5 million acres burned, and firefighters were recruited
from as far away as Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia. In California,
more than 70,000 acres of the Sequoia National Forest burned, along
with 25,000 acres in Idaho and 20,000 in Nevada. Montana experi-
enced its worst fire season in over fifty years, with 8 deaths from fire by
August. The federal government allotted $590 million in emergency
funds to combat the conflagrations. Because there had been few
fires—and little rain—in these areas in previous years, there was
much “fuel” for the fires in the undergrowth and vegetation.

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Fires

In the fall of 2003, Southern California experienced at least 12

wildfires that burned simultaneously from Los Angeles to San Diego.
Fueled by dry conditions and the warm winds called Santa Anas, the
fires killed 22 people and displaced 80,000 more, destroying 3,500
homes. This Fire Siege of 2003 tested local fire departments to the
limit and again highlighted the danger of urban/wild lands inter-
face. As earth’s climate warms and drought conditions occur more
frequently, more large fires are a probability.
Gary W. Siebein
Nancy M. Gordon

Bibliography
Branigan, Francis. Building Construction for the Fire Service. Quincy,
Mass.: National Fire Protection Association, 1992. This book is a
primer on fire safety in buildings, written from the perspective of
firefighters.
Cote, Arthur, ed. Fire Protection Handbook. 19th ed. Quincy, Mass.: Na-
tional Fire Protection Association, 2003. This handbook by the
leading fire-safety association in the world contains detailed chap-
ters on every aspect of fire prevention and control by leaders in
the field. It is updated continually and is the definitive work in the
area.
Cote, Arthur, and Percy Bugbee. Principles of Fire Protection. Quincy,
Mass.: National Fire Protection Association, 1995. This book by
two noted fire researchers presents a concise summary of fire prin-
ciples and fire-protection strategies.
Cottrell, William H., Jr. The Book of Fire. 2d ed. Missoula, Mont.: Moun-
tain Press, 2004. Intended for students and general readers. Ex-
plains how heat, ignition, and flame can progress to a wildfire.
Lathrop, James K., ed. Life Safety Code Handbook. 5th ed. Quincy,
Mass.: National Fire Protection Association, 1991. This is an illus-
trated annotated guide to the rules and regulations governing life
safety in buildings. It includes many illustrations on how to design
safety features in buildings.
Lyons, Paul Robert. Fire in America! Boston: National Fire Protection
Association, 1976. This book presents the history of fires in cities,
buildings, and vehicles from ancient times to modern times, in a
readable and illustrated format.

128
 Fires

Tebeau, Mark. Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800-1950. Bal-

timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Shows how the
changing practices of firefighters and fire insurers helped to
shape American cities and urban life.

129
Floods
Factors involved: Geography, human activity, plants,
rain, snow, temperature, weather conditions
Regions affected: Cities, forests, islands, mountains,
plains, rivers, towns, valleys

Definition
Floods occur when streams or rivers overflow their banks and inun-
date the adjacent floodplain. They have caused enormous destruc-
tion of property and loss of life ever since human societies settled in
large numbers along river valleys.

Science
Floods are difficult to define. This is partly because there are no natu-
ral breaks in nature and partly because flood thresholds are selected
based on human criteria, which can vary. A flood is commonly de-
fined as the result of a river overflowing its banks and spreading out
over the bordering floodplain. The scientific definition is based on
discharge, which is the volume of water moving past a given point in
the stream channel per unit of time (cubic feet per second).
Two aspects that are instrumental in flood occurrence are the
amount of surface runoff and the uniformity of runoff from differ-
ent parts of the watershed (a region that drains to a body of water). If
the response and travel times are uniform, then the flow is less likely
to result in a flood. Conversely, watersheds that have soils and bed-
rock with higher infiltration rates are prone to flooding. Flood mag-
nitude depends on the intensity, duration, and areal extent of precip-
itation in conjunction with the condition of the land. If the soils in
the watershed have been saturated due to antecedent precipitation,
the flooding potential is much greater. For example, the unusual oc-
currence of Hurricanes Connie and Diane in 1955 striking so close
together in time resulted in substantial flooding along the Delaware
River in New Jersey and Pennsylvania because the ground was already
saturated from the first storm.
Floods are caused by climatological conditions and part-climato-
logical factors. Climatological conditions include heavy rain from

130
 Floods

tropical storms and hurricanes, severe thunderstorms, midlatitude

cyclones and frontal passages, and rapid snow and ice melt. Part-
climatological factors consist of tides and storm surges in coastal ar-
eas. Other factors that may cause floods are ice- and logjam breakups,
earthquakes, landslides, and dam failures.
Flood-intensifying conditions include fixed basin characteristics,
such as area, shape, slope, aspect (north- or south-facing), and eleva-
tion; and variable basin characteristics, including water-storage ca-
pacity and transmissibility in the soil and bedrock, soil infiltration
rates, and extent of wetlands and lakes. Channel characteristics, such
as length, slope, roughness, and shape, also may intensify floods, as
may the human effects of river regulation: conjunctive use of ground-
water, interbasin transfers, wastewater release, water diversion and ir-
rigation, urbanization and increases in impervious cover, deforesta-
tion and reforestation, levees, and land drainage.
Because floods are capable of such extensive damage, knowledge
of the magnitude and frequency of these events would be very useful.
Accordingly, hydrologists use statistical methodology to obtain esti-
mates of the probability that a flood of a certain size will occur in a
given year. The estimates are based on historical stream-flow records,
and special graph paper is used. The peak discharge for each year of
record is plotted on the vertical Y-axis, which is scaled arithmetically.
The horizontal X-axis on the bottom is scaled in probability terms,
which provides the percent probability that a given discharge will be
equaled or exceeded.
The plotting position for each annual peak flow is calculated us-
ing a special equation. A straight line is drawn through the array of
data points on the graph, which then becomes a flood-frequency
graph for a location (gauging station) on a particular river. The hori-
zontal X-axis at the top of the graph provides the return period in
years (or recurrence interval), which is the inverse value of the prob-
ability percentage on the bottom X-axis. Thus, a discharge associated
with a value of 5 percent means that this discharge is expected to be
equaled or exceeded in five out of one hundred years. In this exam-
ple of a 5 percent probability value, the return period is twenty years,
implying that on the average, this particular discharge is estimated to
be equaled or exceeded once every twenty years. This frequency esti-
mate can also be called the twenty-year-flood.

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Floods

Milestones
1228: Flooding in Holland results in at least 100,000 deaths.
1333: The Arno River floods Venice, with a level of up to 14 feet (4.2
meters).
1642: More than 300,000 people die in China from flooding.
1887: The Yellow River floods, covering over 50,000 square miles of
the North China Plain. Over 900,000 people die from the floodwaters
and an additional 2 to 4 million die afterward due to flood-related
causes.
1889: A dam bursts upstream from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and the
floodwaters kill over 2,200 people.
1911: The Yangtze River in China floods, killing more than 100,000
people.
1927: Extensive flooding of the Mississippi River results in 313 deaths.
March 12, 1928: The St. Francis Dam collapses in Southern Califor-
nia, leading to about 450 deaths.
1938: Chinese soldiers are ordered to destroy the levees of the Yellow
River in order to create a flood to stop the advance of Japanese
troops. It works, but at a terrible cost to the Chinese people; more
than 1 million die.
1939: Flooding of the Yellow River kills over 200,000 people.
1947: Honshn Island, Japan, is hit by floods that kill more than 1,900
people.
February 1, 1953: A massive flood in the North Sea kills 1,853 in the
Netherlands, Great Britain, and Belgium.
November 1, 1959: More than 2,000 people die in floods in western
Mexico.
October 10, 1960: Bangladesh floods kill a total of 6,000 people.
October 31, 1960: Floods kill 4,000 in Bangladesh.
November 3-4, 1966: Flooding in Florence, Italy, destroys many works
of art.
January 24-March 21, 1967: Flooding in eastern Brazil takes 1,250
lives.
July 21-August 15, 1968: Flooding in Gujarat State in India results in
1,000 deaths.
October 7, 1968: Floods in northeastern India claim 780 lives.

132
 Floods

June 9, 1972: Heavy rainfall over Rapid City, South Dakota, causes an
upstream dam to fail and release floodwaters, and 238 people lose
their lives.
July 31, 1976: A flash flood rushes down Big Thompson Canyon, Col-
orado, sweeping 139 people to their deaths.
July, 1981: Over 1,300 people die in the flooding of Sichuan, Hubei
Province, China.
June-August, 1993: Largest recorded floods of the Mississippi River
occur; 52 people die, over $18 billion in damage is inflicted, and
more than 20 million acres are flooded.
February-March, 2000: Severe flooding in Mozambique, caused by
five weeks of rain followed by Cyclone Eline, kills 800 people and
20,000 cattle.

Note that the flood estimate is stated in probability terms. This has
confused some people, who believe that if a twenty-year-flood event
occurred, then the next flood of that magnitude will not occur again
for another twenty years. This is incorrect, as two twenty-year-floods
can occur in the same year, even though the probability is low. A fifty-
year-flood and hundred-year-flood have a probability of being equaled
or exceeded of only 2 and 1 percent, respectively.
The longer the historical record of floods, the more confidence
may be taken in the estimated flood frequencies. However, the histor-
ical period of record for many bodies of water of fifty or even seventy-
five years is considerably shorter than the total time the water has
been flowing. In addition, many watersheds have been extensively
changed by urbanization, farming activities, logging, and mining to
such an extent that previous discharges may not be in accord with
current conditions. Also, climatic change, particularly near large
metropolitan areas, may have been great enough to make quantifi-
able changes in discharge. Thus, forecasts that are based on past
flows may not be suitable for estimating future flows.
Flash floods differ from long-duration floods of large streams in
that they begin very quickly and last only a short time. They often oc-
cur with torrential thunderstorm rains of 8 to 12 inches in a twenty-
four-hour period over hilly watersheds that have steep ground and

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Floods

channel slopes. Three climatological situations are associated with

flash floods. One is a hurricane that occurs over a landmass, which
happens often in the eastern United States. The second situation oc-
curs when moist tropical air is brought into a slow-moving or station-
ary weather front, which is common in the central and eastern
United States. The third occurs in the mountainous western states, as
typified by the flash floods caused by winter storms in California.
The hydrologic effects of urbanization on flooding potential are
substantial. Roofs, driveways, sidewalks, roads, and parking lots greatly
increase the amount of impervious cover in the watershed. For exam-
ple, it is estimated that residential subdivisions with lot sizes of 6,000
square feet (0.14 acres) and 15,000 square feet (0.34 acres) have im-
pervious areas of 80 and 25 percent, respectively. Commercial and in-
dustrial zones have impervious areas of 60 to 95 percent. A typical
suburban shopping center with its large expanse of parking area has
about 90 percent impervious cover.
As the impervious cover increases, infiltration is reduced and
overland flow is increased. Consequently, the frequency and flood
peak heights are increased during large storms. Another change re-
lated to urbanization is the installation of storm sewers, which route
storm runoff from paved areas directly to streams. This short-circuit-
ing of the hydrologic cycle reduces the travel time to the stream chan-
nel, reduces the lag time between the precipitation event and the en-
suing runoff, and increases the height of the flood peak. In essence,
an increasing volume of water is sent to the stream channel in a
shorter period of time.

Geography
Floods are one of the most common and damaging of natural haz-
ards. They can occur anywhere in the world but are most prevalent in
valleys in humid regions when bodies of water overflow their banks.
The water that cannot be accommodated within the stream channel
flows out over the floodplain—a low, flat area on one or both sides of
the channel. Floodplains have attracted human settlement for thou-
sands of years, as witnessed by the ancient civilizations that developed
along the Nile River in Egypt, the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers of China,
and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia (now Iraq).
More people are living in river valleys than ever before, and the num-

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 Floods

ber is increasing. About 7 percent of the United States consists of

floodplains that are subject to inundation by a hundred-year-flood.
Most of the largest cities of the nation are part of this 7 percent. Even
as flood damages increase, development in the floodplain has been
growing by about 2 percent a year.
Large areas of the floodplain not only are inundated but also are
subjected to rapidly moving water, which has enormous capacity to
move objects such as cars, buildings, and bridges. If the flood is large
enough, the water will inundate even stream terraces, which are
older floodplains that are higher than the stream. For example, Hur-
ricane Agnes in 1972 caused the Susquehanna River to rise nearly 16
feet above flood stage, inundating the downtown portion of Harris-
burg, Pennsylvania, which was built on a terrace.
Floods can also be devastating in semiarid areas where sparsely
vegetated slopes offer little resistance to large volumes of overland
flow generated by a storm event. For example, the winter storms in
January, 1969, in Southern California and the consequent flooding
resulted in 100 deaths. Floods also occur in coastal and estuarine en-
vironments. A winter storm in 1953 resulted in severe coastal flood-
ing in eastern England and northwestern Europe (particularly the
Netherlands), causing the deaths of almost 2,000 people, the de-
struction of 40,000 homes, and the loss of thousands of cattle. Ban-
gladesh is particularly vulnerable to coastal flooding. Most of the
population of over 115 million in an area about the size of New York
State live in the downstream floodplain of the Brahmaputra and
Ganges Rivers. In addition, its location at the head of the Bay of Ben-
gal only accentuates the storm surges that frequently occur in this
area from tropical storms. For example, coastal storm surges killed
225,000 people in 1970 in Bangladesh.

Prevention and Preparations

Societies have made many attempts over the years to prevent floods,
most of which involve some form of structural control. For example,
the Flood Control Acts of 1928 and 1936 assigned the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers the responsibility of building reservoirs, levees,
channels, and stream diversions along the Mississippi and its major
tributaries. As a result of this legislation, 76 reservoirs and 2,200 miles
of levees in the Upper Mississippi River basin alone were built by the

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Floods

The Mississippi River floods Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in 1927. (National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Administration)

Army after the late 1930’s. State and local governments constructed
an additional 5,800 miles of levees in the same watershed. The U.S.
Natural Resources Conservation Service (formerly the Soil Conser-
vation Service) built over 3,000 reservoirs on the smaller tributaries
in the basin. All these very expensive efforts on the Mississippi and
similar efforts on other watersheds still did not prevent the disastrous
floods in 1993 on the Mississippi and in 1997 on the Red River in
North Dakota and Minnesota.
Flood-abatement measures can be divided into structural and
nonstructural approaches. The structural approach involves the ap-
plication of engineering techniques that attempt either to hold back
runoff in the watershed or to change the lower reaches of the river,
where inundation of the floodplain is most probable. The nonstruc-
tural approach is best illustrated by zoning regulations.
One form of a structural measure is to treat watershed slopes by
planting trees or other types of vegetative cover so as to increase infil-
tration, which thereby decreases the amount of overland flow. This
measure, when combined with the building of storage dams in the
valley bottoms, can substantially reduce the flood peaks and increase
the lag time between the storm event and the runoff downstream.

136
 Floods

Another very common type of structural measure is to build artificial

levees (or dikes) along the channel. They are usually built of earth,
may be broad enough to contain an automobile trail, and should be
high enough to contain a flood. During high water on the Mississippi
at New Orleans, it is possible to see ships sailing above when standing
at the foot of the levee.
Starting in 1879 with the Mississippi River Commission, a large sys-
tem of levees was constructed in the hope of containing all floods.
This levee system has been expanded and improved so that it totals
over 2,500 miles in length and is as high as 30 feet in some places.
One problem with the levees is that the river channel aggrades or
builds up over time so that it is higher than the bordering floodplain.
If the levees fail, the water in the channel will rush into the flood-
plain, which is at a lower elevation, and create a disastrous flood. For
example, the Yellow River in China in 1887 flooded an area of 50,000
square miles (nearly the size of England), which resulted in the direct
deaths of nearly 1 million people and the indirect deaths of millions
more by the famine that followed.
Another structural measure that has been tried by the Army Corps
of Engineers on the Mississippi is to cut channels (also known as cut-
offs) across the wide meander loops, which shortens the river length.
This reduction in length increases the river slope, which correspond-
ingly increases the average velocity of the water. As velocity increases,
more water can move through the channel, and the flood peak can
be reduced. Although the technique was initially successful, the river
responded by developing new meanders, which only increased the
length.
Where feasible, selected portions of the floodplain may be estab-
lished as temporary basins that will be deliberately flooded in order
to reduce the flood peak in the main channel. A related structural
measure, which is used in the delta region of the Lower Mississippi, is
to use floodways that divert water from the channel directly to the
ocean. For example, the Bonne Carre floodway upstream of New Or-
leans is designed to divert excess water to Lake Pontchartrain, which
is adjoined to the Gulf of Mexico.
As an alternative to structural flood abatement measures that in-
volve engineering solutions, the nonstructural approach is to view
floods and the damages they cause as natural events that will con-

137
Floods

tinue in the future even after expensive and elaborate engineering

structures have been built. Levees that were designed for a hundred-
year-flood will fail if a flood of greater magnitude, say a two-hundred-
year-flood, occurs. The real problem is the ongoing urban, commer-
cial, and industrial development in the floodplain. Consequently, the
nonstructural measure that has received increasing attention is
floodplain zoning, which restricts development in flood-prone areas.
This type of planning allows some agricultural activity and recreation
in the floodplain as these types of land use call for occasional flood-
ing. Under this form of zoning, permanent structures such as houses,
schools, businesses, and industries would not be permitted in the
flood-prone portions of the floodplain.
One of the major nonstructural techniques that has developed
over the years in the United States to reduce flood losses is flood in-
surance. The notion of an insurance program that provides money
for flood losses appeared to be reasonable because the pooling of
risks, collection of annual premiums, and payments of claims to
those property owners who suffer losses was similar to other types of
insurance programs, such as fire insurance.
The first attempts to begin a federal flood insurance program be-
gan after flooding of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers in 1951. Legisla-
tion was introduced over the years and finally resulted in the National
Flood Insurance Act of 1968. This act created the National Flood In-
surance Program, which is administered through the Federal Emer-
gency Management Agency (FEMA). The objectives of the program
are to have nationwide flood insurance available to all communities
that have potential for flooding, try to keep future development away
from flood-prone areas, assist local and state governments in proper
floodplain use, and make additional studies of flood hazards. One of
the useful outcomes of the program has been the preparation of
maps showing the approximate delineation of the area that would be
covered by the hundred-year-flood. These maps are made available to
all floodplain communities and provide essential information to
realtors and mortgage-lending institutions. The flood insurance pro-
gram is meant to be self-supporting.
There is some controversy about flood insurance, however. For ex-
ample, although one of the intents of the program is to assist people
who cannot buy insurance at private market rates, the effect has been

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 Floods

to encourage building on the floodplain because people feel that the

government will help them no matter what happens. Some people
would even like to move their homes and commercial facilities to
higher land in another location, but property owners can only collect
for damages if they rebuild in the same flood-prone location. If these
criticisms are correct, this policy of rebuilding on the floodplain will
only perpetuate the problem.
As distinct from an earthquake, which occurs without warning, ma-
jor storms and the associated possibility of flooding can be learned of
in advance. Satellites and specially equipped reconnaissance airplanes
can track storms over the ocean that may be heading for land and pro-
vide early warning of potentially heavy rainfall and storm surges. The
River and Flood Forecasting Service of the U.S. National Weather Ser-
vice maintains eighty-five offices at various locations along the major
rivers of the nation. These offices issue flood forecasts to the commu-
nities within their region. The flood warnings are disseminated to lo-
cal governmental agencies, who may then close roads and bridges and
recommend evacuation of flood-prone areas. Parts of coastal Florida
have evacuation routing directions on highway signs.

Levees are structures designed to contain stream flow, oxbows are bodies of water that
were detached from the stream, and bluffs are the boundaries of a floodplain.

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Floods

Rescue and Relief Efforts

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been actively involved in flood
control efforts since 1824, and much more so after 1890. This in-
volvement in flood fighting was broadened in 1955, when Congress
authorized them under Public Law 84-99 to engage in preparation
and emergency response to floods. The Corps became responsible
for implementing precautionary measures when there was an immi-
nent threat of potentially serious flooding, providing any necessary
emergency assistance during floods so as to prevent loss of life and
property damage, providing immediate postflood assistance, and re-
habilitating any flood-control structures that were damaged.
In order to respond quickly and provide assistance under emer-
gency conditions, the Corps established emergency-response plans
in conjunction with training of personnel for emergency response
and recovery activities. These plans are tested by conducting exer-
cises with state and local governments and other federal agencies,
such as FEMA. When flooding is imminent or has already occurred,
the Corps has the authority to provide state and local governments
with technical assistance, supplies and materials, and equipment.
Emergency construction—which includes stream obstruction removal;
temporary levee construction; and the strengthening, repairing, and
increasing of the height of existing levees—may also be included.
Sandbagging levees to protect buildings during a flood constitutes 90
percent of the emergency assistance. For example, about 500,000
sandbags were used during the 1986 flood near Tulsa, Oklahoma.
As soon as the flood subsides, the Corps is authorized to remove
debris that blocks critical water supply intakes, sewer outfalls, and key
rail and road arteries. Restoration of public services and facilities is
also provided.
The nonengineering relief efforts are handled by other agencies.
Foremost among them is the American Red Cross, which started in
1905 to establish shelters for the homeless and arrange for meals for
flood victims and rescue workers. Other civic and religious organiza-
tions join in the rescue effort with food, clothing, miscellaneous
household goods, and money. These organizations can also assist in
cleanup and rebuilding operations.

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 Floods

Debris can be the dangerous aspect of a flood. Timber clogs the Kansas River in Kan-
sas City following the spring floods of 1903. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration)

Impact
Among the natural hazards in the world, floods rank first in the num-
ber of fatalities. An estimated 40 percent of all the fatalities that occur
from natural hazards are attributed to flooding. People are attracted
to river valleys for water supply; navigation; arable, level land; and
waste disposal—yet these are the same lands that are the most suscep-
tible to floods. Flood damages tend to be more in terms of property
loss and less in fatalities in industrialized societies because the latter
have the technology for better monitoring, storm and flood warn-
ings, and evacuation procedures. In contrast, developing countries,
particularly those with high population densities, suffer greater loss
of life, because prevention and relief efforts are less well organized.
The estimated distribution of fatalities and property losses from
flooding is 5 and 75 percent in developed countries, respectively, as
compared to 95 and 25 percent in developing countries, respectively.
These differences can be illustrated by the Great Mississippi River
Flood of 1993 and several historical floods in China. Unusually heavy
rain in the Upper Mississippi River basin in the late spring and early
summer of 1993 was the immediate cause of the flood. For many loca-

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Floods

tions, monthly rainfall totals were the highest ever measured in over a
century. Levees failed and allowed enormous volumes of water to
spread out over the floodplain, inundating an area of over 15,000
square miles (nearly the size of Switzerland). An estimated 70,000
people were driven from their homes, 52 lives were lost, and the
property damage topped $18 billion. Historical records for floods in
the densely populated floodplain of the Yellow River in China esti-
mate an astonishing 900,000 and 3.7 million deaths in 1887 and
1931, respectively—a sad world record.
Obviously, water is the key element in flood damage. The water
overflowing the stream channels inundates land that has buildings,
equipment, crops, roads and rails, and lines of communication that
were not intended to operate underwater. In addition, the high ve-
locity of floodwaters has extra capacity to carry sediment and debris,
such as parts of buildings, which damage other structures in its path
and are later dumped at some inconvenient location.
The most dramatic damage from floods is loss of human life.
Other forms of damage include loss of livestock in rural areas; de-
struction of crops, buildings, transport facilities, and stored materi-
als, such as seed, fertilizer, and foodstuffs; and soil erosion by the rap-
idly moving water. Even the coffins in cemeteries may be scoured out
and destroyed, as was the case in the Great Mississippi River Flood of
1993.

Historical Overview
Flooding of rivers and coastal areas has been a natural phenomenon
ever since Earth cooled sufficiently for water to accumulate on its sur-
face. Floods are important in numerous geological processes, such as
erosion of the continents, transport of sediments, and the formation
of many fluvial and coastal landforms. There are a number of causes
of flooding in historic times. The most common cause is an excess of
precipitation in a drainage basin, which then leads to rivers overflow-
ing their banks and inundating the surrounding areas. In general,
rivers flood about every one to two years. This type of flooding may be
very local, in the case of flash flooding, or it may be more widespread,
as when large-scale storms dump great quantities of rain over ex-
tended areas for long periods of time. A second common reason for
flooding is the movement of typhoons or hurricanes into coastal ar-

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 Floods

eas, which often causes severe coastal flooding. Flooding may also be
caused by the collapse of human-made structures, such as dams or
levees. Finally, there are a few examples of flooding caused directly by
humans as an act of war or terrorism.
Perhaps the most spectacular example of large-scale flooding oc-
curred during the Pleistocene epoch (the Ice Age) in eastern Wash-
ington and Idaho, when an ice dam in western Montana broke and
released a torrent of floodwaters. The floodwaters raced across east-
ern Washington at velocities of 98 feet (30 meters) per second and
scoured much of the area down to bedrock. The discharge of the
floodwaters was estimated at about 179 million cubic yards (13.7 mil-
lion cubic meters) per second, and the total water released in this cat-
astrophic flood is estimated to be approximately 81.7 million cubic
yards (25,000 cubic meters), an amount about equal to five times the
water held in Lake Erie. The flood may have lasted as long as eleven
days. Many other ice-dam collapses probably resulted in similar, if less
catastrophic, floods during the ice ages, but the record of the eastern
Washington flood is the best preserved.
When humans began to live in towns and cities, they commonly
chose sites along rivers. The rivers provided water, transportation,
and food, and the floodplains had fertile soils. Civilizations arose
along the Tigris (western Asia), Euphrates (western Asia), Nile (east-
ern Africa), and Yellow (northern China) Rivers. Each of these civili-
zations depended directly or indirectly on the flooding of these
rivers. The yearly floods brought nutrients to the floodplains, which
became the early agricultural bases for these civilizations. As popula-
tions grew after the agricultural revolution began, more and more
people moved into areas that were inundated periodically by floods.
Floods are the most widespread of the natural hazards, and, because
of the extensive development in the floodplains, floods are the most
commonly experienced natural disaster. For centuries, floods were
seen as necessary but completely uncontrollable acts of nature.
However, this view changed when people realized that some
floods might be controlled by constructing levees and dams. Chinese
engineers have tried to control the flooding of the Yellow River for
over 2,500 years. Levees have been built along this river to control the
river during high water flow, but the program requires constant ex-
pansion and maintenance. The Yellow River is the muddiest river in

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Floods

the world, and it continually deposits sediment in its channel, thus

raising the level of the river water. This aggradation of the channel
bed requires that even higher levees be constructed. The levees do
control moderate flooding events but have frequently broken during
higher flow levels.
The Yellow River has broken through its levees 1,593 times since
the year 1800. Each levee breach causes a flood, many of which have
been catastrophic. In 1887 more than 900,000 people lost their lives
as the Yellow River flooded, and an additional 2 to 4 million people
died later as the result of the flooding. The Yellow River flooded
again in 1921, 1931, 1938, and 1939. Millions of Chinese have died
during the flooding of this river known as “China’s Sorrow.” The
1938 flood was created by the Chinese army as it dynamited the levees
in order to cause a flood southward to stop the advancing Japanese
troops. The strategy worked, but at a great cost. Over 1 million Chi-
nese people died in this human-made flood, and many more suffered
for years afterward due to hunger and disease caused by the inunda-
tion of the agricultural areas.
The Yellow River has not been the only danger in China. Flooding
of the Yangtze River in China has also caused extensive damage and
great loss of life. In India, the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers annu-
ally flood because of the enormous amount of rain and snowfall in
the Himalayas, which are the source area for these rivers. Monsoon
conditions add to the flooding during most years, and rivers com-
monly inundate large regions along the lower stretches of these
rivers. Yearly flooding of the lowlands in Bangladesh is often com-
pounded by coastal flooding caused by oceanic storms moving in-
land. In October of 1960, two separate floods killed 6,000 people and
4,000 people, respectively. In August of 1968 more than 1,000 people
perished in a flood in the Gujarat State, India, and this was followed
by another deadly flood three months later in northeastern India,
which resulted in the death of 780 people.
Owing to the enormous population growth in Asia and the rela-
tively low level of flood control in many parts of the region, damage
and death from flooding in this area have historically been great. It is
estimated that in the twenty-year period between 1947 and 1967
more than 154,000 people were killed by floods in Asia.
Flooding in Europe has also caused damage, suffering, and loss of

144
 Floods

life. Records indicate that a flood in Holland in 1228 killed an esti-

mated 100,000 residents. On November 4, 1333, Florence experi-
enced one of its greatest floods when the Arno River overflowed its
banks and inundated the city to a depth of 14 feet (4.2 meters). In
1966, Florence was once again flooded by the Arno River, but to the
even greater depth of 22 feet. In total, 24 people perished in the
flood. This flood also damaged priceless paintings, sculptures, tapes-
tries, books, and maps.
On October 9, 1963, Italy suffered a devastating flood caused by
the overtopping of a high arch dam in Vaiont. The flood was caused
by an enormous rockslide that rushed into the reservoir behind the
dam. The rock debris filled the reservoir and displaced the water to-
ward the dam in waves as high as 230 feet (70 meters). The water
flowed over the dam (which was not destroyed) and down the river
valley at great speeds. A total of 1,800 people died. In the period from
1947 to 1967, floods took 10,540 lives in Europe (excluding the So-
viet Union).
Flooding has also been extensive in the United States. One of the
great tragedies in the late nineteenth century was caused by the col-
lapse of the dam above Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In the western part
of the country another dam collapse occurred in 1928, when the St.
Francis Dam in Southern California ruptured, sending a flood down-
stream. More than 450 people in the Santa Paula area died from this
flood.
Regional flooding of the Missouri-Mississippi drainage basin has
long caused problems for the midwestern part of the country. Flood-
ing of the lower stretches of the Mississippi River in the late 1800’s
caused engineers to design extensive levee systems to hold back the
floodwaters. In 1927 the river rose to its then-historic high water
level, causing extensive damage in the southern states. The river
breached its levees in 225 locations, and 313 people lost their lives.
The Mississippi again flooded in 1943 and 1944.
In 1972, Hurricane Agnes moved onshore and northward through
the eastern part of the country, dumping enormous quantities of rain
in the region and causing extensive flooding east of the Appalachian
Mountains from North Carolina to New York State. A total of 113 peo-
ple lost their lives in these floods. Estimated damages were in excess
of $3 billion, the largest flood disaster in United States history at that

145
Floods

time. Also in 1972, the devastating Rapid City, South Dakota, flood
occurred. A tremendous thunderstorm broke over the area, dump-
ing up to 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain in less than six hours.
The upstream dam was overtopped, and the river inundated the
floodplain and much of Rapid City. The death total was 238, and
damages exceeded $160 million.
The following year, the Mississippi River flooded extensively again,
resulting in over $1.155 billion in damage. However, the extensive
flood-control measures and early evacuation kept the death toll to a
low level. In 1976, a thunderstorm dropped over 7.5 inches (19 centi-
meters) of rain in four hours over Big Thompson Canyon in Colo-
rado. The flash flood that resulted killed 139 people. Only a few days
earlier the Teton Dam in Idaho had collapsed, killing 11 people.
The largest flood of the Mississippi River in the 133 years of record
keeping occurred in 1993. High-water marks were recorded at St.
Louis, and the river broke through or overtopped 1,083 levees in the
upper part of the basin. More than 20 million acres were flooded,
and damages exceeded $18 billion. At least 52 people died in the
floods.
Robert M. Hordon
Jay R. Yett

Bibliography
Beyer, Jacqueline L. “Human Response to Floods.” In Perspectives on
Water, edited by David H. Spiedel, Lon C. Ruedisili, and Allen F.
Agnew. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. This is a well-
written chapter that focuses on flooding and how societies re-
spond to its danger.
Dunne, Thomas, and Luna B. Leopold. Water in Environmental Plan-
ning. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1978. This is a classic book that
contains several very useful chapters on runoff processes, flood
hazard calculations, and human adjustments to floods.
Dzurik, Andrew A. Water Resources Planning. 2d ed. New York: Row-
man & Littlefield, 1996. In addition to other material on planning
issues in water resources, this book contains a good chapter on
floodplain management.
Hornberger, George M., Jeffrey P. Raffensberger, Patricia L. Wilberg,
and Keith N. Eshleman. Elements of Physical Hydrology. Baltimore:

146
 Floods

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Contains a chapter that pro-

vides a technical discussion on streams and floods from an engi-
neering perspective.
Jones, J. A. A. Global Hydrology. Essex, England: Longman, 1997. A
well-documented book on hydrology and environmental manage-
ment, including a chapter on floods and magnitude-frequency re-
lationships.
Martini, I. Peter, Victor R. Baker, and Guillermina Garzón, eds. Flood
and Megaflood Processes and Deposits: Recent and Ancient Examples.
Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Science, 2002. Promotes an understand-
ing of large floods and their impact.
Myers, Mary Fran, and Gilbert F. White. “The Challenge of the Missis-
sippi Floods.” In Environmental Management, edited by Lewis Owen
and Tim Unwin. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997. This chapter pro-
vides a readable account of the issues involved in the destructive
1993 Mississippi floods.
O’Connor, Jim E., and John E. Costa. The World’s Largest Floods, Past
and Present: Their Causes and Magnitudes. Reston, Va.: U.S. Geologi-
cal Survey, 2004. A circular from the U.S. Geological Survey. In-
cludes bibliographical references. Also available online at http://
pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1254.
Strahler, Alan, and Arthur Strahler. Introducing Physical Geography. 4th
ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. One of the better
standard college books that has useful text and illustrations on
runoff processes and floods.
White, Gilbert F. Choice of Adjustment to Floods. Department of Geogra-
phy Research Paper 93. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1964.
This is a classic paper that deals with the social-science aspects of
settlement on floodplains, including the increasing damages from
floods in the face of ever-larger expenditures for flood control.

147
Fog
Factors involved: Geography, temperature, weather
conditions
Regions affected: Coasts, especially those where a
cool ocean current is present; mountains; cities;
towns

Definition
Fog can be a transportation danger because it reduces visibility. It is
particularly hazardous in situations where heavy use of a transporta-
tion artery occurs.

Science
Fog occurs when the temperature of any surface falls below the dew
point of the air directly above it. There are a number of different
kinds of fog, depending on the circumstances that lead to its genera-
tion. Radiational fog occurs in the early morning hours, when the
cooling of the ground has created a temperature differential be-
tween the ground and the moist air directly over it. The lower ground
temperature (at lower temperatures the air is less able to hold mois-
ture) causes the moisture in the air immediately above it to condense
into tiny droplets. Massed, the droplets make visibility impossible. By
definition, fog exists when visibility is less than 0.6 mile (l kilometer).
Advectional fog occurs when moist air moves over colder water.
This is the kind of fog common along coasts, especially those where a
colder ocean current tends to parallel the coast. If wind speeds in-
crease, the density of this kind of fog also tends to increase, unless the
wind speed is such as to blow away the moist air mass constituting the
fog. For that to occur, wind speeds greater than 15 knots are needed.
Upslope fog occurs in areas in which the prevailing winds blow
over a large surface area from a moist region toward a region of in-
creasing altitudes. As the wind blows upslope, it creates the tempera-
ture gradient between the ground and the moister air that can in-
duce fog.
Occasionally, precipitation in the form of drizzle can turn into
fog. This can occur if the drizzle is falling through cool air that be-

148
 Fog

Milestones
January 19, 1883: 357 die in fog-related collision of steamers Cimbria
and Sultan.
1901: Transatlantic wireless radio sends first signal to receiver in St.
John’s, Newfoundland.
May 29, 1914: More than 1,000 drown in the sinking of the Canadian
liner Empress of Ireland following its collision with Norwegian freighter
Storstad in heavy fog on the St. Lawrence River.
1925: First radio signal to warn of fog is sent to ships on the Great
Lakes.
December 23, 1933: Two trains collide in fog near Paris, killing 230.
1945: Radar is used for tracking civilian traffic in ships and planes.
December 5-9, 1952: Heavy smog in London kills 4,000 people.
July 25-26, 1956: The Italian liner Andrea Doria sinks after being
struck by Swedish vessel in fog.
July 31, 1973: A Delta Airlines jet crashes while attempting to land at
Boston’s Logan International Airport in fog; 89 die.
March 27, 1977: Two airliners collide in fog in Tenerife, Canary Is-
lands; 583 die.
April 10, 1991: 138 die in crash of ferry Moby Prince and oil tanker Agip
Abruzzo in Italy.

comes saturated as a result of the drizzle. Such fogs can become very
dense and are most apt to occur in places where relatively high rain-
fall is the norm.
In high latitudes, what are known as ice fogs are rather common.
In these cases, below-freezing temperatures cause moisture in the air
to become suspended ice crystals that dominate the atmosphere, cre-
ating the effect of fog. For such fogs to form, very low temperatures
are needed—at least minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit.
The fog that comes off the surface of a body of water in early
winter is often warmer than the air above. Even though the vapor
pressure of the water is higher (the reverse of the normal condition
creating fog) droplets will sometimes move upward from the water
creating the effect of fog. Such fog is called steam fog.

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Fog

Geography
Radiational fog may occur anywhere if the proper temperature dif-
ferential exists, but it is most common in areas where there are differ-
ent elevations. This type of fog tends to concentrate in depressions or
river valleys. It tends to burn away during the early morning hours if
the day is sunny—the heat of the sun dries up the condensed water
vapor.
Advectional fog is most common along coasts and most frequent
along coasts where a cold ocean current flows and creates the neces-
sary temperature differential. The cold ocean current is the defining
factor, and for this reason fog is very common on seacoasts where such
currents exist. The west coast of the United States, from San Francisco
northward, is subject to such conditions, with the prevailing wind
blowing the moisture off the ocean onto the land. The Pacific coast of
North America has at least sixty days of dense fog each year.
The east coast of Canada, especially Newfoundland and Labrador,
is notorious for its dense fogs. These fogs result from the cold Labra-
dor current that runs up that coast. Even farther south, on Cape Cod,
Massachusetts, fogs are fairly common, although they lack the inten-
sity of those along the east coast of Canada.
Iceland and the British Isles are notorious for their fogs, again re-
sulting from the temperature differential between the land and the
surrounding ocean. On the other hand, fogs are rare in the lower lat-
itudes farther south in Europe, although radiational fog may exist in,
for example, the Alpine valleys of Switzerland.
Although fog is rare in tropical areas, there are two regions that do
experience it. One is the Peruvian coastline, where, although there is
little actual precipitation, vegetation can survive in an essentially
desert climate from the condensation of the moisture contained in
the fogs. Another tropical area that experiences fog is the coast of So-
malia, in eastern Africa, where some unusual coastal currents create
the necessary temperature differential.
Arctic fogs have created problems for weather-gathering stations
in Greenland for a number of years. They are particularly intense on
the east coast of Greenland.
Although the reduction in the use of coal-fired steam engines has
reduced the amount of steam vented into the atmosphere around cit-
ies, auto exhausts and emissions from power plants can, if added to

150
 Fog

natural fog, produce what is often called smog. This mixture of natu-
ral fog and emissions can be a hazard. Some cities, located where pre-
vailing winds cannot disperse such atmospheric collections because
of adjacent mountains, have severe problems with smog—Denver
and Los Angeles are examples.

Prevention and Preparations

Because of the hazard to transportation, especially air transport, at
various times efforts have been made to try to disperse fog, especially
at transportation hubs. Seeding a fog with salt has been found ef-
fective but has some obvious environmental drawbacks. Another
method, creating a blast of hot air along the runways of airports, has
been used in some critical situations but demands an extremely large
fuel input. However, when temperatures are below freezing (below
25 degrees Fahrenheit), success has followed seeding of fog with
solid carbon dioxide crystals. Another method occasionally used has
been spraying with propane gas. However, when temperatures are
above freezing (and most fogs form under such conditions), no satis-
factory method has been found to disperse fogs at airports.
Foghorns have been the traditional method of warning vessels both
at sea and on large bodies of inland waters, such as the Great Lakes.
The most effective antidote to fog has been the development of radar,
which sees through fog. This methodology has become increasingly
successful in handling air traffic, although the radar devices have had
to become more exact as the volume of traffic has grown. Even so, and
even though all commercial pilots now must be able to land a plane
solely with the use of instrument indicators, fog can shut down air op-
erations. Most pilots prefer being able to see a runway before they
land. Even localized fogs can disrupt the schedules of virtually all air-
lines because they interrupt interconnecting flights.
Although airplane crashes in the United States resulting from fogs
are now relatively rare because the flights are regularly shut down
when fog closes in at an airport, there is always an intensive investi-
gation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) if there is a
crash. Because the federal government controls all the airline flights
through its air traffic control system, flights are routinely canceled
when a serious fog situation exists.
Fog continues to be a problem in automobile travel, although the

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Fog

development of the interstate highway system, with its dual road

structure, has helped reduce the dangers. However, the majority of
roads remain two-lane roads, and it is up to the individual motorist to
drive with exceptional care in foggy conditions.
As shipping has become more a system for moving freight than for
moving people, the risk of marine accidents is no longer what it once
was. Still, in certain areas fog continues to be a problem for oceango-
ing traffic despite the assistance of radar.

Impact
As the amount of air travel has grown, so has the danger posed by fog
conditions. The layout and siting of airports can be helpful in miti-
gating the effects of fog, but the standard response is still to shut
down flights until the air clears.

Historical Overview
Although fogs can occur anywhere in the world under the appropri-
ate conditions, they are more common in the northerly latitudes, es-
pecially along seacoasts. Consequently, they began to pose a major
problem as the inhabited world spread northward from the Mediter-
ranean. They constitute a hazard for travelers, and as the develop-
ment of new vessels made people more venturesome on the sea, fog
became more of a risk factor. At the same time, vessels tended to hug
the shoreline, where the lack of visibility in a fog (fog is defined as a
condition in which visibility is less than 3,281 feet, or 1,000 meters)
posed the risk of running aground on a difficult-to-see coast.
As European fishermen braved the Atlantic to fish in the rich wa-
ters of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, the fogs that often en-
shroud that peninsula became deadly. Breton fishermen risked their
lives in search of cod as early as the fifteenth century, and thousands
of fishermen have lost their lives in shipwrecks brought about by the
inability of the crewmen to see. In the lobby of one of the principal
hotels on the French island of Miquelon, one of the few remaining
possessions of France in the Western Hemisphere, there is a chart list-
ing more than 300 wrecks that have occurred along the Newfound-
land coastline, most as a result of fog. The locals maintain that the list
significantly undercounts the number of wrecks that have cost fisher-
men their lives.

152
 Fog

Throughout the nineteenth century, as residents of coastal areas

of New England went to sea to make a living, the risk of shipwreck
along the rocky New England coast remained great. In the middle of
the nineteenth century the whaling vessels of New England num-
bered more than 700. Because the ships possessed only relatively ru-
dimentary navigational instruments and navigated by sight, fogs
posed a real danger. Even the adoption of foghorns at many risky
coastal points did not relieve the danger for sailing vessels.
New technology, especially the invention of wireless radio in the
late nineteenth century enabling ship-to-shore communication, re-
duced some of the risks posed by fog. Radio communication from
shore stations to vessels during fog was only introduced gradually, how-
ever; the first such signal on the Great Lakes was sent in 1925. The in-
vention of radar in World War II vastly reduced the risks of fog at sea, as
it enabled vessels to “see” even under conditions of heavy fog.
Marine disasters under foggy conditions did not disappear with
the introduction of wireless radio, however. On May 29, 1914, the Em-
press of Ireland was struck by a Norwegian steam freighter on the St.
Lawrence River; when the Norwegian vessel backed off, the Empress of
Ireland quickly filled with water and went down within fifteen min-
utes. Although 444 people were saved, more than 1,000 died. All pas-
sengers were rescued when the George M. Cox struck Isle Royale in
Lake Superior in 1933, despite foghorn warnings. Even the presence
of radar did not prevent a collision between two vessels on Lake Mich-
igan in October, 1973, although no one was injured.
The most spectacular shipping disaster attributed to fog was, how-
ever, the sinking of the Italian liner Andrea Doria in July of 1956. The
Swedish liner Stockholm struck the Andrea Doria just after 11 p.m. in
heavy fog. The Swedish ship had a reinforced prow, and, despite be-
ing equipped with numerous watertight bulkheads, the Andrea Doria
could not be saved; it sank in the Atlantic eleven hours later. All pas-
sengers who survived the impact were saved, however, by other ships
that came to the rescue.
Fog, when mixed with suspended particles in the air, can be a
killer on its own. The famous London fogs, mixed with suspended
particulate matter and called “smogs,” proved to be particularly in-
tense between December 5 and 9, 1952. They are thought to be re-
sponsible for the deaths of more than 4,000 individuals.

153
Fog

Fog also poses a danger to surface transportation. The greatest

problems have arisen in situations where numerous trains use the
same track and are dependent on signals that may not be readily visi-
ble in heavy fog. London has a history of train disasters due to fog
and smog. In 1947, in South Croydon, an overcrowded suburban
train was rammed from behind by a faster-moving train. The signal-
ing equipment, only partly automated, failed to alert the faster train
to the presence of the suburban train on the same track. In 1957, on a
day when fog reduced the visibility to as little as 66 feet (20 meters),
an express train struck an electrified suburban train at St. John’s, out-
side of London, killing 92 people. The introduction of fully auto-
mated signaling equipment has helped prevent such disasters, al-
though as late as 1966 a passenger train crashed into the rear of a
freight train in Villafranca, Italy, causing the death of 27 people.
Fog is a major hazard to airplane traffic. Although most airplane
accidents in the United States are not attributable to fog, in part be-
cause the stringent rules of the Federal Aviation Administration re-
quire that airports with severely reduced visibility be shut down, the
danger is great. The crash of a Delta jet attempting to land at Logan
International Airport in Boston on July 31, 1973, brought home the
dangers posed by fog. Eighty-nine people lost their lives. Since then,
airports have been shut down entirely when they are enveloped in
fog, and incoming flights are diverted to other airports. The flight
control system maintained by the federal government is entirely
based on radar, which is unaffected by fog.
Nancy M. Gordon

Bibliography
Barry, Roger G., and Richard J. Chorley. Atmosphere, Weather, and Cli-
mate. 8th ed. New York: Routledge, 2003. A strongly scientific pre-
sentation that treats fog as condensation. Provides numerous
maps showing water vapor content at various locations.
Gedzelman, Stanley David. The Science and Wonders of the Atmosphere.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1980. Contains numerous diagrams
and maps. Provides descriptions of the climate in various geo-
graphical areas, with the resulting vegetation. Numerous photo-
graphs.
Hidore, John J., and John E. Oliver. Climatology: An Atmospheric Science.

154
 Fog

2d ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002. Contains ex-
cellent diagrams of the process of fog formation. A solid, scien-
tific-based presentation for the general reader.
Lockhart, Gary. The Weather Companion. New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1988. Contains some information on foghorns. Otherwise, a com-
pendium of popular weather lore.
Lydolph, Paul E. The Climate of the Earth. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1985. Although a generalized text on climatology, this
text contains good material on the different kinds of fogs.

155
Heat Waves
Factors involved: Chemical reactions, geography,
human activity, temperature, weather conditions,
wind
Regions affected: Cities, coasts, deserts, plains,
towns, valleys

Definition
Heat waves occur when the air temperature remains abnormally high
for an extended period of time over a region. Heat waves destroy
crops; damage infrastructure, such as roads, buildings, and railroad
tracks; and cause both animal and human deaths.

Science
Heat waves are the result of a combination of natural factors and hu-
man activity. Natural factors include the normal heating of the
earth’s atmosphere by short-wave radiation from the sun and long-
wave radiation from the earth, the flows of heat that make up the net
radiation balance, the tilt of the earth, and the chemical makeup of
the atmosphere above the surface of the earth. Human activity,
mainly the burning of fossil fuels, is capable of changing the chemi-
cal makeup of the atmosphere and thus affects the heating of the
earth’s atmosphere.
Normal heating of the earth’s atmosphere occurs when radiant
heat, or short-wave radiation, from the sun begins to heat the earth
shortly after dawn. Radiation is defined as the transmission of energy
in the form of electromagnetic waves. The short-wave radiation is ab-
sorbed by the earth. The earth then emits long-wave radiation, which
is absorbed by the atmosphere as heat. (Wavelength refers to the dis-
tance between the wave crests of successive waves.) In summary, the
sun’s rays heat the earth, the earth passes some of this heat to the air,
or atmosphere, that surrounds it, and the atmosphere becomes
warm. As the air near the earth warms, it rises, and cooler air de-
scends. This rising and lowering sets air currents in motion in the at-
mosphere. These air currents carry the heat that under certain cir-
cumstances can become a heat wave.

156
 Heat Waves

A wide variety of factors can affect the amount of short-wave radia-

tion that is absorbed by the earth. About 30 percent of the short-wave
radiation coming to Earth is reflected by clouds or dust particles and
never reaches the earth’s surface. Another 17 percent of the radia-
tion is absorbed by clouds and other particles in the atmosphere.
Thus, a change in the amount of clouds or particles in the atmo-
sphere will affect the amount of radiation that reaches Earth. The
condition of the earth’s surface also influences how much radiation
is absorbed. The color, composition, and slope of the surface deter-
mine how much radiation is absorbed or reflected. Rays that strike
the earth perpendicularly are less likely to be reflected. Rays that
strike dark soil or dark surfaces are more likely to be absorbed than if
they strike light-colored areas.
Carbon dioxide, water vapor, and ozone are the three major com-
ponents of the atmosphere that absorb the long-wave radiation emit-
ted by the earth, with carbon dioxide absorbing the most. The higher
the concentration of these substances becomes in the atmosphere,
the more heat is absorbed and the hotter the air becomes. High con-
centrations of these chemicals also provide a blanket effect over the
earth, preventing radiation and heat from escaping. This blanket ef-
fect results in a phenomenon called the “greenhouse effect.” In a
greenhouse, the sun’s rays pass through the glass and warm the air
within the greenhouse. The glass, however, then prevents the heat
from escaping. Similarly, the sun’s radiation passes through the at-
mosphere, warming the earth and the air, and then the atmosphere
stops the heat from escaping.
Although the greenhouse effect occurs naturally, it can be influ-
enced by human activity. When fossil fuels are burned, enormous
quantities of carbon dioxide are produced and released into the atmo-
sphere. Over the last one hundred years, human beings have increased
their use of fossil fuels drastically. Generating electricity, heating build-
ings, and using automobiles are all human activities that currently de-
pend on burning fossil fuels. Debate continues among scientists as to
what role the higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and
the greenhouse effect play in global warming trends.
When the radiation that leaves the earth is subtracted from the ra-
diation that reaches earth, the amount of radiation left over is called
the net radiation. Net radiation affects the earth’s climates and is a

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Heat Waves

Milestones
1348-1350: Hot summers contribute to the spread of bubonic plague
in Europe.
1665-1666: Very hot summers in London exacerbate the last plague
epidemic.
1690: Siberia experiences extreme heat, probably due to southerly
winds; at this time, Europe is abnormally cold.
1718-1719: Great heat and drought affect most of Europe during the
summers of these years.
1845: Moist, southerly winds and a hot summer provide the perfect
growing conditions for the potato blight fungus, resulting in the Irish
Potato Famine.
1902: Willis H. Carrier designs the first system to control the tempera-
ture of air.
1906: The term “air-conditioning” is used for the first time by an engi-
neer named Stuart W. Cramer.
1936: Dust Bowl conditions arise in the central United States; 15,000
to 20,000 die.
1968-1973: Drought occurs in the Sahel region of Africa.
1972: A heat wave affects Russia and Finland.
1975-1976: Heat waves are recorded in Denmark and the Nether-
lands.
1980: A heat wave in Texas produces forty-two consecutive days above
100 degrees Fahrenheit.
1990: The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) predicts that, if unchecked, greenhouse gases and
carbon dioxide emissions produced by human activity could raise
world surface temperatures by 0.25 degree Celsius per decade in the
twenty-first century.
August, 1994: A severe heat wave and drought parches Japan; blocks
of ice are put in subway stations for travelers to rub their heads
against.
1995: The IPCC predicts carbon dioxide and greenhouse emissions
to raise Earth’s surface temperature between 0.8 and 3.5 degrees Cel-
sius within one hundred years.
July, 1995: A heat wave in the midwestern United States kills almost
500 people in Chicago alone, as well as 4,000 cattle.

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 Heat Waves

July, 1998: A heat wave hits the southwestern and northeastern United
States; daytime temperatures in Texas hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit,
with forty-one days of above-100-degree weather, causing huge crop
losses and 144 deaths.
July, 1998: Worldwide, July is determined to be the hottest month in
history to date.
August, 1998: India reaches 124 degrees Fahrenheit; 3,000 people die
in the worst heat wave there in fifty years.
August, 1998: As a result of summer heat, 50 people die in Cyprus,
and 30 die in Greece and Italy; grapes die on vines.
August, 1998: In Germany, record heat produces severe smog, and
cars lacking antipollution devices are banned.
July-August, 2003: A heat wave grips all of Europe, especially France,
Italy, Spain, and Portugal; as many as 40,000 die from heat-related
causes, and drought and wildfires follow.

source of heat for earth. Thus, all factors that affect radiation to and
from the earth will influence the possible development of heat waves.

Geography
Heat waves can occur anywhere on Earth. A wide range of countries
have reported heat waves, including the United States, Canada, Rus-
sia, India, Japan, many European countries, many African countries,
Australia, and Cyprus. Heat waves generally occur over land masses
rather than over the oceans. More energy is required to raise temper-
atures over water than over land, so temperature fluctuations are
more prevalent over land. Thus, islands that are surrounded by large
bodies of water do not experience heat waves. Since air cools as the al-
titude increases, mountainous areas are less susceptible to heat waves
than are lower areas.
Urban areas tend to have higher rates of heat-related deaths than
do rural areas. The heat retention of urban structures contributes to
the natural heat of the heat wave. Also, the tall buildings and the pol-
lution of urban areas stagnate the movement of air, thus intensifying
the effects of a heat wave.
Many areas of the United States have been affected by heat waves.

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Heat Waves

In 1901, 9,508 heat-related deaths occurred in the midwestern states.

During the brutally hot summer of 1936, 15,000 to 20,000 people per-
ished from the heat. As recently as July, 1995, heat in the Midwest
killed almost 500 Chicago residents. Heat waves have devastated the
southern states and have wreaked havoc in both New England and Cal-
ifornia. Neither Hawaii nor Alaska has recorded a heat wave. Although
Hawaii is located near the equator, the Pacific Ocean surrounding Ha-
waii moderates its temperatures. Alaskan summer days can be hot, but
they only go above 90 degrees Fahrenheit occasionally.

Prevention and Preparations

Human beings are powerless to control the natural forces, such as ra-
diation, that affect heat waves. However, human beings can control
the amount of fossil fuels they burn, and thus somewhat control the
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Numerous international confer-
ences have been held to discuss this issue.
Although heat waves are not preventable, both individuals and
communities can prepare for heat waves and reduce their harmful ef-
fects. Individuals should discuss with family members what they
would do during a heat wave and should identify the coolest places to
be while at home, at work, or at school. They should learn about
places in the community where people can go for help, plan daily ac-
tivities for the coolest time of day, and refrain from physical activity
during the midday hours. Wearing lightweight, light-colored cloth-
ing and staying out of the sun can reduce the effects of a heat wave.
People should talk to their doctors about any medications or medical
conditions that would affect their ability to tolerate heat, as well as
learn the signs and symptoms of heat stroke and heat exhaustion and
first-aid treatments for these conditions.
Community support programs can greatly reduce loss of life. Those
most at risk are the elderly, the poor, and those with health conditions
that reduce the ability to tolerate heat. Obtaining air conditioners and
fans for those who need them has been effective in saving lives. Estab-
lishing “cool centers,” areas that are air-conditioned, where people can
go to cool down, can also help reduce fatalities. Media announce-
ments, especially television and radio, inform and alert people to the
dangers of heat waves. During the Chicago heat wave of 1995, police
officers even went door to door to check on elderly citizens.

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 Heat Waves

Rescue and Relief Efforts

To save lives, rescue and relief efforts must be started as soon as the
heat wave hits. The two dangerous medical conditions that result
when heat waves occur are heat exhaustion and heat stroke, the latter
being the more serious. When someone is exposed to hot weather for
an extended time and does not take in adequate water and salt, heat
exhaustion occurs. The human body cools itself by sweating; the
evaporation of water from the skin reduces body heat. Excessive
sweating causes the body to lose large amounts of water and salt. Ex-
tended exposure to heat requires the body to sweat profusely in an ef-
fort to get rid of heat. If the water and salt lost in this process are not
replaced, the body’s attempts to cool itself eventually become ineffec-
tive, and heat exhaustion occurs.
The symptoms of heat exhaustion include pale, clammy skin,
rapid pulse and breathing, headache, muscle cramps, dizziness, and
a sick and faint feeling. If heat exhaustion occurs, the victim should
lie down in as cool a place as possible with his or her feet raised
slightly, loosen tight clothing, and replace lost fluids by drinking
water. One level teaspoon of salt added to each quart (or liter) of
water will help to replace the salt lost during excessive sweating. Heat
exhaustion must be treated immediately or it will progress to heat
stroke.
Heat stroke, also called sunstroke, occurs when the body’s temper-
ature regulation mechanism fails. This mechanism, which is located
in the brain, normally helps the body maintain a constant tempera-
ture by telling the body to shiver if it needs to become warmer or to
sweat if it needs to cool. If a person suffers a heat stroke, this mecha-
nism stops functioning and the body temperature starts to rise to 104
degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) or higher. This is a medical
emergency, and medical help should be sought immediately.
The symptoms of heat stroke include flushed, hot, dry skin;
strong, rapid pulse; confusion; and ultimately unconsciousness. To
treat heat stroke until medical help arrives, victims should be moved
to the coolest place possible. Their clothing should be removed, and
they should be sponged with cool or tepid water and fanned by hand
or with an electric fan. A blow-dryer set on cool may also be used.

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Heat Waves

Impact
In the United States alone, heat waves have been responsible for the
loss of billions of dollars and thousands of human lives. Heat waves
damage property, both privately and publicly owned. They kill cattle
and destroy crops. Excessive heat causes roads to buckle and crum-
ble, and it warps metal, causing, for example, railroad tracks to bend,
resulting in train derailments. Heat waves have been connected to in-
creased cases of riots, violence, and homicides. Sustained heat waves
are very difficult for the human body to tolerate. When heat waves oc-
cur, normal daily activity must be adjusted in order for humans to
survive.

Historical Overview
Throughout history, extremes in temperature have greatly affected
human existence. From 543 to 547 c.e., the entire Roman world suf-
fered from plague. Great heat in the area contributed to the spread
of the disease. Hot weather caused the flea that transmitted the bu-
bonic plague to speed up its life cycle. The European countries were
also affected by wave after wave of disease from 1348 until 1665.
Again, the hot summers furthered the spread of the disease.
Detailed weather records from early times do not exist. Informa-
tion about weather is inferred from the reports of travelers and food
availability. Weather reports from the sixteenth century have sur-
vived. However, reports based on instrument readings did not appear
until the seventeenth century. These records show that periods of
high temperature have been recorded for many areas on earth, in-
cluding Europe, Africa, China, India, Australia, and North America.
As time progressed, the records became much more detailed. Thus,
much of the information available on heat waves relates to events oc-
curring after the middle of the nineteenth century.
Heat waves have been a contributing factor in human migration
patterns. In Ireland, in 1845, hot summer temperatures favored the
growth of the organism that caused the potato blight fungus. Failure
of the potato crop resulted in widespread famine. Over the next six
years around 1 million people died in Ireland. Although an epidemic
of typhus contributed to the death toll, hunger played a significant
role. Believing that there were more opportunities elsewhere, thou-
sands of Irish immigrated to the United States.

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 Heat Waves

In the United States, heat waves have been responsible for thou-
sands of deaths and the loss of billions of dollars in the twentieth cen-
tury alone. The century began with a very hot summer in 1901. It is
reported that 9,500 people died that summer. The summer of 1936
was brutally hot; an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people lost their lives.
Those who survived often lost their farms and everything for which
they had worked. Again, heat waves influenced migration; families
left the “Dust Bowl” area of the middle United States and moved to-
ward the coasts, where more fertile land was to be found.
The air-conditioning of homes began in the 1930’s, but it was not in
prevalent use. In 1980, only 30 percent of the homes in the United
States had air-conditioning, which greatly reduces death tolls during
heat waves.
The heat wave of 1980 in the midwestern United States killed
1,265. The heat wave of 1988 resulted in 10,000 casualties. In 1995, al-
most 500 people in Chicago died within one week. The same heat
wave killed 4,000 cattle. The increasing frequency and severity of
heat waves worldwide beginning in the last half of the twentieth cen-
tury generated tremendous concern in the scientific community.
Much effort went into studying weather patterns in an attempt to de-
termine whether these heat waves are just part of a natural fluctua-
tion of weather or if human activity is contributing to the warming of
the earth.
The damage done by heat waves does not affect all socioeconomic
classes to the same degree. The economically disadvantaged suffer
more dire consequences when heat waves hit than do those with re-
sources. During the heat wave that struck Chicago in 1995, most of the
fatalities were people who were poor and elderly. Most lived in the top
floors of old apartment buildings that were not air-conditioned. Peo-
ple with resources obtained air-conditioning or left the city. Farmers
are another group of people who are hard hit by heat waves. When
heat waves destroy crops or kill cattle, the farmer’s livelihood is de-
stroyed as well. Meanwhile, an accountant who lives in an air-condi-
tioned home in the city pays a bit more for hamburger but hardly no-
tices. Thus, heat waves affect some social classes more than others.
In other countries, cultural issues can play a role. In July and Au-
gust, 2003, a severe heat wave in Europe claimed as many as 40,000
victims, many in France. Most homes in Europe do not have air-

163
Heat Waves

conditioning, and the effects of the heat wave were worsened by the
tradition of August vacations, with few people around to check on el-
derly residents.
Louise Magoon

Bibliography
Abrahamson, Dean Edwin. The Challenge of Global Warming. Washing-
ton, D.C.: Island Press, 1989. Provides a through discussion of the
greenhouse effect.
American Red Cross. Heat Wave. Stock Number NOAA/PA 94052.
Rev. ed. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1998. This
pamphlet gives very practical advice on how to survive a heat wave.
Clayman, Charles B. The American Medical Association Family Medical
Guide. 3d ed. New York: Random House, 1994. Offers a thorough
description of heat exhaustion and heat stroke and the first-aid
treatments for these conditions.
DeBlij, H. J., and Peter O. Muller. Physical Geography of the Global En-
vironment. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1993. This geography text-
book describes the heating of the earth’s atmosphere, global distri-
bution of heat flows, the greenhouse effect, and climate changes.
Graedel, T. E., and Paul J. Crutzen. Atmosphere, Climate, and Change.
New York: W. H. Freeman, 1995. This book gives a very easy-to-
read description of weather, temperature, and climatic changes.
_______. Atmospheric Change: An Earth System Perspective. New York:
W. H. Freeman, 1993. Details the chemistry of the atmosphere
and climate and describes ancient climate histories.
Kirch, W., B. Menne, and R. Bertollini, eds. Extreme Weather Events and
Public Health Responses. Berlin: Springer, 2005. Describes the devel-
opment of and the damage caused by extreme weather events in
Europe since the 1970’s.
Lyons, Walter A. The Handy Weather Answer Book. Detroit: Visible Ink
Press, 1997. Using a question-and-answer format, the author gives
short, simple answers to questions that are posed.
Oliver, John E. The Encyclopedia of Climatology. New York: Van Nos-
trand Reinhold, 1987. Provides a good discussion of the effects of
temperature extremes.

164
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and
Cyclones
Factors involved: Geography, gravitational forces,
rain, weather conditions, wind
Regions affected: Cities, coasts, forests, islands,
oceans, rivers, towns

Definition
Hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones are storms formed over tropical
oceans. A single storm can cover hundreds of thousands of square
miles and has interior winds of from 74 to over 155 miles per hour.
Hurricanes are known as the “greatest storms on earth,” and destruc-
tion goes beyond wind damage, as storm surges and subsequent
flooding have caused many of the greatest natural disasters in the
world. Hurricane damage in the United States continues to rise as
more people move to coastal areas; however, the loss of life has de-
creased because of better forecasting and evacuation methods.

Science
A hurricane (from the Caribbean word huraka’n), also called a ty-
phoon (a combination of t’ai feng, Chinese for “great wind,” and
typhon, Greek for “whirlwind”), requires warm surface water, high
humidity, and winds from the same direction at a constant speed in
order to form. All hurricanes begin as cyclonic tropical low-pressure
regions, having a circular motion that is counterclockwise in the
Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
These depressions can develop only in areas where the ocean tem-
peratures are over 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius). The
eye structure of a hurricane, which must be present in order for a
storm to be classified as a hurricane, demands temperatures of 79 to
80.6 degrees Fahrenheit (26 to 27 degrees Celsius) to form.
In hurricane formation, heat is extracted from the ocean, and
warm, moist air begins to rise. As it rises, it forms clouds and instabil-
ity in the upper atmosphere. The ascending air then begins to spiral
inward toward the center of the system. This spiraling movement

165
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

Milestones
1588: A major storm destroys the Spanish Armada, which is seeking to
escape the English navy under Sir Francis Drake.
August 15, 1635: A hurricane strikes Massachusetts and Rhode Island
coastal settlements.
September 27, 1727: A hurricane strikes the New England coast.
September 15 and October 1, 1752: Two hurricanes strike South and
North Carolina.
September 8-9, 1769: The Atlantic coast, from the Carolinas to New
England, is hit by a hurricane.
October 22-23, 1783: A hurricane strikes the Atlantic coast, from the
Carolinas to New England.
August 13, 1856: A hurricane striking Last Island, Louisiana, results
in a death toll of 137.
1890: The Federal Weather Bureau is created.
1898: A hurricane warning network is established in the West Indies.
September 8, 1900: A hurricane in Galveston, Texas, leads to the
highest death toll from a hurricane to date, from the following storm
surge.
September 15-22, 1926: The Great Miami Hurricane strikes Florida
and the Gulf states, resulting in 243 dead.
September 10-16, 1928: A Category 4 storm, the San Felipe, or Lake
Okeechobee, hurricane claims over 4,000 lives in the Caribbean and
Florida.
September 21, 1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938
causes high winds, flooding, and a storm surge that leave 680 dead,
more than 1,700 injured, and $400 million in damage.
December 17-18, 1944: A typhoon in the Philippine Sea kills 790.
September 4-21, 1947: A hurricane impacts the Gulf states, leaving
over 50 dead.
1953: The system of naming hurricanes is adopted.
October 12-18, 1954: Hurricane Hazel strikes the Atlantic coast, caus-
ing 411 deaths and $1 billion in damage.
June 27-30, 1957: More than 500 die when Hurricane Audrey hits the
Louisiana and Texas coastlines.
September 6-12, 1960: The Atlantic coast’s Hurricane Donna results
in 168 dead and almost $2 billion in damage.

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 Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

August 15-18, 1969: Hurricane Camille rages across the southern

United States; 258 die.
November 12-13, 1970: The Bhola cyclone strikes the Ganges Delta
and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing at least 300,000 people.
June 21-23, 1972: 122 die during Hurricane Agnes.
September 7-14, 1979: Hurricane Frederic strikes the Gulf Coast
states, causing $1.7 billion in damage.
September 12-17, 1988: Hurricane Gilbert kills 260 in the Caribbean
and Mexico.
September 13-22, 1989: 75 die as Hurricane Hugo strikes the Carib-
bean, then South Carolina.
April 30, 1991: A cyclone hits Bangladesh and kills more than 131,000.
August 22-26, 1992: Hurricane Andrew strikes southern Florida, leav-
ing 50 dead and $26 billion in damage.
July 5-15, 1996: Hurricane Bertha hits the Caribbean and the Atlantic
coast; winds exceed 100 miles per hour.
November 3, 1997: Typhoon Linda kills more than 1,100 in Vietnam.
June 9, 1998: A cyclone hits the Indian state of Gujarat; more than
1,300 are killed.
September 16-29, 1998: 400 die when Hurricane Georges strikes in
the Caribbean, then the Gulf Coast; winds exceed 130 miles per hour.
October 27, 1998: Hurricane Mitch hits Central America; the death
toll exceeds 11,000.
February 11, 1999: Cyclone Rona strikes Queensland, Australia; 1,800
are left homeless.
October 4-9, 2001: Hurricane Iris kills 31 and does $150 million in
property damage in Belize.
September 18, 2003: Category 5 hurricane Isabel makes landfall
south of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, leaving 53 dead and prop-
erty damage of $3.37 million.
2004: Four Category 5 storms—Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne—
make landfall in the United States, the most in a hurricane season
since 1963.
August 25-September 2, 2005: Hurricane Katrina kills 1,500-2,000
people in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida and leaves
hundreds missing; property damage is estimated at $75 billion. The
levees protecting New Orleans are breached, and the city is com-
pletely flooded. Two other powerful hurricanes, Rita and Wilma, hit
the Gulf Coast shortly afterward.

167
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

causes the seas to become turbulent; large amounts of sea spray are
then captured and suspended in the air. This spray increases the rate
of evaporation and helps fuel the storm.
As the vortex of wind, water vapor, and clouds spins at an increas-
ing rate, the eye of the hurricane forms. The eye, which is at the cen-
ter of the hurricane, is a relatively calm area that experiences only
light winds and fair weather. The most violent activity in the hurri-
cane takes place in the area around the eye, called the eyewall. In the
eyewall, the spiraling air rises and cools and moisture condenses into
droplets that form rainbands and clouds. The process of condensa-
tion releases latent heat that causes the air to rise and form more con-
densation. The air rises rapidly, resulting in an area of extremely low
pressure close to the storm’s center. The severity of a hurricane is of-
ten indicated by how low the pressure readings are in the central area
of the hurricane.
As the air moves higher, up to 50,000 feet, it is propelled outward
in an anticyclonic flow. At the same time some of the air moves in-
ward and into the eye. The compression of air in the eye causes the
temperature to rise. This warmer air can hold considerable moisture,
and the water droplets in the central clouds then evaporate. As a re-
sult, the eye of the hurricane becomes nearly cloud-free. In the mid-
dle and upper levels of the storm, the temperature in the eye be-
comes much warmer than the outside. Therefore, a large pressure
differential develops across the eyewall, which helps to produce the
violence of the storm.
The hurricane winds create waves of 50 to 60 feet in the open
ocean. Winds in a hurricane are not symmetrical around the eye. Fac-
ing the direction the hurricane is moving, the strongest winds are
usually to the right of the eye and can move at speeds up to 200 miles
per hour. The radius of hurricane winds can vary from 10 miles in
small hurricanes to 100 miles in large hurricanes. The strength of the
wind decreases in relation to its distance from the eye.
Depending on the size of the eye, which can range from 3 to 40
miles in diameter, a calm period of blue skies and mild winds can last
from a few minutes to hours as the eye moves across a given area. The
calm is deceptive because it does not mark the end of the storm but a
momentary lapse in intensity until the winds from the opposite direc-
tion hit.

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 Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

Storms resembling hurricanes but that are less intense are classi-
fied by their central pressure and wind speed. Winds up to 39 miles
per hour (34 knots) are classified as tropical depressions, and winds
of 40 to 73 miles per hour (35 to 64 knots) are called tropical storms.
To be classified as a hurricane, storms must have sustained winds of
74 miles per hour or higher.
All hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere have a general track,
beginning as a westward movement in response to the trade winds,
veering northward because of anticyclonic wind flow around sub-
tropical high pressure regions, and finally trending northeastward to-
ward polar regions in response to the flow of the prevailing westerly
winds. The specific path that each storm travels is very sporadic.
Some will travel in a general curved path, while others change course
quite rapidly. They can reverse direction, zig-zag, veer from the coast
back to the ocean, intensify over water, stall, return to the same area,
make loops, and move in any direction at any given time.
The path of a hurricane is affected by pressure systems of the sur-
rounding atmosphere and the influence of prevailing winds as well as

A satellite view of a hurricane as it approaches the United States. The cyclonic motion
of the “arms” and the eye are visible. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-
ministration)

169
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

the earth’s rotation. Hurricanes can also be influenced by the pres-

ence of high and low pressure systems on the land they invade. The
high pressure areas act as barriers to the hurricanes, and if a high is
well developed, its outward spiraling flow will guide the hurricane
around its edges. Low pressure systems tend to attract hurricane sys-
tems.
The greatest cause of death and destruction in a hurricane comes
from the rise of the sea in a storm surge. As the hurricane crosses the
continental shelf and moves to the coast, the water level may increase
15 to 20 feet. The drop in atmospheric pressure at sea level within the
hurricane causes the storm surge. The force of the reduced pressure
allows the hurricane to suck up the seas and to allow the winds in
front of it to pile up the water against the coastline. This results in a
wall of water that can be up to 20 feet high and 50 to 100 miles wide.
This wall of water can sweep across the coastline where the hurricane
makes landfall. The combination of shallow shore water and strong
hurricane winds makes for the highest surge of water.
If the storm surge arrives at the same time as the high tide, the
water heights of the surge can increase an additional 3 to 4 feet. The
height of the storm surge also depends upon the angle at which the
storm strikes the coast. Hurricanes that make landfall at right angles
to the coast will cause a higher storm surge than hurricanes that en-
ter the coast at an oblique angle. Often the slope or shape of the coast
and ocean bottom can cause a bottleneck effect and a higher storm
surge.
Water weighs approximately 1,700 pounds per cubic yard, and
when lifted to any great height its weight can be very destructive. The
storm surge is responsible for 90 percent of the deaths in a hurricane.
The pounding of the waves caused by the hurricane can easily de-
molish buildings. Storm surges can cause severe erosion of beaches
and coastal highways. Often, buildings that have survived hurricane
winds have had their foundations eroded by the sea surge or have
been demolished by the force of the waves. Storm surges and waves in
harbors can destroy ships. The salt water that inundates land can kill
existing vegetation, and the residual salt left in the soil makes it diffi-
cult to grow new plants.
Precipitation from hurricanes can be more intense than from any
other source. The amount of rainfall received during a hurricane de-

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 Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

pends on the diameter of the rain band within the hurricane and the
hurricane’s speed. A typhoon in the Philippines in 1944 caused 73.62
inches of rain to fall in a twenty-four-hour period, a world record.
Heavy rainfall can cause flash floods or river system floods. Flash
floods last from thirty minutes to four hours and are caused by heavy
rainfall over a small area that has insufficient drainage. This causes
excess water to flow over land and overflow streambeds, resulting in
damage to bridges, underpasses, and low-lying areas. The strong cur-
rents in flash floods can move cars off roads, destroy bridges, and
erode roadbeds.
River system floods develop more slowly. Two or three days after a
hurricane, large rivers may overflow their beds because of excessive
runoff from the saturated land surface. River floods cover extensive
areas, last a week or more, and destroy both property and crops.
When the floodwaters retreat, buildings and residences can be full of
mud. Often, all furnishings, appliances, wallboard, and even interior
insulation within the structure must be completely replaced because
of the infiltration of the mud. Rain driven by the wind in hurricanes
can cause extensive damage to buildings because of leakage around
windows, through cracks, and under shingles.
Hurricanes often spawn tornadoes. The tornadoes associated with
hurricanes are usually about half the size of tornadoes in the Midwest
and are of a shorter duration. The area these tornadoes affect is
small, usually 200 to 300 yards in width and not quite 1 mile long. Yet
even though they are smaller tornadoes, they can be very destructive,
ruining everything in their path. Tornadoes normally occur to the
right of the direction of the hurricane’s movement. Ninety-four per-
cent of tornadoes occur within 10 to 120 degrees from the hurricane
eye and beyond the area of hurricane-force winds. Tornadoes associ-
ated with hurricanes are most often observed in Florida, Cuba, the
Bahamas, and the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico and the south Atlantic
Ocean.

Geography
Because hurricanes require temperatures of 79 to 80.6 degrees Fahr-
enheit (26 to 27 degrees Celsius) to form, they will rarely develop
above 20 degrees latitude because the ocean temperatures are never
warm enough to provide the heat energy needed for formation. In

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Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

the Northern Hemisphere the convergence of air that is ideal for

hurricane development occurs above tropical waters when easterly
moving waves develop in the trade winds. The region around the
equator is called the “doldrums” because there is no wind flow. Hur-
ricanes, needing wind to form, can be found as little as 4 to 5 degrees
away from the equator. At these latitudes the Coriolis effect, a deflect-
ing force associated with the earth’s rotation, gives the winds the spin
necessary to form hurricanes.
Hurricanes evolve in specific areas of the west Atlantic, east Pa-
cific, south Pacific, western north Pacific, and north and south In-
dian Oceans. They rarely move closer to the equator than 4 or 5 de-
grees latitude north or south, and no hurricane has ever crossed the
equator. In the Northern Hemisphere, hurricanes are common from
June through November; in the Southern Hemisphere, the hurri-
cane season occurs from December to May.
In the Western Hemisphere, these storms are called hurricanes.
They are referred to as typhoons in the western Pacific, cyclones in
the Indian Ocean, Willy Willys near Australia, and baguious in the
Philippines. The swirling motion of these storms is counterclockwise
in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemi-
sphere.

Prevention and Preparations

Hurricanes cannot be prevented; therefore, steps need to be taken to
avoid loss of life and destruction of property. Persons in hurricane ar-
eas need to be aware of and respond to hurricane watches and warn-
ings forecast by the National Hurricane Center, National Weather
Service, and local media. The National Hurricane Center is responsi-
ble for forecasting hurricane watches and warnings for the Atlantic
and eastern Pacific north of the equator. Although both warning ca-
pacity timing and accuracy have greatly improved, predictions can
still be inaccurate by as much as 100 miles in a twenty-four-hour pe-
riod.
Before a watch or warning is forecast, residents need to prepare a
home evacuation plan. This involves determining where the family
will go if a hurricane threatens. The options include staying with
friends or relatives outside the area or going to public shelters. Evacu-
ation supplies such as extra cash, hygiene products, drinking water,

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 Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

batteries, bedding, clothing for wet and cold conditions, prescrip-

tions, canned foods, and road maps should be kept on hand. A three-
week supply for each person and pet is recommended. Restoration
supplies should also be organized and stored together for use after
residents are able to return home. Restoration supplies include rope
and chains, brooms and shovels, rolls of heavy plastic, duct tape,
tools, nails, pruning shears and saws, large-capacity garbage bags,
nonperishable foods, folding lawn chairs, mosquito spray and net-
ting, and chlorine bleach to be used for purifying water.
In order to protect homes in hurricane areas, shutters should be
installed to protect windows. In some cases thin plywood can be used
to cover large windows. Masking tape or duct tape applied to windows
can help control some of the shattering in window breakage. Gas
grills and propane gas tanks should be stored in a safe place so they
are not damaged or do not explode during the storm. It is recom-
mended that dead vegetation around the house be cleared and any
coconuts removed from the trees so that they will not become de-
structive debris in the midst of the hurricane. All objects kept outside
should be tied down, and all electricity, water, and gas should be
turned off at the main panel if a hurricane warning is issued. Insur-
ance policies, inventory records, and important documents should
be kept in safe-deposit facilities. Trees and shrubbery should be cut
in such a manner as to allow air to flow through them so that they will
survive in hurricane winds.
If a hurricane watch is issued, windows should be covered and
backup systems such as portable pumps to remove floodwater, alter-
nate power sources, and battery-powered lighting should be made
available. Because a hurricane watch means that a hurricane is possi-
ble in twenty-four to thirty-six hours, residents should be prepared
for evacuation if one is called.
A hurricane warning indicates that a hurricane will reach land
within twenty-four hours. All utilities should be turned off and loose
items secured. Small items inside the house should be placed on
countertops in order to avoid damage in case of flooding. Cash, so-
cial security cards, drivers’ licenses, wills, medical records, bank ac-
count information, small valuables, and photo albums should be put
in waterproof bags to ensure their safety. Garbage cans, lawn furni-
ture, and bicycles should be brought inside. Cars should be filled

173
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

with gas and should contain evacuation maps; if evacuation is called

for, then emergency plans should be put into action.
One way to survive a hurricane is to build a “safe room” or shelter
in the house. The shelter must be built where it cannot be flooded
during a hurricane. It must be anchored to the foundation of the
house in such a way as to resist uplift or overturning in the storm. All
the connections in the shelter must be strong enough to resist struc-
tural failure and penetration by wind-blown debris.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Devastation after a hurricane can range from light to catastrophic,
depending on the storm’s intensity. Millions of cubic yards of debris
can be left in a hurricane’s wake. Before residents are allowed to re-
turn to a hurricane area, emergency management personnel make
search and rescue and preliminary damage assessments. Residents
are not allowed back until the area is determined safe. Dangling
wires, fallen trees, debris, and washed-out roads can make travel into
the area difficult or impossible until cleanup has been accomplished.
Debris can consist of trees, shrubs, building materials, and hazard-
ous waste, such as paints, solvents, batteries, and insecticides. As this
debris is cleaned up, Emergency Management and Environmental
Resource Management personnel, with the help of the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, will need to authorize and manage the disposal
of the debris. Task forces work with regulatory agencies to determine
the impact of incineration and other disposal methods.
The Red Cross and other volunteer agencies help provide needed
relief. Often there is deterioration or contamination of water sup-
plies, and the Red Cross supplies bottled water as well as nonperish-
able foods. Shelters may be set up for those left without homes.
Residents are advised not to enter their homes or businesses be-
fore officials have checked for structural damage. They are told to be-
ware of such outdoor hazards as downed power lines, weakened
limbs on trees, or damaged overhanging structures. People need to
be aware that poisonous snakes are often driven from their dens by
high water and seek refuge in trees and structures. Residents are en-
couraged to take as many photographs of the damage to their prop-
erty as possible for insurance purposes. If their homes are livable, the
long process of cleanup begins.

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 Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

Impact
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale categorizes the storm intensity
of hurricanes into five levels. Category 1 hurricanes are considered
weak and have sustained winds of 75 to 95 miles per hour. They cause
minimal damage to buildings but do damage unanchored mobile
homes, shrubbery, and trees. Normally they cause coastal road flood-
ing and minor damage to piers. Storm surges seen in Category 1 hur-
ricanes are usually 5 to 7 feet above normal.
Category 2 hurricanes, with wind speeds of 96 to 110 miles per
hour, damage roofing materials, doors, and windows on buildings.
They also cause substantial damage to trees, shrubs, mobile homes,
and piers. Utility lines can be blown down, and vehicles may be blown
off bridges. Flooding of roads and low-lying areas normally occurs
two to four hours before the center of the hurricane arrives. Storm
surges are estimated to be 8 to 12 feet high under these conditions.
Category 3 hurricanes are considered strong, with winds of 111 to
130 miles per hour; large trees can be blown down. These storms de-
stroy mobile homes and can cause structural damage to residences
and utility buildings. Small structures can be destroyed, and struc-
tures near the coastline can sustain damage from battering waves and
floating debris. Flooding from this level of hurricane can destroy
small structures near the coast, while larger structures normally sus-
tain damage from floating debris. There can be flooding 8 miles or
more inland. Coastal areas can sustain storm surges of 11 to 16 feet.
Category 4 hurricanes are categorized as very strong, with winds
of 131 to 155 miles per hour. These storms can blow down trees,
shrubs, power lines, and antenna towers. They cause extensive dam-
age to single-family structures and cause major beach erosion. They
can damage lower floors of structures, and the flooding can under-
mine foundations. Residences often sustain roof structure failure
and subsequent rain damage. Land lower than 10 feet above sea level
can be flooded, which would cause massive evacuation of residential
areas up to 6 miles inland. Storm surges may reach 14 to 20 feet at this
level.
Category 5 hurricanes are classified as devastating, sustaining
winds greater than 155 miles per hour. Evacuations of residents living
within 5 to 10 miles of the shoreline may be required. Such a strong
hurricane can cause complete roof failure on residential and indus-

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Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

trial buildings, as well as some complete building failures. Major utili-

ties are usually destroyed in this level of hurricane. Structures less
than 15 feet above sea level can sustain major damage to lower floors,
and massive evacuations of residential areas usually occur. Storm
surges associated with these severe hurricanes can be 18 feet or
higher.
The devastation of hurricane winds is exemplified by the fact that
the wind force applied to an object increases with the square of the
wind speed. A building 100 feet long and 10 feet high that has 100-
mile-per-hour winds blowing against it would experience 40,000
pounds of force being exerted against its walls. This is because a 100-
mile-per-hour wind exerts a force of approximately 40 pounds per
square foot. If the wind speed was 160 miles per hour, the force
against the house would be 100,000 pounds. Additionally, winds in a
hurricane do not blow at a constant speed. The wind speeds can in-
crease and decrease rapidly. The wind pressure on the house and
fluctuating wind speed can create enough stress to cause connections
between building components to fail. Often the roof or siding can be
ripped off the house, or windows may be pushed in. Structures that
fail because of the effects of extreme winds often look as if they have
exploded. Rain blown by the wind also contributes to an increase of
pressure on buildings and can result in structure failure.
Flying debris, often referred to as “windborne missiles,” can be
thrown at a building with enough force to penetrate the walls, win-
dows, or roof. A 2-by-4-inch piece of wood that weighs 15 pounds can
have a speed of 100 miles per hour when carried by a 250-mile-per-
hour wind. This will enable it to penetrate most reinforced masonry.
The impact of hurricanes goes beyond the destruction of homes
and property. Agricultural loss, oil platform and drilling rig damage,
and destruction of boats can range into millions and even billions of
dollars. Property loss alone in 1992’s Hurricane Andrew was approxi-
mately $25 billion. Agriculture, petroleum industry, and boat losses
in Florida and Louisiana amounted to another $1 billion.
The marine environment is also impacted by hurricanes. There
can be changes in near-shore water quality, as well as bottom scouring
and beach overwash. Fuel from damaged boats can discharge into
the water for days. Often, sponges, corals, and other marine life will
be severely impacted.

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 Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

Historical Overview
Hurricanes are major tropical storms that originate in the Atlantic
Ocean off the west coast of Africa between June and November. Simi-
lar storms can develop in the Pacific Ocean, where they are called ty-
phoons, and in the Indian Ocean, where they are called cyclones.
Hurricanes have clearly existed since the end of the last ice age, but
their impact on humans has increased markedly with the growth of
population in the coastal areas hit by these storms.
The Atlantic Coast and the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico are the
two areas most affected by Atlantic hurricanes. The tail end of such a
storm may have destroyed the remains of the Spanish Armada in
1588, when it sought to escape the victorious English fleet by sailing
around the British Isles.
Hurricanes have had a profound impact on the vegetation of the
Atlantic coastline. These “disturbances,” as ecologists classify them,
have the effect of destroying so much of the vegetation that the pro-
cess of ecological succession must start over in the areas affected by
hurricanes. There is, on average, one hurricane per century at any
particular point on the Atlantic coast; in the twentieth century, a Cat-
egory 4 hurricane struck the Atlantic coast once every six years, on
average. Hurricanes are classified according to wind speed from 1 to
5; Category 4 hurricanes have windspeeds of 131-155 miles per hour.
What is known about hurricanes before the twentieth century
comes mainly from descriptive records. It is known, for example, that
what has been described as a “hurricane” struck the coastline of
Rhode Island and Massachusetts in 1635, and another hit about a
century later, in 1727. In 1752, the Carolinas were hit, and in 1769
and again in 1783 hurricanes struck the Atlantic coastline from
South Carolina to New England. How much destruction was done by
these hurricanes, or how many may have lost their lives, is unknown
because records of that sort were not kept at that time.
Scientists are sure that a hurricane that missed New Orleans on
August 13, 1856, wiped out the settlement on Last Island, off the Lou-
isiana coast. The Federal Weather Bureau was created in 1890, and in
1898 an early warning network was set up in the West Indies—the first
steps in the system that, by the end of the twentieth century, suc-
ceeded in reducing the loss of life from hurricanes. Notwithstanding,
these early warning efforts did not prevent what is still, from the

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Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

standpoint of loss of life, the most devastating hurricane in U.S. his-

tory, the one that struck Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900; esti-
mates of the death toll (arising as much from the following storm
surge) reach about 12,000.
Deaths by drowning are common features of some of the earlier
known hurricanes, a hazard that has been mitigated by the evacua-
tion of communities in the path of a hurricane. A storm that hit the
Miami, Florida, area in 1926 left more than 200 people dead. More
than 4,000 died in 1928 when, as a consequence of the storm named
for it, Lake Okeechobee overflowed. This disaster, also known as the
San Felipe hurricane, led to the construction of a levee around the
lake.
Only 47 were killed in 1933 when a hurricane struck the mid-
Atlantic coast. This hurricane led to further actions on the part of
government to prevent the loss of life from hurricanes. Notwith-
standing preventive measures, the 1930’s had one of the most de-
structive hurricanes of the twentieth century, when the Great New
England Hurricane of 1938 struck New England and pushed inland,
killing more than 600 people and causing extensive damage, particu-
larly to the forests of New England. Even though this hurricane quali-
fied as only a Category 2 storm, the extent of the damage etched it
permanently in the minds of many New Englanders.
Major changes in the government’s handling of hurricane alerts
resulted from technological advances in the 1930’s and particularly
during World War II. The radio made advance warning of large pop-
ulations much easier as it became popular in the 1930’s. World
War II, however, with its extensive use of airplanes, revolutionized the
handling of hurricane information. With airplanes, it became possi-
ble to fly over the disturbances as they progressed from the Atlantic
Ocean off the coast of Africa toward the Atlantic coastline of the
Western Hemisphere. It thus became customary to follow the path of
a hurricane and to forewarn threatened populations by radio. Be-
cause the radio message was easier to understand when it had a name
attached to it, the practice of naming hurricanes began in 1953.
In 1965 U.S. president Lyndon Johnson reorganized the govern-
ment’s weather monitoring system. Prior to that, in 1955, two new fa-
cilities were created: the National Hurricane Center in Miami and
the Experimental Meteorology Laboratory, also in Miami. The latter

178
 Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

Rows of houses in Greenville, North Carolina, are flooded after Hurricane Floyd
dumped as much as 20 inches of rain on the coast. (FEMA)

performs meteorological research, and the former tracks the paths

of hurricanes as they develop. They subsequently became part of the
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
In 1978 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was
added by President Jimmy Carter to the governmental organizations
designed to deal with hurricanes and other natural disasters.
The devastation wrought by Hurricane Camille, which struck the
Gulf Coast on August 17, 1969, made clear the importance of united
societal action. Although Camille caused only 258 deaths—as com-
pared with predecessors Audrey in 1957, in which more than 500
people lost their lives, and Hilda, which killed 304 people in 1964—
but the value of the property destroyed by Camille soared into the bil-
lions and focused people’s minds on the problem of hurricanes.
Hurricanes have been quite erratic in where they strike land (they
generally lose force quickly once they move over land), but the Gulf
Coast has been a favorite target. In August, 1970, Hurricane Celia
struck Texas and Florida; in September, 1979, Hurricane Frederic

179
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

landed on the Gulf Coast (in 1979 men’s names as well as women’s
began to be used), in 1985 Hurricane Juan struck the Gulf Coast, and
in September, 1988, Hurricane Gilbert hit the Caribbean and Mex-
ico. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew hit chiefly South Florida but also
went on to Louisiana, and in 1998 Hurricane Georges struck first in
the Caribbean and then traveled to the Gulf Coast. In 2005, numer-
ous strong hurricanes formed, with several striking the Gulf Coast.
The worst by far was Hurricane Katrina, which devastated Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Alabama and left as many as 2,000 dead.
Despite the severity of that season, analysis of the history of hurri-
canes indicates that, beginning in the second half of the twentieth
century, intense hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean decreased. No con-
clusive scientific evidence has been found for linking hurricanes to
global warming. There is some connection between the formation of
hurricanes and the heat over the Sahel in Africa, but it provides no
indication as to where any hurricanes that might form will strike land
in North America.
It has been found that the number of deaths caused by hurricanes
can be reduced dramatically by evacuating the residents of an area in
the path of a hurricane. If a hurricane strikes the coast of North
America in a relatively uninhabited area, destruction will probably be
extensive but few lives will be lost. However, the rapid growth of
coastal populations makes it less and less likely that hurricanes will
come ashore where there are few people. Even though Hurricane
Hugo in 1989 struck a portion of the South Carolina coast that was
lightly inhabited, it caused the deaths of 75 people; the more intense
Hurricane Andrew resulted in the deaths of only 50. Massive evacua-
tion efforts were made once it became clear where Hurricane An-
drew would strike the Florida coast, and no doubt many lives were
saved as a result. Evacuating a large city in the path of a hurricane,
however, can prove more problematic, as the situation in New Or-
leans proved with Hurricane Katrina.
In countries where the governmental infrastructure is less well de-
veloped than in the United States, the kinds of policies followed in
the United States will not particularly help. A cyclone that hit Bangla-
desh in 1991 killed 131,000 people. A typhoon that landed in Viet-
nam in November, 1997, killed 1,100. A cyclone in the Indian state of
Andhra Pradesh in November, 1996, caused the deaths of more than

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 Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

1,000 people, and when a cyclone hit the Indian state of Gujarat in
June, 1998, more than 1,300 people lost their lives. Hurricane Mitch,
which hit Central America in late October, 1998, killed more than
11,000 and totally devastated the economies of Honduras and Guate-
mala. Experts have estimated that in Asia alone, the number of peo-
ple at risk for death from cyclones is somewhere between 12,000 and
23,000.
Although actions taken by society have succeeded, at least in the
United States, in reducing the effects of hurricanes on humans, the
costs of hurricanes have risen dramatically. Hurricane Camille, which
struck the Gulf Coast in 1969, and Hurricane Betsy, which landed in
the Bahamas, South Florida, and Louisiana in 1965, produced dam-
ages estimated to run in the neighborhood of $1 to $2 billion.
In contrast, the damage caused by Hurricane Andrew, in 1992, to-
taled more than $25 billion. The largest part of this consisted of dam-
age to private property, but many public structures and roads were
also affected. The damage caused by Andrew bankrupted a number
of insurance companies, and many more restricted the amount of
coverage they would provide in hurricane-prone regions. Hurricane
Katrina left widespread damage totaling $75 billion. As the value and
number of properties in coastal areas grow, the risk of major eco-
nomic dislocation from future hurricanes grows as well. Although
some governments have attempted to restrict development along
hurricane-prone shores, this approach has proved unpopular and
has not been highly successful. Most experts agree that future disas-
ters caused by hurricanes are inevitable.
Dion C. Stewart and Toby R. Stewart
Nancy M. Gordon
R. Baird Shuman

Bibliography
Bryant, Edward A. Natural Hazards. 2d ed. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press, 2005. Provides a solid scientific treat-
ment for the educated student. Readers should have a basic un-
derstanding of mathematical principles to fully appreciate this
book. Contains a glossary of terms.
Emanuel, Kerry. Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. A hurricane expert de-

181
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones

scribes the science behind these storms and analyzes their histori-
cal impact.
Pielke, R. A., Jr., and R. A. Pielke, Sr. Hurricanes: Their Nature and Im-
pacts on Society. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. A very informa-
tive and well-written book by father and son meteorologists. Fo-
cuses on the United States, integrating science and social policies
in response to these storms.
Robinson, Andrew. Earthshock: Hurricanes, Volcanoes, Tornadoes, and
Other Forces of Nature. Rev. ed. New York: Thames and Hudson,
2002. An informative book written for high school students or
general adult readers. Provides an interesting mix of science, indi-
vidual event summaries, and noteworthy facts and figures.
Sheets, Bob, and Jack Williams. Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Dead-
liest Storms on Earth. New York: Vintage, 2001. Discusses historical
methods of prediction as well as modern forecasting techniques.
Simon, Seymour. Hurricanes. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. In-
tended for young people. Discusses how hurricanes are formed,
the destruction that they can cause, and the precautions that can
be taken.
Tufty, Barbara. 1001 Questions Answered About Hurricanes, Tornadoes,
and Other Natural Air Disasters. Rev. ed. New York: Dover, 1987. This
text has a logical flow to it. Excellent illustrations accompany the
text.

182
Icebergs and Glaciers
Factors involved: Geography, geological forces,
gravitational forces, ice, snow, temperature, weather
conditions, wind
Regions affected: Coasts, forests, lakes, mountains,
oceans, rivers, towns, valleys

Definition
Glaciers are gigantic ice masses flowing down and over land, whereas
icebergs, which originate from glaciers, are ice masses that typically
float in oceans. Over the centuries, glaciers and especially icebergs
have caused much destruction of human property and lives.

Science
Glaciers, which cover about 10 percent of the earth’s surface, are
large masses of freshwater ice formed by the compacting and recrys-
tallization of snow in polar regions and in other regions’ high moun-
tains. When the aggregated ice is large and thick enough, it generally
starts flowing downhill by gravity and spreading outward because of
its increasing volume. Moving glaciers may terminate on land, where
their melting ice turns into a river of water, or they may end in a lake
or ocean. Various scientists estimate the number of glaciers at 70,000
to 200,000, depending on how their sizes are defined. Glaciers can
vary from an area of about one-third of a square mile to nearly 5 mil-
lion square miles (12.5 million square kilometers), the size of the
great Antarctic ice sheet. About three-quarters of the world’s freshwa-
ter exists as glacial ice.
Climate and topography cause differences in a glacier’s size,
shape, and physical characteristics. When an ice mass grows so large
that it covers an area of about 19,300 square miles (50,000 square ki-
lometers), glaciologists call it an ice sheet, and it usually spreads over
vast plateaus, flowing from its center outward. The Antarctic and
Greenland ice sheets are the only ones now existing, but during the
ice ages of the Pleistocene epoch (1.8 million to 10,000 years ago) ice
sheets covered the northern parts of Europe and North America.
If the area covered is less than 19,300 square miles, the glacier is

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Icebergs and Glaciers

called an ice cap, a flattened, dome-shaped glacier covering both

mountains and valleys. In Arctic regions ice caps occur at fairly low al-
titudes, whereas in such temperate regions as Iceland they occur on
high plateaus. In valley glaciers, the flow of ice is confined between a
valley’s hillsides or mountainsides. These glaciers may originate from
ice sheets or ice caps, but they may also flow out of cirque glaciers nes-
tled in the steep-walled hollows of mountain flanks.
Because a glacier is essentially a flowing ice river, it has a tendency
to move from its initial high altitude toward sea level. When glaciers
are unconfined by geological barriers, they are able to flow to the sea,
where, because of erosive action of changing tides and winds, large
chunks of ice split from glacial tongues and ice shelves. These float-
ing masses of freshwater ice are called icebergs, and calving is the
process of making them by fracture from a glacier’s seaward end. Ice-
bergs can be white, blue, green, or even black (from the rock materi-
als they contain).
Scientists have categorized icebergs by their sizes and shapes. Tab-
ular (table-shaped) icebergs, also called “ice islands,” are large blocks
of ice that protrude several feet above sea level and average 1,640 feet
(500 meters) in diameter. Tabular icebergs are rare in the Arctic but
common in the Antarctic. Pinnacled icebergs, also called castellated
after their castlelike shape, are characteristic of northern polar
oceans. Whether tabular or pinnacled, an iceberg has only one-ninth
of its mass projecting above the water’s surface, though the ratio of
an iceberg’s vertical height above water to its height below varies be-
cause of icebergs’ irregular shapes.
Icebergs form mostly during the spring and summer, when warm
weather increases the rate of calving. In the Northern Hemisphere
glaciers in west Greenland produce about ten thousand icebergs. An
average Greenland-born iceberg weighs approximately 2 billion
pounds (1 million metric tons) and lasts from two to five years. The
West Greenland Current carries these icebergs northward and west-
ward, until eventually many of them are captured by the cold Labra-
dor Current as it moves south to encounter the warm Gulf Stream.
They then drift into the region of the Grand Banks, a submarine pla-
teau extending from the Newfoundland coast. Canadian scientists
have found a nearly linear decrease in the numbers of icebergs as
they wander from northern to southern latitudes. Nevertheless, suffi-

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 Icebergs and Glaciers

cient numbers survive to populate the North Atlantic shipping lanes

with potential hazards to navigation.

Geography
Glaciers develop in geographical regions of the earth where such
precipitation as snow and hail exceeds the aggregated frozen precipi-
tation that melts during the summer. This growing glacial accumula-
tion occurs in polar regions where summers are cool and short, but
glaciers are also found in temperate zones on high mountains, such
as the Alps in Switzerland, and even in the tropics on very high moun-
tains, such as Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Glaciers occur on all
the earth’s continents, except Australia, and on all the world’s great
mountain ranges. Whether a glacier develops in a certain geograph-
ical region depends on both its latitude and its altitude. Approxi-
mately 91 percent of the volume of the earth’s glacial ice (85 percent
of its area) is concentrated in Antarctica, whereas 8 percent of its vol-
ume (12 percent of its area) is in Greenland. This means that only 1
percent of the total volume of the earth’s glacial ice exists in the
world’s mountain ranges.
Arctic icebergs are the products of glaciers in Greenland, Canada,
Alaska, and Russia, but western Greenland is by far the major source
of icebergs in the Northern Hemisphere. Icebergs are rare in the
north Pacific Ocean because those that are calved from Alaskan gla-
ciers generally drift northward, whereas in the north Atlantic Ocean
icebergs generally drift southward (icebergs have been reported as
far south as Bermuda).
Another geographical source of icebergs is the Antarctic. Because
the immense weight of the Antarctic’s ice sheet has depressed its un-
derlying landmass, most Antarctic ice tends to remain inland rather
than flow to the coast. Nevertheless, the sloping coastal edges of the
Antarctic ice sheet constantly calve icebergs. For example, in 1927 a
section about eight times the size of the state of Rhode Island broke
from the Antarctic shore and floated north along the coast of Argen-
tina.

Prevention and Preparations

Because glaciers move slowly and because they are located in sparsely
populated regions, they do not pose the same threat to human life

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Icebergs and Glaciers

and property that icebergs do, but they are not devoid of hazard. Gla-
ciers are capable of overrunning buildings or small settlements, as
they did in seventeenth century Switzerland during the start of what
came to be called the “Little Ice Age.” Glacial movements can block
streams, and when these ice dams fail, human structures and lives are
at risk. Today, remote-sensing mapping techniques are able to iden-
tify glacial areas of potential dangers to human communities.
Throughout the period of sailing ships and even during the pe-
riod of steamships, icebergs caused massive loss of life and property.
Because of the tragedy precipitated by Titanic’s collision with an ice-
berg in 1912, an international conference was held in London in
1913 to determine what needed to be done to prevent such disasters
in the future. The International Ice Patrol (IIP) began its service in
1914, and through aerial surveillance of icebergs supplemented by
observations from commercial ships, the IIP tracked dangerous ice-
bergs, alerted ships to their presence, and prevented collisions. After
World War II, radar and sonar techniques were developed to pre-
cisely monitor iceberg movements. Canadians were particularly suc-
cessful in developing airborne ice-mapping sensors, including side-
looking airborne radar (SLAR). Scientists from the United States
and Canada have also used satellite images to study the loss of glacier
mass by calving, and these quantitative data have proved more accu-
rate than estimates based on iceberg reports from ships. A measure
of the success of the IIP’s efforts is the fact that, since its inception,
not a single reported loss of life or property has occurred from a co-
operating vessel’s collision with an iceberg.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Glacier-related disasters are generally neither as dramatic nor as cata-
strophic as major earthquakes, but their cumulative costs in property
loss and human fatalities mean that survival and rescue become im-
portant after such disasters occur. When the lobe of a glacier blocks a
stream or an iceberg threatens a seabed oil installation off Labrador,
sufficient time exists to evacuate people from a potential glacial
surge or to lift workers by helicopter from an oil rig.
During the days of sailing ships, rescues were largely matters of
chance. When John Rutledge, traveling from Liverpool to New York,
collided with an iceberg off the Newfoundland banks on February

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 Icebergs and Glaciers

20, 1856, its 120 passengers and 16 crew members tried to survive in
five lifeboats (with one compass among them), but by the time
Germania picked up one of the lifeboats eight days later, only one
young boy remained alive. During the time of the great steamships,
the most dramatic rescue of passengers and crew from an iceberg-
sunk ship was Titanic. Its 705 survivors owed their lives to the wireless
telegraph, for the Cunard liner Carpathia heard Titanic’s SOS mes-
sages and sped to the disaster site.
Modern technology has improved survival rates and rescues at
sea. Training and drills on ships, emergency alarms, and detailed
evacuation systems, as well as superior lifeboats, life rafts, life jackets,
and immersion suits, have all facilitated rescues and lessened the loss
of life. Because of hypothermia, only 14 people who went down with
Titanic were pulled alive out of the water, and only half of those sur-
vived. Thermal protective suits now enhance the chances that rescue
ships will pull survivors rather than corpses out of cold ocean waters.

Impact
In the early twenty-first century, only a small number of glaciers ex-
isted near inhabited areas, minimizing their impact on humans. Ice-
bergs cause disasters on a short time scale, such as collisions with
ships, but glacier-related hazards can also be serious when consid-
ered on a long-term basis. Variations in the amount of glacial ice are
crucial to human populations. Throughout geological history, par-
ticularly during the ice ages, glaciers have had a powerful effect on
humans and their environment, as they forced our species to adapt
or migrate. At the height of the last ice age, about twenty thousand
years ago, much more ice existed on continents than exists today,
preventing humans from using much valuable land in North Amer-
ica and northern Europe. Some scientists predict that the earth will
eventually experience another ice age that might last 50,000 years
and that this would have devastating effects on human beings.
On the other hand, many scientists are worried about the effects
of future global warming on the earth’s glacial ice. If all this ice were
to melt, the resulting rise in sea level of about 200 feet (60 meters)
would submerge every major coastal city. Glaciers are sensitive indi-
cators of climate change, expanding and contracting in response to
temperature fluctuations. During the lifetime of our species, humans

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Icebergs and Glaciers

have adapted to immense expansions and contractions of gigantic

polar ice sheets, and if the present understanding of glaciologists
about the periodic nature of these fluctuations is correct, humans
will need to continue their adaptations well into the future.
Robert J. Paradowski

Bibliography
Benn, Douglas I., and David J. A. Evans. Glaciers and Glaciation. New
York: Arnold, 1998. The authors create a contemporary synthesis
of “all important aspects of glaciers and their effects.” Particularly
valuable is an extensive set of references.
Hoyle, Fred. Ice: The Ultimate Human Catastrophe. New York: Contin-
uum, 1981. In this popular account Hoyle presents the arguments
of those scientists who believe that an ice age is imminent, while
offering practical suggestions about what needs to be done to
avoid its catastrophic consequences.
McCall, G. J. H., D. J. C. Laming, and S. C. Scott. Geohazards: Natural
and Man-Made. New York: Chapman and Hall, 1992. This book,
written by geoscientists experienced in the practical problems of
natural disasters, enlightens readers through descriptions of geo-
hazards (including glaciers and icebergs), their assessment and
prediction, and the mitigation of their effects.
Simon, Seymour. Icebergs and Glaciers. New York: HarperTrophy, 1999.
Intended for young people. Discusses the formation, movement,
and types of glaciers and icebergs. Describes their effect on their
surroundings.
Tufnell, L. Glacier Hazards. New York: Longman, 1984. The dangers
to human life and property posed by ice sheets in glacierized re-
gions can be significant, and the author shows how to identify
such high-risk areas and to reduce their dangers.

188
Landslides, Mudslides, and
Rockslides
Factors involved: Geography, geological forces,
gravitational forces, human activity, ice, plants, rain,
snow, temperature, weather conditions
Regions affected: All

Definition
“Landslide” is a general term referring to any perceptible mass move-
ment of earth materials downslope in response to gravity. The deadly
forms of landslides, such as debris avalanches and mudflows, can
move at speeds in excess of 249 miles (400 kilometers) per hour and
can bury entire cities. The death toll from a single event can be
greater than 100,000. Landslides cause more deaths and cost more
money each year than all other natural disasters combined.

Science
Mass movement is the proper term for any form of detachment and
transport of soil and rock materials downslope. Some forms of mass
movement have extremely slow velocities, less than 0.4 inch (1 centi-
meter) a year. Landslides include all forms of mass movement having
speeds of greater than 0.04 inch (1 millimeter) a day.
Landslides can be divided into as many as fifteen different classes.
The basis for the classification is the type of material that moves (for
example, mud) and the general nature of the movement (for exam-
ple, flow). The names of most of the individual classes are merely a
combination of the two terms used in making the classification. For
example, when very small particles called mud are saturated with
water and flow down a slope like a liquid, the landslide is classified as
a “mudflow.”
The types of materials that are involved in a mass-movement event
are called debris, mud, rock, sand, and soil. These terms refer to the
size of the particles that are moving. The word “soil” is used by earth
scientists for particles that are less than 0.08 inch (2 millimeters)
across. The word “mud” refers to the smaller pieces of soil, whereas

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Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

Milestones
1512: A landslide causes a lake to overflow, killing more than 600 in
Biasco, the Alps.
September, 1618: Two villages are destroyed by landslides, and 2,427
are reported dead in Chiavenna Valley, Italy.
September, 1806: Portions of Rossberg Peak collapse, destroying 4 vil-
lages and killing 800 people in Goldau Valley, Switzerland.
April, 1903: A 0.5-mile section of Turtle Mountain near Frank, Al-
berta, slides down the mountain, killing 70 people in the town.
December, 1920: An earthquake shears off unstable cliffs in Gansu
Province, China, destroying 10 cities and killing 200,000.
1959: Hurricane rains and an earthquake combined with a series of
massive landslides bury the 800 residents of Minatitlan, Mexico, and
kill another 4,200 in surrounding communities.
October, 1963: A landslide caused by an earthquake destroys the
Vaiont Dam, drowning almost 3,000 residents of Belluno, Italy.
November, 1963: Grand Rivière du Nord, Haiti, is devastated by land-
slides brought about by tropical downpours; an estimated 500 tourists
and residents are killed.
1964: Earthquakes and rains cause landslides near Niigata, Japan, kill-
ing 108, injuring 223, and leaving more than 40,000 homeless.
1966: A slag heap near Aberfan, Wales, collapses and kills 147—116
of them children.
1968: More than 1,000 are killed in Bihar and Assam, West Bengal, by
floods and landslides.
January, 1969: Torrential rains lasting more than a week trigger
mudslides that kill 95 and cause more than $138 million in damage in
Southern California.
July, 1972: Landslides caused by torrential rains kill 370 persons and
cause $472 million in property damage throughout Japan.
1974: A landslide in Huancavelica, Peru, creates a natural dam on the
Mantaro River, forcing the evacuation of 9,000 living in the area and
killing an estimated 300.
September, 1987: Mudslides wipe out entire sections of the Villa Tina
area of Medellín, Colombia, killing 183 residents and leaving 500
missing.

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 Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

July, 1998: Waves created by an undersea landslide caused by an

earthquake kill 2,000 in Papua New Guinea.
August, 1998: The village of Malpa, India, is destroyed by boulders
and mud, leaving 202 dead; only 18 survive.
February, 2006: A mudslide buries 16 villages on the island of Leyte in
the Philippines; more than 200 are confirmed dead, and 1,800 are
missing.

“sand” indicates the larger-sized soil fragments. The term “rock” is

used for particles that are greater than 0.08 inch (2 millimeters)
across. The term “debris” is used when there is a mixture of soil and
rock; however the rock sizes usually predominate in most debris.
Civil engineers, who build highways, bridges, dams, and other
construction projects, have slightly modified the classification of ma-
terials. They consider “soil” any unconsolidated material, which they
divide further into two classes, called “earth” when the particle size is
small and “debris” when the particle size is large. The term “rock” is
reserved for material that started as distinct, rigid, rock layers within
the earth. Rock will usually break up into gravel-size particles during
a mass movement.
The nature of the movement can be a “slide,” “flow,” “fall,” or one
of a number of special terms in which a mixture of different move-
ments occurs. There are several key characteristic movements associ-
ated with a slide, which physically resembles a child’s slide in a play-
ground. The material usually moves as a single mass. The moving
material is coherent; it does not break apart, nor do the individual
fragments take differing contoured paths down the slope. Also, the
base of the sliding material is usually a single, well-defined surface. A
“translational slide” occurs when the surface at the base of the mov-
ing material is a flat plane having a uniform slope, which roughly cor-
responds to the slope on the land surface prior to the mass move-
ment. A “rotational slide” occurs on a curved basal surface, where the
upper part of the surface is steeper and the lower part is gentler, giv-
ing the surface a spoon shape.
The mass movement called a “flow” has a motion similar to that of
a shallow mountain stream: The entire mass behaves as a fluid. The

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Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

individual particles of moving material take contoured paths that di-

verge, converge, and collide with one another as they proceed down
the slope. The basal surface beneath the flowing material is more un-
dulating, having higher and lower elevations in different areas of the
flow. In most cases flows have higher water content than slides; how-
ever, the fluid nature of a flow can also be generated by internally
trapped air.
A “fall” occurs when material either free-falls down a cliff face or
bounces down a very steep slope. A special movement called a “top-
ple” happens when the material rotates around a fixed pivot axis near
the base of the column before the fall occurs. The rotation may pro-
ceed slowly over a period of years, but this fall is the fastest of all types
of movement.
Two special categories of motion are often associated with natural
disasters. An “avalanche” is a special category of flow, in which a highly
disaggregated material is fluidized by entrapped air and moves at very
fast speeds. A “spread” is a vertical combination of a coherent upper
layer that slides downslope on a lower, more fluid layer that flows.
Spreads commonly occur during an earthquake, when the dry coher-
ent material above the groundwater table laterally spreads out and
sinks into the water-saturated flowing material below the water table.
Often, people are not present at the location of a landslide, and
the nature of movement must be deduced from the deposits formed.
The standard technique to distinguish a slide from a flow is to make a
ratio of the depth (thickness) of the moving material divided by the
length (or distance) the material moves down the slope. This ratio is
called the depth-length ratio. Flows move greater distances down the
slope even though they generally involve less thickness of flowing ma-
terial. Flows, thus, have small values for the depth/length ratio, com-
pared to slides, which are thick and move a short distance downslope.
Of the fifteen classes of landslides, which are defined by the type
of material and the nature of movement, all can be disasters in terms
of property loss, but less than half are life-threatening. The most
common disaster is when debris moves by a rotational slide; this class
is called a “slump.” A slump generally moves slowly, taking hours,
days, months, or even years to complete its travel down the slope. The
main block of material in a slump often breaks into a series of smaller
blocks that appear as backward-tilted steps. A small, slow-moving

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 Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

Parts of a Slump
Scarp
Head
Slump blocks

Hummocks
Toe

Failure
Plane
Foot

earthflow typically develops at the toe of the slump. Few lives have
been lost because of slumps, but when a slump develops in a city or
town, every home in a section of several square blocks will have bro-
ken foundations and loss of vertical orientation of their walls and will
probably need to be razed.
Mudflows and debris flows are the landslides that have generated
the greatest death tolls. These events involve thick masses of mud or
debris saturated with water and flowing with the consistency of wet
cement. They can move at speeds of 31 miles (50 kilometers) per
hour and faster. Normally, they develop after a long period of rain-
fall, which saturates slope materials and causes them to move. These
flows also occur after sudden melting of frozen soils, often brought
on by spring snowmelt. They are particularly numerous in years with
heavy snowfalls and deep snowpack. As the snow melts, the water
seeps into the subsurface of the slope, saturating the soil or rock mass
and beginning the landslide. Mudflows are usually unexpected, and
the slurry of mud and debris rushing down the slope can destroy
homes, wash out roads and bridges, fell trees, sweep away cars, and
obstruct roads and streams with a thick deposit of mud.
A special class of mudflow or debris flow called a “lahar” is pro-

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Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

duced when material from a volcanic eruption is ejected onto snow-

fields, glaciers, or crater lakes at the summit of a stratovolcano. An
eruption of Nevado del Ruiz, an ice-capped Andean volcano in Co-
lombia, in 1985 killed no one. However, the lahar produced by the
melting glacier rushed 37 miles (60 kilometers) down the valley and
killed 25,000 people in the city of Armero. Lahars can travel at speeds
of 93 miles (150 kilometers) per hour, and when these thick deposits
of mud come to rest they become as firm as concrete in a matter of a
few hours.
Mudslides can be distinguished from mudflows by the coherence
of the moving mass. One eyewitness in a mudslide reported that the
ground became soft and he sank to his ankles, making walking diffi-
cult while he moved several hundred yards downslope on top of a
mudslide. People unfortunate enough to be atop a mudflow would
immediately sink into it and become part of the churning fluid.
The landslide categories of rockslides, rockfalls, and rock ava-
lanches are also usually lethal. A vivid example is the Vaiont Dam Di-
saster, where a slab 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) wide by 1 mile (1.6 kilo-
meters) long and 820 feet (250 meters) thick slid into the Vaiont
Reservoir in Italy in 1963. The drop into the reservoir took less than
one minute. The rockslide splashed a wave over the dam, producing
a downstream flood that killed almost 3,000 people in a town 1.5
miles (2.5 kilometers) from the dam. The dam itself survived. A rock
avalanche in 1962 in Peru moved 3.9 million cubic yards (3 million
cubic meters) of mountain 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) down a valley
in seven minutes. Observers said the landslide bounced from one
side of the valley to the other at least five times before it spread out
over a populated valley at the base of the mountain, killing 60 people.
The same valley experienced another rock avalanche in 1970, exact-
ing a death toll of 70,000.
The material of a rockslide differs from that of a rock avalanche in
the amount of fracturing found in the rock. Rockslides involve crack
development at a specific horizon where there is expansion within
the rock mass. Cracks form within the rock over a relatively narrow
zone; the fracturing does not penetrate the whole rock mass. Rock av-
alanches develop when the fracturing is continuous all the way down
to the sliding surface. An avalanche involves independent movement
of fragments in the entire mass above the sliding surface, as opposed

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 Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

to the rockslide, which involves a single direction of movement for

the material above the layer of continuous cracks.
Rockfalls in mountainous regions are often controlled by an in-
crease in temperature, causing a thaw. Rockfalls can be so continuous
in mountains that spring climbing on some European peaks must be
completed by 10 a.m. Several people are killed each year in the Rocky
Mountain region of the United States because of rockfalls, usually
motorists struck by bouncing rocks clearing the retaining wall.
All landslides are a form of slope failure. They happen when the
shear stress within a slope exceeds the strength of the slope material.
Then the slope fails, and millions of cubic feet of rock and soil mate-
rials can shear away from the slope and move hundreds or thousands
of feet down the hill. There are a half dozen or more factors that can
cause shear stresses to exceed the forces that hold the slope in place.
The most significant factor promoting landslides is an increase in the
angle of the slope: The steeper the slope, the more prone it is to land-
slides. The angle of the slope always increases directly above any re-
gion where construction has cut a relatively flat region into the hill-
side, such as a road, the leveling for a house foundation, or a quarry
site. Fills for roads and waste from mines and quarries are often
placed on slopes, making them steeper than the normal angle of rest.
Slides will begin until the angle of rest (usually about 35 degrees for
coarse material) is attained. The naturally steep walls of river gorges
and glaciated valleys are therefore common sites for landslides.
Another common factor contributing to landslides is the addition
of water to the area. Water lifts or pushes the grains apart in the soil
or rock, reducing the internal friction of the soil and counteracting
the gravitational forces that hold the slope in place. Much in the
same way air pressure in a car’s tires lifts the car, high water pressure
in the pores of rock or soil will lower the stability of the slope. This
added water can come from heavy rains, melting snow, or even ponds
and reservoirs. The area of Southern California is like a desert most
of the year; however, it can receive heavy rains in later winter and
early spring, which corresponds to the landslide season. Human in-
fluence has added water to the ground by construction of septic
tanks, ponds, reservoirs, or irrigation canals. In one case in Los An-
geles, a man went on vacation leaving his lawn sprinklers running,
which caused an earthflow.

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Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

Landslides can also be caused by earth tremors. Earthquakes, vol-

canic eruptions, and even heavy machinery or trains passing on
nearby roads or railroads have been known to induce tremors that
start landslides. Most of the victims of the 1998 earthquake in Af-
ghanistan were killed not by the earthquake itself but by landslides
caused by the quake. In January, 1994, an earthquake in Northridge,
California, triggered more than 11,000 landslides over an area of ap-
proximately 3,861 square miles (10,000 square kilometers). The larg-
est measured rockslide had a volume in excess of 130,790 cubic yards
(100,000 cubic meters). Dozens of homes were destroyed or dam-
aged, roads were blocked, and an oil-field infrastructure sustained
damage from the slide.
Another factor that promotes landslides is the removal of lateral
or basal support from a slope. In nature, this occurs because of ero-
sion by either meandering rivers or wave action on ocean cliffs. Every
year numerous million-dollar homes are lost to earthfalls from wave
erosion along the Pacific coastline.
Vegetation changes contribute to landslides in a variety of ways. In
high mountain valleys the bedrock is wedged apart by roots of trees. In
regions of rockslides the depressions created where small-scale move-
ments have occurred are often the very sites where trees will take root
and grow. On gentler slopes vegetation helps to anchor loose soil ma-
terials and prevent landslides. Wildfires have been responsible for pro-
moting landslides by destroying tree cover; areas freshly clear-cut by
the logging industry or cleared for housing developments have also
been reported as sites of increased landslide activity.
The repeated freezing and thawing of water in cracks can be re-
sponsible for rockfalls. The process is called frost wedging, in which
the expansion during freezing widens the crack and allows the water
to penetrate deeper into the rock when the thaw occurs. Individual
blocks can be wedged out of the cliff face, falling independently or
causing such a loss of cohesion that larger portions of the cliff face
can collapse.

Geography
Mass movement occurs in varying degrees almost everywhere. Huge
landslides have been identified on the Moon, on Mars, and beneath
the Atlantic Ocean on continental margins. A landslide discovered

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 Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

on Mars in 1978, was about 37 miles (60 kilometers) long and 31

miles (50 kilometers) wide.
The number of landslides increases in regions that have steep
slopes, high precipitation, sizable fluctuations in seasonal tempera-
tures, much clay in the soils, and frequent earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions. Some countries that are among the hardest hit by land-
slides are Switzerland, Italy, Japan, China, Peru, and Colombia.
Landslides occur in every state of the United States. California,
West Virginia, Utah, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Washington
have the most severe landslides. Many of the disastrous landslides in
the United States have occurred in the West; these states are among
the most arid, and the occurrence of landslides is strongly correlated
with unusually heavy rainfalls or the melting of winter snowpack.
Once a landslide has occurred in a given area the chances of a re-
peat occurrence are very high. Governments spend a considerable
amount of time and money attempting to identify geographic re-
gions where landslides have occurred. Satellite images are used to

An undated rockslide in Frank, Alberta, Canada. (National Oceanic and Atmo-

spheric Administration)

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Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

identify large landslides by noting changes in soil and vegetation

cover. Photographs taken from planes are used to record the extent
of sliding land.

Prevention and Preparations

The standard method used to evaluate the potential of a landslide is
the determination of the “factor of safety.” A numerical value is deter-
mined for every factor related to the occurrence of a landslide. The
factor of safety is a ratio in which all the values that resist landsliding
are divided by the sum of all the values that favor a landslide. The
slope is considered stable when the factor of safety has a value that is
greater than 1. Landslides are considered imminent when the value
is less than 1.
Myriad techniques and equipment are used to assess the instability
of a slope. Conventional surveying methods measure and record the
development of cracks, subsidence, and uplift on slopes. Tiltmeters
are used to record changes in the slope inclination near cracks and
areas of weakness. Inclinometers and rock noise instruments are in-
stalled to record movements near cracks and ground deformations.
Dating cracks and subsidence and upheavals of slope areas can help
scientists assess the past changes in climate and denudation, along
with rainfall and earthquake and volcanic activities, which can act as
triggers for future slope failures.
Recording air-temperature thresholds forecasts the onset of land-
slides brought on by snowmelt. Research is demonstrating that 85
percent of landslide events occurs within two weeks after the first
yearly occurrence of a six-day average temperature of 58 degrees
Fahrenheit. This sort of forecasting can allow ample time to prepare
persons in the area to evacuate. One of the safety problems of land-
slides is that they normally happen within seconds, pouring tons of
material on homes and buildings in their path, not allowing the pop-
ulace enough time to evacuate the area.
Trends from past measurement coupled with current monitoring
of slopes increase the ability to predict future landslides. Monitoring
rainfall and pore water pressure are other ways to try to predict po-
tential landslides. However, predicting landslides is a very inexact sci-
ence because some cracks can form on slopes and cause landslides
within minutes of their formation. Other slopes have been known to

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 Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

sustain cracks, subsidence, or buckling for years and then fail sud-
denly, with little or no warning.
Local officials are turning more to the development of landslide
hazard mapping. Each area is rated as to the potential for movement
and assigned to one of six designations. Areas of similar designation
are grouped together as regions on a map. Local legislation places re-
strictions on and develops greater monitoring of the areas having the
highest hazard rankings. In San Mateo County in California the haz-
ard maps are used to restrict the number of homes that may be built
there. The normal density allowed is one home per 5 acres, whereas
high-hazard areas are restricted to one home per 40 acres.
People living in landslide areas need to note common warning
signs of potential slope failure. Some signs of landslides are doors or
windows sticking or jamming for the first time on a home. New cracks
appearing in plaster, tile, brick, or the foundation of houses can be a
precursor of earth movement. Widening cracks on paved streets or
driveways also indicate movements in landslide areas. Sometimes un-
derground utility lines will begin to break as result of earth move-
ment. Water will sometimes break through the ground in new loca-
tions, and fences, retaining walls, utility poles, and trees will tilt more.
A faint rumbling sound, increasing in volume, can be heard as the
landslide nears. If any of these warning signs are experienced, evacu-
ation plans should be made. It is recommended that there be at least
two planned evacuation routes, because roads may become inaccessi-
ble from deposit of slide materials.
Japan spends approximately $4 billion annually to try to control
mud- and debris flows. The Japanese government has built sabo dams
along the river systems in urban areas to trap mud and rock that slide
down the mountains. In the United States an American version of
these dams is found in Los Angeles County, where there is a system of
temporary fortifications to protect areas such as Pasadena and Glen-
dale from debris flows that originate in the San Gabriel Mountains
and canyons after hard rains.
The best form of landslide prevention is to not build on areas
where landslides have occurred, at the base of slopes, at the base of
minor drainage hollows, at the base or top of old fill slopes, or on hill-
side developments where leach-field septic systems are used. Unfor-
tunately, landslide, rockslide, and mudslide areas are very scenic and

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Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

Winter storms in 2005 created a number of fatal mudslides in California, such as this
one in the town of La Conchita. (FEMA)

are known to entice people to build houses. The West Coast, one of
the most slide-prone areas in the world, is a prime example of an area
that attracts building in spite of the dangers of landslides.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

A variety of agencies are usually dispatched to the scenes of disastrous
landslides. Search and rescue teams are trained in recovery techniques
that are appropriate for landslides, such as rescue dogs and proper dig-
ging methods. The dangers that are associated with disease, hunger,
and lack of water and shelter are handled by entities such as state gov-
ernments, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and
the American Red Cross. The National Landslide Hazards Program,
within the United States Geological Survey, responds to emergencies
and disasters to provide information on the continuing potential for
movement while rescue efforts are taking place.
The National Flood Insurance Program was amended in 1969 to
include payment for damage incurred by mudslides caused by flood-

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 Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

ing. Most homeowners’ insurance policies do not cover damage

caused by landslides. Federal assistance is available for areas declared
a national emergency.

Impact
The United States Geological Survey reported that more people died
from landslides in the last three months of 1985 than were killed dur-
ing the previous twenty years by all other geological hazards (such as
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions). In terms of property damage,
landslides have cost Americans three times the combined costs from
all other natural disasters, including hurricanes, tornadoes, and
floods. The average annual statistics for the United States report 25
people killed and $1.5 billion in damage.
Landslides are a major worldwide hazard. Thousands of people
are killed each year across the world in landslides. A region of south-
ern Italy experienced a series of landslides in 1973, causing 100 vil-
lages to be abandoned and 200,000 people to be displaced. A single
mudflow event in the Gansu Province of China in 1920 is thought to
have been the deadliest landslide, with an estimated 200,000 people
killed. Property damage from landslides worldwide is estimated to be
in the tens of billions of dollars.

Historical Overview
Historically, the deadliest landslides have occurred in the mountain-
ous regions of Asia, Europe, and the Americas. While landslides are
also frequently experienced in Africa and Australia, the quantity of
slides and the resultant loss of life in those regions do not compare to
those in other parts of the world. Most landslides occur in hilly or
mountainous regions where sloping conditions make such activity
more likely, but they can happen almost anywhere.
In the United States, landslides and rockslides have occurred most
frequently in the Rocky Mountain region and along the Pacific coast.
Utah, Colorado, California, and Washington have been the most sus-
ceptible to landslide disasters. West Virginia holds that distinction on
the U.S. East Coast, primarily as a result of slope instability caused by
mining and the debris and waste that it creates. Alberta, British Co-
lumbia, and Quebec are considered the most landslide-prone prov-
inces of Canada.

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Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

The largest and most devastating landslides have been caused by

earthquakes. Most landslides occur with little or no warning, often in
tandem with seismic activity. In one of the worst slides in recorded
history, a 1920 earthquake in Gansu Province, China, sheared off un-
stable cliffs, destroying 10 cities and killing 200,000.
Human activity has also been a major contributor to the death toll
caused by landslides. Ground that is normally stable may slide after
human activity alters its natural state. Many deadly landslides have oc-
curred when development altered slope and groundwater condi-
tions. In Virginia, a state not considered a prime site for landslide ac-
tivity, 8 people were killed in 1942 when a coal waste heap slid into a
river valley near the city of Oakwood. The worst landslide in the his-
tory of Wales occurred when a human-made slag heap outside of
Aberfan shifted, sending 2 million tons of rock, coal, and mud down-
hill into the city and killing 147 people, most of them children. De-
forestation was a major factor in the Leyte mudslide that buried vil-
lages in the Philippines; more than 2,000 people were missing or
confirmed dead.
Scientists were long unaware of the potential for destruction from
underwater landslides. A scientific team that visited the site of a 1998
tsunami in Papua New Guinea later concluded that the deadly waves
were probably caused by an underwater landslide set in motion by a
small earthquake. This theory forced many scientists to seriously con-
sider the possibility of a connection between landslides and tsunamis.
Unlike many other natural disasters, landslides often have a long-
lasting effect on the physical environment. Landslides have collapsed
mountains, sent rivers on new and destructive courses, and created
huge lakes that inundated populated fertile valleys. A 1925 landslide
sent some 50,000 cubic yards of debris into the Gros Ventre River of
Wyoming, creating a natural dam 350 feet high. A 3-mile-long lake
formed behind the dam. It is not unusual for a landslide to perma-
nently displace animals and humans.
Property damage from landslides is a common occurrence
throughout the world, resulting annually in billions of dollars in
property damage. A variety of methods are now employed through-
out the world to prevent landslides. One way of avoiding catastrophe
is diversion and drainage of water before it reaches potential prob-
lem areas. Building contractors consider the potential for landslide

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 Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides

damage to buildings and other structures prior to excavation and

construction. The disposal of construction, logging, and mining
waste is closely monitored by many governments in efforts to avoid
potential slide disasters.
Dion C. Stewart and Toby R. Stewart
Donald C. Simmons, Jr.

Bibliography
Bloom, Arthur L. Geomorphology: A Systematic Analysis of Late Cenozoic
Landforms. 3d ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Chapter 9, entitled “Mass Wasting and Hillslopes,” provides a low-
level technical discussion of factors contributing to landslides.
Bryant, Edward A. Natural Hazards. 2d ed. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press, 2005. A nontechnical book that cites
nearly twenty additional readable references on land instability.
Cooke, R. U., and J. C. Doornkamp. Geomorphology in Environmental
Management. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1990. This book
provides details on hazard assessment and risk calculations. It gives
detailed examples from many countries, including the United States.
Easterbrook, Don J. Surface Processes and Landforms. 2d ed. Upper Sad-
dle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1999. This college textbook is quite
good for a general audience. It provides excellent descriptions,
pictures, and accounts of over ten classes of landslides.
Erickson, Jon. Quakes, Eruptions, and Other Geologic Cataclysms: Reveal-
ing the Earth’s Hazards. Rev. ed. New York: Facts On File, 2001. One
of the books in the series entitled The Living Earth. Contains a
chapter on earth movements that provides a descriptive treatment
of landslides.
Plummer, Charles C., David McGeary, and Diane H. Carlson. Physical
Geology. 11th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2007. A
superb introductory textbook. A chapter is devoted to mass wast-
ing and landslides, including descriptions of common forms of
landslides and a section on prevention.
Ritter, Dale F., R. Craig Kochel, and Jerry R. Miller. Process Geomorphol-
ogy. 4th ed. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 2002. This book pro-
vides the technical details of how to evaluate all factors involved in
the calculation of the factor of safety. Requires a good background
in mathematics, including trigonometry and vectors.

203
Lightning Strikes
Factors involved: Chemical reactions, rain,
temperature, weather conditions
Regions affected: Cities, coasts, forests, lakes,
mountains, plains, towns, valleys

Definition
Lightning strikes fatally wound between 50 and 100 persons each
year in the United States, mostly within the thunderstorm season that
occurs during the spring and summer months. Lightning also causes
tens of millions of dollars of damage each year by sparking large for-
est fires and destroying buildings and various forms of electrical and
communication systems.

Science
A lightning bolt is a high-voltage electrical spark which occurs most
often when a cloud attempts to balance the differences between posi-
tive and negative charges within itself. Lightning bolts can also be
generated between two clouds, or between a cloud and the ground,
although these conditions occur much less often. A lightning bolt is
generally composed of a series of flashes, with an average of four
flashes. The length and duration of each flash will vary greatly.
Thunder is caused by the heating of air surrounding a lightning
bolt to temperatures as high as 72,032 degrees Fahrenheit (40,000
degrees Celsius), which is approximately five times hotter than the
Sun, causing a very rapid expansion of air. This heated air then
moves at supersonic speeds under a force ten to one hundred times
normal atmospheric pressure, thus forming shock waves that travel
out from the lightning at speeds of approximately 1,083 feet (330 me-
ters) per second.
Thunderstorms are local rainstorms that feature lightning and re-
sultant thunder claps; they sometimes produce hailstones. Much less
often, lightning is created by snowstorms, dust storms, or clouds pro-
duced by volcanic eruptions or thermonuclear explosions. The ex-
plosive release of electrical energy within a thunderstorm cloud cre-
ates a lightning bolt, which is most often produced by accumulations

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 Lightning Strikes

Milestones
1769: 1,000 tons of gunpowder stored in the state arsenal at Brescia,
Italy, explode when struck by lightning. One-sixth of the city is de-
stroyed, and 3,000 people are killed.
1786: The people of Paris make bell-ringing during thunderstorms il-
legal. The ringing of church bells was believed to prevent lightning
strikes but often proved fatal to ringers.
April 3, 1856: 4,000 are killed on the Greek island of Rhodes when
lightning strikes a church where gunpowder is stored.
1900: The first quantitative measurements of peak current in light-
ning strikes are conducted.
1917: The first photographic record of the spectrum from lightning
using a spectroscope is made.
1918: In Nasatch National Forest, Utah, 504 sheep are killed by a
lightning strike.
1925: The U.S. Weather Bureau applies sensors to airplane wings to
record atmospheric conditions.
July 10, 1926: Explosions triggered by lightning at an ammunition
dump in New Jersey kill 21 people, blasting debris 5 miles.
1927: French scientists produce the radiosonde, an instrument pack-
age designed to measure pressure, temperature, and humidity during
balloon ascents and radio the information back to earth.
1929: American scientist Robert H. Goddard launches a rocket carry-
ing an instrument package that includes a barometer, a thermome-
ter, and a camera.
1959: The first meteorological experiment is conducted on a satellite
platform.
1963: The first quantitative temperature estimates are made for indi-
vidual lightning strikes.
1963: Lightning strikes a Boeing 707 over Elkton, Maryland, killing all
81 persons on board. This is the first verified instance of a lightning-
induced airplane crash.
December 23, 1975: A single lightning strike in Umtrali, Rhodesia
(now Zimbabwe), kills 21 people.

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Lightning Strikes

of electrical charge within the same cumulonimbus cloud. Cloud-to-

cloud lightning involves one cloud which is seeking an oppositely
charged cloud to neutralize itself. Cloud-to-ground lightning in-
volves a lightning bolt which is seeking the best conducting route to
the ground, thus hitting lightning rods, tall buildings, and trees.
Thunderstorms occur when the atmosphere is unstable and moist
air at the ground surface rises, creating several small cumulus clouds
that initially dissipate while producing rain or electrical charges. As the
clouds increase in size and combine, they surge upward and generate
rain and lightning. The average storm produces five to ten flashes per
minute, whereas larger clouds can produce electrical discharges of
over a thousand flashes per minute. A single thunderstorm cloud has
the potential to build up an electrical charge of approximately 1 mil-
lion volts per meter, produced by the action of the rising and falling of
air currents. This electrical charge is transferred through the cloud as
raindrops, hailstones, and ice pellets collide with smaller water drop-
lets and possibly ice. A falling stream of electrons creates a negative
charge, which generally accumulates in the lower part of the cloud,
with the positive electrons simultaneously creating a positive charge in
the upper part of the cloud. Lightning is essentially the reaction that
neutralizes these positive and negative charges.
Other functions of lightning are to enhance rain and snow forma-
tion, supply energy to tornadoes, and assist in the fixation of atmo-
spheric nitrogen. Other forms of lightning include ball lightning,
also called kugelblitz, a rare phenomenon in which round balls of fire
appear, often near telephone lines or buildings. Heat lightning in-
volves lightning seen from a distant thunderstorm which is too far
away for the thunder to be heard.
American scientist Benjamin Franklin performed the first system-
atic study of lightning in the late eighteenth century, working from
his hypothesis that sparks observed in his laboratory experiments
and lightning were both forms of the same type of electrical energy.
During a Pennsylvania thunderstorm in 1752, he flew the most fa-
mous kite in history, with sparks jumping from a key tied to the bot-
tom of the damp kite string to an insulating silk ribbon tied to Frank-
lin’s knuckles. The kite took the place of a lightning rod, and
Franklin’s grounded body provided the conducting path for electri-
cal currents originating from the storm clouds. Franklin’s experi-

206
 Lightning Strikes

ments proved that lightning strikes do contain electricity and deter-

mined that the lower parts of the clouds were negatively charged,
with Earth providing the positive charge. Franklin’s research also laid
the groundwork for the implementation of lightning rods as a means
of protecting buildings.

Geography
An estimated fifteen hundred to two thousand thunderstorms occur
somewhere on the Earth’s surface at any given moment. These thun-
derstorms are estimated to trigger approximately one hundred or
more lightning flashes every second, which corresponds to approxi-
mately 8.6 million strikes every day and more than 3 billion every
year. Lightning has also been known to occur within atmospheric
storms on other planets within Earth’s solar system, such as Jupiter
and Venus.
Lightning occurs most commonly in warm and moist climates,
with the hot and humid climate of Central Florida experiencing the
highest occurrence of lightning strikes and the Pacific Northwest see-
ing the lowest occurrence.

Prevention and Preparations

The National Lightning Detection Network was set up in the 1970’s
to assist meteorologists in locating and tracking thunderstorms and
lightning strikes. This intricate computer network utilizes lightning
detection images from orbiting satellites and other equipment which
reveal precisely where severe storm activity is located, in addition to
the exact locations where lightning has occurred and has possibly hit
the ground.
Thunder is an important warning signal by nature which reveals
that a lightning bolt has just fired within approximately a 10-mile ra-
dius. The commonly used “flash-to-bang” method is effective in esti-
mating how far away this most dangerous part of a storm is occurring.
Once a flash of lightning is visibly observed, the number of seconds
until thunder is heard is counted. The speed of light is 186,300 miles
per second, thus enabling lightning to be seen immediately after it
flashes. By contrast, sound waves travel about a million times slower at
approximately 1 mile every five seconds. To estimate the approxi-
mate distance from the location of an individual to the lightning

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Lightning Strikes

strike, one should divide the number of seconds between the “flash”
and the “bang” by five to obtain the distance away that the lightning
occurred in miles. If the lightning and thunder are extremely close
together, one should divide the difference between the lightning and
thunder by 360 to obtain the estimated distance away that the light-
ning occurred in yards.
Common sense dictates that an individual caught near a thunder-
storm should seek safe shelter immediately, particularly if the “flash-
to-bang” time is only ten to fifteen seconds, as this means that the
lightning is only 2 to 3 miles away. Successive lightning strikes within
the same storm can be used to determine if the thunderstorm is ap-
proaching one’s location or moving away. If the time interval be-
tween the lightning and the thunder is getting progressively shorter,
the storm is getting closer. If time between the lightning and the
thunder is getting progressively longer, the storm is moving away
from one’s location.
The best defense against getting struck by lightning is prevention,
in the form of examining the weather forecast before participating in
any outdoor activities. Continually being on the lookout for clouds
that appear to be forming into thunderstorms is critical, as is heading
for shelter at the first sight of lightning or the first sound of thunder.
The occurrence of thunder means that lightning must be present
somewhere even if it is not directly visible, with the flash often hidden
within thick clouds.
The best shelter from lightning is a large, permanently fixed, and
electrically conductive building, staying away from windows and other
breakable objects. Sheds and small buildings, particularly those con-
structed with wood and masonry and that do not contain a lightning
rod, do not provide nearly as much protection. In the event that a
building is not available, taking refuge in a motor vehicle with a metal
roof can provide some protection, as the lightning current has a
chance to pass harmlessly down through the vehicle and dissipate
into the ground. Regardless of the structure in which a person seeks
cover, it is important to refrain from touching any metal surfaces. Lo-
cations that contain flammable fuels, such as gasoline, should be
avoided during a thunderstorm.
Persons are advised to avoid being exposed in open areas, high
places, or near isolated trees during lightning danger periods. Those

208
 Lightning Strikes

U.S. Lightning Deaths by Month, 1959-1980

Deaths
641

600

496
500 481

400

300

240

200 194

100 84
64
33 39
2 4 8
0
JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC

This graph represents the deaths caused by lightning in the United States by month
from 1959 to 1980. Lightning strikes most often during spring and summer, when the
air is warm and moist.

caught in the water during a storm, such as while swimming, have a

much greater chance of experiencing electrical shocks in the event
that lightning strikes an area nearby. Saltwater, a better conductor of
electricity, is less dangerous than freshwater as the electrical current
tends to flow around, rather than through, an individual or boat in
the water.
Lightning rods are important protection devices required to be

209
Lightning Strikes

placed within all modern structures. They are made from metal strips
that conduct lightning discharges through the building and into the
ground. Arresters are often used in locations where power, tele-
phone, and antenna wires enter buildings. Ground wires involve ca-
bles that are strung above other wires in an electrical transmission
line, in the hope that they will become the preferred target for a
lightning surge.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

The heavy currents of large lightning bolts have been known to shat-
ter masonry and timber, and they often start fires. Lightning has
been documented injuring critically or even killing persons talking
on the telephone, taking a bath, or sitting near electrical units such as
a computer. Cadaver studies on victims of fatal lightning strikes re-
veal that death can occur from heart damage, inflated lungs, brain
damage, and burns.
For those who survive a lightning strike, immediate medical atten-

Large cities, with their tall buildings, often attract lightning. Because many airports
are located in or near cities, lightning poses much danger to airplanes. (PhotoDisc)

210
 Lightning Strikes

tion is necessary. If the victim is not breathing, artificial respiration

can provide adequate short-term life support, though the victim may
become stiff or rigid in reaction to the shock. Survivors of electric
shock, from lightning or other sources, may suffer from severe burns
and permanent aftereffects, including cataracts, angina, or nervous-
system disorders. Amnesia and paralysis can also occur.

Impact
Lightning thunderbolts have long been feared by societies with be-
liefs in the supernatural, such as the Greeks, Vikings, Buddhists, and
Native Americans. Science has confirmed that lightning is one of the
strongest forces in nature, with larger bolts generating an average po-
tential difference of 100 million volts of energy, approximately equiv-
alent to the power contained in a middle-sized nuclear reactor.
Data collected by the National Lightning Detection Network re-
veal that lightning strikes kill an average of 75 people each year in the
United States and injure hundreds more, mostly during the spring
and summer months. Most fatalities occur from a direct hit, but elec-
trical activity occurring along the ground following a severe strike has
also proved fatal.
Lightning is also to blame for over 10,000 forest fires each year in
the United States alone, with the total property replacement cost in
the tens of millions of dollars. Lightning research greatly increased in
the 1960’s, motivated by the danger of lightning to both aerospace ve-
hicles and the solid-state electronics used in computers and other tech-
nical devices. Commercial airliners performing a normal number of
service runs are subjected to an average of one lightning strike per
year, and in many cases the lightning is triggered by the airplane itself.

Historical Overview
Lightning predicted a victory by Gilgamesh, Sumerian hero of an
epic dating to the third millennium b.c.e. Zeus, chief god of the
Greeks, hurled thunderbolts, and Thor, the thunderer, was the stron-
gest of the Norse gods. Thunderstorms occur throughout the globe,
even in Africa’s Sahara Desert, and many societies have produced
myths that associate lightning, a frightening and long-misunderstood
phenomenon, with supernatural power. Thunder and lightning on
Mount Sinai preceded presentation of the Ten Commandments to

211
Lightning Strikes

Moses. The Romans considered the location of lightning to be an

omen favoring or discouraging personal and governmental business.
Many cultures believed that objects struck by lightning held magical
powers, but people’s primary concern has been protection from the
unpredictability of lightning, with its associated fire and destruction.
Romans wore laurel leaves for protection, and, in the Middle Ages,
European fire festivals sought protection for communities.
Simultaneously, rational explanations for lightning have encoun-
tered superstition. Greek philosopher Socrates described a storm as
“a vortex of air.” Aristotle theorized that a cooling and condensing
cloud forcibly ejects wind which, striking against other clouds, cre-
ates thunder. He wrote, “As a rule, the ejected wind burns with a fine
and gentle fire, and it is then what we call lightning.” Greek historian
Herodotus observed that lightning strikes tall objects, and Mongol
law recognized the fatal association between lightning and water, for-
bidding washing of clothes or bathing during thunderstorms. Italian
artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci theorized that clouds forced to-
gether by opposing winds could only rise, and he thus connected
storm clouds with updrafts.
Not until the eighteenth century was lightning associated with
electricity, itself a little-understood phenomenon named in the late
1500’s by Elizabethan court physician William Gilbert after the Greek
philosopher-scientist Thales of Miletus’s experiments with amber, or,
in Greek, electra. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
electricity and magnetism attracted experimentation and showman-
ship. Only when knowledge of European experiments and gifts of
apparatus, including glass Leyden jars capable of holding and storing
electrical charges, came to American Benjamin Franklin in 1746, did
a theory of electricity emerge. Franklin determined that there was a
single type of electricity, confirmed speculation that lightning was
electricity and, in 1749, first proposed that metal rods could protect
buildings and ships from strikes. His suggestions for construction,
placement, and grounding appeared in the 1753 Poor Richard’s Al-
manac.
Practical applications of electricity, beginning with American in-
ventor Thomas Alva Edison’s 1879 invention of a durable light bulb,
and the subsequent problems of distribution along power lines vul-
nerable to lightning, encouraged lightning research. Despite light-

212
 Lightning Strikes

ning rods on poles, lightning struck power lines and disrupted ser-
vice. Solutions required accurate measurements of lightning voltage
and speed of discharge, studies led by Westinghouse and General
Electric engineers. German immigrant Charles Steinmetz built high-
voltage generators to simulate lightning. Generators produced 50-
foot bolts of lightning for New York World’s Fair visitors in 1939, but
laboratory apparatus could not equal the energy of natural lightning.
In 1925, Sweden’s Harold Norinder, using the European-devel-
oped cathode-ray oscilloscope, measured a lightning-induced electri-
cal surge of about a ten-thousandth of a second, and Americans mea-
sured lightning strikes on power-transmission lines of 5 million volts
in under two-millionths of a second. Understanding the magnitude
of the problem led to improved protection, reducing power failures.
Research leading to recognition of weather conditions likely to
produce lightning, and knowledge of the location of lightning strikes
serves military, commercial, and public interest and furthers techno-
logical advances. Practical applications of scientist Robert H. God-
dard’s 1929 Massachusetts launch of a rocket carrying a barometer,
thermometer, and camera improved both World War II rocket design
and television cameras. In 1959, scientists conducted the first meteo-
rological experiment on a satellite platform. On April 1, 1960, the
launch of the polar-orbiting Television Infrared Operational Satel-
lite, TIROS-1, inaugurated the era of satellite meteorology. Capabil-
ity expanded December 6, 1966, with the launch of the first geosta-
tionary meteorological satellite. Research begun at the University of
Arizona in the 1970’s evolved into the U.S. National Lightning Detec-
tion Network under Global Atmospherics Incorporated, the product
of a 1995 merger, which supplies data to local forecasters.
Lightning has caused more deaths than tornadoes or hurricanes in
the United States but far fewer injuries and less property damage. De-
spite advances in radar and satellite remote sensing and increasing re-
liability of forecasts, weather predictions warn only of the potential for
lightning, and technology locates lightning only as it occurs. Public
and private agencies stress public awareness and education in safety
procedures to minimize exposure to strikes and fatalities.
Daniel G. Graetzer
Mary Catherine Wilheit

213
Lightning Strikes

Bibliography
Dennis, Jerry. It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes: Four Seasons of Natural Phe-
nomenon and Oddities of the Sky. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Very readable manuscript highlighting lightning strikes and other
natural phenomena within the atmosphere.
Gardner, Robert L., ed. Lightning Electromagnetics. New York: Hemi-
sphere, 1990. Text applying examples from physics and electron-
ics to the natural events occurring during a thunderstorm.
Rakov, Vladimir A., and Martin A. Uman. Lightning: Physics and Effects.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Covers all aspects of
lightning, including physics and protection. Accessible to general
readers.
Renner, Jeff. Lightning Strikes: Staying Safe Under Stormy Skies. Seattle:
Mountaineers Books, 2002. Discusses the risks of lightning, thun-
derstorm winds, and floods. Offers practical strategies for avoid-
ing lightning.
Salanave, Leon E. Lightning and Its Spectrum: An Atlas of Photographs.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980. Document relating the
physics principles behind lightning formation and its spectrum.
Uman, Martin A. The Lightning Discharge. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2001.
Excellent description of the intricate process of lightning dis-
charge in various environments.
Williams, Jack. The Weather Book. 2d rev. ed. New York: Vintage Books,
1997. An often-referenced text giving excellent descriptions of
various weather patterns such as thunderstorms and catastrophic
events such as lightning strikes.

214
Meteorites and Comets
Factors involved: Chemical reactions, geography,
gravitational forces, temperature, weather conditions
Regions affected: All

Definition
The effects of meteorite and comet impacts on Earth range from the
insignificant to the greatest natural disaster humankind may ever
face—the extinction of most of the life on Earth.

Science
The Moon viewed through even a small telescope is a spectacular
sight. It is covered with craters. Samples brought back from the Moon
prove that they are impact craters, not volcanic craters. Because
Earth and the Moon are in the same part of the solar system, it follows
that Earth has been subjected to the same bombardment from space
that produced craters on the Moon. Having been largely erased by
erosion, Earth’s own cratering record is not so obvious. Earth’s atmo-
sphere protects it from the rain of smaller meteoroids, a protection
the Moon lacks, but the fact remains that Earth has been hit count-
less times in the past, and no doubt it will be hit countless times in the
future.
Objects that are out in space that might hit Earth include dust,
meteoroids, asteroids, and comets. In modern terminology, a mete-
oroid is a natural, solid object in interplanetary space. A meteor is the
flash of light produced by frictional heating when a meteoroid enters
a planetary atmosphere. Particularly bright meteors are called fire-
balls or bolides (especially if they explode). Meteorites are meteor-
oids that survive their passage through the atmosphere and reach the
ground.
Photographs of three meteorites during their meteor phase—
from Pribram, Czechoslovakia, 1959; Lost City, Oklahoma, 1970; and
Innisfree, Alberta, 1977—have allowed pre-impact orbits to be calcu-
lated. The orbits of all were traced back to the asteroid belt. Begin-
ning in 1969, various workers were able to match the spectra of mete-
orites with those of asteroids, and it is now widely accepted that most

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Meteorites and Comets

meteorites are chips from asteroids. A few have been identified as

having come from the Moon or from Mars.
Rocky or metallic objects larger than about 328 feet (100 meters)
across are called asteroids. They are so named because they look like
stars—like points of light—in a telescope, but they have more in com-
mon with planets than with stars. It is believed that when the Sun first
formed it was surrounded by a platter-shaped cloud of gases and dust
grains. These grains accreted to form ever-larger objects, and the
largest ones became the planets. Asteroids and comets are leftover
objects that were never incorporated into planets. Asteroids larger
than about 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) in diameter contained enough
radioactive elements to melt their insides, allowing nickel and iron to
sink to the center and stony material to float to the top. Over the
eons, collisions among the asteroids have produced the collection
present today. Nickel-iron asteroids are the remnant cores of aster-
oids whose outer, stony material has been chipped away. To penetrate
deeply enough into Earth’s atmosphere to cause severe damage, ob-
jects must be more than about 131, 164, and 328 feet (40, 50, and 100
meters) in diameter for metallic, stony, or icy bodies, respectively.
The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Farther out in the solar system, beyond the orbit of Neptune, ice was
the most abundant solid building material. (Here, ice means mostly
frozen water, but it also includes frozen carbon dioxide, methane,
and ammonia.) The solid part of a comet, the nucleus, forms from
these ices mixed with silicate and hydrocarbon dust grains. An inac-
tive comet looks much like an asteroid, but as a comet nears the Sun,
vapor streams from the nucleus as the ices evaporate. Inactive comets
are difficult to detect, but a large, active comet is a spectacular sight.
The nucleus is surrounded by a vapor cloud 621,400 miles (1 million
kilometers) across and has a gas tail up to 62,140,000 miles (100 mil-
lion kilometers) long.
Asteroids or comets that may hit Earth are of obvious interest.
Richard P. Binzel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology, developed a scale to help scientists communicate with the
media and the public about the perceived risks associated with these
objects. This scale is named the Torino Impact Hazard Scale and was
adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1999. A
Torino scale 0 object is either too small to cause damage or will not

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Milestones
2 billion b.c.e.: An asteroid impact at Vredefort, South Africa, pro-
duces a 186-mile-diameter crater, the largest known on Earth.
1.85 billion b.c.e.: An asteroid impact at Sudbury, Ontario, Canada,
produces a 155-mile-diameter crater. Groundwater, upwelling through
fractured rocks, eventually produces one of the world’s richest nickel
deposits.
65 million b.c.e.: A 6.2-mile-diameter asteroid produces a 112-mile-
diameter crater on the Yucatán Peninsula. The associated environ-
mental disaster causes most of the species then living, including the
dinosaurs, to become extinct.
49,000 b.c.e.: The impact of a huge nickel-iron boulder forms the
Barringer meteorite crater in Arizona.
1680: Scientist Isaac Newton notes that the comet of 1680 passes less
than 621,400 miles (1 million kilometers) from the Sun and deduces
that its nucleus must be solid in order to survive.
December 25, 1758: The first predicted return of Halley’s comet is
observed.
1794-1803: Scientists prove that meteorites do fall from the sky.
1861: Earth passes through the tail of the Great Comet of 1861 with
no measurable effects.
June 30, 1908: A huge boulder or a small comet explodes over
Tunguska, Siberia, causing widespread destruction.
1920: Arizona’s Barringer Crater is the first Earth feature recognized
to have been caused by a meteorite impact.
January 3, 1970: The fall of the Lost City, Oklahoma, meteorite is pho-
tographed, and its orbit is later traced back to the asteroids.
August 10, 1972: A house-sized rock forms a brilliant fireball as it hur-
tles through Earth’s atmosphere and back into space.
June, 1980: Luis Alvarez and others at the University of California at
Berkeley publish an article in Science presenting the hypothesis that
an asteroid impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
March, 1986: The nucleus of Halley’s comet is photographed.
October 9, 1992: A meteorite smashes the rear end of a 1980 Chevy
Malibu automobile in Peekskill, New York.
July, 1994: The impact of the fragmented Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
on Jupiter is widely observed.

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Meteorites and Comets

hit Earth. Torino scale 1 objects will probably not hit Earth, but they
merit careful watching. Torino scale 2, 3, and 4 objects merit con-
cern, and scale 5, 6, and 7 objects are progressively threatening.
Torino scale 8, 9, and 10 objects will hit Earth and are expected to
cause local, regional, or global damage, respectively.

Geography
Any place on Earth may be hit by a meteorite; no location is particu-
larly safe, but seacoasts are the most vulnerable. The 1908 Tunguska
impact was a Torino scale 8 event with localized destruction. Had the
Tunguska meteorite been just large enough to reach the ground in-
tact, the destruction still would have been largely local. However, if
such an object struck the ocean it would generate tsunamis that
would cause widespread coastal destruction.
The impact of a Tunguska-scale object on the glaciers of Green-
land or Antarctica might melt 35,315 cubic feet (1 cubic kilometer)
of ice, but that would produce only an imperceptible rise in the
ocean level. However, the impact on Antarctica of a 6-mile-diameter
asteroid, such as is thought to have killed the dinosaurs, could melt
enough ice to raise the sea level more than 230 feet (70 meters). An-
other environmentally sensitive site for a giant impact is a thick lime-
stone deposit such as exists on the Yucatán Peninsula. It seems likely
that the copious amounts of carbon dioxide released from the Yuca-
tán limestone contributed to a warmer climate for thousands of years
after the impact.

Prevention and Preparations

The first step in meteorite strike prevention and preparation is to
make a survey of objects that come close to Earth. These are called
near-earth objects (NEOs). Under the auspices of the International
Astronomical Union, the Spaceguard Foundation was established on
March 27, 1996, in Rome. The foundation coordinates international
efforts to discover NEOs. As of November 2, 2006, 4,338 NEOs had
been discovered and their orbits calculated. Considered the most
dangerous of these were 814 potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs).
PHAs are larger than 492 feet (150 meters) in diameter and will
come within 4.7 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) of Earth. More
refined orbital information should eventually tell whether or not

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The Torino Impact Hazard Scale

Assessing asteroid and comet impact hazard predictions.

Events Having No 0 The likelihood of a collision is zero, or

Likely Consequences well below the chance that a random
(White Zone) object of the same size will strike Earth
within the next few decades.
Events Meriting Careful 1 The chance of collision is extremely
Monitoring unlikely, about the same as a random
(Green Zone) object of the same size striking Earth
within the next few decades.
Events Meriting 2 A somewhat close, but not unusual
Concern (Yellow Zone) encounter. Collision is very unlikely.
3 A close encounter, with 1 percent or
greater chance of a collision capable of
causing localized destruction.
4 A close encounter, with 1 percent or
greater chance of a collision capable of
causing regional devastation.
Threatening Events 5 A close encounter, with a significant
(Orange Zone) threat of a collision capable of causing
regional devastation.
6 A close encounter, with a significant
threat of a collision capable of causing
a global catastrophe.
7 A close encounter, with an extremely
significant threat of a collision capable
of causing a global catastrophe.
Certain Collisions 8 A collision capable of causing localized
(Red Zone) destruction. Such events occur
somewhere on Earth between once per
50 years and once per 1,000 years.
9 A collision capable of causing regional
devastation. Such events occur
between once per 1,000 years and once
per 100,000 years.
10 A collision capable of causing a global
climatic catastrophe. Such events occur
once per 100,000 years, or less often.

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Meteorites and Comets

they will actually hit Earth. There were no known PHAs with more
than a minute probability of hitting Earth.
If it is discovered that an asteroid is about to hit Earth, can any-
thing be done about it? The answer depends upon three key factors:
the amount of warning time, the size of the asteroid, and the state of
readiness of the space program. Taking the third factor first, there
are normally no spacecraft on standby that are capable of reaching
an asteroid. That means that if the warning time is only a few months,
the only thing to be done is to evacuate the probable impact site, or
to evacuate coastal areas if an ocean impact is predicted. Such an
evacuation will be difficult and disruptive for a Torino scale 8 (local
damage) object and will approach the impossible for a Torino scale 9
(regional damage) object. It would be incredibly difficult to evacuate
the eastern United States, for example. For a Torino scale 10 object
(global catastrophe), preparation efforts will be to provide food,
shelter, and energy stores to maximize the number of survivors.
Once an asteroid is discovered and observed for a period of time,
its orbit can be predicted accurately for fifty to one hundred years
into the future. Deflecting the asteroid into a slightly different orbit
becomes an option if there is a ten- to twenty-year warning time. De-
flection is probably superior to attempting to destroy the object. Ob-
jects small enough to be vaporized with nuclear weapons are small
enough to be destroyed by Earth’s atmosphere. If an asteroid were
not vaporized, but rather only shattered, by a nuclear explosion, the
cloud of fragments would continue in the asteroid’s orbit and still
strike Earth. If there were enough fragments, or if there were large
fragments, Earth would still be devastated.
Another solution is to explode a nuclear weapon above the sur-
face of the asteroid. Prior experimentation and manned exploration
may be necessary to determine how best to do this. Heat and radia-
tion from the blast will vaporize asteroidal surface material, causing it
to push against the asteroid like a rocket engine and thereby change
the asteroid’s orbit. Only a small change in orbit would be necessary
if done far enough in advance. A neutron bomb would be the
weapon of choice since neutrons would penetrate deeper beneath
the surface and therefore launch more material into space than
would the gamma rays and X rays of a conventional thermonuclear
weapon.

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 Meteorites and Comets

Scientists monitor the path of near-Earth objects such as comets in order to identify any
collision threats. (NASA)

If humankind were to develop sufficient space-faring capacity,

workers might land on the asteroid. Given enough time and an en-
ergy source such as a nuclear reactor, the orbit of the asteroid could
be changed by launching rocks from a catapult device (mass driver)
acting as a rocket engine. If there were sufficient water available, as
ice in a comet nucleus, or combined in minerals as in some carbona-
ceous asteroids, steam rockets mounted on the object might be used
to change its orbit. Three properties of comets make them more dif-
ficult to deal with: The vast majority can be discovered only months
before their closest approach to Earth, and they are fragile and may
break apart if one tries to maneuver them. They also travel faster than
asteroids. Typical approach speeds relative to Earth are 9.3 miles (15
kilometers) per second for asteroids, but are 15.5 to 31 miles (25 to
50 kilometers) per second for comets.

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Meteorites and Comets

Rescue and Relief Efforts and Impact

If the damage from a meteorite were local, the aftermath would re-
semble that of other large-scale disasters, such as massive flooding,
large earthquakes, destructive hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, or
massive bombings. Rescue and aid workers would come from outside
the area, but if a large city were destroyed, it would probably take days
to bring sufficient resources to bear. As with the Tunguska event,
most impacts occur in sparsely inhabited areas, but such events are
expected to occur between once every fifty years to once every thou-
sand years.
If the destruction were regional, it might take many weeks to bring
in sufficient aid. During that time the tragedy would be greatly com-
pounded. Such regional events are expected to occur between once
every thousand years and once every hundred thousand years. If the
destruction were worldwide, sufficient aid would not exist. People in
steel and stone buildings might survive the sky becoming baking hot
(because of the fiery reentry of debris) unless the air became too hot
to breathe or too oxygen-depleted by conflagrations. Both Switzer-
land and China have large systems of underground shelters built for
nuclear war, and many other nations have some shelters. Those who
survive the initial impact, earthquakes, tsunamis, hot sky, secondary
fires, possibly toxic vapors and gases, and rising sea level (from melt-
ing ice) will need food and energy to keep warm for a few months to a
year until the worldwide dust cloud settles from the air and the Sun
shines again. Then they will need crops that will grow in the new,
warmer climate. They will also need to deal with greatly increased ul-
traviolet radiation from the Sun, plagues, and the breakdown of civi-
lization. Yet, except in an extreme worst case, some people should
survive. Global climatic catastrophe due to asteroid or comet impact
is expected to occur roughly every hundred thousand years.

Historical Overview
Humankind’s observations of meteorites and comets surely extend
back to the times before recorded history. Some suggest that the an-
cient Greek myth of Phaethon’s ride is based upon a close brush with
an active comet. According to the legend, Phaethon, son of the sun
god, Helios, receives reluctant permission to drive the sun chariot
across the sky. The inexperienced Phaethon drives too close to Earth

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 Meteorites and Comets

and scorches it. To curtail further harm to Earth, Jupiter slays Phae-
thon with a lightning bolt. Helios reclaims the sun chariot, but in his
grief, he refuses to bring light to Earth. All of this makes a fairly good
description of a small comet rising in the east just before the Sun, a
comet fragment producing a Tunguska-like fireball, and dust from
an impact blocking sunlight. There is evidence for a destructive blast
wave and for wildfires sweeping the Middle East four thousand years
ago.
The Greek word meteoros means “high in the air.” Some ancient
Greeks considered comets to be meteors, that is, fiery gases high in
the atmosphere. Others thought them to be “long-haired” stars
(astTrkomTtTs), properly belonging to the heavens beyond the orbit of
the Moon. Because comets often look like swords in the heavens
poised to strike Earth, they were usually regarded as ill omens por-
tending drought, famine, or war. Long ago, the term “meteors” also
included rainbows, clouds, rain, snow, the aurora borealis, hail-
stones, and thunderstones. Thunderstones were unusual stones that
were imagined to have been formed by lightning fusing dust in the
air or by lightning striking the ground and launching stones into the
air. Discovered thunderstones actually included some fossils, certain
minerals, ancient stone tools, and meteorites.
Throughout history some people claimed to have seen stones fall
from the sky, or they have found things they believed to have come
from the sky. Certainly, an iron meteorite is different enough from
normal rocks that its finder would seek a special explanation. The As-
syrian term for iron meant “metal from heaven.” The earliest-known
iron objects were made from meteoric iron, and it is quite possible
that working with this “sky metal” aided the Hittites in ushering in the
iron age by smelting iron ore around 1400 b.c.e.
Several meteorites became objects of veneration because they
were considered gifts from the gods in the heavens. The temple of Ar-
temis at Ephesus housed a meteorite, and the stone of Emesa in Syria
was regarded as an incarnation of the sun god, Heliogebalus. The
most famous is the black stone mounted in the corner of the Kaaba in
the court of the Great Mosque at Mecca. The black stone of the
Kaaba is said to have fallen from the sky as a sign of the divine calling
of the prophet Abraham.
By 1790 scientists had shown that most thunderstones did not

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come from the sky, and they supposed that none did. That supposi-
tion changed over a period of only ten years. In 1794 the physicist
Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni published a treatise exploring the
evidence for a dozen falls—cases where the meteorite was seen fall-
ing and was then recovered. In 1802 the chemist Edward Charles
Howard announced that the minerals and chemical constituents of
several meteorites were similar to each other but different from ter-
restrial rocks. In 1803 the physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot reported on a
fireball that dropped many stones at L’Aigle in Normandy, proving
that meteorites did fall from the sky.
In the 1500’s several astronomers noted that because comet tails
always pointed away from the Sun, comets must be in heavenly realms
and cannot be luminous gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Tycho Brahe
attempted to measure the distance to the comet of 1577 and showed
that it was far beyond the Moon, thereby settling that question. Sir
Isaac Newton maintained a lifelong fascination with comets. He even-
tually proved that the comet of 1680-1681 followed the same laws of
motion and gravitation that planets did. It was Edmond Halley who

Meteor Crater in Arizona was formed by a meteorite more than 150 feet in diameter
about 50,000 years ago. (NASA CORE/Lorain Valley JVS)

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 Meteorites and Comets

fired the public’s imagination with his successful prediction of the re-
turn of the comet that carries his name. Noting that the comets of
1531, 1607, and 1682 had very similar orbits, Halley supposed that
they were the same comet and predicted that it would return near the
end of 1758—it did, on Christmas night.
Charles W. Rogers

Bibliography
Burke, John G. Cosmic Debris: Meteorites in History. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1986. An engaging treatment of how science
discovered the truth about meteorites.
Chapman, Clark R., and David Morrison. Cosmic Catastrophes. New
York: Plenum Press, 1989. This book treats the K/T impact, in
which a meteorite hit the earth 65 million years ago, and other di-
sasters.
Cox, Donald W., and James H. Chestek. Doomsday Asteroid: Can We
Survive? Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996. A good treat-
ment of the efforts needed to locate and deflect potentially dan-
gerous asteroids and comets.
Lewis, John S. Comet and Asteroid Impact Hazards on a Populated Earth:
Computer Modeling. San Diego, Calif.: Academic, 2000. An excel-
lent and scholarly treatment of the subject.
_______. Rain of Iron and Ice: The Very Real Threat of Comet and Asteroid
Bombardment. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1996. A good ac-
count of various impacts, including interesting, but less well-
known, ones.
Sagan, Carl, and Ann Druyan. Comet. New York: Random House,
1985. An excellent book by this very successful husband-wife writ-
ing team. It explains what we know about comets and how we
learned this. The book is easily read and profusely illustrated.
Steel, Duncan. Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The Search for the
Million Megaton Menace That Threatens Life on Earth. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, 1995. A good book for the general reader on mass
extinctions and the K/T impact, the Tunguska object, and early
detection efforts.
Verschuur, Gerrit L. Impact! The Threat of Comets and Asteroids. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996. An excellent and authorita-
tive popular work written by an active astronomer.

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Meteorites and Comets

Zanda, Brigitte, and Monica Rotaru, eds. Meteorites: Their Impact on

Science and History. Translated by Roger Hewins. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2001. An accessible, comprehensive guide
written by a team of experts.

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Smog
Factors involved: Geography, human activity,
temperature, weather conditions
Regions affected: Cities, towns, valleys

Definition
Smog is a common component of urban life in many parts of the
world. It was responsible for thousands of deaths after the widespread
use of fossil fuels led to damaging emissions in local urban areas. Gov-
ernments have responded by setting emissions standards in many
countries.

Science
Smog is one of the major atmospheric problems of modern urban
life and is found in two varieties. Until the middle part of the twenti-
eth century, smog was formed by the mixture of particulate matter
and sulfurous compounds combined in the atmosphere in regions
where coal burning was common. This type of sulfurous smog is com-
monly called gray air or “London-type” smog. With the increased use
of automobiles and trucks, a second type of smog, generated by the
impact of sunlight on pollutants, became prevalent in many urban ar-
eas. This second type is called photochemical smog and results pri-
marily from exhausts of vehicles in urban areas that have certain me-
teorological and topographical characteristics. The general term
“smog” is a combination of the words “smoke” and “fog” and covers
both types of air pollution.
Air pollution formed by the burning of coal is not just a modern
phenomenon. As far back as the thirteenth century, laws controlling
the burning of coal were enacted to reduce the amount of smoke and
haze that formed in London. However, the increased reliance on that
common energy source produced more and more episodes of this
type of air pollution in Europe and in other areas where coal was
burned in quantity.
When coal is burned, large amounts of particulate matter are re-
leased into the atmosphere, and these particles can cause health
problems when inhaled in sufficient quantity. These small particles

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Smog

Milestones
12th and 13th centuries: Air pollution in London is caused by exten-
sive burning of coal.
1273: A law passes in London to restrict the burning of soft coal in an
attempt to improve air quality in the area.
1306: England’s Parliament issues a proclamation requiring citizens
to burn wood instead of coal in order to improve local air quality.
December, 1873: An air pollution event in London kills between 270
and 700 people.
February, 1880: Approximately 1,000 people die in London from an
air pollution event.
December, 1892: A smog episode kills 1,000 people in London.
December, 1930: A thick fog settles in the industrialized area along
the Meuse River in Belgium and is trapped for three days; thousands
of people become ill and 60 die.
1943: A major smog episode in Los Angeles leads local officials to be-
gin to look at regulations to reduce air pollution.
December, 1948: Smog accumulates over Donora, Pennsylvania, and
is trapped in the valley of the Monongahela River for four days, result-
ing in 18 deaths above the average number for that time period.
November, 1949: A smog forms in Berkeley, California, from the ex-
haust of automobiles being driven into the area for a football game.
December, 1952: A dense fog develops over London and remains
stagnant for five days, leading to 4,000 deaths above the average num-
ber for that time interval.
1953: Smog accumulates in New York City, causing at least 200 deaths.
1956: A severe smog episode in London leads to the deaths of 1,000
people.
November, 1956: At least 46 people die in a smog episode in New
York City.
1962: Over 700 people die in a smog event in London.
December, 1962: 60 people die from smog in Osaka, Japan.
January-February, 1963: Smog kills up to 400 people in New York City.
1966: A four-day smog event in New York City results in the deaths of
80 people; Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller declares a state of emer-
gency.

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 Smog

1970’s: Severe smog conditions are recognized in many Chinese cit-

ies; death rates as high as 3,500 people per year are reported in some
areas in 1979.
1980’s-1990’s: Reports of increase of deadly air pollution conditions
in Eastern Europe, Mexico, and China.
December, 2005: In Tehran, Iran, businesses and schools close be-
cause of severe smog conditions; hundreds of people are taken to the
hospital.

also act as nucleation sites for water vapor to condense and form
water droplets, leading to the formation of a fog. In addition, most
coals contain a significant amount of sulfur, and, when burned, this
sulfur is combined with oxygen and released into the atmosphere as
sulfur dioxide. The sulfur dioxide may then combine with the water
droplets formed on the particulate matter to create sulfuric acid.
Major episodes of sulfurous smog generally occur when certain
topographical and meteorological features coincide. If the urban
area is located in a basin, then the pollutants can be easily trapped if
an atmospheric inversion develops in the region. An atmospheric in-
version forms when winter anticyclonic conditions and low tempera-
tures occur and little low-level atmospheric circulation is produced.
As a result, the pollutants are pumped into a basin sealed by a me-
teorologic “lid,” and there is little to no dispersion of the particulate
matter and sulfuric acid droplets. These meteorologic conditions
may continue for days, during which time the resultant air pollution
will worsen. The smog will be dispersed only if meteorologic condi-
tions change such that breezes can move the pollution over the sur-
rounding hillsides and out of the basin. In some areas, there is no
topographic basin that retains the pollutants; rather, the input of pol-
lutants is so great that horizontal flow is not fast enough to remove
the smog. The classic examples of this type of smog were the London
smogs of the 1950’s.
Photochemical smog is formed in very different ways. This type of
smog has been recognized since the 1940’s in Southern California
and is now common in many large urban areas. Once again, the ma-
jor culprit in the formation of this type of air pollution is the burn-

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Smog

ing of fossil fuels, particularly oil. The combustion of gasoline in

motor vehicles and industrial plants produces a wide variety of ex-
haust particles and compounds. Particularly important in the forma-
tion of photochemical smog are hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides.
Through a series of complex chemical reactions, these compounds
and others lead to the formation of photochemical oxidants such as
ozone and peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN).
The chemical reactions begin when nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is
split by the ultraviolet radiation of sunlight and the oxygen atom re-
leased by the reaction, then combines with oxygen (O2) in the air to
produce ozone (O3). Ozone is a major component of photochemical
smog, causing numerous respiratory health effects. In the absence of
other compounds the ozone will decompose, releasing an oxygen
atom that will combine with nitrogen oxide (NO), which was pro-
duced when nitrogen dioxide was split by sunlight. Thus, the concen-
tration of ozone will generally not rise to high levels unless the latter
reaction is not allowed to proceed.
Automobiles and trucks release large quantities of hydrocarbons
during operation, and these hydrocarbons are degraded in the atmo-
sphere by oxygen, creating volatile organic compounds. These vola-
tile organic compounds then enter into a number of complex reac-
tions with the NO and thus short-circuit the reaction of NO and
ozone that keeps the level of ozone quite low. The reactions of the
volatile organic compounds and the nitric oxide may produce nu-
merous compounds, including PAN.
Whereas natural levels of ozone, produced in the absence of vola-
tile organic compounds, may reach background levels of 0.04 parts per
million, ozone levels in urban areas may reach over 0.2 parts per mil-
lion, and levels over 0.6 were recorded in the Los Angeles area during
the 1950’s. These higher levels of ozone and other pollutants of photo-
chemical smog are usually developed in topographic basins where an
atmospheric inversion occurs. In the Los Angeles basin, the effect of
descending warm air produced by regional weather patterns tends to
seal the air mass into the basin and not allow even coastal breezes to
push the pollutants over the mountains to the east and north. These
conditions may last for several days and keep the polluted air mass
within the region. Pollution will lessen only when the inversion disap-
pears and the smog can be dispersed into the areas east of the basin.

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 Smog

Geography
Smog has been a significant air-pollution problem in Western coun-
tries for centuries because of the development of coal and, later, oil
resources as major energy sources that fuel economic development.
As a result, the most significant smog episodes have been reported in
Europe and the United States. Smog has killed thousands of people
in London, Belgium, New York, Pennsylvania, and other industrial-
ized areas in the Western world.
However, photochemical and sulfurous smogs are not confined to
the United States and Europe. The industrialization of many other
countries and the increase in automobile usage worldwide have cre-
ated the unwanted side effect of atmospheric pollution. Many of the
most severe smog events now occur in Eastern Europe, Mexico, Ja-
pan, and China. The number of automobiles operating at the end of
the twentieth century was about 700 million, and because the num-
ber was expected to climb to over 1 billion in the early part of the
twenty-first century, it is apparent that the occurrence of photochem-
ical smog in urban areas will continue to be a significant problem for
many years.

Prevention and Preparations

Governments have approached the prevention of smog in a number
of ways. One approach has been to attempt to control emissions by es-
tablishing laws limiting the quantity of emitted pollutants. The United
States, France, Japan, Canada, Italy, Germany, Yugoslavia, Norway, and
Russia have established air-quality standards. The air-quality standards
vary within these countries. In the United States, the Clean Air Act, en-
acted in 1970 and emended in later years, established national ambi-
ent air-quality standards, which set the permissible levels of six pollut-
ants in the air. The six original pollutants were carbon monoxide, lead,
ozone, particulate matter, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen oxides.
In many cases the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) autho-
rized states to monitor and enforce the regulations, which have been
aimed at controlling emissions from large point sources, such as coal
and oil-fired factories and utilities, in an attempt to reduce the emis-
sion of gaseous and particulate pollutants. The localized nature of
these point sources makes the control of emissions manageable but
often expensive.

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Smog

However, the formation of photochemical smog is the result of

emissions from millions of automobiles, trucks, and buses. Four ap-
proaches have been tried to reduce the emission of tailpipe pollut-
ants. One approach has been to set emissions standards that all auto-
mobiles must meet in order to be licensed for the road. Smog tests
are required for cars, and those not passing the test must be repaired
before further use. Second, since the total emission is related to total
gasoline usage, an increase in car efficiency would reduce pollutants.
Miles-per-gallon standards have been established for automobile
manufacturers, although these standards have been modified at
times.
The third method of reducing emissions has been alteration of
the fuel itself. Gasoline additives such as methyl butyl ether (MTBE)
have reduced tailpipe pollutants by helping to burn the fuel more
completely. Unfortunately, MTBE has been shown to be a groundwa-
ter pollutant and will be phased out of use; alternative compounds
will be substituted to reduce emissions. Finally, general conservation
methods such as carpooling and mass transit can reduce total fuel
use and result in fewer emissions. These regulations have greatly re-
duced some of the pollutants—lead and particulate matter—but re-
ducing the levels of the other air pollutants has been more difficult.

Impact
The health impacts of smog are various but are generally associated
with respiratory effects. People most affected by sulfurous smogs are
children, the elderly, and those with chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease. Also affected are people with heart disease. It has been esti-
mated that the London smog event of December, 1952, resulted in an
excess of over 4,000 deaths above the average. Most of these deaths
were attributed to pulmonary problems, with those having chronic
bronchitis resulting in the highest number of deaths. In addition, a
significant number died because of heart failure.
Photochemical smogs also affect the young, elderly, and the sick
most severely. Epidemiological studies have not shown that photo-
chemical smogs alone cause death, but the combination of smog and
high temperatures has resulted in increased mortality. Because
ozone is a gas, it most frequently affects respiratory function, and
short-term exposure may lead to coughing, wheezing, shortness of

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 Smog

U.S. Air Pollution Trends, 1970-1997

In Thousands of Tons

PM-10, Volatile
fugitive Sulfur Nitrogen organic Carbon
Year PM-10 dust dioxide dioxides compounds monoxide Lead

1970 13,190 (NA) 31,161 21,639 30,817 128,761 220,869

1975 7,803 (NA) 28,011 23,151 25,895 115,968 159,659
1980 7,287 (NA) 25,905 24,875 26,167 116,702 74,153
1985 4,695 40,889 23,230 23,488 24,227 115,644 22,890
1990 5,425 24,419 23,678 23,436 20,935 95,794 4,975
1995 4,306 22,454 19,189 23,768 20,558 89,151 3,924
1997 8,428 25,153 20,369 23,582 19,214 87,451 3,915

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States,

1999, 1999.
Note: PM-10 emissions consist of particulate matter smaller than 10 microns
in size.

breath, chest tightness, headaches, nausea, and throat dryness. The

long-term effects of ozone exposure are not well understood, but
there is some indication of scarring in lung tissue and the develop-
ment of lung fibrosis. The primary eye irritants found in photochem-
ical smog are PAN, peroxybenzol nitrate, and acrolein.
In the case of both types of smog the advice is the same. All people,
particularly those most at risk, should restrict exposure to smog dur-
ing these air-pollution events by remaining indoors and restricting
exercise. Children are particularly at risk to smog because their air in-
take is higher per unit of body weight than that of adults, and they
should be supervised appropriately during a smog event to reduce
exposure.
Smog also has significant impacts on agriculture and forests.
Ozone, a significant component of photochemical smog, causes an
estimated annual economic loss of over $3 billion in the United
States because of a reduction in productivity of crops. Particularly
susceptible plants include tomatoes, spinach, pinto beans, and to-
bacco. Ozone and other oxidants also cause damage to forests. Signif-

233
Smog

icant tree loss or damage because of ozone has been reported in

Southern California, Mexico, Israel, and Europe.
Smog can also cause damage to many consumer products. Stretched
rubber exposed to ozone will rapidly degrade and crack, but damage
is controlled by adding ozone inhibitors during the production of au-
tomobile tires and insulation. Other consumer products affected by
ozone include textiles, dyes, and some fabrics.

Historical Overview
Air pollution has been a problem in some parts of the world since the
use of coal and oil became important and common. As early as the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries in London, the air became so pol-
luted with smoke from coal fires that complaints were frequent, and
in 1273 a law was enacted to reduce the amount of soft coal burned.
This was followed in 1306 by a proclamation issued by Parliament re-
quiring citizens to burn wood instead of coal in an attempt to rid
London of the dreaded gray fogs that periodically caused illnesses
and deaths in the city. However, the meteorologic conditions in
southern England and the continued use of coal by industries and
residents led to numerous smog episodes throughout the years. In
the latter part of the nineteenth century, major smog events in Lon-
don occurred in 1873, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1891, and 1892. An addi-
tional major air-pollution episode occurred in 1901.
Smog generated by the industrial use of coal and, later, oil contin-
ued to be a significant environmental problem in the twentieth cen-
tury. In December, 1930, a very heavy fog developed in Belgium
along the Meuse River. The fog mixed with the emissions from blast
furnaces, fertilizer plants, glass factories, and other industries and
created a deadly smog, which caused thousands to become ill and re-
sulted in at least 60 deaths.
In 1948, Donora, Pennsylvania, experienced one of the most
deadly air-pollution events in the United States. This area in the
Monongahela River Valley was engulfed in a dense polluted fog for
four days. The air was polluted with the emissions from coal burning
as well as those from a zinc smelter and a steel mill. This stew of air
pollutants was responsible for approximately one-half of Donora’s
population becoming ill and about 20 deaths.
Beginning in the early 1940’s in Southern California a new type of

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 Smog

smog was recognized. Photochemical reactions produced a type of air

pollution that consisted of ozone and other irritants. Initially, it was
thought that this smog was produced in much the same manner as
those smogs of London or New York. In Los Angeles, politicians
thought that the smog could be eliminated within just a few months by
restricting the emissions of a number of industries in the city. However,
these controls were not successful. In 1949 the role of automobiles in
the production of photochemical smog became evident, when such a
smog developed in Berkeley, California, where there were no major in-
dustrial plants. Fans attempting to reach a football game at the Univer-
sity of California there were stalled in a massive traffic jam, and the
idling cars released emissions that were converted into smog.
During the 1950’s and 1960’s London and New York City contin-
ued to suffer very severe, deadly air pollution episodes. Over 4,000
people died in London in December, 1952, and another 1,000 peo-
ple were killed by smog in the same city in 1956. Killing smogs oc-
curred in New York City in 1953, 1963, and 1966. More than 500 peo-
ple died from these smog events.
The widespread nature of smog became more evident beginning
in the 1970’s and continuing throughout the remainder of the cen-
tury. China revealed the heavy toll air pollution had taken on its pop-
ulation in large cities. It was reported that about 3,500 people died
per year in the city of Wuhan alone and that many other Chinese cit-
ies suffered severely from the smogs created by the burning of coal.
Air pollution has been extremely damaging in Eastern Europe, al-
though the exact nature of all the damage is not yet known. In addi-
tion, Mexico, particularly Mexico City, suffered extreme air pollution
in the latter part of the twentieth century. The increasing develop-
ment of Third World countries will, in all probability, lead to more
frequent damaging smog episodes. In December, 2005, hundreds of
people had to be taken to the hospital in Tehran, Iran, and busi-
nesses and schools were closed as a result of severe smog conditions.
Jay R. Yett

Bibliography
Allaby, Michael. Fog, Smog, and Poisoned Rain. New York: Facts On File,
2003. Intended for students. Discusses air pollution and its conse-
quences.

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Smog

Benarde, Melvin A. Our Precarious Habitat. New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1989. The author presents information on a wide variety of
environmental problems, including smog. Good data are given on
specific instances of air pollution and its effects.
Elsom, Derek M. Atmospheric Pollution: A Global Problem. Cambridge,
Mass.: Blackwell Scientific, 1992. This is an excellent text on all
types of atmospheric pollution and includes very informative
chapters on smog and its effects. The book covers scientific, eco-
nomic, political, and social aspects of air pollution.
Graedel, T. E., and Paul J. Crutzen. Atmospheric Change: An Earth Sys-
tem Perspective. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1993. The authors are
primarily concerned with long-term climate change, but their
book is a good introduction to physical and chemical processes of
the atmosphere. Also contains an important chapter on urban air
quality.
Keller, Edward A. Environmental Geology. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River,
N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000. A well-written text that covers atmo-
spheric pollution as well as other geologically important environ-
mental problems.
Soroos, Marvin S. The Endangered Atmosphere. Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1997. All aspects of air pollution are treated
in this book, which includes an informative section on gaseous
pollutants.

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Tornadoes
Factors involved: Geography, temperature, weather
conditions, wind
Regions affected: Cities, coasts, forests, mountains,
plains, towns, valleys

Definition
Tornadoes are violent, funnel-shaped whirlwinds that extend down-
ward from thunderstorm clouds. Each year, hundreds of tornadoes
touch down worldwide, causing billions of dollars in damage and
claiming many lives.

Science
A tornado is a violently rotating column of air in contact with the
ground and extending from the base of a thunderstorm or a tower-
ing cumulus cloud. A condensation funnel does not need to reach
the ground or even be visible for a tornado to be present. A water-
spout is a tornado occurring over water. The word “tornado,” a hy-
brid of the Spanish tronada (thunderstorm) and tornar (to turn), ap-
peared in sixteenth and seventeenth century English writings but
referred to a tropical Atlantic thunderstorm, often with torrential
rain and sudden violent gusts (probably a hurricane). Eighteenth
and nineteenth century Americans called tornadoes “whirlwinds” or
“cyclones.” Not until the twentieth century did the word “tornado”
define a vortex over land.
A tornado is usually a white, gray, black, or invisible funnel-shaped
cloud, but some tornadoes may resemble a wall of smoke rolling
across the landscape. Path widths vary from a few yards to more than
a mile; path lengths, averaging 4.5 miles, range from 0.25 mile to
more than 200 miles. In the United States, the storms move most of-
ten from southwest to northeast or west to east at ground speeds from
nearly stationary to 70 miles per hour. A tornado may last from a few
minutes to more than an hour. Winds in tornadoes generally whirl
in a counterclockwise (cyclonic) direction in the Northern Hemi-
sphere and a clockwise (anticyclonic) direction in the Southern
Hemisphere, although about one in one thousand whirls in the op-

237
Tornadoes

Milestones
600-500 b.c.e.: Perhaps the first recorded tornado is the “whirlwind”
mentioned in Ezekiel 2:4 and 2 Kings 2:11 of the Old Testament.
October 17, 1091: The earliest British tornado for which there is an
authentic record hits London, killing 2 and demolishing 600 houses.
May 27, 1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896, an F4 tornado, hits St.
Louis, Missouri, leaving 306 dead and 2,500 injured and destroying or
damaging 7,500 buildings as well as riverboats and railroads.
June 30, 1916: Canada’s most lethal twister to date kills 28 in Regina,
Saskatchewan.
March 18, 1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado, the United States’
worst tornado disaster to date, occurs when a 219-mile-long twister
destroys entire towns along its path through Missouri, Illinois, and In-
diana, causing 689 deaths, more than 2,000 injuries, and $16-18 mil-
lion in damage.
March 25, 1948: Air Force officers Ernest Fawbush and Robert Miller
issue the first tornado watch in the United States, but it is for military
use only.
March 17, 1952: The U.S. Weather Bureau issues the first tornado
watch to the American public.
May 11, 1953: A tornado destroys much of downtown Waco, Texas,
leaving 114 dead and 1,097 injured.
June 8, 1953: The last U.S. tornado to date to claim 100 lives devas-
tates parts of Flint, Michigan, killing 120 and injuring 847.
June 9, 1953: The worst tornado to date to strike the northeastern
United States plows a path greater than a half-mile wide through
Worcester, Massachusetts; 94 people are killed, 1,288 are injured, and
more than 4,000 buildings are damaged or destroyed.
April 11, 1965: The Palm Sunday Outbreak of around 50 tornadoes
kills 271, injures more than 3,100, and causes more than $200 million
in damages in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
June 8, 1966: The first $100 million tornado in the United States cuts
a path through Topeka, Kansas, killing 16 and destroying more than
800 homes and much of the Washburn University campus.
May 11, 1970: A powerful tornado plows through downtown Lub-
bock, Texas, killing 26 and injuring more than 1,500. This tornado
initiates a new interest in tornado studies, including Theodore Fu-
jita’s development of a tornado rating scale.

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 Tornadoes

January 10, 1973: South America’s worst tornado to date destroys

parts of San Justo, Argentina; 50 people are killed.
April 3-4, 1974: In the Jumbo Outbreak, 148 tornadoes, including 6
rated F5, kill 316 and injure almost 5,500 in 11 midwestern and south-
ern states; an additional 8 deaths occur in Canada. Hardest hit com-
munities include Xenia, Ohio, with 35 deaths and 1,150 injured, and
Brandenburg, Kentucky, with 31 deaths and 250 injured.
June 9, 1984: Europe’s worst tornado to date kills over 400 and injures
213 in Belyanitsky, Ivanovo, and Balino, Russia.
April 26, 1989: The world’s deadliest tornado to date occurs in Ban-
gladesh when a twister slashes a 50-mile-wide path north of Dhaka;
about 1,300 people are killed, more than 12,000 are injured, and al-
most 80,000 are left homeless.
May 13, 1996: A large tornado levels several towns near Tangail, Ban-
gladesh; more than 1,000 are dead and 34,000 are injured, with
100,000 left homeless.
May 27, 1997: An F5 tornado hits Jarrell, Texas; 27 are dead, 8 are in-
jured, and 44 homes are damaged or destroyed.
May 3, 1999: Part of the Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak, one of the
most expensive tornadoes in U.S. history destroys nearly 2,500 homes
and kills 49 in Oklahoma City and its suburbs; damage estimates ap-
proach $1.5 billion.
May 15, 2003: A researcher is able to insert probes called “turtles” into
an F4 tornado to measure its pressure.
February 2, 2007: A tornado outbreak in central Florida kills 20 peo-
ple; it is the first event to be measured by the Enhanced Fujita Scale,
which factors in storm damage.

posite direction. Scientists do not know the minimum pressure

within a tornado but estimate that it may be as low as 60 percent of
normal air pressure, or about 600 millibars of mercury. Witnesses
have variously described the sound of a tornado as like a freight train,
a jet airplane, or a high-pitched squeal.
Wind speeds range from below hurricane strength (75 miles per
hour) to more than 300 miles per hour, but about 70 percent of tor-
nadoes produce winds of less than 110 miles per hour. The appear-
ance of a tornado is not an indication of its intensity. No instrument

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Tornadoes

The Fujita Scale

Rating Strength Wind Speeds Damage Levels
F0 weak 40-72 mph light damage
F1 weak 73-112 mph moderate damage
F2 strong 113-157 mph considerable damage
F3 strong 158-206 mph severe damage
F4 violent 207-260 mph devastating damage
F5 violent 261-318 mph incredible damage

to measure wind speed has ever survived a strong tornado. Theodore

Fujita at the University of Chicago devised a tornado rating scale,
called the Fujita scale or F-scale, which examines structural damage
to assess the wind speed of a tornado. Meteorologists and engineers
assign each U.S. tornado a rating, from F0 to F5, based on the single
most intense example of damage in its path. Only 2 percent of torna-
does have received an F4 or F5 rating, but they have caused 70 per-
cent of deaths. An F5 tornado is extremely rare; only twenty of the
more than twenty-seven thousand tornadoes from 1970 through
1998 received that rating.
Although tornadoes can appear at any hour of the day, most form
between noon and 9 p.m., peaking between 5 and 6 p.m. The majority
of tornadoes occur in spring and summer, but they have occurred dur-
ing every month of the year. A tornado has a distinct life cycle. It is usu-
ally born as a thin funnel descending from a parent thunderstorm
cloud. As it matures and expands, the rotating column of air picks up
material in its path and acquires the color of the circulating debris. In
its dying stage the funnel may appear as a long, thin rope. A tornado is
capable of massive destruction during all stages. Some tornadoes have
multiple vortices, or several small funnels rotating around a central
axis. Occasionally, a tornado “outbreak” occurs, when a single weather
system produces numerous tornadoes in one day.
Annually, the United States is home to about 100,000 individual
thunderstorms; about 1,000 of them produce a tornado. Conditions
for formation of a tornadic thunderstorm exist when a layer of warm,
moist air becomes trapped beneath a layer of cold, dry air by an inter-
vening layer of warm, dry air. If a cold front or disturbance in the up-

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 Tornadoes

per levels of the atmosphere disturbs the delicate layering, the warm,
moist air pushes upward through the cold air. As the thunderstorm
develops, winds of different speeds and directions at varying heights
in the atmosphere create an invisible, horizontal spinning effect near
the earth’s surface, much like a rolling pin moving across a table. The
rising warm air tilts the rotating air from horizontal to vertical (stands
the rolling pin on end while it is still turning), producing an area of
rotation about 2 to 6 miles in diameter within the storm.
Tornadoes appear from this rotating area, called a mesocyclone,
but not all mesocyclones produce tornadoes. A majority of tornadoes
form in conjunction with cold fronts, but in the central plains many
tornadoes develop along a dryline, the dividing line between very
moist warm air to the east and hot dry air to the west. Both cold fronts
and drylines can produce supercell thunderstorms with clouds tow-
ering to 50,000 feet or higher. Supercells produce most of the violent
tornadoes. Tornadoes also form when tropical storms or hurricanes
move over land, but these tornadoes are usually weak. Scientists have
not found the last piece of the puzzle, the exact mechanism that trig-
gers the formation of a tornado.
The capricious nature of tornadoes is well documented. Tor-
nadoes have completely destroyed a house but left food on a table un-
touched or leveled one house and left the neighboring one intact.
The howling winds have carried people and objects great distances
and deposited them back to earth unhurt. They commonly drive
blades of grass or splinters of wood into trees or houses.
Tornado myths abound. One says that areas near lakes, rivers, and
mountains are safe from tornadoes, but in reality these barriers have
no effect on tornadoes. They have traveled across lakes and up and
down mountains; more than thirty tornadoes have crossed the Missis-
sippi River. Other myths include that tornadoes are always preceded
by hail, mobile homes attract tornadoes, and opening windows will
keep a building from exploding.

Geography
More than one-half of the world’s tornadoes occur annually in the
United States, where the conditions for their formation are ideal: a
moisture source to the south, a cold source to the north, mountain
ranges to the west, deserts to the southwest, and an active jet stream.

241
Tornadoes

These meteorological conditions converge most often in an area des-

ignated “Tornado Alley,” which extends from Texas northward to Ne-
braska.
From 1880 to 1998, more than 35,000 killer tornadoes brought
death to virtually every state of the union. The Great Plains, Midwest,
and Southeast experienced the greatest loss of life. Only seven states—
Alaska, Hawaii, California, Nevada, Utah, Rhode Island, and Ver-
mont—reported no fatalities. Texas led the nation in the number of
tornadoes and total deaths. Oklahoma had the greatest tornado
concentration per square mile. Mississippi led in deaths per million
people.
About twenty other countries, including Canada, Russia, Austra-
lia, India, China, Bangladesh, England, Italy, France, and Japan, have
conditions favorable for tornadoes. In most of these countries, torna-
does are weak and take few lives. Fujita studied tornado damage re-
ports from throughout the world and concluded that tornadoes
rated F4 or greater occur only in the United States, Canada, Bangla-
desh, and India. Statistics for countries outside the United States may
be misleading, however. No standards for identifying and rating tor-
nadoes exist, and no organization compiles international tornado
statistics. Countries with large, sparsely populated areas, such as Aus-
tralia, Canada, and Russia, may experience many more tornadoes
than are reported.
Second to the United States in the number of tornadoes is Can-
ada, which averages 80 tornadoes and 1 or 2 deaths annually. Most
Canadian tornadoes occur in areas near the U.S. border and in west-
ern New Brunswick and interior British Columbia. The United King-
dom, which experiences 33 weak tornadoes in an average year, has
the highest frequency of tornadoes per unit area in the world. The
most susceptible areas are the Midlands and eastern England; torna-
does are rare in Northern Ireland and Scotland. About 15 tornadoes
occur annually in Australia in the summer and winter, particularly in
the eastern, southeastern, and western coastal areas.

Prevention and Preparations

Humans cannot prevent tornadoes or lessen their destruction, but
they can take several steps to lessen loss of life. A successful prepara-
tion program includes four integral parts: the issuance of a tornado

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 Tornadoes

forecast or watch, the spotting of a tornado, the dissemination of

warnings to the public, and the response of an educated public to the
warnings.
The United States is the only country to have a national office re-
sponsible for issuing severe weather forecasts. The Storm Prediction
Center in Norman, Oklahoma, issues a tornado watch (forecast)
when atmospheric conditions that could produce a tornado arise. A
watch, which usually covers an area of 20,000 to 30,000 square miles,
activates spotter networks within the watch area. These volunteers
are amateur radio operators, law enforcement officials, or ordinary
citizens who receive training in recognizing and reporting tornadoes
within their county. A tornado watch also activates emergency proce-
dures at the local National Weather Service (NWS) offices, law en-
forcement agencies, and emergency management offices. If spotters
see a tornado, or if Doppler radar indicates that one may be forming,
the local NWS office issues a tornado warning for the affected county.
Local television and radio stations break into programming to warn
citizens of impending danger, and many communities sound a warn-
ing siren. The media, especially television, relay information on the
path of the tornado and the safety precautions to take.
In Canada and Australia, provincial and regional weather offices
are responsible for tornado forecasts and warnings. Canada has a
weather alert system that scrolls severe weather information across
television screens, and a Doppler weather radar network was com-
pleted in 2003. Most other countries where tornadoes occur have no
organized method of forecasting or warning of tornadoes.
Because tornadoes occur so rapidly, all the potential victim has
time to do is seek shelter. Doppler radar has increased the average
warning time for tornadoes that strike in the United States to about
fifteen minutes, but many occur with much less notice. To educate
the public about the actions to take when a tornado threatens, the
NWS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) dis-
tribute millions of tornado-safety brochures to schools and the gen-
eral public, and states susceptible to twisters have a severe weather
safety week each spring. Among the other countries that produce
tornado-safety materials are Canada and Australia.
The key to survival in a tornado is to avoid flying and falling de-
bris. The best place to take shelter is in a storm cellar or basement. In

243
Tornadoes

homes without basements, the safest place is on the lowest level in an

interior room. The idea is to put as many walls as possible between
oneself and the tornado and to stay away from windows. People in
public buildings should go to an inside hallway on the lowest level
and avoid wide-span roofs such as those found in auditoriums, gym-
nasiums, and shopping malls.
Mobile homes and vehicles are especially vulnerable in a tornado
and should be abandoned. In the United States 50 percent of the tor-
nado fatalities from 1985 to 1997 occurred in mobile homes and ve-
hicles. Those caught outdoors should seek shelter inside a building,
and if nothing is available they should lie in a ditch. In all cases, arms
or pillows should be used to protect the head and neck. Texas Tech
University’s Wind Engineering Research Center studied building
construction for many years in an effort to design homes that could
withstand tornado and hurricane winds. In 1998 FEMA made plans
for inexpensive home shelters that the Tech Center had designed
available to the public and encouraged their construction.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Because tornadoes occur with so little warning, and the odds of their
striking one particular locale are so minute, few communities have
specific tornado rescue plans. Often the streets are blocked by debris
after a tornado, so much of the initial search for victims and rescue of
trapped people comes from the survivors themselves. The greatest
hazard in a tornado is being buried by falling debris. Frequently,
those who seek shelter in a basement have the house fall in on them.
When a tornado struck downtown Waco, Texas, in 1953, brick build-
ings crumbled, burying victims under 20 to 30 feet of rubble. In
Saragosa, Texas, in 1987, 22 of the 30 fatalities occurred when the
concrete block community center collapsed.
Local law enforcement agencies are usually in charge of search
and rescue. When the tornado is of great proportions, the governor
may call in the National Guard for assistance, and if a large number
of people are unaccounted for, FEMA may send search dogs to sniff
through the rubble.
A very strong tornado may hurl victims about like pieces of paper,
sometimes many yards from their places of shelter. In the most vio-
lent tornadoes, victims may be found in trees or wrapped in tele-

244
 Tornadoes

phone or electric lines. Those who remain in mobile homes or cars

are often found entangled in twisted metal.
Tornado victims tend to have specific types of injuries. Most fatali-
ties are from crushing injuries and head traumas. Broken bones,
gashes, cuts, puncture wounds, and embedded glass are among the
most common nonfatal injuries. In nearly all tornadoes, a majority of
the victims are the elderly and children.
An immediate concern is to turn off the gas and electricity to pre-
vent fires and electrocutions. The National Guard may be mobilized
to restore order and patrol against looting. If many fatalities are in-
volved, law-enforcement officials will order everyone out of the dev-
astated area until the bodies are recovered. When the victims are al-
lowed to return to what remains of their homes and businesses, they
usually find very little that is salvageable. What the wind does not de-
stroy, the rain that frequently follows does.
Simultaneously with rescue efforts, national relief organizations,
such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, begin feeding the vic-
tims and rescue workers and setting up shelters for the homeless. A
designated agency, often the Red Cross or a local government entity,
compiles lists of survivors and fatalities. Within hours of the disaster,
religious and civic organizations as well as individuals provide food,
clothing, household items, and money for the victims. Many also
help in the cleanup and rebuilding process.
If the tornado has left behind substantial property damage, the
governor may request a national disaster declaration. This designa-
tion, which the president must sign, provides federal assistance to in-
dividuals and communities for rebuilding.

Impact
Tornadoes rarely have a long-lasting effect on the physical environ-
ment. Unlike many natural disasters, such as floods or volcanic erup-
tions, “twisters” do not alter the topography of the area that they
strike. The greatest environmental impact of a tornado is on trees,
animals, humans, and the artificial environment. Violent tornadoes
snap off trees, leaving only stubs, while most smaller tornadoes only
break off branches. Occasionally, a twister downs thousands of trees
in a forest. More commonly, the greatest damage to vegetation is to
agricultural crops, which are readily replanted.

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Tornadoes

Tornadoes often kill wildlife. Frequently, frogs, fish, and various

types of birds “rain” from the sky when they are caught in the rotating
winds and dropped some distance away. During a 1978 tornado in
Norfolk, England, 136 geese fell from the sky along a 25-mile track.
Few reports of tornadoes killing larger wild animals exist, but it is
probable that tornadoes killed many bison that once roamed the
American Great Plains. Deaths of farm animals are common in torna-
does. Tens of thousands of cows, horses, pigs, and chickens have died
through the years when winds carried them distances before drop-
ping them or when barns or chicken houses collapsed. Dogs and cats
are also frequent casualties of tornadoes.
Tornadoes cause incredible damage to human-made objects.
Stronger storms can reduce brick and wooden buildings to piles of
rubble in seconds, and even weak ones can demolish mobile homes.
Tornadoes have dumped bridges into rivers and lakes, leaving be-
hind only twisted iron or steel and concrete pillars. A violent tornado
can scour pavement from roads, toss cars and trucks like matchsticks,
and derail trains. The annual price tag for tornado damage is un-
known, but single tornadoes have been known to cause more than $1
billion in damage. The tornado that struck Omaha, Nebraska, on
May 6, 1975, left behind $1.135 billion in damage (in 1995 dollars),
and the tornadoes that ripped through the Oklahoma City area on
May 3, 1999, cost more than $1 billion.
Tornadoes leave their greatest impact on humans. During the
twentieth century, these storms killed almost 15,000 and injured ap-
proximately 125,000 in the United States. In 1998, a record 1,426 tor-
nadoes touched down in the United States and took 130 lives, the
most in twenty-five years. Although they do not keep tornado statis-
tics, India and Bangladesh combined may lead the world in tornado
fatalities. A single tornado north of Dhaka, Bangladesh, killed 1,300
and injured 12,000 in 1989, and one in 1996 took more than 1,000
lives in the same area. The number of homeless and bereaved left in
the path of tornadoes is uncountable.

Historical Overview
Although Greek philosopher Aristotle, the founder of meteorology,
described tornadoes (or what he called “whirlwinds”) around 340
b.c.e, few accounts of nature’s most violent storms exist before 1600

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 Tornadoes

A large funnel cloud moves across the plains. (National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration)

except in the legends of several American Indian tribes. Tornadoes

occurred infrequently in Europe and, except in England, received lit-
tle notice until settlement began in North America, the prime natu-
ral habitat of these storms. Even then, tornadoes were not common
occurrences. Only twenty such storms were recorded in pre-Revolu-
tionary War times, including the July 8, 1680, storm in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, which claimed the life of John Robbins. This was the
first written account of a tornado and a victim within the future
United States.
A Jesuit priest’s narrative of the tornado that struck Rome in 1749
is one of the few published accounts of a European tornado outside
England to appear before the nineteenth century, and after 1800
most of the interest in tornadoes centered in the United States. A
twister that struck New Brunswick, New Jersey, on June 19, 1835,
stirred an ongoing scientific debate between U.S. meteorologists
James Pollard Espy and William Redfield over the origin and nature
of the storms. During the 1850’s and 1860’s, the Smithsonian Institu-
tion collected weather data from volunteer observers and military

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Tornadoes

posts, and in 1862 it distributed circulars to the public warning about

tornado dangers and asking for reports on these storms. The first
weather forecast in the United States, which meteorologist Cleveland
Abbe issued on September 2, 1869, raised the possibility of forecast-
ing severe storms and tornadoes in the future.
On February 2, 1870, the federal government created a national
weather service and placed it under the jurisdiction of the Army Sig-
nal Corps. One corpsman, John Park Finley, began a systematic study
of tornadoes in 1877. Based on personal observations of the storms
in the Great Plains and historical tornado data, Finley devised a set of
rules for forecasting tornadoes. The corps allowed Finley to issue
trial tornado predictions in 1884, and he claimed a 95-98 percent suc-
cess rate. These forecasts never reached the public because the pre-
vailing thought of the time was that people would panic if they
thought a tornado might appear. This fear, along with a lack of inter-
est in tornadoes among the scientific community, led to a prohibition
on the use of the word “tornado” in any weather forecast until 1938.
During the nineteenth century, four tornadoes in the United
States claimed more than 100 lives each: May 7, 1840, in Natchez,
Mississippi, 317 deaths; June 3, 1860, in rural Iowa and Illinois, 112
deaths; May 27, 1896, in St. Louis, Missouri, 306 deaths; and June 12,
1899, in New Richmond, Wisconsin, 117 deaths.
The large population increase in the sections of the United States
most prone to tornadoes led to greater tornado disasters during the
first half of the twentieth century. The worst tornado disaster in U.S.
history occurred on March 18, 1925, when a boiling mass of black
clouds rolled 219 miles through parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Indi-
ana, killing 689 and injuring more than 2,000 in its path. This “Great
Tri-State Tornado,” also the holder of the record for the longest path,
helped make 1925 the deadliest year (794 deaths) and the 1920’s the
deadliest decade on record for the United States (3,169 deaths).
Annual deaths during the first half of the century averaged 210,
and in addition to the Great Tri-State Tornado, eight tornadoes
claimed 100 or more lives each: May 18, 1902, in Goliad, Texas, 114
deaths; April 24-25, 1908, in Louisiana and Mississippi, 143 deaths;
March 23, 1913, in Omaha, Nebraska, 115 deaths; May 25-26, 1917, in
Mattoon, Illinois, 103 deaths; April 2, 1936, in Tupelo, Mississippi,
216 deaths; April 6, 1936, in Gainesville, Georgia, 206 deaths; June

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 Tornadoes

23, 1944, in Shinnston, West Virginia, 151 deaths; and April 9, 1947,
in Woodward, Oklahoma, 181 deaths.
The Weather Bureau lifted the ban on the use of the word “tor-
nado” in forecasts in 1938 and gave its local offices responsibility for
issuing severe storm and tornado forecasts, but local offices rarely
mentioned the word. World War II brought a change in attitude to-
ward these deadly storms. Many munitions plants and Army Air
Corps fields were located in the tornado-susceptible Great Plains and
South. To lessen the possibility of many deaths should lightning
strike a munitions plant and to decrease the potential loss of air-
planes, the bureau organized storm-spotting networks around the
crucial facilities. A few of these remained after the war and became
the nucleus of a nationwide spotter network organized in the 1950’s.
On March 20, 1948, a tornado raked Tinker Field in Oklahoma
City. Air Force meteorologists Ernest Fawbush and Robert Miller
studied the atmospheric conditions that existed before the storm oc-
curred. Five days later, when they recognized nearly identical condi-
tions, the officers issued a tornado forecast for Tinker Field, the first
such forecast in modern history. They were correct—a tornado
touched down on the base. Fawbush and Miller continued to issue
forecasts for the military, but the civilian population did not receive
the same type of advanced notification until 1952. The Weather Bu-
reau issued the first tornado forecast to the American public on
March 17 of that year, but no tornadoes occurred within the watch
area. Four days later, the bureau issued another tornado watch, and
this time it was a “success”—one tornado occurred within the desig-
nated area and time—but there was no cause for rejoicing on March
21. The 17 tornadoes that struck Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missis-
sippi that day took 202 lives and injured over 1,200. In May, the
Weather Bureau formed a Severe Weather Unit, the ancestor of the
Storm Prediction Center, to issue both tornado and severe thunder-
storm forecasts for the United States.
In 1953, tornadoes hit three U.S. cities, with terrible consequences.
On May 11, a twister plowed through downtown Waco, Texas, taking
114 lives; on June 8, a tornado struck Flint, Michigan, killing 120; and
the following day, nature’s fury struck Worcester, Massachusetts, leav-
ing 94 dead. These deadly storms ushered in a decade of vast im-
provements in tornado forecasting and warning, primarily the result

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Tornadoes

of radar and an expanded communications system.

After the Waco tornado, Texas A&M University converted surplus
navy radar to weather radar and installed it at various Weather Bu-
reau offices around the state to create the country’s first comprehen-
sive tornado warning system. Meteorologists noticed that frequently
a tornado formed a distinctive radar pattern, called a hook echo, and
they began issuing tornado warnings based solely on radar. During
the 1950’s, their partner in spreading the warning of approaching
danger to the public was radio (95 percent of U.S. households had a
radio in 1950), but by the next decade, television had replaced radio
as the primary warning medium.
The weather establishment began to realize that one of the best
ways to save lives was to educate the public. The Weather Bureau
(which became the National Weather Service in 1970), state disaster
offices, newspapers, television stations, and schools began a campaign
in the late 1950’s to teach the public the difference between a tornado
watch (meaning a tornado is possible) and a tornado warning (mean-
ing a tornado has been sighted) and the precautions to take to save
lives. Most communities in tornado-prone areas organized volunteer
spotter networks. Television stations began to acquire radar and to
hire professional meteorologists. The White House designated the Na-
tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Ra-
dio as the sole government system to provide direct warnings of natu-
ral or nuclear disasters to private homes in 1975, and many Americans
bought a special radio that sends out a warning when severe weather
threatens their area. In the 1990’s, the National Weather Service in-
stalled a vastly improved tornado detector, Doppler radar, at all its of-
fices throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and many
television stations bought their own Dopplers.
All these advances, along with improved building construction,
contributed to a substantial reduction in the U.S. tornado death rate
after the 1950’s, the last decade to register more than 1,000 tornado
deaths. As of 2006, no individual tornado had claimed more than 100
lives since 1953, and the last single tornado to kill more than 50
Americans occurred in 1971. These statistics are remarkable consid-
ering that the population in the southeastern and southern plains
states, the areas most susceptible to tornadoes, increased more than
60 percent in the second half of the twentieth century.

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 Tornadoes

In spite of all the technological and educational advances that the

United States has made, nature’s most vicious storm occasionally tri-
umphs. An outbreak (several tornadoes in the same day) of 148 tor-
nadoes on April 3-4, 1974, claimed 316 lives and injured more than
5,000 in 11 states. Other deadly outbreaks occurred on April 11,
1965, when 271 died in 6 midwestern states and on February 21,
1971, when 110 died in Louisiana and Mississippi.
During 1994 and 1995, scientists from many U.S. universities and
U.S. and Canadian weather agencies employed an armada of spe-
cially equipped vehicles, including aircraft, to gather data from thun-
derstorms in an effort to unlock the secret of tornado formation. In
2003, researchers were able to insert measuring devices called “tur-
tles” into an F4 tornado.
Marlene Bradford

Bibliography
Bluestein, Howard. Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. This book by a leading
meteorologist and tornado chaser is a history of tornado research
interspersed with magnificent photographs.
Bradford, Marlene. Scanning the Skies: A History of Tornado Forecasting.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. Traces the history
of today’s tornado warning system. Explains how advancements in
the late twentieth century resulted in the drastic reduction of fa-
talities.
Eagleman, Joe R. “The Strongest Storm on Earth.” In Severe and Un-
usual Weather. Lenexa, Kans.: Trimedia, 1990. The author de-
scribes the basic science of tornadoes in terminology that general
readers can understand.
Flora, Snowden D. Tornadoes of the United States. Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1953. This book served as the standard refer-
ence work on tornadoes for years. Although outdated in many re-
spects, it offers excellent historical accounts of many destructive
tornadoes.
Grazulis, Thomas P. Significant Tornadoes: 1680-1991. St. Johnsbury,
Vt.: Environmental Films, 1993.
_______. Significant Tornadoes Update, 1992-1995. St. Johnsbury, Vt.:
Environmental Films, 1997. This massive book and its supplement

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Tornadoes

contain basic tornado information, maps, statistics, and a descrip-

tion of every tornado rated F2 or higher that occurred in the
United States from 1680 to 1995.
_______. The Tornado: Nature’s Ultimate Windstorm. Norman: Univer-
sity of Oklahoma Press, 2003. A comprehensive look at the most
destructive tornadoes in the United States and 200 other coun-
tries.
Ludlum, David. Early American Tornadoes: 1586-1870. Boston: Ameri-
can Meteorological Society, 1970. The author describes every re-
ported tornado that occurred within the present United States un-
til 1870 and discusses early American scientific thought on these
storms.
Whipple, A. B. “Thunderstorms and Their Progeny.” In Storm. Alex-
andria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1982. This chapter mixes the science
behind tornadoes with excellent meteorological drawings, mag-
nificent photographs, and historical accounts of tornadoes.

252
Tsunamis
Factors involved: Geography, geological forces,
gravitational forces
Regions affected: Cities, coasts, islands, oceans

Definition
A tsunami is an ocean wave, or a series of ocean waves, of enormous
energy caused most often by undersea geological disturbances, espe-
cially earthquakes. The waves can travel thousands of miles from
their source to an island or coastal region, where they can cause great
loss of life and massive physical damage to the natural environment
and artificial structures.

Science
“Tsunami” is a Japanese word that means “harbor wave.” Tsunamis
are also known popularly as tidal waves, although this is a misnomer
because they are not caused by the tides or by Earth-Moon gravita-
tional attraction, as are the tides. Tsunamis are caused by any distur-
bance under the ocean’s surface that causes great movements in the
seawater. Tsunamis can be generated by earthquakes as well as land-
slides or volcanic eruptions on the seafloor. Tsunamis have been
called seismic sea waves because they are often caused by earth-
quakes. They can also be caused by the impact of a large meteorite or
large volcanic debris on the surface of the ocean. A tsunami should
not be confused with a tidal bore, a storm surge, or a seiche. A tidal
bore is a quickly advancing frontal wave of the incoming tide when
concentrated into shallow narrow estuaries. Storm surges are associ-
ated with hurricanes and cyclones, which superimpose wind-driven
waves onto the normal tidal actions and the sea currents created by
offshore winds. Seiches are the slow and rhythmic oscillations of
water in enclosed or nearly enclosed waters, such as bays or lakes.
Tsunamis, like other waves or wave systems, are collections of en-
ergy. At a specific point in time and at a specific location, energy is
transferred by a disturbance into a medium at rest, in this case the
ocean, is propagated through that medium, and is ultimately dissi-
pated, either slowly through friction with adjacent media or by the

253
Tsunamis

sudden transfer of the remaining energy into another medium at a

moment and point of disturbance. The vast majority of tsunamis are
caused by earthquakes. Earthquakes themselves are caused by the
shifting of tectonic plates relative to each other at the lines, either
faults or trenches, where the plates meet.
According to plate tectonics, the earth is a dynamic structure in
which a dozen or more huge plates, each some 70 to 100 miles thick,
float on a semimolten viscous mantle, which covers the entire surface
of the earth. The energy dissipated by the circulation of the mantle
causes the plates above to shift. Tectonic-plate motion is extremely
slow, only an inch or two per year. If the forces that cause this motion
are not completely dissipated through this slow movement they will
build up and be released at once in a sudden cataclysmic shifting of
the plates.
Although earthquakes are the most frequent cause of tsunamis,
not all earthquakes will produce such an event. An earthquake must
be located under or near the ocean, be large (tsunamis are typically
caused by earthquakes measuring 6.5 and above on the Richter
scale), have a focal point less than 30 miles below the seafloor, and
cause movement in the seafloor. It is the movement of the ocean
floor under the water above it which serves as the initial impetus for
the creation of the tsunami.
Much more important than the magnitude of the earthquake are
the type of earthquake and the type of motion it causes in the sea-
floor. Vertical shifting of the plates, especially a phenomenon known
as subduction, is much more effective than transverse (side-by-side)
motion in generating tsunamis. Subduction is the movement of one
plate under an adjacent plate. Such subduction earthquakes are es-
pecially formative of tsunamis in the Pacific, where the thinner plates
underlying the seafloor are moving downward and under the thicker
adjacent continental plates. The sudden vertical movement of a sub-
duction earthquake will displace, and thereby upset the equilibrium
of, the water above.
Because water is not compressible, the movement will force up-
wards, or downwards, the entire column of water above the shifted
area, which might measure thousands of square miles. Waves form
subsequently as gravity pulls the enormous volume of disturbed
water back downward to its position of equilibrium. In this type of tsu-

254
 Tsunamis

Milestones
1692: Tsunamis spawned by an earthquake in Port Royal, Jamaica, kill
3,000.
1703: 5,000 die in tsunamis in Honshn, Japan, following a large earth-
quake.
1707: A 38-foot-high tsunami kills 30,000 in Japan.
1741: Following volcanic eruptions, 30-foot waves in Japan cause
1,400 deaths.
1755: As many as 50,000 lose their lives in the combined earthquake
and tsunami in Lisbon, Portugal.
1783: A tsunami in Italy kills 30,000.
1868: Tsunamis in Chile and Hawaii claim more than 25,000 lives.
1883: The Krakatau volcanic explosion and tsunami in Indonesia re-
sult in 36,000 deaths.
1896: As many as 27,000 die after tsunamis hit Sanriku, Japan.
1933: 3,000 are killed by tsunamis in Sanriku, Japan.
1946: The Aleutian tsunami creates 32-foot-high waves in Hilo, Ha-
waii, causing 159 deaths there.
1946: 2,000 die in Honshn, Japan, after an earthquake spawns tsu-
namis.
1964: 195-foot waves engulf Kodiak, Alaska, after the Good Friday
earthquake; 131 die.
1998: A series of tsunamis in Papua New Guinea kills 2,000, mostly
children.
1999: A tsunami and accompanying earthquake at the island of Van-
uatu kills 10, injures more than 100, and leaves thousands homeless.
2001: A tsunami in Peru leaves 26 dead and 70 missing.
2004: A massive tsunami strikes 11 nations bordering the Indian
Ocean, leaving at least 212,000 dead and almost 43,000 missing.

nami generation the amount of vertical drop or uplift of the underly-

ing seafloor and the area over which it occurs govern the size of the
resulting tsunami. The physics of the tsunami itself render it possible
for the generating energy of the earthquake or other motive distur-
bance to be propagated across an entire ocean and deposited on

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Tsunamis

shore in powerful destructive forces. The tsunami will move outward

in all directions from the point of disturbance in concentric circles,
similar to the way ripples fan out in all directions when a stone is
dropped into water.
Unlike the ripples on a pond, however, the tsunami waves in the
deep ocean are impossible to see from the air, nor can they be felt on
a ship by which they pass. It is precisely the dimensions of the tsunami
that render that possible. Wave dimensions are height (the distance
from the bottom of the trough to the top of the crest), length (the
distance from one crest to the next), and period (the time it takes for
successive wave crests to reach a fixed point). Waves caused by the
wind, which are visible on a lake or at the beach, will have a period of
a few seconds, a height of a few feet or less—or more in the case of
storms—and a length of a few hundred feet. In such an environment
an object or vessel will visibly bob up and down on the surface as suc-
cessive waves pass. A tsunami wave in the middle of the ocean, how-
ever, can have a period ranging from ten minutes to two hours, a
height of a few feet or less, but a length of 300 miles or more. The ra-
tio of length to height is thus far greater for a tsunami than for a wind-
driven wave. As a tsunami passes in the open ocean an object or vessel
will only rise and fall a very short distance over a far greater length of
time. The tsunami, for all the destructive power it manifests when
striking a shore, is thus impossible to see or feel on the open ocean.
To illustrate this irony one need only look to the example of the tsu-
nami that destroyed the village of Sanriku, Japan, on June 15, 1896.
About 90 miles offshore, an earthquake caused a tsunami that passed
by the town’s fishing fleet, then working only 20 miles off the coast,
completely unnoticed. The fishermen returned home the next day
to find their town destroyed and the bodies of some 27,000 people lit-
tering the harbor.
Tsunamis behave as shallow water waves. Such waves are character-
ized by a very low ratio of water depth to wave length. Although it may
be hard to imagine, given the enormous depths found in the open
ocean—especially the Pacific—if one considers the dimensions it is
not hard to believe. The average depth of the Pacific is between 3 and 4
miles. If a tsunami’s length can be some 300 miles, then the ratio of
ocean depth to wavelength is on the order of 1 to 100. Very important
for the case of a tsunami, the speed of a shallow water wave is the

256
 Tsunamis

square root of the product of the acceleration of gravity and the depth
of the water. That means the deeper the water, the faster the tsunami.
Normal sea waves travel no faster than 60 miles per hour, even in
the stormiest of weather over the deepest of seas. A tsunami can
travel ten times as fast. The average depth of the Pacific Ocean is
18,480 feet. In water of such a depth a tsunami will travel 524 miles
per hour. Through water 30,000 feet deep a tsunami travels at 670
miles per hour—as fast as a jet passenger plane. Furthermore, the
rate of energy loss for a wave is inversely related to its length. There-
fore, the longer the wave, the more slowly it loses its energy. These
two factors, high velocity and slow energy loss, make it possible for a
tsunami to deliver a tremendous amount of force across the entire
Pacific Ocean, the largest ocean on the earth, in less than one day. A
tsunami can carry so much energy that striking a shore will not neces-
sarily consume all of its energy. Tsunami waves have been known to
bounce back and forth across the Pacific for a week or more while
their energy is slowly dissipated.
As a tsunami approaches the perimeter of the ocean or an island
and begins to run into increasingly shallow water, the wave’s velocity,

A tsunami capsizes a fishing boat. (FEMA)

257
Tsunamis

dependent entirely upon the depth of the water, decreases. In 60 feet

of water, a tsunami wave will be slowed to 30 miles per hour. However,
since the wave’s period will remain constant, the height of the wave
will increase. Therefore, as the wave approaches land its speed de-
creases and its height increases. Although tsunami heights of up to
100 feet have been recorded, only very rarely will a tsunami take the
form of a towering cresting wave of the sort sought after by surfers.
The wave height will increase, however, and the tsunami will be no-
ticeable, unlike on the open ocean.
A tsunami might appear as a quickly changing tide, a series of
breaking waves, or even a bore—a steplike wave with a steep breaking
front. It is not necessarily the case that the tsunami will cause the
water first to rise. If the trough of the tsunami reaches the shore first,
the water level can drop and recede to an enormous extent, baring
more of the shore bottom than the lowest tide. The crest will still fol-
low, however. It has happened that onlookers, seeing what they
thought was an incredibly low tide, have ventured out onto the ex-
posed bottom, only to be caught by the subsequent fast-moving crest
and drowned.

Geography
Although tsunamis can occur in any ocean of the world, approxi-
mately 80 percent of tsunamis are found in the Pacific Ocean. An-
other 10 percent are found in the Atlantic, and the rest are found
elsewhere. Most tsunamis occur in the Pacific because that ocean has
far more seismic activity than the others. The perimeter of the sea-
floor of the Pacific, known as the “Ring of Fire,” is a series of moun-
tain chains, deep trenches, and volcanic island arcs caused by the
movements of the adjoining tectonic plates that cover the surface of
the earth. Major mountain ranges, such as the Andes Mountains in
South America, and deep trenches, such as the Peru-Chile trench im-
mediately off the west coast of South America, the Aleutian trench
south of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, and the Japan trench east of
Japan, were created by the sudden movement of adjoining plates
along fault lines.
In the Pacific Ocean at least one tsunami per year has been re-
corded since 1800, and there is an average of two destructive tsuna-
mis somewhere in the Pacific per year. Hawaii, an easy target in the

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 Tsunamis

middle of the Pacific Ocean, suffered 37 tsunamis from 1875 to 2000,

while Japan was struck by 15 major tsunamis, 8 of them especially de-
structive, between 1650 and 2000. Although Pacific-wide tsunamis
are somewhat rare, the nations of the Pacific Ocean can expect an
oceanwide tsunami on the average of once every ten or twelve years.
Tsunamis are rare in the Atlantic, but they are not unknown. In
November of 1928, an earthquake off of the Grand Banks in New-
foundland, Canada, generated a tsunami that caused both loss of life
and significant property damage in that region. In terms of local ge-
ography, low-lying coastal regions and islands, especially land less
than 50 feet above sea level and within 1 mile of the shoreline, are at
the greatest risk of damage once a tsunami strikes.

Prevention and Preparations

Scientists and public officials are especially keen to lessen the dam-
age and loss of life caused by tsunamis. Mitigation of tsunami damage
depends upon three factors: prediction, warning, and preparation.
Because earthquakes are the prevalent cause of tsunamis, efforts at
tsunami prediction have focused on earthquakes. In spite of signifi-
cant research, however, scientists remain unable to predict the inci-
dence of earthquakes with real certitude. Tsunami researchers in-
stead focus their efforts on distinguishing as quickly as possible
tsunamigenic earthquakes from other earthquakes, thereby decreas-
ing the amount of time necessary to issue a clear warning. The
shorter the time period between tsunami generation and the issu-
ance of a warning, the more lives that can be saved. While it remains
virtually impossible to warn population centers of an oncoming lo-
cally generated tsunami—because of the great speed at which a tsu-
nami travels—it is very possible to warn residents of areas under
threat of a tsunami generated by distant seismic disturbances.
The ability to predict the arrival time of a tsunami has been in
place for some time. The known physics of tsunami creation and
propagation, combined with increasingly accurate mapping of the
seafloor over which the tsunamis travel and precise measurements of
ocean depths, make it possible to predict with reasonable, even excel-
lent, accuracy the moment and point at which a tsunami will arrive
ashore. An earthquake struck off the coast of Chile in 1960, causing
enormous damage and loss of life to the local residents, who had

259
Tsunamis

been caught completely unaware. Yet once tsunami monitors were

able to confirm that a tsunami had been created, they were able to
predict its arrival in Hilo, Hawaii, with truly phenomenal accuracy—
the tsunami arrived within one minute of its predicted time.
Later, scientists assumed a new challenge, that of ascertaining the
amplitude of a tsunami once it is created. This requires a better un-
derstanding of how earthquakes create tsunamis and how they are
propagated, as well as the creation of better instrumentation to de-
tect and measure them. As part of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Sys-
tem, scientists and engineers have placed throughout the Pacific
increasingly sensitive subsurface pressure sensors that measure tsu-
nami amplitude in the open ocean.
The study, understanding, and measurement of coastal runup
and impact ashore is an equally important piece of the Tsunami
Warning System. Accurate and current surveys of the local topog-
raphy—both below and above the shoreline—accurate tidal mea-
surement, numerical modeling, and historical data are combined to
create worst-case impact and inundation scenarios and define evacu-
ation zones and routes to ensure quick response when a tsunami
warning must be issued. This information is also used in long-term
public efforts to mitigate public and private property damage and
loss of life.
Government agencies can initiate public works projects, such as
the construction and maintenance of breakwaters or floodwalls that
act as physical barriers to tsunami flooding. Governments can also ac-
quire land or regulate land usage through zoning or taxation policy
to prevent, discourage, or regulate areas prone to tsunami impact
or flooding. Finally, governments can foster public education and
awareness of the dangers inherent in tsunami-prone areas by requir-
ing, for instance, disclosure of such information in real estate trans-
actions.
The final component of efforts to mitigate loss of life from tsu-
nami impact and flooding is the warning itself. Research, monitor-
ing, and understanding of tsunami generation and propagation, and
communication of the data relevant to them, are all essential compo-
nents of any warning effort. Tsunami warnings are issued by the au-
thorities or institutions that monitor the data coming from remote
sites and sensors scattered throughout the Pacific. Once a decision to

260
 Tsunamis

Tide and seismograph reporting stations of the Pacific Tsunami Warning System.
This is a representation of the travel times for tidal waves originating at Honolulu,
Hawaii. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

announce a warning has been made, the governmental authorities

where a tsunami is expected to come ashore are alerted. The warning
is then disseminated to the various appropriate regional and local civil
defense organizations and other responsible agencies and broadcast
to the public via radio and television.
The effectiveness of such a system, no matter how well devised and
maintained, is ultimately dependent upon a well-informed and re-
sponsive public. Education and outreach are thus critical compo-
nents of the work of the organizations responsible for monitoring
tsunamis or issuing tsunami warnings and other agencies involved in
public safety. Public awareness is essential in the case of locally gener-
ated tsunamis, where nearby coastal residents must be taught to seek
refuge inland on higher ground upon feeling the tremors of a locally
generated earthquake.
Education is, however, no less important in the case of tsunamis
generated by distant earthquakes and for which there is thus much

261
Tsunamis

time to issue a warning. Residents in areas prone to tsunamis must be

educated as to the complexity of the danger. People have drowned
because they went out to marvel at what they thought was an incredi-
bly low tide but which in fact was the trough of an oncoming tsunami
whose crest followed.
Residents must be likewise alerted to the incidence of multiple
waves. Civil defense authorities had managed to evacuate Crescent
City, California, in March of 1964 when warned of a tsunami that was
on the way from an earthquake that struck near the coast of Alaska.
Their work paid off well; there was no loss of life after the arrival of
the first two waves of this particular tsunami. Unfortunately, some res-
idents, assuming the danger was over, decided to return to the
stricken area before an all-clear signal was given and were drowned
by a third wave that was much larger than the first two. It is perhaps an
irony that tsunami warnings bring out sightseers interested in view-
ing the very danger from which they have been instructed to flee.
The warnings issued in May of 1960 to Hilo, Hawaii, while instrumen-
tal in preventing large-scale loss of life, did bring out a few sightseers,
all of whom were drowned.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Although the areas of tsunami damage might be small compared to
those of other disasters, the damage is particularly thorough. Local-
ities affected by tsunamis are usually devastated, requiring significant
short-term and long-term recovery and reconstruction efforts. After
a tsunami strikes, the most immediate concern for local civil defense
authorities is the public health. While treatment of injured survivors
is important, perhaps more critical is the condition of the water sup-
ply, typically fouled by tsunami flooding. If sewer lines are broken or
the sewage system is overwhelmed, the potential public health haz-
ard is even worse. Additionally, the bodies of the drowned must be lo-
cated, recovered, and disposed of properly as quickly as possible to
prevent further pollution of the water and outbreaks of communica-
ble diseases.
Besides bringing the immediate threats to the public health under
control, initial relief efforts require the recovery of the essential in-
frastructure, especially the water and power supply, as well as commu-
nications and transport. Without these basics it is impossible for both

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 Tsunamis

individuals and communities as a whole to commence the task of re-

building. Because the tsunami will have left an enormous amount of
debris in its wake, initial cleanup efforts require the removal of every-
thing from trash and building debris to boats and motor vehicles,
much of which may have been moved hundreds of yards inland. In
the long term, recovery from a tsunami entails reconstruction of
homes, businesses, and public spaces and even the rehabilitation of
the environment, which often suffers massive damage.

Impact
Tsunamis cause damage in two ways: flooding and exertion of the
wave’s force against structures. The water that comes onto the shore
and proceeds inland is called runup. Its height is the vertical distance
measured from the tide level at the time the tsunami strikes the shore
to the contour line of highest point on shore reached by the water. A
tsunami can easily raise the water level from 20 to 30 yards above nor-
mal height and reach, especially if the stricken coastal area is particu-
larly low, hundreds of yards inland, thereby flooding enormous tracts
of land. Runup can cause enormous environmental damage, remov-
ing years of accumulated beach sand, stripping away coastal vegeta-
tion and trees, and drowning animals.
Tsunamis exert a truly powerful force against anything with which
they come into contact, including human-made structures. A tsu-
nami wave can easily flatten buildings or remove them from their
foundations, wash boats and small ships hundreds of yards ashore,
and toss around automobiles and even heavy construction equip-
ment as if they were toys. The movement of such objects, as well as the
debris of destroyed structures and even uprooted trees, can cause se-
vere secondary damage when the wave carries them forward and
forces them against still-standing structures, and then subsequently
when the waters recede and drag the same objects back to strike
against what little might still be left standing.
Besides causing severe environmental and property damage, tsu-
namis cause important and sometimes dangerous infrastructure
damage that can threaten public health and delay post-tsunami re-
covery efforts. Widespread flooding almost always causes polluted
water supplies. The local energy grid can be compromised or put out
of service entirely if electrical or gas lines are destroyed.

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Tsunamis

A tsunami’s most fearsome toll, however, is always loss of human

life, attributable almost exclusively to drowning. Between 1932 and
July of 1998, more people died in the United States as a result of tsu-
namis than as a result of earthquakes. The desire to prevent such loss
of life has been the primary motivation behind the establishment of
the warning system and preparatory measures now in place through-
out the Pacific.
In April of 1946 an earthquake in the Aleutian trench near Alaska
generated a tsunami that struck Hawaii unexpectedly, causing 159 fa-
talities and tens of millions of dollars in damage. Motivated by what is
still considered to be Hawaii’s worst natural disaster, the United States
Coast and Geodetic Survey established in Hawaii the Seismic Sea Wave
Warning System, which later became the Pacific Tsunami Warning
Center (PTWC). Before the end of the twentieth century, the PTWC
would be the operational center of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Sys-
tem, a sophisticated and coordinated international effort comprising
26 member states. These countries of the Pacific region pool their
knowledge and resources to monitor the entire Pacific basin for
tsunamigenic earthquakes in the hope of giving adequate warnings to
population centers under threat of a tsunami and thereby lessening
property damage and reducing the loss of human life.

Historical Overview
Tsunamis are caused by sudden seismic shocks that sometimes erupt
in coastal waters. When earthquakes accompany tsunamis, as they of-
ten do, the loss of life and property in the affected areas can be stag-
gering. Because waterfront land is usually heavily populated, the gi-
gantic waves characteristic of tsunamis are particularly devastating.
Unless they have some forewarning of an advancing tsunami, whole
populations can simply be swept away in the roiling waters that move
with such force that they flatten everything in their paths.
Most large, devastating tsunamis that have resulted in the greatest
loss of life have occurred in the Pacific Basin. They have usually been
the result of underwater earthquakes caused by the movement of tec-
tonic plates, often in the western reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Japan
has often fallen victim to such disasters, although tsunamis have hit
Indonesia, eastern Russia, and Alaska with relative frequency as well.
The earliest records of tsunamis date to the end of the fifteenth

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 Tsunamis

century, although they undoubtedly occurred but were not recorded

before that time. One was thought to have struck Japan in 1498. Two
others are known to have occurred there in the early seventeenth
century, one in 1605 and the other in 1611. Between 4,000 and 5,000
inhabitants were thought to have died when these tsunamis swamped
their oceanside villages.
Tsunami activity in the eighteenth century was substantial. Japan
suffered devastation from it in 1707, 1741, and 1792. The Kamchatka
Peninsula in the North Pacific was struck by a tsunami in 1737, and
one struck the Ryukyu Islands in 1771. Peru was hit by tsunamis in
1724 and 1746.
In 1783, one was recorded in Italy, where tsunamis are experi-
enced only infrequently. This part of the world, however, has not
been exempt from them entirely. Indeed, in 1755, the most spectacu-
lar tsunami of the eighteenth century hit Lisbon, Portugal, which was
struck simultaneously by an earthquake that leveled much of the old
city. The waves that engulfed Lisbon almost totally destroyed its port,
one of the most active in southern Europe. Memories of this disaster
are preserved in the Voltaire’s famous novel Candide (1759), whose
protagonist arrives in Lisbon in time to witness the catastrophe.
The Lisbon disaster claimed as many as 50,000 lives, making it the
most destructive such event in recorded history until its loss of life
was eclipsed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by greater loss
of life in tsunamis and earthquakes. When Chile was struck by a tsu-
nami in 1868, its huge waves, traveling at speeds thought to have ex-
ceeded 500 miles (800 kilometers) an hour, swirled across the Pacific
Ocean and struck Hawaii. Approximately 25,000 lives were wiped out
by this event.
Among the costliest tsunamis in loss of life was the eruption of the
Krakatau Volcano in Indonesia in 1883, which triggered a wall of
water 135 feet high that snuffed out the lives of 36,000 people. In
1896, a tsunami killed 27,000 people in Japan.
In the twentieth century, many tsunamis struck the Pacific rim,
the so-called Ring of Fire, but the loss of life was smaller than in many
of the tsunamis in earlier centuries, perhaps because early warning
systems were in place. The Kamchatka Peninsula suffered tsunamis
in 1923 and in 1952. Tsunamis struck the Aleutian Islands in 1946
and 1957. The former devastated Hilo, Hawaii.

265
Tsunamis

Japan suffered tsunamis in 1933, 1944, and 1983, but none of

these was so destructive as the one that struck Kodiak, Alaska in 1964,
where an earthquake leveled much of the town before the tsunami
followed, wiping out the entire community. This tsunami also created
the enormous waves that overwhelmed Crescent City, California. An-
other devastating tsunami of the twentieth century killed more than
5,000 people in the Philippines in 1976.
During the twentieth century, scientists developed the means to
prevent the enormous death tolls that tsunamis exacted in earlier
centuries. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) set up a tsunami warning system in Hawaii, making it possi-
ble to evacuate endangered areas. Following the Alaskan earthquake
and tsunami of 1964, this system was extended to Alaska, where it is
designated the Regional Tsunami Warning System.
At the Pacific Tsunami Warning System, headquartered in Hono-
lulu, Hawaii, seismologists carefully track seismic activity throughout
the Pacific basin and issue warnings whenever there is need. The abil-
ity to predict the time and place of landfall has made it possible to
protect most residents of coastal areas from tsunamis. So precise is
the work of the seismological warning stations that when an earth-
quake struck off the coast of Chile in 1960, it was possible to predict
its arrival in Hilo, Hawaii, to within one minute of the actual landfall.
Despite the remarkable advances that have been made in predict-
ing and giving advanced warnings of tsunamis, the most devastating
Indian Ocean tsunami in recorded history occurred on December
26, 2004. The underwater earthquake that created it registered a
magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale. This tsunami swamped the
coastlines of 11 countries that border the Indian Ocean. The imme-
diate death toll was set at 186,983, with another 42,883 missing and
unaccounted for. The final death toll may never be known. Many
bodies washed out to sea. Thousands eventually died of diseases trig-
gered by the appalling sanitary conditions in the storm areas. Infec-
tions from open wounds likely accounted for deaths from blood poi-
soning and related ills. Dysentery, malaria, typhoid, and dehydration
plagued the survivors.
David M. Soule
Nancy M. Gordon
R. Baird Shuman

266
 Tsunamis

Bibliography
Lander, James F., and Patricia A. Lockridge. United States Tsunamis,
1690-1988. Boulder, Colo.: National Geophysical Data Center,
1989. This is an excellent source for readers looking for more de-
tail regarding specific tsunamis that have struck the United States
and its possessions. It includes data and descriptions of individual
events, their causes, and the ensuing damages. The many illustra-
tions and tables are helpful.
Lockridge, Patricia A., and Ronald H. Smith. Tsunamis in the Pacific
Basin, 1900-1983. Boulder, Colo.: National Geophysical Data Cen-
ter and World Data Center A for Solid Earth Geophysics, 1984.
Similar to the work by Lockridge mentioned above, it includes in-
formation for the 405 tsunamis that occurred in the Pacific region
during the years covered. The number of tsunamis alone is a fasci-
nating statistic.
Myles, Douglas. The Great Waves. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985. This
is an excellent and easy-to-read introduction, treating tsunamis
throughout history and covering them from the perspectives of
science, geography, and impact on people.
Robinson, Andrew. “Floods, Dambursts, and Tsunamis.” In Earth
Shock: Hurricanes, Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, and Other Forces
of Nature. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. This essay gives
good, but brief, coverage of the damages a tsunami can cause. In-
cludes some excellent photographs.
Satake, Kenji, ed. Tsunamis: Case Studies and Recent Developments.
Springer, 2006. A review of current tsunami research. The first
part reports on tsunamis generated by volcanic eruptions and
earthquakes around the Pacific Ocean, while the second part re-
ports on developments in computations, monitoring, and coastal
hazard assessment.
Solovev, Sergei, and Chan Nam Go. Catalogue of Tsunamis on the East-
ern Shore of the Pacific Ocean. Sidney, B.C.: Institute of Ocean Sci-
ences, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 1984. This catalogue
provides a wealth of data on individual tsunamis.
_______. Catalogue of Tsunamis on the Western Shore of the Pacific Ocean.
Sidney, B.C.: Institute of Ocean Sciences, Department of Fisheries
and Oceans, 1984. The counterpart to the above-mentioned work.
Together these two volumes provide the interested reader with

267
Tsunamis

great detail on the tsunamis, both real and legendary, that have
occurred throughout the centuries in the Pacific Ocean, as well as
on the earthquakes or volcanoes or other disturbances that may
have caused them.
Whittow, John. Disasters: An Anatomy of Environmental Hazards. Ath-
ens: University of Georgia Press, 1979. This excellent work covers
the mechanics of tsunamis and the earthquakes that cause them.
The detailed explanations are superb and are aided by helpful dia-
grams and tables. Photos are included. This is a great source for
those wishing to get a more in-depth understanding of tsunamis.

268
Volcanic Eruptions
Factors involved: Chemical reactions, geography,
geological forces, wind
Regions affected: All

Definition
A volcanic eruption is the manner in which gases, liquids, and solids
are expelled from the earth’s interior onto its surface. Eruptions can
range from calm outflows of lava to violent explosions. About fifty vol-
canoes erupt every year, and a truly catastrophic eruption occurs
about once a century. Nearly 200,000 people have died over the last
five centuries because of volcanic eruptions. Three-quarters of these
deaths were caused by only 7, extremely violent, eruptions.

Science
Volcanic eruptions are induced by and usually propelled by gas. The
most common source of the gas is water, which at the high tempera-
tures associated with volcanic activity is turned to water vapor (steam).
Liquid lava is often involved in an eruption. The ratio of gas to liquid
in an erupting magma (molten rock material within the earth) is ex-
tremely variable. Some eruptions are almost entirely gas with minus-
cule amounts of liquid, such as the Salt Lake explosion crater in
Oahu, Hawaii. At the other extreme are eruptions of lava flows that
have less than 1 percent gas, such as the seafloor eruptions at mid-
oceanic ridges.
There are several methods to generate the water and associated
gas in a magma. The gas that causes the eruption can come from the
magma itself. Magmas that are deeply buried (under a high pres-
sure) can dissolve considerable amounts of water. About 10 percent
water can dissolve in a magma that resides 9.3 miles (15 kilometers)
below the earth’s surface. The amount of water that can stay dis-
solved decreases as the magma begins to rise. When the pressure
drops sufficiently, the water comes out of the magma and boils to
make bubbles. This process is called “vesiculation.”
Vesiculation occurs in a similar manner to the opening of a cham-
pagne bottle: When the cork is removed and the pressure on the liq-

269
Volcanic Eruptions

Milestones
5000 b.c.e.: Crater Lake, Oregon, erupts, sending pyroclastic flows as
far as 37 miles (60 kilometers) from the vent; 25 cubic miles of mate-
rial are erupted as a caldera forms from the collapse of the mountain-
top.
c. 1470 b.c.e.: Thera erupts in the Aegean Sea, possibly causing the
disappearance of the Minoan civilization on Crete and leading to sto-
ries of the lost “continent” of Atlantis.
August 24, 79 c.e.: Vesuvius erupts, burying Pompeii and Hercu-
laneum.
March 11, 1669: Sicily’s Mount Etna begins a series of devastating
eruptions that will result in more than 20,000 dead and 14 villages de-
stroyed, including the seaside town of Catania, Italy.
June 8, 1783-February 7, 1784: The Laki fissure eruption in Iceland
produces the largest lava flow in historic time, with major climatic ef-
fects. Benjamin Franklin speculates on its connection to a cold winter
in Paris the following year.
April 5, 1815: The dramatic explosion of Tambora, 248.6 miles (400
kilometers) east of Java, the largest volcanic event in modern history,
produces atmospheric and climatic effects for the next two years.
Frosts occur every month in New England during 1816, the Year
Without a Summer.
August 26, 1883: A cataclysmic eruption of Krakatau, an island in In-
donesia, is heard 2,968 miles away. Many die as pyroclastic flows race
over pumice rafts floating on the surface of the sea; many more die
from a tsunami.
May 8, 1902: Pelée, on the northern end of the island of Martinique
in the Caribbean, sends violent pyroclastic flows into the city of St. Pi-
erre, killing all but 2 of the 30,000 inhabitants.
June 6, 1912: Katmai erupts in Alaska with an ash flow that produces
the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.
February 20, 1943: Paricutín comes into existence in a cultivated field
in Mexico. The eruption of this volcano continues for nine years.
March 30, 1956: The Russian volcano Bezymianny erupts with a vio-
lent lateral blast, stripping trees of their bark 18.6 miles (30 kilome-
ters) away.
January, 1973: During an eruption on Heimaey Island, Iceland, the
flow of lava is controlled by cooling it with water from fire hoses.

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 Volcanic Eruptions

May 18, 1980: Mount St. Helens, in Washington State, erupts with a
directed blast to the north, moving pyroclastic flows at velocities of
328 to 984 feet (100 to 300 meters) per second (nearly the speed of
sound).
March 28-April 4, 1982: El Chichón, an “extinct” volcano in Mexico,
erupts violently, killing 2,000, injuring hundreds, destroying villages,
and ruining over 100 square miles of farmland.
November 13, 1985: Mudflows from the eruption of the Nevado del
Ruiz, in Colombia, kill at least 23,000 people.
August 21, 1986: After building up from volcanic emanations, carbon
dioxide escapes from Lake Nyos, Cameroon, killing over 1,700 people.
June, 1991: Pinatubo erupts in the Phillipines after having been dor-
mant for four hundred years.
September-November, 1996: Eruption of lava beneath a glacier in the
Grimsvötn Caldera, Iceland, melts huge quantities of ice, producing
major flooding.
June 25, 1997: On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, 19 people die
and 8,000 are evacuated when the Soufrière Hills volcano erupts.
January 17, 2002: The Nyiragongo volcano erupts in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, sending lava flows into the city of Goma; 147 die
and 500,000 are displaced.

uid is released, the dissolved gas (carbon dioxide in champagne)

forms bubbles in the liquid. If an abundance of gas is produced, the
bubbles can coalesce and shred the magma into droplets surrounded
by turbulent jets of gas. In larger, more explosive eruptions the ex-
panding gases can pulverize preexisting rocks in the throat of the vol-
cano and along the walls of the magma passages. This combination of
gases, ash, degasing droplets of liquid, vesiculating clots of lava, and
broken fragments of hot rock can erupt as a glowing avalanche (nuée
ardente), which is the most destructive and deadly of all forms of
eruptions. Numerous nuées ardentes erupted in 1902 from Pelée in
the Caribbean, killing 30,000 in St. Pierre within two minutes on May
8 and 800 in Morne Rouge on August 30.
Another source of the water needed to drive an eruption is
groundwater. Water that originates as atmospheric precipitation cre-

271
Volcanic Eruptions

ating lakes, rivers, and oceans is called “meteoric water.” Starting at

the surface, meteoric water can infiltrate into the ground to produce
water-saturated rock, where it is called groundwater. Large quantities
of groundwater can be raised to the boiling point as magma rises.
The destructive eruption of Vesuvius in 79 c.e., which buried the city
of Pompeii and killed over 13,000 people in the region, was initiated
by the boiling of groundwater.
Magma reaching the surface of the solid earth can acquire a late-
stage explosive nature by interacting with surface water of lakes,
rivers, or oceans. The 1963 birth of the island of Surtsey in Iceland
produced a pair of violent explosion plumes, a white steam cloud and
a black cloud of fragmented lava. The crater region where many vol-
canoes have their main vent is often a circular depression that be-
comes filled with meteoric water to make a crater lake. The water in
crater lakes is often highly acidic and filled with mud. Kelut, on the
Indonesian island of Java has a deep crater lake that has repeatedly
been the site of eruptions; a minor eruption in 1919 mixed the lake
water and the fragmented lava to make a violent mudflow that killed
5,500 people. The deadliest eruption ever was Krakatau in 1883,
which killed 36,000 people from a tsunami that was generated when
seawater entered the collapsed side of the island volcano and hit the
erupting magma.
An explosion requires two components: the force (expanding
gases) and a resistance to the force. To pop a balloon loudly requires
that air be blown into it and that the latex rubber exert a force against
the inflow of air. The explosion occurs when the pent-up force even-
tually overcomes the resistance. In a violent eruption the resistance
comes from the very sticky nature of the liquid portion of the
magma. The stickiness of a liquid is called the viscosity. Highly viscous
magmas are the most explosive. The higher the amount of silicon in
the magma the greater the viscosity and the more explosive the erup-
tion when water is present.
Nuées ardentes, the most deadly form of volcanic eruptions, usu-
ally develop in magmas that have a high silicon content. About
13,000 people were evacuated in Japan in 1991 when a low-gas, high-
silicon lava began erupting at Unzen, forming a thick, pasty dome of
lava on top of the volcano. When the lava acquired sufficient gas it
erupted as a nuée ardente, killing 42 people, mostly journalists and

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 Volcanic Eruptions

geologists who had stayed to study and photograph the volcano.

Volcanoes are classified into six general categories with several sub-
groups. The major categories are Hawaiian, Strombolian, Vulcanian,
Peléan, Plinian, and Surtseyan. The classification is based upon the
volcano’s predominant eruptive style, which considers both the vio-
lence of the eruption (as indicated by plume height, frequency of
event, and volume of material) and the type of material ejected (rang-
ing from the effusion of liquid lava flows to a gaseous mixture that con-
tains ash, fragments of rock, and droplets or clots of liquid). A Volcanic
Explosivity Index (VEI) was developed to assist with the classification
of an eruption. Calm, effusive lava eruptions are given a VEI value of 0,
whereas the most violent eruptions have VEI values of 8.
The most nonexplosive class is the Hawaiian class of eruption. It
involves minimal explosions (VEI values of 0 or 1) and a calm out-
pouring of low-viscosity, low-silicon lava. When these occur on the
floor of the ocean at mid-oceanic ridges and ocean basin hot spots
they are called submarine eruptions. The pressure of the overlying
seawater helps to nullify the explosiveness of the eruption.
A Hawaiian eruption can emerge from a single vent that erupts al-
most on a daily basis for months on end. These eruptions typically
form shield volcanoes with gentle slopes of 3 to 5 degrees. Shield vol-
canoes may rise from the seafloor to become islands, which can con-
tinue growing for another 13,123 feet (4,000 meters) above sea level
(Mauna Loa in Hawaii is 13,678 feet above sea level and still growing,
as evidenced by a 1984 eruption).
When Hawaiian eruptions occur from long fissures, they can pro-
duce large volumes of liquid lava. The Great Tolbachik fissure erup-
tion in Russia in 1975 produced over 70,629 cubic feet (2 cubic kilo-
meters) of lava that covered more than 15.4 square miles (40 square
kilometers). In Iceland the Laki fissure eruption of 1783 covered 102
square miles (265 square kilometers), destroyed four-fifths of the
sheep and half the cattle, and caused 10,000 residents to starve to
death during the ensuing winter.
The Strombolian class of eruptions is weakly explosive (VEI values
of 1 or 2). These eruptions usually begin with the volcano tossing out
molten debris to form cinders and clots of liquid that solidify in the
air to fall as bombs. This high-arching, incandescent portion of the
eruption resembles firework fountains. These bursts last only a few

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Volcanic Eruptions

Lava streams down Mauna Loa in Hawaii. (National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration)

seconds, with long pauses of twenty minutes or more between the

bursts. Magma can rise from 328 feet (100 meters) to 0.6 mile (1 kilo-
meter) into the air, breaking into lava clots of all sizes. Many Strom-
bolian eruptions are known for throwing bombs hundreds of feet
into the air every few seconds. The pyroclastic display is often fol-
lowed by fluid lava flows. Normally short-lived, the eruptions last a

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 Volcanic Eruptions

few months before pausing for a year or so. The cinder cones associ-
ated with an eruptive phase are rarely over 820 feet (250 meters) in
height and the lava flow rarely exceeds 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) in
length. The explosion of Etna in Italy in 1500 b.c.e. is thought to
be the first historic record of any volcano recorded. Etna has over
one hundred recorded eruptions of Strombolian activity, and it still
erupts every few years.
The Vulcanian class of eruptions is more explosive, with VEI val-
ues ranging from 2 to 4. The magma is usually more viscous and has
considerable strength. The eruption column is quite noticeable, ris-
ing from 1.9 to 9.3 miles (3 to 15 kilometers) above the volcano.
There are few, if any, lava flows; rather, these eruptions are character-
ized by thick liquid clots being shot far into the air. Vulcanian erup-
tions’ explosiveness is so powerful that it sometimes destroys part of
the volcanic edifice.
These volcanoes can lay dormant for over one hundred years and
then burst into a noisy, violent eruption. Nuées ardentes are often by-
products of Vulcanian explosions, and when the nuée ardente is asso-
ciated with the collapse or explosion of a volcanic dome sitting over
the vent it is classed as a Peléan eruption (often considered a subclass
of Vulcanian eruptions).
The dome-building phase of the Peléan eruptions can begin when
the center of the crater starts to bulge upward, revealing a spine man-
tled with explosive debris from the floor of the crater. The dome can
grow as much as 98 feet (30 meters) a day to a final height of 1,969
feet (600 meters) or more. The elevation of the crater floor can rise
328 feet (100 meters) above its normal level, changing the shape of
the volcano to an almost-level platform. The explosions can shatter
the dome, and its pieces can become swept up in the turbulent flow
of the nuée ardente. The dome can be rebuilt in the crater again and
exist in a quiet phase.
A nuée ardente has so much gas that it is a semifrictionless fluid,
and it can race down the slopes of the volcano at velocities of up to
311 miles (500 kilometers) per hour. It is an avalanche of hot, frothy
clots of lava, noxious gases, fragments of molten ash, and incandes-
cent boulders. A large cloud of ash and gas rises above the nuée
ardente as it moves across the ground, and the clouds can asphyxiate
animals and humans that are near the nuée ardente.

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Volcanic Eruptions

Nevado del Ruiz spawned many mudflows called lahars, which destroyed towns and
caused many deaths in northern Colombia. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration)

The most famous Peléan eruption is the eruption of Pelée in

1902, which became the basis for this subclass of volcanic eruptions.
Lamington in New Guinea has produced both Vulcanian and Peléan
eruptions. It was not thought to be a volcano until, in 1951, it erupted
a nuée ardente that devastated an area of 69.5 square miles (180
square kilometers) and killed 3,000 people. Since then, several volca-
nic domes have grown in its summit crater and have subsequently
been destroyed by later explosions.
Plinian eruptions are the most explosive and rare of the volcanic
eruptions of historic record, having VEI values of 4 to 6. Although
Ultra-Plinian explosive eruptions (VEI values of 7 and 8) have been de-
duced from the geological record of their deposits, no Ultra-Plinian
eruptions have occurred in recorded history. A powerful eruption
shaft develops over the vent, having speeds of several feet per second
and shooting volcanic materials in a column that can reach 15.5 miles
(25 kilometers) or more in height. As the volcanic fragments falls they
can cover a huge area of ground (hundreds of square miles). Plinian

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 Volcanic Eruptions

eruptive fragments are predominantly made of bubbly pumice and

ash. Pumice falling fairly near the volcano can attain thicknesses of
close to 100 feet. The Tambora eruption of 1815 in Indonesia is the
largest of all historic eruptions. It killed 92,000 people, had an erup-
tion column that was 25 miles (40 kilometers) in height, and deposited
164 feet (50 meters) of pumice in surrounding areas.
The eruption plume of a Plinian eruption will bring an abun-
dance of ash into the stratosphere, which can circle the globe for sev-
eral years before falling back to the ground. After the 1991 eruption
of Pinatubo in the Philippines, the dust clouds became an aviation
hazard because neither pilots nor radar could distinguish water-
based clouds from dust clouds. In the months following the eruption
14 airliners developed engine problems from dust clouds, and 9 had
to make emergency landings.

Comparison of Eruption Styles

Flood

Lava 8
Plains 7
.I.
V.E 6
Ultraplinian
5
4
Increasing Volume

Plinian

a 3
g Are Phreatoplinian
sin 2
rea
Inc 1 Subplinian
Vulcanian
0
Strombolian

Hawaiian
Inc
rea
sin
gF
rag Surtseyan
me
nta
tio
n

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Volcanic Eruptions

There is a strong correlation between large eruptions and a

change in the weather conditions. The eruption of El Chichón (VEI
of 4) in Mexico in 1982 was the first eruption cloud to be tracked in
the atmosphere by weather satellites. The eruption injected 3.3 mil-
lion tons of gaseous sulfur into the atmosphere, which converted to
sulfuric acid within three months. Following the Laki eruption of
1783 the acid aerosol contaminated the pastures and animals grazing
on these grasses, and they died within three days. Once dispersed,
the dust and gases can reflect incoming solar radiation and reduce
the earth’s temperatures. Following the 1815 eruption of Tambora,
the coldest summer in over 250 years of record keeping was re-
corded. The average summer temperature was 2 degrees colder than
the second-coldest summer. The Pinatubo eruption of 1991 caused
the average world temperature to drop by 0.5 degree.

Geography
The vast majority of the active volcanoes on Earth are associated with
long, narrow belts of fractured rocks. The longest belt and the site of
over 75 percent of all the volcanic activity on earth takes place under-
water, along the crests of the mid-oceanic ridges. Although the ridge
system is over 37,284 miles (60,000 kilometers) in length, the actual
number and magnitude of the eruptions are untold. The submarine
volcanic events are not counted on the list of active volcanoes until
the lava deposits bring the submarine volcano to the surface as an is-
land. Iceland, which is the largest island on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
has twenty-two active volcanoes. Other notable volcanoes with his-
toric eruptions from the flanks of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge are the
Azores, Ascension Island, and Tristan da Cunha.
The longest belt of active volcanoes virtually circles the Pacific
Ocean and is commonly called the Pacific “Ring of Fire.” Two-thirds
of the world’s active volcanoes occur in this belt. The volcanic chains
making up the Ring of Fire are the Cascades of the United States
and Canada (Mount St. Helens), the Mexican Volcanic Belt (El
Chichón), the Central American Belt (Santa María), the Andes of
South America (Nevado del Ruiz), New Zealand (Ngauruhoe),
Tonga (Niuafo’ou), New Guinea (Lamington), Indonesia (Kelut),
the Philippines (Pinatubo), the Ryukyu Island arc (Kutinoerabu),
the volcanic arc of the Mariana, the Izu and Bonin Islands (Miyak-

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zima), Japan (Unzen), the Kamchatka Peninsula (Bezymianny), and

the Aleutian Islands and South Alaska (Katmai).
The third major belt of active volcanoes starts at the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge at the Azores and runs east through the Mediterranean Sea
(Etna and Vesuvius), across the northern Arabian Peninsula, down
the Malaysian Peninsula (Krakatau), and connects with the Ring of
Fire in Indonesia. The smallest belt of active volcanoes that is isolated
from the other longer belts is the volcanic island arc that occurs
along the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea (Pelée).
There are a number of isolated volcanic centers that occur in the
interior of continents and ocean basins, usually a considerable dis-
tance from the linear belts. The island of Hawaii in the center of the
Pacific basin has experienced over 100 recorded eruptions since
1700, and Nyiragongo in Zaire had a lava lake in its summit crater
from the time of its discovery in 1894 until 1977, when it suddenly
drained 28.8 million cubic yards (22 million cubic meters) of lava
down its flanks and killed 70 people. The active volcanoes outside of
the system of belts account for less than 5 percent of all historic erup-
tions.

Prevention and Preparations

Volcanic eruptions are virtually impossible to prevent, but there have
been some fairly successful efforts made to divert or control the di-
rection of lava flows and lahars (mudflows) once volcanoes have
erupted. Lahars are flash floods, having the consistency of wet ce-
ment, which are caused when a volcanic eruption melts glacial ice or
occurs in a lava lake. Less than 10 percent of the diversion barriers for
lava flows have been successful. In Iceland an advancing lava flow was
cooled by a spray of water from hoses, which forced the lava to spread
sideways. Aerial bombing to collapse crater walls and disrupt existing
magma flows has also been tried. These techniques usually at least
slow down the lava flow if they do not divert it, providing for needed
evacuation time.
An unusual prevention measure was used on Kelut on Java after the
1919 eruption produced a lahar that killed 5,500 people. The Dutch
colonial authorities dug a series of underground tunnels through the
crater wall, draining most of the lake. The volcano’s next eruption, in
1951, emptied into a lake that was 164 feet (50 meters) lower. There

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Volcanic Eruptions

A volcano erupts in the middle of Lake Taal in the Philippines in 1965. Islands can
be formed by volcanic activity. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-
tion)

were no lahars produced, but the tunnel system was destroyed. In 1964
the crater again acquired 52.3 million cubic yards (40 million cubic
meters) of water, and scientists asked that new tunnels be dug. A 1966
eruption again caused lahars, which killed hundreds of people, and
new tunnels were dug to drain the lake. In 1990 prediction techniques
forewarned of another eruption, and 60,000 people were evacuated.
The eruption did not produce a lahar, but 32 casualties occurred be-
cause of roofs collapsing under the heavy weight of the ash and pum-
ice. Steps are now also made to reinforce roofs of homes and buildings
in order to support the weight of falling debris.
The best prevention of a high death toll is orderly evacuation.
Evacuation plans require a high degree of cooperation between civil
authorities and scientists, as well as an amazing amount of prepara-
tion. In the scientific arena, the first step to being prepared for a vol-
canic eruption is to monitor the activity of a volcano. Most volcanoes
give some warning signs of an upcoming eruption. Normally, magma
will move into the area below the volcano in a reservoir called the
magma chamber. The magma then travels up the chamber and be-

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gins to release gases. As the magma moves up the chamber it pro-

duces small earthquakes and ground vibrations.
There are three forms of seismic activity: short-period earthquakes,
long-period earthquakes, and harmonic tremors. Short-period earth-
quakes are caused by the fracturing of brittle rock as the magma
forces its way up the chamber; they signify that the magma is coming
near the surface. Long-period earthquakes are thought to be the re-
sult of increased gas pressure in the volcano. Harmonic tremors are
the result of sustained movement of magma below the surface. Scien-
tists use seismographs to monitor the earthquakes.
As the magma moves toward the surface, a volcano will begin to
swell, and the degree of slope of the volcano may change. Fumaroles,
which are vents giving off gas, will often increase their sulfur content.
Scientists can monitor these events with a number of tools: Tiltmeters
measure the change in slope, and geodimeters measure the amount
of swelling in the volcano. Gases released near the volcano can be
measured by spectrometers.
Many regions have established volcano observatories to monitor
ground motion for dangerously active volcanoes. The Rabaul Vol-
cano Observatory in New Guinea recorded two swarms of 1,000
earthquakes in a two-day period in 1984. In June of that month they
recorded 13,749 individual earthquakes. They also recorded an up-
lift of 63 inches (160 centimeters) over the nine months leading up
to the earthquakes. With these techniques, scientists are becoming
skilled at predicting volcanic eruptions.
Monitoring of volcanoes can save countless live. Communication
with the populace is of utmost importance; restricted areas must be
drawn, and certain areas must be completely or partially evacuated.
In 1985, the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia was well moni-
tored, but due to lack of communication the town of Armero was not
prepared for evacuation, and a lahar swept down the slope and killed
at least 23,000 people, 90 percent of the town’s population.
Before the eruption of Pinatubo in June of 1991, scientists worked
closely with civil defense authorities in the Philippines to establish a
four-stage plan leading to the eruption. They evacuated more than
80,000 people from the area. Each stage of the plan was implemented
when the scientists measured a specific level of sulfur in the fuma-
rolic gases, a certain number and strength of earthquakes occurred,

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or a specified amount of rise and tilt of the volcano came to pass.

With each stage the authorities evacuated a larger area and took ac-
tions to increase their readiness. The death toll could have run in the
tens of thousands, but because of advance preparations and educa-
tion, only a few hundred people died.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

More deaths often occur in the aftermath of a violent eruption—
from starvation and disease—than from the eruption itself. Survivors
usually return to their homes after the eruption has waned. In the
historic past, areas around Plinian eruptions were deeply buried,
with complete loss of all crops and pastures and severe loss of live-
stock and potable water supplies. Most countries did not have disas-
ter relief plans, nor was international aid available. This usually led to
a higher death toll from starvation and disease than was attributed to
the ejected materials from the volcano.
The modern world has vastly differing degrees of readiness. Mex-
ico, with over a dozen active volcanoes, had no civil defense program
or contingency plans for evacuation, shelter, or resettlement when El
Chichón erupted in 1982. Italy set up its Ministry of Civil Protection in
1981. Many poor countries with active volcanoes have no volcano mon-
itoring programs and no civil defense systems for volcanic eruptions.
Japan is at the other end of the scale in terms of readiness. That
country established volcano surveillance and disaster plans in the
1950’s. The On-take area is a model of preparation, with concrete vol-
canic shelters at intervals along all the roads in the area. Within the
river systems special dams and canals have been built to impede the
progress of lahars. Children wear helmets when they go to school;
once a year all citizens in the area participate in a rehearsal of a full-
scale evacuation. Temporary lodgings are built and maintained, and
the monitoring information from the volcano is computerized and
automatically transmitted to the civil authorities.

Impact
Volcanoes are the second most destructive natural disasters on Earth.
Historically, two-thirds of all eruptions have caused fatalities. The
chief causes of death from violent eruptions are suffocation and
drowning. Most catastrophic eruptions occur in populated coastal re-

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gions, and tsunamis (tidal waves) generated by eruptions can exact a

much greater toll than the actual erupted materials. In the past five
hundred years, volcanic eruptions have killed 200,000 people and
have cost billions of dollars in damage to homes and property. Dur-
ing the twentieth century, volcanic eruptions killed an average of 800
people per year.

Historical Overview
A dark plume obscures the sun and the sky; acrid fumes irritate the
mucous membranes as a sulfurous stench pervades the air. Intermit-
tently, accompanied by deafening noise, lightning, and thunder,
eruptions spew fire and brimstone into the air, hurling hot, sputter-
ing chunks of rock far from the mountain. This is the experience of
those who have lived near volcanic eruptions and were fortunate
enough to survive. In the face of such incredible power, death and
destruction, and dramatic changes in landscape, cultures through-
out time have attached great religious significance to volcanoes.
Within Western European cultures, objective written descriptions
of volcanic events date back to 79 c.e., when Vesuvius, a famous vol-
cano to the northeast of the Bay of Naples in Italy, erupted. The
towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried beneath ash and
pumice. Pliny the Elder, a well-respected admiral in the Roman navy,
perished, and the historian Tacitus, reconstructing the conditions of
his death, sought information from his nephew: Pliny the Younger, in
two letters, described what had occurred. The volcano had not been
active for several centuries, and no one considered it a threat.
Benjamin Franklin was among the first to recognize the global cli-
matic effects of volcanoes when he speculated that the 1783 Laki fis-
sure eruption in Iceland was responsible for the bitter winter of 1783-
1784 in Paris. Temperature records for this year from the eastern
United States show an average winter temperature 41 degrees Fahr-
enheit (4.8 degrees Celsius) lower than the 225-year average. The
eruption, lasting eight months, produced the largest lava flow in his-
toric time, but much of its deadly effect resulted from the gases that
escaped.
Modern analysis of gas samples retrieved from Greenland ice
cores reveals a dramatic spike in acidity corresponding to this erup-
tion. It has been estimated that the influx of acid gases into the atmo-

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sphere from this one eruption is about equivalent to the annual

global anthropogenic input. Sulfur dioxide is responsible for much
of the acidity observed in the ice cores, but hydrogen fluoride from
the eruption is suspected to have killed most of the cattle in the re-
gion, which caused a famine. Three-quarters of the livestock in Ice-
land, and 25 percent of the human population, died.
The 1815 eruption of Tambora, in Indonesia, produced much
greater climatic effects. Whereas the relatively calm basaltic eruption
of Laki was probably confined to the lower levels of the atmosphere,
where precipitation is constantly removing dust and ash, the very ex-
plosive eruption of Tambora injected ash and gases into the strato-
sphere, far above these elevations. Records from astronomers show
that the haze produced by this eruption persisted for at least two and
a half years. During 1816, often referred to as the Year Without a
Summer, New England experienced a frost every month of the sum-
mer. Crops failed, and famines struck much of Europe, Canada, and
the United States.
When Krakatau erupted in 1883 it generated intense scientific in-
terest. More than 36,000 people died, most from tsunamis. The erup-
tion was witnessed by many who survived to write about it, and it was
the subject of research for the Royal Society and the Dutch govern-
ment. Heard as far away as 2,990 miles (4,811 kilometers), causing at-
mospheric pressure fluctuations that circled the globe many times,
and lowering temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere by 0.25 de-
gree Celsius for a year or two, this eruption captured the attention of
scientists in a way no earlier eruption had. Strange optical effects
were observed, including blue tinges on the sun and the moon. Solar
energy reaching the earth at an observatory in France decreased ini-
tially by 20 percent, then remained 10 percent below normal for
many months.
By the second half of the nineteenth century the Neptunist the-
ory, which held that all rocks had precipitated from a primitive
ocean, was no longer impeding the development of the earth sci-
ences. Many geologists went into the field to study active and ancient
volcanoes. Laboratory techniques evolved rapidly, and by the early
twentieth century many of the processes and reactions involved in
the melting and freezing of rock had been sketched out.
Pelée erupted in 1902, and suddenly a great deal was learned

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about pyroclastic flows. Emanating from the volcano after a period of

minor eruptive activity, these flows raced down the slopes at velocities
of about 99 miles (160 kilometers) per hour, running over and totally
destroying the town of St. Pierre. The force of such a blast was devas-
tating in itself, but its temperature, estimated to have been about
1,292 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius), made it particularly
deadly. Of the 30,000 people in the town that morning, only 2 sur-
vived—and they were horribly burned. These pyroclastic flows, which
were given the name nuées ardentes, or “glowing avalanches,” had
never been witnessed before—at least not by anyone who survived.
Enough was learned, however, to be able to identify this mecha-
nism as having been responsible for similar, but much larger, depos-
its displaced during the eruption of Katmai a decade later. Only dis-
tant ashfalls were directly observed from this volcano, located in a
sparsely populated area of Alaska. It was not until 1916 that an expe-
dition actually visited the site of the eruption. Still, there was enough
heat left in the deposit to continue to turn water from the soil below it
into steam. This region has been called the Valley of Ten Thousand
Smokes ever since.

Cars trapped in a lava flow in Hawaii. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-
ministration)

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Volcanic Eruptions

Over the next sixty years the theory of plate tectonics was devel-
oped. It explained why volcanoes occur where they do and why their
rocks, shapes, and eruptive styles vary so much. The theory was able
to show why some volcanoes, such as all of the Hawaiian islands—
other than the big island of Hawaii—are truly dead and pose no risk
at all, while most other volcanoes are capable of erupting centuries
after their last activity.
One of those that did return to activity was a volcano of the Cas-
cade Range in southwestern Washington, named Mount St. Helens.
In 1978 scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey had predicted that
this volcano would erupt again, perhaps by the end of the century. In
March and April of 1980 it began to exhibit some signs of life. Seismic
activity and small ash eruptions indicated that the long-sleeping giant
was coming to life. Well aware of the risks it posed, government agen-
cies began restricting access to the region and preparing evacuation
plans. The media converged on the region, and there was television
news coverage nearly every night.
Peculiar seismic signals, called harmonic tremors, were detected,
signaling the ascent of melted rock into the upper reaches of the vol-
cano. This magma caused the mountain to swell, increasing in size by
as much as 3 feet a day. Such bulging made the slopes on the moun-
tain steeper and thus less stable. On May 18 a moderate earthquake
proved to be the last straw. A major landslide occurred, and as a huge
portion of the mountain slid down, the side of the chamber of pres-
surized magma was exposed. A dramatic lateral blast ensued, devas-
tating vast areas to the north in just a few minutes. This was followed
by a vertical blast that transported huge quantities of ash as high as
12.4 miles (20 kilometers) into the atmosphere.
Scientists have estimated that the energy released by Mount St.
Helens was the equivalent of one atomic bomb being dropped per
second for nine hours. The initial blast was nearly horizontal, which
had not been expected, and was far more destructive than anyone
had imagined. Still, because of excellent monitoring of the develop-
ing events, cooperation between scientists and the government, and
strong communication with the populace, only 60 people died.
Similar scientific work and careful monitoring were unable to
avoid a calamity a few year later, in 1985, when mudflows, or lahars,
from the eruption of Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz killed at least

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23,000 people. Scientists had accurately predicted that an eruption

would melt much of the glacial ice near the summit, producing huge
mudflows that would flow down the river valleys toward the popu-
lated towns, including one named Armero. They also knew an erup-
tion was imminent. As with Mount St. Helens, there had been a
month of small eruptions in advance of the large one. An hour after
the main eruption began authorities urged evacuation of the down-
stream towns, but the order to evacuate Armero was not given for an-
other five hours. When it was given, radio communication was not es-
tablished. It is likely that most of the inhabitants would have survived
if effective evacuation measures had begun in a timely fashion.
No warning existed for more than 1,700 people in Cameroon, Af-
rica, in 1986, when a cloud of carbon dioxide swept down on them in
their sleep. Carbon dioxide enters Lake Nyos from molten rock be-
neath it. The lake is stratified, and most of the carbon dioxide enters
the dense water near the bottom. If the water is suddenly mixed by a
landslide, an earthquake, or even stiff breezes, the gas-charged water
can rise to the surface, where the pressure is lower and the carbon di-
oxide comes out of the solution. A cloud of gas, denser than air,
builds up and eventually races down the valleys, killing everything in
its wake by asphyxiation. Now that this hazard has been identified, ef-
forts are underway to remove the carbon dioxide before it builds up
to unstable concentrations.
The successful efforts to mitigate the effects of the eruption of
Pinatubo, which occurred in the Philippines in 1991, provide hope.
A series of evacuations proceeded in parallel with increasing volcanic
activity. Although complicated by the arrival of Typhoon Yunya, the
evacuation of more than 200,000 people undoubtedly saved a great
many lives. This eruption, the third largest of the twentieth century
and occurring in a densely populated area, killed only 320 people.
Dion C. Stewart and Toby R. Stewart
Otto H. Muller

Bibliography
Bardintzeff, Jacques-Marie, and Alexander R. McBirney. Volcanology.
2d ed. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett, 2000. This is a more ad-
vanced book that gives details of gas generation and mechanisms
for explosive eruptions.

287
Volcanic Eruptions

Bullard, Fred M. Volcanoes of the Earth. 2d rev. ed. Austin: University of

Texas Press, 1984. Still one of the best books on eruption classifi-
cation, with excellent photographs, line drawings, and illustra-
tions of volcanoes and volcanic processes.
Decker, Robert, and Barbara Decker. Volcanoes. 4th ed. New York:
W. H. Freeman, 2006. A book for general readers that introduces
all aspects of volcanology.
Fisher, Richard V. Out of the Crater: Chronicles of a Volcanologist. Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. This is a personal nar-
rative of visits to many of the volcanic sites mentioned in this ar-
ticle.
Francis, Peter, and Clive Oppenheimer. Volcanoes. 2d ed. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004. This book gives information on
nearly five hundred volcanic eruptions. It has an interesting chap-
ter on volcanoes and changing weather.
Macdonald, Gordon A. Volcanoes. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall, 1972. This college-level textbook contains a map and tabu-
lated data on more than five hundred active volcanoes.
Scarth, Alwyn. Volcanoes: An Introduction. College Station: Texas A&M
University Press, 1994. This book has a large section on predic-
tions. It also provides many interesting accounts of historic erup-
tions.
_______. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. Describes 15 notable eruptions
in history, from Vesuvius in 79 to Pinatubo in 1991, using firsthand
accounts.

288
Wind Gusts
Factors involved: Geography, temperature,
topography, weather conditions, atmospheric
pressure, wind
Regions affected: Cities, coasts, forests, mountains,
plains, towns, and valleys

Definition
Wind gusts can be violent, with loss of property and life measured in
millions, even billions of dollars. They can occur anywhere on earth,
sometimes without warning. Wind shear, a localized wind gust, can
imperil aircraft, causing collisions with terrain on takeoff and land-
ing.

Science
Wind gusts, also called wind shear, occur for a number of reasons,
sometimes seemingly at random. No place on the earth’s surface is
immune to wind gusts, although some areas are more likely to experi-
ence them than others. Gusts may be localized differences in atmo-
spheric pressure caused by frontal weather changes. These occur
most often in the spring and fall seasons. Normally, fronts having a
temperature difference at the surface of 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5
degrees Celsius) or more and with a frontal speed of at least 30 knots
are prone to creating wind gust conditions.
These so-called cold fronts contain a wedge of cold air at their
leading edge. This wedge of cold air pushes warm air that is ahead of
it upward very rapidly. If the warm air is rich in water vapor, as is seen
in the southeastern United States, severe storms erupt ahead of the
cold front and may continue until it passes. The weather proverb “If
the clouds move against the wind, rain will follow” implies a cold
front where clouds in the upper wind are moving in a different direc-
tion from clouds driven by lower winds. Most experienced aircraft pi-
lots know how to fly cold frontal boundaries for fuel efficiency, in ef-
fect gaining a tailwind both ahead of and into the front.
To determine the strength of wind gusts, a good reference is the
Beaufort scale. Beaufort numbers vary from 0, no wind, to 12, which

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Wind Gusts

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

News photographer Howard Clifford runs from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as it col-
lapses following a wind gust in 1940. (University of Washington Libraries, Spe-
cial Collections, FAR021)

depicts winds in excess of 73 miles per hour. People can start to feel
the wind at Beaufort 2. A Beaufort 6 means that an umbrella is hard
to control and large tree branches are moving. Serious damage po-
tential arrives with Beaufort 10, when trees are uprooted and consid-
erable structural damage can be incurred by anything in the path of
the wind gust.
Thunderstorms, whether a product of a cold front or local air
mass heating, are responsible for the majority of wind gusts. Thou-
sands of thunderstorms occur across the earth’s surface every day.
Typical of thunderstorms are the “first gust,” the rapid shift and in-
crease in wind velocity just before a thunderstorm hits, and the
“downburst,” or rapid downward movement of cooled air in and
around the thunderstorm cell. A thunderstorm pulls in relatively
warm air near the earth’s surface, then sends it skyward at several

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 Wind Gusts

thousand feet per minute, rapidly cooling it. The cool air, becoming
more dense and heavy, then plummets back down to the earth’s sur-
face. This downward plunge of 7 to 10 miles creates tremendous iner-
tia that can only be dissipated by outflow when the mass strikes the
surface. This effect can be compared to dumping a bucket of water
on a concrete surface: The “splash” is the same as the outflow from
the downburst.
The gusty winds associated with mature thunderstorms are the re-
sult of these large downdrafts striking the earth’s surface and spread-
ing out horizontally. Some gusts can change direction by as much as
180 degrees very rapidly and reach velocities of 100 knots as far as 10
miles ahead of the thunderstorm. Low-level gusts, typically between
the earth’s surface and an altitude of 1,500 feet, may increase as
much as 50 percent, with most of the increase occurring in the first
150 feet. This makes them particularly dangerous for aircraft in take-
off and landing.
The downburst is an extremely intense localized downdraft from a
thunderstorm. The downdraft frequently exceeds 720 feet per min-
ute in vertical velocity at 300 feet above the earth’s surface. This ve-
locity can exceed an aircraft’s climb capability, even that of large
commercial and military jets. This downdraft is usually much closer
to the thunderstorm than the first gust. One clue is the presence of
dust clouds, roll clouds, or intense rainfall.
Hurricanes and cyclones also breed large wind gusts. Although
winds from these weather phenomena have predictable direction
and velocity, tornadoes and whirlwinds imbedded in them can pro-
duce wind gusts capable of major damage.
Very local gusting is often referred to as wind shear, and it can be
horizontal or vertical. Horizontal shear can move an aircraft off the
centerline of a precision approach to an airport. While annoying, it is
not usually harmful. Vertical shear, however, is potentially lethal to air-
craft. The change in velocity or direction can cause serious changes
in lift, indicated airspeed, and thrust requirements, often exceeding
the pilot’s and the aircraft’s ability to recover.
A decreasing head wind can cause airspeed and lift of the aircraft
to decrease. The pilot reacts with application of power and nose-up
attitude of the aircraft. Although overshoots of the intended ap-
proach may occur, the pilot is usually able to go around and land

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Wind Gusts

safely. Decreasing tailwind causes an increased lift, and the aircraft

climbs above the intended approach path.
Modern commercial pilot training devotes significant time to
wind shear problems. Using computerized flight simulators, the en-
tire array of wind shear problems can be programmed for flight
crews. This increases their awareness and application of wind shear
recovery without exposing them to the hazards of ineffective recov-
ery techniques if using actual aircraft.

Geography
Topographic features, both natural and human-made, can promote
wind gusts. Most people have experienced this in cities with tall build-
ings, where the wind intensity is much greater in the gaps between
large buildings and swirling winds are expected.
Conditions peculiar to the southwestern United States prompt the
formation of temperature inversions. These inversions are caused by
overnight cooling, where a relatively cool air mass hugs the ground
and is overlain by warmer air in the low-level jetstream. High winds
from the low-level jet sometimes mix with this inversion, and signifi-
cant wind gusts may occur at the interface with 90-degree shifts in di-
rection and 20- to 30-knot increases in wind velocity common.
On a much larger scale are the gusts resulting from high winds in
mountain passes, on the leeward side of large mountains, and across
valleys between mountain ranges. A weather phenomenon often
called a “mountain rotor” results from differential heating across a
valley between two mountain ranges. Air flowing down an upwind
mountain during the day is heated, traverses a relatively cool air mass
in the valley, then moves across the downwind mountain, causing the
turbulence at the boundary of the cooled and heated air masses
described above. As the air is heated in the morning, a weak rising
motion of the cool air is induced and pulls the air currents attempt-
ing to climb the downwind mountain back into the valley. This back-
rotation creates a rotary motion that contains both horizontal and
vertical wind gusts.
At least one commercial aircraft accident has been tentatively
blamed on a rotor. Rotors can be seen, unless the atmosphere is devoid
of moisture, as nearly round symmetrical clouds in mountain valleys.
Pilots undergoing mountain-flying training are cautioned to steer

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clear of these rotors. A flight into a dry rotor is usually dangerous.

The roughness of the earth’s surface plays a major role in deter-
mining wind gust intensity. This roughness can occur from obstacles
or terrain contours, called orography. Orography promotes tunnel
effects (mountain passes) and hill effects (lee—the side sheltered
from the wind—of mountains). Pilots are very familiar with this ef-
fect. A very calm outbound flight in the morning after a cold-front
passage can mean a bumpy return flight in the afternoon as the fron-
tal wind gains intensity and flows over rough topography.
In general, the rougher the earth’s surface, the more the wind will
be slowed. Forests and large cities slow the wind more than lakes and
prairies. Surface roughness can be classified as to its ability to slow
wind. For example, landscapes with many trees and buildings have a
roughness class of 3 or 4, while a large water surface has a roughness
class of 0. Open terrain has a roughness class of 0.5. Roughness
length is used with roughness class, and relates to the distance above
ground level where the wind speed theoretically should be 0.

Prevention and Preparations

The aviation industry has been particularly interested in wind gusts,
or wind shear, because of their potential effect on aircraft perfor-
mance in takeoff and landing. According to National Transportation
Safety Board (NTSB) records, wind shears contributed to approxi-
mately 50 percent of all commercial airline fatalities between 1974
and 1985. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has required
some type of wind shear hazard detection systems on scheduled com-
mercial aircraft since 1995.
Pulsed Doppler radar is the primary means of detection of wind
gusts for aircraft crews and ground-based air controllers and weather
prognosticators. Doppler radar senses speed and direction in the
same manner as police traffic radar. A well-understood Doppler ef-
fect is a train whistle that is always higher in pitch when the train is ap-
proaching than when moving away.
Doppler weather radar bounces its pulses off raindrops in storm
clouds. If the raindrops are moving toward the radar set, the re-
flected signal is higher in frequency than if the rain is falling verti-
cally. Frequencies are compared, and color displays are created to de-
pict areas of precipitation and wind shear. Some Doppler radar sets

293
Wind Gusts

create an audible warning to aircrews if wind shear is nearby. Effec-

tive though dangerous indicators of wind shear are reports from pi-
lots experiencing it. Air-traffic controllers solicit these reports, and
many may be received in a short period of time in areas where pilots
are experiencing wind shear conditions.
Aside from aviation and its vulnerability to wind gusts, other
modes of transportation are frequently disturbed by wind gusts.
Mountain valleys and other gust-prone locations often experience
upended tractor-trailer rigs, which are typically top-heavy and show a
considerable broadside resistance to the wind. Sailing ships and rela-
tively light watercraft are also prone to upset by wind gusts. Even with
no sails in the wind, boats are difficult to steer with changing wind
speeds bearing against their hulls.

Rescue and Relief Efforts

Wind gusts produce the same results as tornadoes but are even more
localized. Building damage and injury to humans and animals can
occur. Trauma-related injuries are typical, including broken bones,
excessive lacerations, and imbedded debris. Police and fire officials
usually handle the localized nature of wind gust damage, although
for widespread damage, the Red Cross and Salvation Army, as well as
other relief organizations, may assist victims.
Local authorities also customarily oversee property damage. Clear-
ing may be necessary to restore public utilities and roadways. Insur-
ance adjusters are frequent visitors to damage sites so that they can as-
sess the severity of the damage to client property and recommend
compensation.

Impact
Like that of tornadoes, wind gust damage is not long-lasting. It has no
significant effect on local topography, but it can cause extensive dam-
age to human-made structures. The famous “Galloping Gertie,” or
Tacoma Narrows Bridge, was set in motion by wind gusts and ulti-
mately destroyed by its own harmonic frequencies. Windows and
trim in large buildings can be damaged or even removed by wind
gusts. Large signs and other similar displays are also frequently dam-
aged or dislodged by gusty winds. These articles pose a risk to
passersby on the streets below.

294
 Wind Gusts

Perhaps most important, wind gusts damage aircraft quite easily.

Those aircraft on the ground not secured by tie-down lines may be
blown around by gusty winds and extensively damaged. However, the
most important damage to aircraft occurs when wind gusts overcome
the pilot’s ability to maintain flying conditions in takeoff or landing
configurations. Aircraft collisions with the ground can cause minor
damage or extensive loss of life and totally destroy aircraft. Literally
thousands of aircraft accidents can be traced to wind gusts as the pri-
mary cause of or at least a major contributor to the accident. A por-
tion of the avionics industry is devoted exclusively to assessing the se-
verity of wind shear and its effect on the operation of aircraft. Even
local television stations proudly advertise that their weather gurus are
equipped with the most modern Doppler radar for the safety and
convenience of their viewers.
Charles Haynes

Bibliography
Freier, George D. Weather Proverbs: How 600 Proverbs, Sayings, and
Poems Accurately Explain Our Weather. Tucson, Ariz.: Fisher Books,
1992. A very interesting book on weather phenomena, with mod-
ern explanations given to ancient weather lore.
Kimble, George H. T. Our American Weather. New York: McGraw Hill,
1955. This is a very readable book, unique in that it depicts U.S.
weather by month. Entertaining as well as informative.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Making the Skies
Safe from Windshear. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/
factsheets/ Windshear.html. A series of NASA documents that de-
tail its research into the causes and detection of wind shear as it af-
fects aircraft.
National Transportation Safety Board. http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/
query.asp. This is the NTSB’s aviation accident/incident database.
Although cold and cryptic details are the essence of this Web site,
it nevertheless details the mounting toll of aircraft accidents re-
sulting in part from wind gusts.
Palmén, E., and C. W. Newton. Atmospheric Circulation Systems: Their
Structure and Physical Interpretation. New York: Academic Press,
1969. Although some knowledge of calculus is necessary to master
this book, it still has many readable pages concerning global

295
Wind Gusts

weather at the lower altitudes that can be understood by most indi-

viduals.
Wood, Richard A., ed. The Weather Almanac: A Reference Guide to
Weather, Climate, and Related Issues in the United States and Its Key
Cities. 11th ed. Detroit: Thompson/Gale, 2004. Provides a detailed
description of the Beaufort number for wind speed and contains
much weather data.

296
Notable Natural
Disasters
Notable Natural
Disasters
 MAGILL’S C H O I C E

Notable Natural
Disasters

Volume 2

Events to 1970

Edited by
Marlene Bradford, Ph.D.
Texas A&M University

Robert S. Carmichael, Ph.D.

University of Iowa

SALEM PRESS, INC.

Pasadena, California Hackensack, New Jersey
 Copyright © 2007, by Salem Press, Inc.

All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or re-
produced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any in-
formation storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the
copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews or in the copying of images deemed to be freely licensed
or in the public domain. For information address the publisher, Salem Press,
Inc., P.O. Box 50062, Pasadena, California 91115.

∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National

Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-
1992 (R1997).

These essays originally appeared in Natural Disasters (2001). New essays

and other material have been added.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Notable natural disasters / edited by Marlene Bradford, Robert S.

Carmichael.
p. cm. — (Magill’s choice)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58765-368-1 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-369-8
(vol. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-370-4 (vol. 2 : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-58765-371-1 (vol. 3 : alk. paper) 1. Natural disasters. I. Bradford,
Marlene. II. Carmichael, Robert S.

GB5014.N373 2007
904’.5—dc22
2007001926

printed in canada
Contents
Complete List of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix

■ Events
c. 65,000,000 b.c.e.: Yucatán crater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
c. 1470 b.c.e.: Thera eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
430 b.c.e.: The Plague of Athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
64 c.e.: The Great Fire of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
79 c.e.: Vesuvius eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
526: The Antioch earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
1200: Egyptian famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
1320: The Black Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
1520: Aztec Empire smallpox epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
1657: The Meireki Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
1665: The Great Plague of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
1666: The Great Fire of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
1669: Etna eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
1692: The Port Royal earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
1755: The Lisbon earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
1783: Laki eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
1811: New Madrid earthquakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
1815: Tambora eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
1845: The Great Irish Famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
1871: The Great Chicago Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
1872: The Great Boston Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
1880: The Seaham Colliery Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
1883: Krakatau eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
1889: The Johnstown Flood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
1892: Cholera pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
1900: The Galveston hurricane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
1900: Typhoid Mary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
1902: Pelée eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505

xxvii
 Notable Natural Disasters

1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . 512

1908: The Tunguska event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
1908: The Messina earthquake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
1914: The Eccles Mine Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
1914: Empress of Ireland sinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
1916: The Great Polio Epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
1918: The Great Flu Pandemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
1926: The Great Miami Hurricane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
1928: St. Francis Dam collapse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
1928: The San Felipe hurricane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
1932: The Dust Bowl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
1937: The Hindenburg Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 . . . . . . . . 609
1946: The Aleutian tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615
1947: The Texas City Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620
1952: The Great London Smog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627
1953: The North Sea Flood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
1957: Hurricane Audrey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 636
1959: The Great Leap Forward famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
1963: The Vaiont Dam Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648
1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
1965: The Palm Sunday Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
1966: The Aberfan Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 662
1969: Hurricane Camille . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
1970: The Ancash earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680

■ Indexes
Category List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXI
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXVII

xxviii
Complete List of Contents
Volume 1
Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

■ Overviews
Avalanches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Droughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Dust Storms and Sandstorms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Earthquakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
El Niño . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Epidemics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Explosions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Famines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Fires. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Floods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Fog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Heat Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Icebergs and Glaciers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Lightning Strikes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Meteorites and Comets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Smog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Tornadoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Tsunamis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Volcanic Eruptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Wind Gusts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

■ Indexes
Category List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

xxix
 Notable Natural Disasters

Volume 2
Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii
Complete List of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix

■ Events
c. 65,000,000 b.c.e.: Yucatán crater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
c. 1470 b.c.e.: Thera eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
430 b.c.e.: The Plague of Athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
64 c.e.: The Great Fire of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
79 c.e.: Vesuvius eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
526: The Antioch earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
1200: Egyptian famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
1320: The Black Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
1520: Aztec Empire smallpox epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
1657: The Meireki Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
1665: The Great Plague of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
1666: The Great Fire of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
1669: Etna eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
1692: The Port Royal earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
1755: The Lisbon earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
1783: Laki eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
1811: New Madrid earthquakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
1815: Tambora eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
1845: The Great Irish Famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
1871: The Great Chicago Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
1872: The Great Boston Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
1880: The Seaham Colliery Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
1883: Krakatau eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
1889: The Johnstown Flood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
1892: Cholera pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
1900: The Galveston hurricane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
1900: Typhoid Mary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
1902: Pelée eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505

xxx
 Complete List of Contents

1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . 512

1908: The Tunguska event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
1908: The Messina earthquake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
1914: The Eccles Mine Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
1914: Empress of Ireland sinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
1916: The Great Polio Epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
1918: The Great Flu Pandemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
1926: The Great Miami Hurricane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
1928: St. Francis Dam collapse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
1928: The San Felipe hurricane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
1932: The Dust Bowl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
1937: The Hindenburg Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 . . . . . . . . 609
1946: The Aleutian tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615
1947: The Texas City Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620
1952: The Great London Smog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627
1953: The North Sea Flood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
1957: Hurricane Audrey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 636
1959: The Great Leap Forward famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
1963: The Vaiont Dam Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648
1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
1965: The Palm Sunday Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
1966: The Aberfan Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 662
1969: Hurricane Camille . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
1970: The Ancash earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680

■ Indexes
Category List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXI
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXVII

xxxi
 Notable Natural Disasters

Volume 3
Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xli
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xliii

■ Events
1970: The Bhola cyclone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687
1974: The Jumbo Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 694
1976: Ebola outbreaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
1976: Legionnaires’ disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
1976: The Tangshan earthquake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711
1980’s: AIDS pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729
1982: El Chichón eruption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741
1982: Pacific Ocean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 747
1984: African famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 750
1985: The Mexico City earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 756
1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
1988: Yellowstone National Park fires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
1988: The Leninakan earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780
1989: Hurricane Hugo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
1991: Pinatubo eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803
1991: The Oakland Hills Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 810
1992: Hurricane Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816
1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993 . . . . . . . . . 828
1994: The Northridge earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 835
1995: The Kobe earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 847
1995: Ebola outbreak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 854
1995: Chicago heat wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 861
1996: The Mount Everest Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 866
1997: The Jarrell tornado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 873
1997: Soufrière Hills eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 880
1998: Papua New Guinea tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 885
1998: Hurricane Mitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 888
1999: The Galtür avalanche . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 897
1999: The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . 903
1999: The Ezmit earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 909

xxxii
 Complete List of Contents

2002: SARS epidemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 921

2003: European heat wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 928
2003: The Fire Siege of 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 934
2003: The Bam earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 940
2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 946
2005: Hurricane Katrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954
2005: The Kashmir earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963
2006: The Leyte mudslide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 970

■ Appendixes
Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 976
Time Line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 995
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1019
Organizations and Agencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1039

■ Indexes
Category List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXXIX
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XLV
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LV

xxxiii
■ c. 65,000,000 b.c.e.: Yucatán
crater
Meteorite

Date: About 65 million years ago

Place: Yucatán Peninsula, Atlantic Ocean
Classification: 10 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale; energy
equivalent to at least 100 million megatons of TNT released
Result: Instantly destroyed most life within 621-mile radius and
caused worldwide climate changes resulting in the extinction of
up to 85 percent of species then living

A team of scientists led by Luis and Walter Alvarez, fa-

ther and son, were studying the thin clay layer that lies
between the rocks of the Cretaceous geological period and the rocks
of the following Tertiary period. This boundary is designated the
K/T boundary. (By convention, Cretaceous is abbreviated K. The let-
ter C is used for the earlier Cambrian period.) Knowing that the ele-
ment iridium is more abundant in meteorites than in earth rocks,
and supposing that small meteorites fall at a more or less constant
rate, they supposed that the amount of iridium in the clay would be a
clue to how long it took to form the clay layer. To their great surprise,
they discovered that the iridium concentration in the clay was 300
times that of the rocks above and below it. In 1980, they startled the
world with this result and with their theory of what had ended the
reign of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
According to their theory, now widely accepted, a rocky asteroid
6.2 miles (10 kilometers) or more in diameter hurtled toward Earth
at tens of miles per second. Plunging through the atmosphere in a
few seconds, its energy of motion was converted into heat as it struck
the ground, vaporizing itself along with a great deal of the target
rock. The resulting explosion lofted 100 million megatons of dust
and rock vapor into the air, much of it out into space. It also pro-
duced an earthquake 30,000 times stronger than the San Francisco
earthquake of 1906.

297
c. 65,000,000 B.C.E.: Yucatán crater

Scientist Luis Alvarez, who theorized that a large meteor-

ite destroyed most life on earth in 65,000,000 B.C.E.
(The Nobel Foundation)

There is a huge crater about 112 miles (180 kilometers) across at

Chicxulub, Yucatán. It is 65 million years old and is thought to be the
impact site of the Alvarez asteroid. Fittingly, Chicxulub (pronounced
CHEEK-shoe-lube) means “tail of the devil.” Today, the crater is com-
pletely covered with surface rock. Further evidence of an impact is
that all around the Gulf of Mexico there is a 65-million-year-old layer
of tsunami-wave rubble 33 feet (10 meters) thick, including large
boulders washed far inland. Shock-fractured crystals found in the
K/T boundary layer are another key piece of evidence. While a large
impact can form these crystals, volcanic activity cannot.

298
 c. 65,000,000 B.C.E.: Yucatán crater

Shock and heat from the impact killed nearly everything above
ground within 621 miles (1,000 kilometers). The vapor that was
lofted into space cooled and condensed into rocky globules that re-
heated as they plunged back into the atmosphere all around the
world. Their heat started forest fires worldwide. The amount of soot
found in the worldwide K/T boundary layer shows that much of
Earth’s total biomass burned. Smoke from these fires combined with
dust lofted into the stratosphere by the impact formed a worldwide
pall that blocked sunlight for months, causing Earth to cool about 40
degrees Fahrenheit and photosynthesis to cease. This has been called
“impact winter.”
Heat from the fireball caused nitrogen and oxygen in the atmo-
sphere to combine to form nitric oxide, which was lofted into the
stratosphere, where it destroyed the ozone layer. Less than 2 percent
of Earth’s surface is covered with layers of limestone and evaporite
1.2 to 1.9 miles (2 to 3 kilometers) thick, but the Yucatán Peninsula is
such a place. Vaporizing these deposits released huge amounts of sul-
fur dioxide and carbon dioxide. Nitric oxide and sulfur dioxide com-
bined with water vapor in the air to form acid rain. There may not
have been enough acid rain worldwide to be a serious problem by it-
self, but it did add to the environmental insult. As the dust cleared,
“impact winter” turned to “impact summer,” and the climate warmed
about 40 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for thousands of years.
These elevated temperatures were possibly due to a greenhouse ef-
fect caused by the extra carbon dioxide and water vapor in the atmo-
sphere.
Which species became extinct and exactly when that happened
remains somewhat controversial; however, the most complete stud-
ies support the hypothesis that the dinosaurs died because of the
climate-changing effects of an asteroid impact. The general pattern
is that species such as dinosaurs, whose food chain depended upon
living plant material, became extinct. Species whose food chain de-
pended upon organic detritus left in logs, soil, or water survived and
eventually expanded into niches previously dominated by extinct
species. Apparently, mammals survived on insects, arthropods, and
worms until the sun began to shine again and plants to grow again.
Charles W. Rogers

299
c. 65,000,000 B.C.E.: Yucatán crater

For Further Information:

Alvarez, Luis W. “Mass Extinctions Caused by Large Bolide Impacts.”
Physics Today, July, 1987, 24-33.
Beatty, J. Kelly. “Killer Crater in the Yucatán?” Sky and Telescope, July,
1991, 38-40.
Raup, David M. The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and
the Ways of Science. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.
Verschuur, Gerrit L. Impact! The Threat of Comets and Asteroids. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Zanda, Brigitte, and Monica Rotaru, eds. Meteorites: Their Impact on
Science and History. Translated by Roger Hewins. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2001.

300
■ c. 1470 b.c.e.: Thera eruption
Volcano
Date: c. 1470 b.c.e.
Place: Aegean Sea
Result: Volcanic eruption and caldera collapse, town buried and
preserved intact, possible cause of disappearance of Minoan civili-
zation on Crete, alleged location of lost “continent” of Atlantis

T he eruption of Thera (now known as Thíra) in 1470

b.c.e. has been compared in severity with the eruption
in 5000 b.c.e. that formed Crater Lake in Oregon, but as no written
records survive, knowledge of the eruption must be deduced entirely
from the geological and archaeological evidence. Judging from the
pottery, archaeologists date the eruption to around 1400 b.c.e. Geol-
ogists give a date of 1470 b.c.e. based on a radioactive age determina-
tion.
The volcano lies in a cluster of islands that used to be known as
Santorin or Santorini. These islands form part of a convex arc of re-
cently extinct volcanoes in the Aegean Sea, facing the Mediterranean
between Turkey and Greece. Geologists describe this as a firing line
where the crustal plate of Africa is plunging down beneath the
crustal plate of southeastern Europe.
Prior to the 1470 b.c.e. eruption, Thera had a long and compli-
cated volcanic history, beginning with submarine eruptions from vol-
canic vents located adjacent to some bedrock islands. When ejecta
from these vents reached water level, small volcanic islands appeared,
which then grew together with the adjoining bedrock as eruptions
continued. Ultimately this complex of overlapping volcanic cones
and bedrock masses formed a circular island nearly 10 miles in diam-
eter and with a summit that might have been as much as 1 mile high.
A period of quiescence then followed, which scientists believe
lasted for many thousands of years. During this interval, fertile soils
developed on the weathered volcanic rocks, lakes and marshes formed
in the depressions, and vegetation appeared. Humans colonized
Thera from neighboring islands, bringing with them the Bronze Age

301
c. 1470 B.C.E.: Thera eruption
BULGARIA
MACEDONIA
TURKEY
Serrai Drama Xanthi Komotini
Kilkis Kavala
Edhessa Thessaloniki
ALBANIA Florina Alexandroupolis
Kastoria Veroia Poliyiros
Kozani Katerini Kariai
Grevena

Ioannina
GREECE
Kerkira Larisa
Igoumenetsa Trikala
Volos TURKEY
Arta Kardhitsa
Aegean Sea Mitilini
Preveza Karpenision
Lamia
Amfissa Levadhia Khalkis
Mesolongion
Chios
Argostolion Patrai
Athens
Corinth
Zakinthos Pirgos Samos
Ionian Sea Navplion
Tripolis Ermoupolis

Kalamata Sparta

Thíra Rodhos
Akrotiri (Thera)

Sea of Crete

Khania
Mediterranean Sea Crete Rethimnon Iraklion
Ayios Nikolaos

culture then prevalent in the eastern Mediterranean. The largest set-

tlement appears to have been at ancient Akrotiri on the southern
coast, a location that had a natural harbor, shelter from the strong
northerly winds, and probably more rainfall than other parts of the is-
land.
Excavations begun here in 1967 have unearthed, from beneath
the mantle of volcanic debris, the most completely preserved prehis-
toric site in Europe. The once-thriving town of several thousand in-
habitants had narrow streets; underground sewers to carry away do-
mestic effluent; and two-, three-, and four-story homes adorned with
frescoes, which are still breathtakingly fresh 3,500 years after they
were first painted. In the surrounding fields, the inhabitants of the is-
land raised sheep and goats; cultivated grapes for wine; and grew

302
 c. 1470 B.C.E.: Thera eruption

crops of lentils, split peas, and barley, from which they milled flour to
make bread. Pottery discovered in the excavation indicates that the
residents maintained close trade connections with both Crete and
mainland Greece.
Archaeologists have concluded that the first indication of the im-
pending eruption was a large-scale earthquake, which caused major
damage to buildings throughout the town. Then came a period of
calm—perhaps several months in length—during which people be-
gan rebuilding their homes. Repairs were still in progress when the
next phase of the eruption struck. This began with a fall of pellets of
pumice that eventually built up a layer as much as 15 feet thick over
most of the island.
By now the inhabitants of Akrotiri must have fled, taking with

A modern satellite image of Thera. (NASA)

303
c. 1470 B.C.E.: Thera eruption

them whatever valuables they could carry and leaving behind the fur-
nishings of their homes, as well as a vast assortment of pottery used
for the storing, cooking, and serving of food. The absence of human
or animal remains in the ruins indicates that people had time to evac-
uate safely. After the fall of pumice pellets came a series of minor ash
and pumice falls, and then the culminating phase of the eruption:
fine, white ash, with scattered basalt boulders, that blanketed the is-
land to a depth of 100 feet or more. The ash is also present beneath
the Mediterranean as a layer up to 7 feet thick found in core samples
more than 450 miles away.
Following the ashfall—or perhaps simultaneous with it—the cen-
tral part of the volcano collapsed into the underlying magma cham-
ber, creating a huge depression in the seafloor, known as a caldera.
Thera’s caldera is 7 miles long and 5 miles wide and has a maximum
depth of 1,575 feet. The rim of the old volcano still surrounds it in
the form of three ragged islands with rocky cliffs 1,200 feet high, ris-
ing toward where the summit used to be. The volume of the collapse
has been estimated at 38 cubic miles, which is about the same as the
collapse at Crater Lake and more than three times the collapse at
Krakatau in Indonesia. Tsunamis (tidal waves) were probably gener-
ated at this time, and a pumice deposit found 23 feet above sea level
at Tel Aviv in Israel has been attributed to them.
About 70 miles to the south of Thera lies the island of Crete, which
was the center of the highly developed Minoan civilization during the
Bronze Age. Many archaeologists blame the sudden disappearance
of this civilization on the eruption of Thera, citing the destructive
earthquakes that accompanied the eruption, the possibility of devas-
tating tsunamis, and the ashfalls from the volcano that could have de-
stroyed the fertility of fields on Crete.
Thera is also cited as a possible location for Plato’s famous lost
“continent” of Atlantis, which he mentioned in two of his writings.
He describes Atlantis as the home of a rich and powerful nation with
an advanced civilization. According to him, the end of this civiliza-
tion came when the island was wracked by violent earthquakes and
floods and then, in the space of a single night and day, was swallowed
up by the sea. This description would fit the catastrophic end of
Thera perfectly.
Donald W. Lovejoy

304
 c. 1470 B.C.E.: Thera eruption

For Further Information:

Bullard, Fred M. Volcanoes of the Earth. 2d rev. ed. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1984.
Doumas, Christos G. Thera, Pompeii of the Ancient Aegean: Excavations at
Akrotiri, 1967-1979. London: Thames and Hudson, 1983.
Fisher, Richard V., Grant Heiken, and Jeffrey B. Hulen. Volcanoes:
Crucibles of Change. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1997.
Fouqué, Ferdinand. Santorini and Its Eruptions. Translated by Alexan-
der R. McBirney. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Friedrich, Walter L. Fire in the Sea: The Santorini Volcano—Natural His-
tory and the Legend of Atlantis. Translated by Alexander R. Mc-
Birney. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

305
■ 430 b.c.e.: The Plague of Athens
Epidemic
Date: 430-427 b.c.e.
Place: Athens, Greece
Result: About 30,000 dead

A s the early battles of the Peloponnesian War (431-404

b.c.e.) were being waged between the ancient Greek
city-states of Athens and Sparta, urban crowding in several major cit-
ies reached an unprecedented level. Perhaps the worst of these over-
populated centers was Athens itself. It had been the strategy of the
Athenian general and statesman Pericles to protect the entire popu-
lace of Attica, the region in which Athens is located, by permitting
any resident of this area who wished to do so to take refuge within the
Athenian city walls. While this policy won much support because it
protected most of the citizenry from Spartan raids, it also caused
such intense crowding within central Athens that the city became vul-
nerable to the swift spread of disease.
The plague that befell Athens in 430 b.c.e. was first observed in
Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, and the island of Lemnos. Scholars assume
that it was carried to Athens aboard ship, a theory given credence by
the illness’s first arrival in mainland Europe at Piraeus, the port of
Athens. Because a state of war then existed between Athens and
Sparta, initial suspicions fell upon the Spartans. They were accused
of poisoning the Athenian water supply in an attempt to win through
deceit victories that they could not win on the battlefield. Neverthe-
less, as the disease spread, ultimately killing as many as a quarter to a
third of the entire Athenian population, it became apparent that the
cause of the disaster was not an enemy conspiracy but a new form of
contagion that had a natural (or, as some thought, a divine) origin.
Symptoms of the Athenian Plague. The symptoms of the
Athenian plague have been detailed with far greater precision than
those of any other ancient epidemic because the Greek historian
Thucydides (c. 459-c. 402 b.c.e.) provided a full account of it in his
history of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides himself had suffered

306
 430 B.C.E.: The Plague of Athens

from the plague, but, like a number of other fortunate individuals,

he survived. The description that Thucydides provided of the plague
includes little speculation as to its cause but extensive analysis of its
symptoms. Thucydides relates that he provided this information in
the hope that future generations would recognize later outbreaks of
the disease and understand its prognosis. By taking this approach,
Thucydides revealed that he was under the influence of the “father of
Greek medicine,” Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460-c. 370 b.c.e.), then at
the height of his prestige among the Athenian intelligentsia. Hippoc-
rates, too, had stressed diagnosis and prognosis over vain attempts to
find cures.
Thucydides notes that the onset of the plague was sudden. During a
year that had otherwise been remarkably free of other illnesses, appar-
ently healthy people would unexpectedly develop a high fever. Inflam-
mation of the eyes, throat, and tongue soon followed, turning the vic-
tim’s breath extremely foul. Several of the plague’s initial symptoms
resembled those of a severe cold. Patients suffered from sneezing,
hoarseness, and coughs. The standard treatments of these symptoms
had, however, little effect upon the rapid progress of the plague.
In its second stage, the plague moved from victims’ heads to their
stomachs. Vomiting and great pain were followed by dry heaves (or,
some scholars believe, violent hiccups) and prolonged spasms. Then,
as the fever began to subside, the patient’s skin turned sensitive.
Many victims found that they could not tolerate being touched in any
way or even being covered by either clothing or blankets. The pa-
tient’s skin turned deep red or black-and-blue in spots, with sores
breaking out over large areas of the body. Sleep proved to be impossi-
ble, both from the pain of the illness and from a general restlessness.
Unquenchable thirst caused many victims to throw themselves into
public rain basins in their desire to drink as much water as possible.
By this stage in the illness, seven or eight days had elapsed; many
of the plague’s victims died at this point. Those who survived the
plague’s initial ravages, however, quickly developed severe diarrhea.
The general weakness that resulted from sustained dysentery then
caused additional deaths among the very young and very old. Those
in the prime of life, however, might begin to regain their health at
this point. The severe fevers caused some victims to develop amnesia.
Others became blind or lost the use of their extremities.

307
430 B.C.E.: The Plague of Athens

As the plague lingered in Athens, it increasingly took its toll upon

those with weakened immune systems. Thucydides notes that, as the
winter continued, nearly any disease that an individual developed
eventually turned into the plague. Victims also remained contagious
after they died. Thucydides reports that animals did not feed on the
corpses of plague victims or, if they did, they died soon after. Human
patients who survived appeared to be immune to further attacks of
plague. Several of those who repeatedly developed plague symptoms
found that subsequent infections were increasingly less severe. In
their elation at their restored health, many former victims imagined
that they were now immune to illness of any kind. As evidence
emerged that this was not true, however, a number of these survivors
were plunged into a deep depression.
Subsequent History of the Plague. One unanticipated out-
come of the Athenian plague was the emergence of an almost city-
wide sense of fatalism. The sudden, indiscriminate death caused by
the plague suggested to many individuals that no human action or
remedy was useful. Victims died regardless of whether they were ig-
nored or well treated by physicians. Death occurred without respect
for a victim’s character or individual piety. Diet, exercise, and a per-
son’s general state of health had little bearing on the rapid progress
of the disease. What was worse in the eyes of many was that the merci-
ful appeared to be dying in even greater numbers than the callous.
Compassionate individuals were more likely to treat others suffering
from the disease and thus were more likely to be exposed to it them-
selves. As a result, many Athenians felt that all the virtues they had
once cherished—piety, fitness, civic-mindedness, integrity—were of
little practical value. In a matter of days, the plague did more to
harden the hearts of many Athenians than did all the months of the
war against Sparta.
The public disorder caused by the plague, combined with the psy-
chic trauma resulting from daily exposure to victims dying or in in-
tense agony, produced a state of chaos throughout Athens. The law
provided no deterrent to citizens who imagined that they would die
soon anyway. Crimes of all sorts began to increase. People ceased
planning for the future, preferring to direct their efforts toward the
satisfaction of immediate pleasures. The worship of the gods de-
clined because many people felt that religion provided no guarantee

308
 430 B.C.E.: The Plague of Athens

of health. Even the literature and art of the city was affected by the
plague. The god Apollo, until then regarded as a source of inspira-
tion and light in Athenian literature, took on an increasingly nega-
tive image in many works, including the tragedies of the playwright
Euripides (c. 485-406 b.c.e.). Apollo’s oracle at Delphi had promised
aid to the Spartans, and, as the Athenians remembered well, Apollo
was the god of plagues in Homer’s Iliad (c. 800 b.c.e.).
When, in the spring of 429 b.c.e., the Spartans again invaded
Attica and once more laid waste to the fields, public opinion began to
turn against Pericles. The Athenians claimed it was his fault that no
crops could be planted for two years and that the city was sufficiently
crowded to spread the plague. In part, at least, these criticisms were
justified. It had been Pericles’ policy to protect behind the city’s walls
thousands of Athenian citizens who ordinarily would have remained
unaffected by the plague in the countryside. As an urban phenome-
non, the plague was largely confined to Athens itself and a few other
large cities. It did not enter the Peloponnisos, sparing Sparta, a less-
populated city than Athens.
Pericles was removed from office as general of Athens. Two of his
own sons died in the plague. History, perhaps unreliably, reports that
his mistress Aspasia and two of his friends, the philosopher Protag-
oras and the sculptor Phidias, were placed on trial by the Athenians
in an effort to discredit Pericles. Pericles himself was fined for misuse
of public funds. Soon, however, public opinion shifted yet again, and
Pericles was restored to public office. Nevertheless, by this time, his
health was in decline. Calling the plague “the one thing that I did not
foresee,” Pericles became its most prominent victim. He died in 429
b.c.e. After its initial outbreak in 430 and 429, the plague returned to
claim more victims in 427 b.c.e.
In 1994, a mass grave dating to the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e.
was discovered as preparations were being made for a subway station
near the ancient Kerameikos cemetery in Athens. Numerous bodies
were uncovered, hastily thrown into multiple shafts. One shaft alone
contained more than 90 skeletons, 10 of which belonged to children.
Because of the date of the burial and the cursory manner in which
the interment appeared to have been carried out, many scholars
speculated that the site might have been associated with the great
Plague of Athens. In his account of the plague, Thucydides had men-

309
430 B.C.E.: The Plague of Athens

tioned that the sheer number of casualties had necessitated swift

burial in mass graves. Although the date and general location of the
burial are appropriate for the Plague of Athens, final identification
will never be possible because the site was destroyed as construction
continued.
Precise Causes of the Athenian Plague. Historians and epi-
demiologists cannot agree as to the precise nature of the organism
responsible for the Athenian plague. Some scholars believe that the
illness was either identical or closely related to various illnesses
known in the modern world. Others believe that, because of the
rapid evolution of microbes, it was a unique contagion having no par-
allel in contemporary society. Candidates put forward as possible
causes of the Athenian plague have included the Ebola virus, influ-
enza, measles, typhus, ergotism (a disease caused by the ingestion of
contaminated grain products), and toxic shock syndrome. The latter
two of these possibilities seem unlikely because they would not have
been spread in the highly contagious manner attributed to the Athe-
nian plague. The other candidates for the disease all lack at least one
of the major symptoms described by Thucydides. Although the pre-
cise nature of the Athenian plague will probably never be deter-
mined, one thing remains clear: The cause of this disease cannot be
identified with that of another famous plague, the Black Death that
ravaged Europe during the fourteenth century. Nowhere in Thu-
cydides’ account is there any mention of the buboes, those enlarged
lymph nodes in the groin or armpits that gave the bubonic plague its
name. In the history of epidemics, the Plague of Athens appears to
remain unique.
Jeffrey L. Buller

For Further Information:

Bollet, Alfred J. Plagues and Poxes: The Impact of Human History on Epi-
demic Disease. New York: Demos, 2004.
Holladay, A. J., and J. C. F. Poole. “Thucydides and the Plague of Ath-
ens.” Classical Quarterly 29 (1979): 282-300.
Langmuir, A. D. “The Thucydides Syndrome: A New Hypothesis for
the Cause of the Plague of Athens.” The New England Journal of
Medicine 313 (October, 1985): 1027-1030.
Morens, D. M., and R. J. Littman. “Epidemiology of the Plague of Ath-

310
 430 B.C.E.: The Plague of Athens

ens.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 122 (1992):

271-304.
_______. “The Thucydides Syndrome Reconsidered: New Thoughts
on the Plague of Athens.” American Journal of Epidemiology 140, no.
62 (1994): 1-7.
Morgan, Thomas E. “Plague or Poetry? Thucydides on the Epidemic
at Athens.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 124
(1994): 197-209.
Page, Denys L. “Thucydides’ Description of the Great Plague.” Classi-
cal Quarterly, n.s. 47, no. 3 (1953): 97-119.
Scarrow, G. D. “The Athenian Plague: A Possible Diagnosis.” Ancient
History Bulletin 11 (1988): 4-8.

311
■ 64 c.e.: The Great Fire of Rome
Fire
Date: July 19-24, 64 c.e.
Place: Rome, Italy
Result: Thousands dead (accurate records unavailable), thousands
of homes destroyed, more than two-thirds of the city destroyed

I n the early morning hours of July 19, 64 c.e., a fire broke

out in a slum district south of the Palatine hill. Due to the
high density of poorly built and very flammable insulae (tenement
houses), the fire quickly burned out of control. During the next sev-
eral days acre after acre of the city burned up as the fire spread north-
ward. Panic-stricken residents ran through the streets, where many
were suffocated or crushed by crowds of people desperately seeking
escape. Adding to the confusion were sudden winds that whipped up
the flames in different directions. Reportedly, rescuers and soldiers,
instead of trying to stop the conflagration, kindled it even more in
greedy hopes of obtaining plunder. To make matters worse, after the
original fire subsided, a second fire broke out near the Capitoline hill
and lasted for three days. The damage was so extensive that many Ro-
mans feared the city would never regain its greatness.
By the time the fire was quenched, 3 of the 14 districts of Rome (as
originally laid out by Emperor Augustus) were completely destroyed.
Only 4 districts were untouched by the fire. The best ancient sources
about the fire, historians Cassius Dio Cocceianus, Suetonius, and
Cornelius Tacitus, did not record precise numbers of either lives lost
or buildings destroyed. Cassius Dio wrote that “countless” people
died in the fire, and it seems likely that hundreds of people perished
in the disaster. An ancient letter, purportedly from the philosopher
Seneca to the Apostle Paul, mentions that 132 domi (private homes)
and approximately 4,000 insulae were destroyed in the flames.
Nero was emperor of Rome at the time, and his role in the disaster
and its aftermath has been the subject of many debates on the part of
scholars. Nero was at Antium, 35 miles from Rome, when the fire
broke out, and he rushed back to his palace in Rome. While watching

312
 64 C.E.: The Great Fire of Rome

Emperor Nero sings while Rome burns. (R. S. Peale and J. A. Hill)

the fire from his palace, he composed and sang a song, supposedly
called “The Taking of Troy,” while playing the lyre. He certainly did
not “fiddle as Rome burned,” as stated in folklore, because violins had
not yet been invented. The fact that Nero was not in Rome when the
fire started and that when he returned he graciously opened his palace
to shelter many who were made homeless by the blaze has led many
historians to conclude that he was not responsible for starting the fire.
On the other hand, Cassius Dio, Pliny the Elder, and Suetonius al-
lege arson by Nero. Nero was known to complain about how Rome
was aesthetically displeasing. When he purchased 120 acres in the
same area where the fire broke out to build an ostentatious palace, it
served to confirm the widespread opinion of Roman citizens that
Nero had the fire started in order to rebuild the city according to his
own liking. The evidence for implicating Nero in starting the fire is,
however, primarily circumstantial, and no firm conclusions can be
made in this regard.
After the fire, Nero set about making Rome a safer and more beau-
tiful city. New building codes were established, with an emphasis on
the use of fireproof materials, and insulae were constructed with
greater access to the public water supply. Wider streets were laid out,

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and Greek-style colonnaded buildings were erected. Nero also began

his famous Golden Palace. This prodigious edifice, had it been fin-
ished, would have covered nearly a third of Rome. However, Nero’s
overly ambitious plans for rebuilding Rome resulted in severe finan-
cial strain. The growing economic crisis combined with the lingering
opinion that Nero was responsible for the fire jeopardized the stabil-
ity of Nero’s rule. With the likelihood of riots and a revolt against his
reign becoming ever more threatening, Nero knew that something
had to be done. His solution had a profound impact on a new reli-
gious group.
Nero’s advisers suggested blaming Christians for the fire in order
to distract the public. Nero agreed and made a big display of arrest-
ing and executing, often by torturous means, many Christians. One
of Nero’s more hideous methods of killing Christians was to lash
them to stakes, tar them, and then turn them into living torches—a
supposed example of the punishment fitting the crime. Making
Christians the scapegoats for the fire had its desired effect, and the
immediate threat of rioting was diffused. The persecution of Chris-
tians, however, resulted in the martyrdom of two of Christendom’s
greatest leaders, the apostles Peter and Paul. The harrowing circum-
stances facing Christians during this time is revealed in a letter from
Peter to fellow believers (written shortly before Peter’s execution), in
which he writes about their faith being “tried in fire” (I Peter 1:7).
The Great Fire of Rome continued to influence events in the Ro-
man Empire long after the last flames were extinguished. The perse-
cution of Christians did not turn public opinion in Nero’s favor, and
within the next four years two plots against his life were made. He was
able to foil the Pisonian Conspiracy in 65 c.e., but he succumbed to a
second plot in 68 c.e., purportedly committing suicide. Nero suc-
ceeded in making Rome a more beautiful city, but his Golden Palace
was never finished. Furthermore, his fire-prevention plans did not
prevent another major fire that devastated Rome in 191 c.e. Nero’s
blaming of Christians for the 64 c.e. disaster resulted in the first offi-
cial Roman persecution of that religious group. Although Nero’s ac-
tions were restricted to the city of Rome, this persecution did set a
precedent that led to larger and more widespread oppressions of
Christians by Roman emperors in the succeeding centuries.
Paul J. Chara, Jr.

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For Further Information:

Bunson, Matthew. Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire. New York: Facts
On File, 1994.
Champlin, Edward. Nero. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Har-
vard University Press, 2003.
Millar, Fergus. A Study of Cassius Dio. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1964.
Tacitus, Cornelius. The Annals and the Histories. Translated by Alfred
John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. New York: Modern
Library, 2003.
Tranquillus, Gaius Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. Translated by Rob-
ert Graves. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1957.
Warmington, H. B. Nero: Reality and Legend. Edited by M. I. Finley.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1969.

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■ 79 c.e.: Vesuvius eruption
Volcano
Date: August 24, 79 c.e.
Place: West coast of Italy
Result: More than 13,000 dead, 4 cities completely buried, 270
square miles (700 square kilometers) devastated

V esuvius is a large stratovolcano, having a height of 4,203

feet (1,281 meters). Prior to the 79 c.e. eruption the es-
timated height was about 6,562 feet (2,000 meters). Mount Vesuvius
is located about 93 miles south of Rome, and 4.4 miles inland from
the Mediterranean coast off the Gulf of Naples. The gulf is a thriving
port, being well protected by surrounding peninsulas and islands.
The city of Naples was a major port of call, lying on the northern side
of the gulf with the Misenum promontory making up the northern
peninsula. Naples was located 7.5 miles northwest from Vesuvius. The
cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii (population 20,000), which were
located 4.4 and 6.2 miles, respectively, to the southwest and southeast
of Vesuvius, were completely buried by the eruption. The southern
side of the gulf was formed by the Sorrento Peninsula and the island
of Capri, with the city of Stabiae (now known as Castellammare di
Stabia) located at the tip of the southern peninsula. Stabiae, which
was abandoned during the eruption, lies 9.3 miles south of Vesuvius
on the coast.
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius is generally regarded as the most
violent eruption in Europe during historic times. Typically, a very vio-
lent eruption of a stratovolcano only occurs after centuries of quies-
cence. This appears to be so for Vesuvius because the historic record
of the ancient peoples in the region did not recognize Mount Vesu-
vius as an active volcano. The first indication of the awakening of
Vesuvius was an earthquake on February 5, 63 c.e. This earthquake
destroyed a portion of Pompeii and damaged the cities of Hercu-
laneum and Naples. For the following sixteen years the area experi-
enced intermittent earth tremors until the actual volcanic eruption
began on August 24, 79 c.e.

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Eyewitness Accounts. A vivid and detailed account of the erup-

tion of Vesuvius was recorded by Pliny the Younger, who was almost
eighteen years old at the time of the eruption. His account takes the
form of letters to a prominent historian, and it chronicles two excur-
sions during the eruption. The first excursion is that of his uncle,
Pliny the Elder, who sailed across the bay during the early stages of
the eruption. The second account chronicles Pliny the Younger’s
flight north from Misenum away from the eruption. Pliny the Youn-

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79 C.E.: Vesuvius eruption

ger and his widowed mother lived with Pliny the Elder in Misenum.
Pliny the Elder was a scientist, the author of a well-known treatise on
natural history, and the commander of the Roman Fleet.
At approximately 1:00 in the afternoon of August 24, Pliny the
Younger’s mother noticed an unusual cloud in the sky. The cloud
that she observed rose in a vertical plume for several thousand feet
before spreading out laterally, like a Roman pine tree spreads its
branches, into the sky. The cloud was sometimes illuminated by
flashes of brightness and then would turn completely dark or be-
come lightly spotted. She brought the strange cloud to the attention
of Pliny the Elder.
Pliny the Elder decided to conduct a scientific investigation of the
cloud and had his crew get a light boat ready for him to sail to the
source of this cloud. Just as he was ready to depart he received a mes-
sage from a friend who lived in Resina at the foot of Vesuvius. The
friend realized that Vesuvius was erupting and that her only chance
of escape from the volcano was by sea. Pliny began receiving addi-
tional requests for help from other inhabitants on the coastline, and
he set off to sea with a fleet of ships to rescue the frightened citizens.
As Pliny’s ship drew near Resina, cinders, pieces of pumice, and
fragments of burned rock from the exploding volcano fell onto the
deck of the ships. Pliny observed that the shore was inaccessible, as
fragments of rock and cinders were piling up on the beach, making it
impossible to reach the citizens of Resina. Pliny was forced to turn
southeast to the coastal town of Stabiae, where his friend Pompo-
nianus lived. He found his friend anxious and frantic to escape
Stabiae, but the onshore winds made escape by ship impossible at
that time. Pliny felt that Stabiae was far enough away from the vol-
cano to be safe, and he assured Pomponianus of their safety and that
they would have ample time to escape if danger was imminent. Pliny
then decided to bathe, eat dinner, and to sleep.
As night came the citizens of Stabiae could see tall, broad flames
flare out from several locations near the top of Vesuvius. During the
night, conditions on Stabiae worsened, with a heavy fall of ash and
pumice. When the building began to sway and shake from the erup-
tion tremors, Pomponianus and his companions felt that the time
had come to abandon the city. They decided to flee to the beach and
attempt to escape by sea. They woke Pliny and tied pillows on their

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 79 C.E.: Vesuvius eruption

heads with napkins in order to protect themselves from falling volca-

nic debris as they made their way to the shore. They arrived at the
shore, having found their way in the blackness with lit torches. Even
though it was well after sunrise, the dark ash clouds continued to
block all light from the sun. When they reached the shore they found
that the wind was still blowing from the north, continuing to make
leaving by sea impossible.
Pliny the Elder, who was overweight, began to feel ill. He lay down
on a sheet that had been spread on the beach. Shortly thereafter,
strong winds and flames appeared nearby, accompanied by a strong
odor of sulfur. Pliny’s companion began to flee in panic southward
down the beach, and as Pliny the Elder struggled to get up he col-
lapsed and died. It is clear in his letters that Pliny the Younger as-
sumed the sulfurous fumes from the volcano overcame his uncle.
Pliny the Younger also chronicled the ordeal that he and his
mother went though at Misenum. Misenum was located on the oppo-
site side of the Bay of Naples from Stabiae, placing it upwind from the
volcano and thereby less affected by it. Earthquakes shook the city of
Misenum all night, and by 6 a.m. the volcanic ash was so thick that it
partially obstructed the sun.
Pliny and his mother decided to flee the city in chariots. They were
joined by chaotic mobs of frightened people. Pliny the Younger and
his mother took solace in the open country, feeling that they were
safe from the falling buildings in the city. However, around 8:30 a.m.
the land was ravaged by a series of strong earthquakes. The tremors
were so bad that the shaking kept moving the chariots, which they
tried to stabilize with stones against the wheels on the level ground.
They observed frequent flashes of light in the dark, ash-laden cloud
that was sweeping toward them. The sea became very turbulent and
receded so much that sea creatures were stranded on the beaches;
then, minutes later, the sea would crash forcefully back over the
beach.
Pliny the Younger and his mother moved farther into the open
country as the black sky seemed to reach down and envelop the sea.
The island of Capri and the promontory of Misenum were no longer
visible. Frightened for her son’s safety and knowing that he could
move faster without her, Pliny the Younger’s mother urged him to go
ahead without her. Pliny refused to leave her, and they traveled on

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slowly in the thick darkness. As visibility became worse, they heard

the panicked screams of men, women, and children who had lost
sight of their loved ones; other people were praying or crying in fear.
The ash began to snow upon the people so thickly that they had to
stand up and shake it off in order to not be buried by it.
Many hours later, daylight began to show though the ash clouds.
As the air began to clear and Pliny could once again see across the bay
to Vesuvius, he noticed that the smooth cone had become merely a
stump. Fields that had been formerly lush with green trees and farm-
lands were now a gray sea of ash.
Scientific Analysis and Pliny’s Narrative. Pliny the Youn-
ger’s account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius proved to be so clear
and concise that all similar eruptions are now classified as “Plinian”
in honor of him and his uncle. The normal sequence of events in a
Plinian (violently explosive) eruption are now well understood and
correlate well with aspects of Pliny’s narrative.
Plinian eruptions are preceded by a slightly less violent explosion
that clears the vent and allows the Plinian eruption to proceed. The
eruption of Vesuvius began when the rising magma encountered
water and exploded early in the morning of August 24. It was this ini-
tial explosion that frightened Pliny’s friend at Resina. She sent word
to Pliny some 5 miles away via a messenger, who arrived shortly after
Pliny the Younger’s mother saw the eruption cloud for the Plinian
eruption, which began at 1:00 in the afternoon.
A Plinian eruption typically produces three types of deposits,
which can be expelled multiple times. The first to form is usually an
air-fall deposit that rains down from the initial explosion column.
The individual particles fall independently of the other particles
around them. The deposit produced, surprisingly, has the smaller
particles on the bottom with larger particles occurring higher in the
deposit. The larger fragments of pumice and accidental rock are of-
ten blown higher in the initial blast. The thickness of an air-fall de-
posit is largely controlled by the local winds. After three days, the Ve-
suvius eruption of 79 c.e. produced nine different air-fall layers.
The second type of deposit in a Plinian eruption is ash flow. An ash
flow begins with an initial blast called a base surge. This base surge
moves at hurricane velocities (usually greater than 108 feet per sec-
ond) and often will defoliate trees without charring the branches.

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 79 C.E.: Vesuvius eruption

Two victims at Pompeii are immortalized in plaster almost 2,000 years after being cov-
ered by volcanic ash from the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 C.E. (Library of Congress)

The deposit left by this surge is surprisingly thin, usually only an inch
thick. Although thin, this material is distinct because it displays ripple
marks and dune structures. The Vesuvius eruption produced seven
surge layers. When one of the later surges reached Pompeii the build-
ings that were not already buried were knocked flat.
Overlying the surge layer are the main deposits of the ash flow,
which can be tens of feet thick. Ash flows can result from either
avalanching of near-vent material because of explosion tremors or
gravitational collapse of the eruptive ash column above the vent. An
ash flow usually follows an initial air-fall eruption, when the radius of
the vent has been enlarged or some of the pent-up gas has been re-
leased. Pliny’s description corresponds to ash flows formed by both
avalanches and cloud collapse. Six ash-flow layers were generated
during the three days of the eruption of Vesuvius.
Ash flows can move incredibly fast, at speeds of 197 feet (60 me-
ters) per second or 124 miles (200 kilometers) per hour. They can
reach distances of 1,242 miles (100 kilometers) from the vent. They
have sufficient momentum that they can cross ridges that are 2,297

321
79 C.E.: Vesuvius eruption

feet (700 meters) high at a distance of 181 miles (50 kilometers) from
the volcano. The great distance of travel is due to the particles still
dissolving gas. Although the explosion at the vent releases the pent-
up gas, the droplets of liquid take longer to release their dissolved
gases.
Once moving, the flows trap and heat surrounding air as they
glide down the slope. The high gas content in the flow makes the
mixture behave like a fluid, and it flows with virtually no internal fric-
tion and, often, little, if any, ground friction—it flows on its own car-
pet of gas. It can reach speeds that approximate the velocity of free-
falling objects, when the slope is taken into consideration. An ash
flow that contains larger blocks of incandescent volcanic fragments
(often with a diameter of a few feet or more) is called a glowing ava-
lanche, or nuée ardente.
A cloud of ash and steam usually rises and expands above the glow-
ing avalanche. The flow itself closely follows canyons and valleys as it
moves downslope, similar in behavior to a snow avalanche. The
cloud, however, is not deflected by topography, and it rolls onward
over ridges and valleys, following a considerable distance behind the
flow. The description that Pliny the Younger gives of the cloud over-
taking the chariots near Misenum is a classic description of the ash-
steam cloud of a glowing avalanche. An ash flow must have moved
out across the water in the Gulf of Naples; because they ride on their
own carpet of gas they do not need to have a solid surface beneath
them.
Volcanic tremors (earthquakes) that displace the seafloor can
cause tidal waves, or tsunamis. When ground displacement occurs a
considerable distance off the coast, the water at the shoreline will re-
cede entirely from the beach before coming back on the land as an
enormous wave. Pliny’s description of the Misenum sequence of an
earthquake, followed by a tsunami, followed by the engulfing cloud
of ash, corresponds to the normal sequence of explosive base surge
and ash flow with an accompanying ash-steam cloud.
Accounts vary as to the destructive nature of the ash-steam cloud
that hovers over the ash flow. In one historical case, the cloud was so
hot and violent that the cloud alone destroyed an entire town and
killed all the residents, while the ash flow followed a nearby stream
valley and entirely missed the town. In another well-documented ac-

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count, a geologist on a high ridge reported watching an ash flow

sweep down the valley below him before the cloud enveloped him.
He reported that there was an enormous thickness of ash in the swirl-
ing air and a very strong, almost overpowering odor of sulfur. This
corresponds well to the events that are associated with the death of
Pliny the Elder.
Most of the ash flows in the Vesuvius eruption were probably gen-
erated by the repeated thrusting and collapsing of the eruption col-
umn. Pliny’s mother described the form of an eruption column that
is classic in a Plinian eruption. The lower part is a straight vertical col-
umn, while the upper part branches out horizontally in gradually in-
creasing distances with increasing height. The upper portion of the
cloud has the appearance of an inverted cone. The lower column is
propelled by gas thrusts as the gases are released from the volcanic
vent. The upper cloud is propelled by convective thrusts due to the
heating and rising of the air above the volcano.
A cloud’s height can be calculated easily after the eruption by
looking at the deposits of the ash flows. A sloping energy line exists
that starts at the boundary between the upper and lower clouds and
descends at a 30-degree angle to the ground. The energy line touches
the ground at the distant end of the longest ash flow. Calculations
based upon the ash flows from Vesuvius indicate that the eruption
column was about 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) high.
Another interesting aspect of a Plinian eruption is the gradual
change of color in pumice (a volcanic glass) erupting from the vent;
starting out white, the pumice gradually grows darker in color as the
eruption goes on. Prior to the eruption the magma in a chamber will
change its composition slowly, over long periods of time. The upper
regions of the chamber become very low in the element iron; the
higher the content of iron, the darker the magma’s color. When an
eruption occurs the first lava erupted is from the upper regions of
the chamber and is white in color, whereas after the eruption has
gone on for some time the magma comes from lower in the chamber
and is gray from the higher iron content.
At Mount Vesuvius white pumice erupted from the vent at a rate
of 5,000 to 80,000 tons every second. The white pumice eruption
is thought to have lasted seven hours. The white pumice, which
erupted first, came from magma at the top of the chamber. It was fol-

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lowed by gray pumice, which originated further down in the cham-

ber. Some scientists feel that the gray pumice, which fell on the eve-
ning of August 24, erupted from the volcano at 150,000 tons per
second.
Last, it is common for a Plinian eruption to conclude with the col-
lapse of the summit region. When sufficient magma is expelled from
the chamber a large void will exist below ground, and the overlying
rocks of the volcano are not sufficiently strong to support the weight
of the summit area. The collapse can invert the topography around
the top of the volcano. The eruption of Vesuvius expelled 247,202 cu-
bic feet (7 cubic kilometers) of magma, and after the eruption had
concluded, Pliny reported that the mountain was merely a “stump” of
its former shape.
Geological and Archaeological Analyses. Quarries and
construction in the region of Mount Vesuvius have exposed more
than a dozen areas where the deposits of the eruption can be studied
in detail. Geological and archaeological research have allowed the
history of the region to be determined to a minute-by-minute level of
accuracy.
The city hit hardest by the eruption was Pompeii, which was
founded in 600 b.c.e. Distribution patterns of the air-fall deposits
show that northwesterly winds prevailed during the eruption. These
winds blew ash and pumice directly onto the city of Pompeii for al-
most eighteen hours, burying it under 9.8 feet (3 meters) of volcanic
fragments. Some of the townspeople began to leave their homes
when the heavy weight of the ash, cinders, and bombs from the erup-
tion caused the collapse of numerous roofs and killed some of the in-
habitants. Making matters worse, an ash flow spewing clouds of pum-
ice and dust collapsed downward from the eruption column and
flowed into the town at about 7:30 a.m. on August 25 (almost twenty-
four hours after the eruption began). The surge flattened most of the
second stories of the taller buildings (the air-fall deposits already cov-
ered the ground to a depth that covered the first floor).
Survival in the violent surge was impossible; all the residents per-
ished in the hot blast of gas and dust. It is estimated that 2,000 people
were still alive in the town when the surge hit. They were all killed
within a minute. This was the fourth of six surge deposits that came
from the volcano. Another surge deposit swept over the town only

324
 79 C.E.: Vesuvius eruption

five minutes later. This fifth surge and ash flow carried all the way to
the outskirts of Stabiae.
The sixth and last surge and ash flow was released at 8 a.m. on Au-
gust 25. It was the largest and was caused by widening of the vent at
the summit of the volcano. As the vent increased its diameter the
eruption lost some of it force, and the existing cloud collapsed down
toward the volcano. This ash flow reached Stabiae and was probably
responsible for the death of Pliny the Elder. Another branch of the
same ash flow swept across the waters of the Gulf toward Misenum, 20
miles away, and was recorded by Pliny the Younger.
After the eruption, the town of Pompeii and the surrounding re-
gion was a wasteland of ash. It was so devastated that there seemed to
be no option but to abandon the area. The tephra, or volcanic debris,
from the eruption covered hundreds of square miles, and it buried
several small settlements near Pompeii, which remain buried today.
It was not until 1595 that some of the remains of Pompeii were
found during construction of an aqueduct. Some coins and pieces of
a marble tablet, which contained some writings about Pompeii, were
found at that time. This led to the rediscovery of the forgotten city. In
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wealthy post-Renaissance
families in Europe became interested in ancient objects of art, and
Pompeii became a favorite site for uncovering statues, jewelry, and
other ancient treasures. The diggings took place haphazardly, with-
out any thought to the preservation of the city or its culture. Ravaging
and pillaging took place all through the excavated areas. In the nine-
teenth century people realized the historical and cultural signifi-
cance of Pompeii, and more coordinated and scientific methods
were used in excavating the abandoned city. Many acres of the town
have been excavated and are open to the public.
The archaeological excavation found uneaten food laid out on ta-
bles in some of the Pompeiian homes, leading scientists to believe
that normal life continued in Pompeii until the very last second. The
bodies of people killed in the disaster are quite unique, as they were
quickly buried in the accumulating ash and cinders from the erup-
tion; when rain fell on the ash, the substance formed a cement
around the bodies, making molds. Some of these molds perfectly
preserved facial expressions and the patterns and textures of the
clothing. Nineteenth century excavators poured plaster of Paris into

325
79 C.E.: Vesuvius eruption

the molds and were able to produce three-dimensional casts of the

people and animals killed. Almost 2,000 skeletons were found with
their hands or cloths over their mouths, trying to protect themselves
from searing, lethal gases of the surge or from breathing the ash and
dust particles of the air-fall deposits.
The city of Herculaneum was located closer to Vesuvius on its west-
ern flank and had a population of about 5,000. Unlike Pompeii,
which was destroyed mostly by the accumulation of air-fall tephra
over a two-day period, Herculaneum was obliterated in minutes by a
surge and ash flow at 1:00 in the morning of the 25th. The town had
been spared from the thick fallout of the white pumice because the
wind had blown the air-fall deposits to the south, toward Pompeii.
However, the very first of Mount Vesuvius’s six ash flows hit Hercula-
neum and buried it under more than 65.6 feet (20 meters) of volca-
nic material. Some buildings were demolished by the force of the
surge; others were simply buried in ash and pumice from the ash
flow.
In addition, an avalanche of mud passed over Herculaneum, fill-
ing every crack and crevice in the buildings and sealing the city so
completely that it became a lost city. When this material became im-
pacted and hardened it became a true volcanic rock, making it very
difficult to excavate. Excavation of Herculaneum has uncovered ap-
proximately eight city blocks. At first it appeared that many of the
townspeople had escaped because very few bodies were uncovered.
However, further exploration in what was an area of the beach during
Roman times has yielded hundreds of skeletons, found huddled in
buildings supported by arched chambers, which were opened to the
beach and housed boats and fishing tackle. It appears that the towns-
people fled to the beach, thinking that the arched chamber would
protect them from the volcano.
In summary, the 79 c.e. eruption of Vesuvius was the first volcanic
eruption ever to be described in detail. The eruption lasted about
twenty-five hours, the last nineteen of these hours being a sustained
highly explosive eruption. About 141,258 cubic feet of volcanic mate-
rial was erupted and blanketed 116 square miles around the volcano.
Vesuvius lost 2,297 feet of its summit area to the final collapse. More
than 13,000 people were killed, and most of the farms, villages,
towns, and cities in the vicinity vanished. Modern archaeological ex-

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cavation of the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum continue to re-

veal details of the last few minutes of life for the residents of this re-
gion.
Dion C. Stewart and Toby R. Stewart

For Further Information:

De Carolis, Ernesto, and Giovanni Patricelli. Vesuvius, A.D. 79: The De-
struction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Mu-
seum, 2003.
Francis, Peter, and Clive Oppenheimer. Volcanoes. 2d ed. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004.
Pellegrino, Charles. Ghosts of Vesuvius: A New Look at the Last Days of
Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections. New York:
William Morrow, 2004.
Scarth, Alwyn. Volcanoes: An Introduction. London: University College
of London Press, 1994.
_______. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Sigurdsson, H., S. Carey, W. Cornell, and T. Pescatore. “The Eruption
of Vesuvius in a.d. 79.” National Geographic Research 1, no. 3 (1985):
332-387.

327
■ 526: The Antioch earthquake
Earthquake
Date: May 29, 526
Place: Antioch, Syria (now Antakya, Turkey)
Magnitude: 9.0 (estimated)
Result: About 250,000 dead

A ntioch was founded around 300 b.c.e. by the Syrian

emperor Seleucus I. Rome captured Antioch in 25
b.c.e., making it into a colony called Caesarea Antiochia. Antioch
quickly became a political center for Rome, and Saul of Tarsus (Saint
Paul) selected it as the center of his mission in the Roman province of
Galatia around 50 c.e. Antioch subsequently became an important,
wealthy city of the eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, surrounded
by olive plantations and home to a silk industry. Located on the
Orontes River about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the northeastern
shore of the Mediterranean Sea, Antioch also prospered in trade.
Prominent in Christian worship during the sixth century was the
feast of the Ascension, a celebration of Jesus Christ’s final rise into
heaven that conventionally took place forty days after Easter. A holi-
day on the same scale as Easter or Christmas, Ascension came on May
30 in the year 526. Antioch, home to thousands of people, swelled
with thousands of visitors who had come to worship in its many mag-
nificent churches and to eat, drink, and celebrate in its many inns the
night before Ascension.
On the evening of May 29, at a time when most of the people in
Antioch were inside buildings, the earthquake struck. Many build-
ings collapsed or caved in instantly, killing thousands of people. To
escape the crushing walls, many fled to marketplaces and other open
spaces within the city. One such person was Patriarch Euphrasius, re-
ligious leader of Antioch, who reportedly fled to the open space of
the Circus (a circular, outdoor arena), only to be killed by a falling
obelisk. Bishop Asclepius of Edessa and other prominent members
of the Christian Church were also killed.
Some buildings withstood the initial shock but were destroyed by

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great fires caused by the earthquake. Rain following the earthquake

further weakened structures, causing them to collapse days later.
John Malalas, an eyewitness to the earthquake, reported that An-
tioch’s Great Church, built under the direction of Constantine the
Great, survived for five days after the earthquake, then caught fire
and burned to the ground. According to eyewitness accounts, even-
tually the entire city was destroyed, except for a few buildings on the
nearby slope of Mount Silpius. On Ascension Day, according to au-
thors reporting from eyewitness accounts, the survivors gathered at
the Church of the Kerateion for a service of Intercession, indicating
that the region south of the inner city might have survived the initial
damage. In all, an estimated 250,000 people were killed by the earth-
quake, fires, and aftershocks. Miraculous escapes from the crushing
debris were reported. Pregnant women, who had been buried under-
neath the debris for twenty-one days, were excavated still alive and
healthy. Some of these women had even given birth while buried but
were still rescued in good condition. Another reported miracle oc-
curred three days after the earthquake, on a Sunday. Above the
northern part of the city, a vision of the Holy Cross appeared in the
sky and hovered for more than an hour. The survivors of the earth-
quake who witnessed this vision reportedly fell to their knees, wept,
and prayed. Mount Silpius, which stood underneath the manifesta-
tion, was thenceforth called Mount Staurin in its honor. (“Staurin”
was colloquial Greek for “cross.”)
After the earthquake, many survivors gathered whatever posses-
sions they could and fled the city. Many of these refugees were killed by
people in the country. A number of robbers were reported entering
the city to strip corpses of jewelry and other valuable goods and to
gather up the gold and silver coins that the earthquake had scattered
about. Accounts of this period tell of the robbers meeting divine jus-
tice after molesting corpses. One story tells of a Roman official called
Thomas the Hebrew who, after the earthquake, stationed himself and
his servants 3 miles away from Antioch at the Gate of Saint Julian.
Thomas, with his band of obedient robbers, successfully gathered to-
gether a large amount of money and luxurious goods over a period of
four days. Apparently healthy with no signs of ailment, Thomas then
suddenly collapsed and died as a divine punishment for his bad deeds,
and all that he had amassed was distributed among needy survivors.

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526: The Antioch earthquake

News of the Antioch earthquake quickly reached Emperor Justin I

(ruled 518-527) in Constantinople, the eastern capital of the Roman
Empire. The emperor had served in Antioch during his military ca-
reer and had fond memories of the city. He ordered the imperial
court to wear mourning, and he suspended all public entertainments
in Constantinople. On Pentecost, which is celebrated fifty days after
Easter, Justin walked to the church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople
in mourning. Rebuilding Antioch became his first priority. First, the
emperor sent several government officials with large amounts of gold
to seek out survivors and give them monetary relief. These officials
were also ordered to assess the damage to Antioch and estimate how
much money would be needed for restoration.
Once this was determined, the restoration began, although it was
a slow process hindered by a second earthquake in November of 528.
Residents of Antioch and nearby areas continued to emigrate from
the region. Despite setbacks, Antioch was gifted by Emperor Justin-
ian I (ruled 527-565) with several churches, a hospice, baths, and cis-
terns in celebration of his rise to emperor. After the second earth-
quake, he deemed the city free of taxation. Antioch had made little
progress, however, when the Persians sacked the city in 540. In 542,
remaining Antioch residents were hit by a devastating plague, thus
destroying any hope of regaining the once-powerful city’s grandeur.
Rose Secrest

For Further Information:

Downey, Glanville. A History of Antioch in Syria. Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 1961.
“Killer Quake at Antioch: A Stroke of Nature’s Fury Destroys a Bril-
liant Metropolis.” In Great Disasters: Dramatic True Stories of Nature’s
Awesome Powers. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Readers Digest Association,
1989.

330
■ 1200: Egypt
Famine
Date: 1200-1202
Place: Across Egypt
Result: More than 100,000 dead

F rom the earliest beginnings of agriculture until the

building of modern dams in the twentieth century, the
people of Egypt depended on the annual flooding of the Nile for sur-
vival. In a typical year, the Nile began to rise in late June and reached
its highest level in the middle of September. The water then receded,
leaving behind a thick layer of silt that allowed crops to be grown.
Without this flooding, the land surrounding the Nile would become
a barren desert.
Two months before the flooding of the Nile began in the year
1200, the water in the river turned green and acquired an unpleasant
taste and odor. Boiling the water did not improve it, and Egyptians
began drinking well water instead. Abd al-Latif, an Arab scholar who
left an eyewitness account of the famine, determined that the water
was full of plant matter and correctly surmised that this was caused by
a lack of rain at the source of the Nile. Although the water eventually
returned to normal, the annual flooding failed to reach its usual
level.
A level of about 28 feet (16 cubits) was considered necessary to
produce sufficient crops. According to records kept for six hundred
years, the Nile had risen to only 24.5 feet (14 cubits) twenty times and
only 22.75 feet (13 cubits) six times. Previous failures of the Nile to
reach adequate levels had led to famine. In 1064, a famine that lasted
until 1072 resulted in between 25,000 and 40,000 deaths. On Septem-
ber 9, 1200, the Nile reached its highest point for the year, at a level
below 22.75 feet (13 cubits).
Knowing that this extremely low flood level would lead to severe
food shortages, thousands of Egyptians fled the country to seek ref-
uge in other areas of North Africa and the Middle East. Huge num-
bers of farmers left their unproductive fields, leading to overcrowd-

331
1200: Egypt

TURKEY

CYPRUS
Nicosia SYRIA
M
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ite
rra Beirut
nean Damascus
Sea
ISRAEL
Suez Tel Aviv
Nile Delta Canal Amman
Alexandria Gaza

JORDAN
Giza Suez
Siwa Saqqara Cairo
Sinai
Beni Suef Peninsula

LIBYA El-Minya SAUDI

Ni

ARABIA
le

R
iv
EGYPT er

R
Luxor

ed
Se
a
Aswan
Toshka Abu
Simbel Lake
Nasser
Halaib

SUDAN

ing in the cities. By March of 1201, starvation in the cities reached the
point where the poor were reduced to eating dogs, carrion, animal
excrement, and corpses.
As the famine progressed, children, who were often left unpro-
tected by the deaths of their parents, were killed and eaten. The gov-
ernment of Egypt sentenced all those who ate the flesh of children to
be burned at the stake, but the murders continued. Latif records that
he saw the parents of “a small roasted child in a basket” brought to
the ruler of Egypt, who condemned them to death. Ironically, the
burnt bodies of those executed for cannibalism were released to the
starving populace for legal consumption.
The famine spread from the cities to all parts of Egypt. Adults as
well as children were in danger of being murdered, even by the

332
 1200: Egypt

wealthy. Workers, brought into homes to perform their duties, and

guests, invited to social events, were sometimes killed and eaten by
their hosts. The corpses of those who died of starvation filled every
town. In Cairo, between 100 and 500 bodies were carried away daily.
Latif visited a pile of about 20,000 bodies in order to study human
anatomy.
Meanwhile, in April of 1201, the water of the Nile again turned
green, a sign that the annual flood would fail to reach the level
needed to relieve the famine. In early September of 1201, the Nile’s
maximum level was about 28 feet (below 16 cubits), then immedi-
ately began to drop back. Although not as severe as the extremely low
flood level of 1200, the rapid decline of the Nile ensured that starva-
tion would continue.
The second year of the famine resulted in fewer deaths than the
first year, mostly because the population of Egypt, particularly among
the poor, had been greatly reduced. As an example of the reduced
population, Latif records that the number of rush-mat makers in the
city of Misr fell from 900 to 15. The population of the cities, so re-
cently increased by refugees, fell so rapidly that rents decreased by as
much as 85 percent. Even the price of wheat fell; although there was
still a severe shortage of food, the number of buyers had been drasti-
cally reduced.
In early 1202, plague broke out in many parts of Egypt. The dis-
ease acted so rapidly that farmers fell dead while working their plows.
In the city of Alexandria, funeral prayers were said for 700 people in
one day. Between July of 1200 and April of 1202, the official number
of deaths in Egypt was reported to be nearly 110,000. This number
did not include many deaths that government officials failed to re-
cord.
In February of 1202, the Nile again turned green, leading to ex-
pectations that the annual flood would again fail to reach an ade-
quate level. Many Egyptians began to suspect that the source of the
Nile had been altered in some way, so that flood levels would never re-
turn to normal. On May 20, 1202, a series of violent earthquakes
struck Egypt, adding to the number of deaths.
The Nile rose very slowly from the middle of June to the middle of
July, discouraging those who hoped for relief from starvation. After
the middle of July, however, the Nile rose more rapidly, reaching a

333
1200: Egypt

level of about 5.25 feet (3 cubits) and remaining steady for two days.
The Nile then swiftly increased to a maximum level of about 28 feet
(16 cubits) on September 4, 1202. Unlike the flood of 1201, which
had declined quickly, the Nile remained at this level for two days, al-
lowing adequate silt to be deposited, then dropped slowly. The re-
turn of the Nile to its normal behavior brought two years of devastat-
ing famine to an end.
Rose Secrest

For Further Information:

“Famine in Egypt: Failure of Nile Floods Brings Hunger to an An-
cient Land.” In Great Disasters: Dramatic True Stories of Nature’s Awe-
some Power. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader’s Digest Association, 1989.
Nash, Jay Robert. “Egypt: Famine, 1199-1202.” In Darkest Hours: A
Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the
Present. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1976.
Tannahill, Reay. “Ferocity and Famine.” In Flesh and Blood: A History of
the Cannibal Complex. Rev. ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996.

334
■ 1320: The Black Death
Epidemic
Also known as: The Plague, the Black Plague, the Pestilence, the
Great Mortality
Date: 1320-1352
Place: Europe, Asia, Middle East, and Africa
Result: 25 million estimated dead in Europe, perhaps more than
double that amount worldwide

T he Black Death was the worst pandemic in human his-

tory, one that annihilated at least one-third of all hu-
manity during its thirty-year killing spree in the fourteenth century.
No other disease has killed so many people so quickly as the Black
Death. Some scholars call it the “greatest biological-environmental
event” in history.
Despite many attempts to explain the reasons for the Plague, no
one at the time understood what caused the disease or how it was
spread. Today, however, medical experts know that the deadly disease
was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Many researchers also be-
lieve the disease manifested itself in four distinct forms as it raged
across most of the known world during the fourteenth century. The
most common form was the bubonic plague. Victims of this malady
suffered headaches, weakness, and feverish chills. A white coating on
the tongue appeared along with slurred speech and a rapid pulse.
Within days painful swellings the size of eggs, called buboes, erupted
in the lymph nodes of the groin and armpits. Black purplish spots
formed by subcutaneous hemorrhaging also appeared on the skin of
most victims. This discoloration may have earned the disease the
name the Black Death, though many historians believe this designa-
tion did not become commonplace until two centuries later, when
Scandinavian writers used the term swarta doden (black death) to em-
phasize the dreadful aspects of the disease.
Most sufferers of the bubonic plague died within a week of con-
tracting the disease. Though highly contagious, this form of the
plague was not transmitted from one human to another as many

335
1320: The Black Death

fourteenth century observers believed. The real carrier of the disease

was the Xenopsylla cheopsis, a flea that lived as a parasite on the Euro-
pean black rat and other rodents. In a complicated cycle of conta-
gion, fleas were the first to become infected by the bacterium, eventu-
ally transmitting the disease to their rodent hosts. When rats died and
became scarce, the infectious fleas searched for new warm-blooded
hosts, such as human beings. Because so many people in the four-
teenth century lived in cramped, squalid conditions, rats and fleas
were ever-present in their daily lives. As result, plague-carrying fleas
easily carried the disease from rats to people.
A pneumonic form of the plague that infected the lungs also de-
veloped during the colder periods of the pandemic. Death resulted
from vomiting blood, coughing, and choking. Unlike the bubonic
plague, the pneumonic form was transmitted by one human to an-
other by sneezing and coughing contaminated mucous particles.
Though less common than the bubonic form, the pneumonic plague
was more lethal and killed up to 95 percent of its victims.
The deadliest of all the Plague’s manifestations were two very rare
forms of the Black Death. Septicemic plague attacked the blood-
stream; death often came within hours. Almost no one survived.
Equally lethal was enteric plague, which devastated digestive systems.
Spread of the Disease. Although historical records of the dis-
ease are imprecise, many historians believe the first major outbreak
of the Black Death in human populations took place among the no-
madic tribes of Mongolia in 1320. Alternating periods of drought, in-
tense rain, and locust attacks throughout Asia may have produced se-
vere ecological disturbances that upset the normal balance between
plague fleas and rats in the wild. This disruption may have also
caused rodents to come into closer proximity to humans. The result
was an epidemic among humans unlike any ever seen before or since.
From the steppes of Mongolia, the Plague spread throughout
China, India, and other Asian lands, killing tens of millions. Next,
infected rats, fleas, and humans headed west by accompanying the
numerous ships, barges, and caravans that traveled the trade routes
connecting the East and West. By 1346 the Plague had spread into
the lands along the Black Sea, but it had not yet reached medieval
Western Europe. Europe’s apparent immunity to the disease soon
changed as a result of human conflict. According to Italian chroni-

336
 1320: The Black Death

cler Gabriele de Mussis, a dispute broke out one day between local
Turkish Muslims, or Tatars, and merchants from Genoa, Italy, who
had established a trading post near the city of Kaffa (today called
Feodosiya) on the Crimea. When fighting erupted, the Genoans re-
treated to their walled compound nearby and managed to keep their
enemy at bay for months. The stalemate broke when the Black Death
arrived and killed Tatars in great numbers. Distraught by their mis-
fortune, the Muslims reportedly catapulted the corpses of their dead
comrades into the Genoa compound to share the disease with their
Christian enemies. Though modern scientists think it is unlikely
that the Plague could be spread in this way, the volley of corpses
prompted the Genoans to escape in their galley ships and head for
friendlier ports in the West. They took with them the Black Death,
presumably brought aboard by infected rats.
The returning Genoa ships, along with other seagoing vessels ply-
ing the trade routes, most likely introduced the disease to the various
populated ports of the Aegean and the Mediterranean. Within a year,
the disease swept through the Middle East, Arabia, Corsica, Sardinia,
Sicily, and Africa. Muslim pilgrims making their way to Mecca may
have helped spread the disease through the Islamic world. Genoese
ships also arrived in the Sicilian port of Messina in October, 1347. On
the ships were infected sailors. Though the terrified people of Mes-
sina drove the vessels away, the disease managed to infect the local
human and rodent populations before departure. Soon, the resi-
dents of Catania, a nearby town, also began to die, and within weeks
the disease raged across Sicily.
The Black Death next entered Italy through its many seaports and
fishing villages. Millions of Italians, already weakened by famine,
earthquakes, civil strife, and severe economic problems, quickly suc-
cumbed to the pestilence as it rushed across the peninsula. Venice
lost 600 people a day during the worst of the disease; ultimately an es-
timated total of 100,000 Venetians died. As many as 80,000 may have
perished in Siena. Matteo Villani, a plague survivor, estimated that 3
out of every 5 died in Florence.
The disease soon went beyond Italy. In 1357, it entered the port
of Marseilles and swept through France, Europe’s most populated
country. In Narbonne, 30,000 died. The Plague destroyed half the
population of Avignon, and in Paris 50,000 were killed. Within

337
1320: The Black Death

An illustration of bubonic plague from a medieval Bible.

months the north and west of France also lay in the grip of the
Plague. Mortality in many villages and towns often exceeded 40 per-
cent. Next, the Low Countries (today Belgium, Luxembourg, and the
Netherlands) became infected. By this time, Spain, Switzerland, Aus-
tria, Germany, and Hungary also suffered.
During the summer of 1348, while the Plague ravaged continental
Europe and many other areas of the world, the English Channel
seemed to offer a protective barrier to those living in the British
Isles. Their security was breached in August, however, when plague-
bearing ships finally arrived in England at the ports of Weymouth
and Melcombe. Soon, Dorset, Devon, Somerset, and other settle-
ments in the south of England were hit. Within months the disease
had moved northward to London, where as many as 100,000 eventu-
ally died. By the summer of 1349 East Anglia and Yorkshire were also
infected.
For a short while, many Scots welcomed the Plague as a divinely in-
spired punishment sent to strike down their enemy, the English.
However, such wishful thinking soon vanished when the disease
swept into Scotland. It also spread into Wales and made its way to Ire-

338
 1320: The Black Death

land. Before the year ended, infected ships reached Sweden and
Norway, where the pneumonic form of the Plague may have de-
stroyed 50 percent of the population. According to some accounts,
the Black Death even reached Scandinavian settlements in Iceland
and Greenland. The Plague also raced eastward and infected vast ar-
eas in Russia that had not yet been infected.
No place seemed safe from the Black Death. Outbreaks of the dis-
ease occurred in cities, towns, and villages throughout most of the
known world. Though the rich were less likely than the destitute to
contract the disease, all social classes suffered catastrophic losses. Ev-
erywhere, people died horrible deaths in their homes, on the streets,
and in the fields. Animals died as well: Dead rats, dogs, cats, and live-
stock lay rotting alongside odiferous human cadavers. The living
were horrified to see rats, vultures, crows, and wolves devouring the
diseased bodies of beasts and humans alike.
By 1352, the worst of the Black Death was over, but the disease had
not gone away forever. Instead it had become endemic to most coun-
tries it had struck. This new ecological situation meant that the
plague recurred many times well into the eighteenth century. When
it struck again in 1361 and killed a disproportionate number of the
young, it became known as the “Pestilence of the Children.” Wher-
ever and whenever the plague took root, stunned survivors struggled
to understand the calamity that had overwhelmed them.
The Search for Answers. From every land came a host of ex-
planations of why and how the Plague had come into being. Many re-
ligious leaders claimed God sent the disease as a punishment for the
sins of humanity, such as avarice, usury, adultery, and blasphemy.
Others blamed the devil or an antichrist. Even the most learned
minds of Christendom and Islam believed in astrology during the
fourteenth century, and many scholars cited astrological influences
as causes of the disease. When asked by Pope Clement VI to explain
the presence of the Black Death, an esteemed panel of doctors in
Paris concluded that a conjunction of the planets Saturn, Mars, and
Jupiter at 1 p.m. on March 20, 1345, caused the disease.
Phantoms were also accused of spreading the Black Death. Among
them was an apparition called the Plague Maiden. Many panic-
stricken Europeans claimed to have witnessed her ghostly form sail-
ing into one home after another to spread her deadly contagion.

339
1320: The Black Death

Some believed the Black Death materialized when frogs, toads, and
reptiles rained down on earth. Priests in England insisted that im-
moral living and indecent clothing fashions were responsible. Comets
were also blamed. The fourteenth century French surgeon Guy de
Chauliac believed sick people spread the Plague merely by looking at
another person.
Inordinate fear generated by the Black Death also produced theo-
ries based on hatred and hysteria, which resulted in massive scape-
goating and persecution. Witches, Gypsies, Muslims, lepers, and
other minorities were often accused of starting the Plague and were
killed by crazed mobs. The worst abuses, however, were reserved for
Europe’s Jewish population, a religious minority that had long faced
persecution in Europe. Despite condemnation from the papacy,
mobs in Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and parts of Cen-
tral Europe tortured, hanged, and burned alive tens of thousands of
Jews in revenge for allegedly spreading the disease with secret poison-
ous potions. Though political leaders in a few countries such as Po-
land and Lithuania offered sanctuary to Jews, most civil authorities
either did nothing to protect them or officially authorized the mass
executions.
Others, meanwhile, sought more rational explanations for the
presence of the pestilence. Basing their opinions on the ideas of an-
cient Greeks, many Christian and Muslim physicians of the four-
teenth century suggested that bad air brought on contagion. This
contamination was believed to have been caused by foul odors re-
leased by earthquakes, decaying corpses on battlefields, or stagnant
swamps. Fogs and winds from the south were also suspected of pro-
ducing plagues. Many medieval physicians also subscribed to another
ancient Greek teaching, which claimed that illness resulted from an
imbalance of the four humors—phlegm, blood, black bile, and yel-
low bile—-believed to have made up the human body. At special risk,
according to many physicians, were poor people whose “bodies were
replete with humours.”
Medieval Preventives and Cures. Balancing the humors in
the body through corrective dieting was one preventive measure un-
dertaken by Europeans. Many people also burned pleasant-smelling
woods, such as juniper and ash, to produce counterbodies in the air
to ward off the Plague. Rosewater and vinegar solutions also were

340
 1320: The Black Death

used to purify household air. Women often held bouquets of flowers

to their noses to counteract bad air. Birds were allowed to fly free in
some homes to keep the air stirred up and free of the Plague; bowls of
milk and pieces of bread were also left out in various rooms with the
hope of soaking up bad air.
Medieval physicians told their patients to shun more than bad air.
They also recommended avoiding hot baths, sexual intercourse,
physical exertion, daytime slumber, and excessive consumption of
deserts. On the other hand, diets of bread, nuts, eggs, pepper, on-
ions, and leeks were recommended to ward off disease. Antiplague
pills were also available and consisted of dozens of substances, rang-
ing from saffron to snake meat and various toxins. Europeans were
also urged to keep their minds healthy and sound as the Plague ap-
proached. Physicians advised others to purge their minds of all ideas
of death and to think only pleasant thoughts.
Another fourteenth century theory held the opposite view and
contended that bad air should be counteracted with something foul.
Accordingly, some Europeans bathed in urine or menstrual blood or
deliberately inhaled the fumes of fecal matter to fumigate themselves
of any plague-causing agents.
In addition to these preventive measures, medieval physicians re-
lied on common medical procedures of their day to cure those
stricken by the Black Death. Because medical knowledge was limited
to mostly inaccurate theories from the ancient world rather than re-
search and experimentation, their efforts invariably failed. Nonethe-
less, doctors practiced their craft the best they could. Many bled their
patients to alter the balance of humors in a sick or dying person.
Some punctured buboes to release evil vapors or applied dead toads
or poultices directly to these swellings to absorb toxins. Muslim physi-
cians treated the buboes with cold water. Above all, doctors urged
their patients to pray for good health.
Spiritual Weapons. The appeal to prayer found a receptive au-
dience among most fourteenth century Christians and Muslims, who
put more faith in their religious beliefs and institutions than any-
thing their physicians had to offer. Both private and group prayer
were rendered constantly to gain heavenly favor during the Black
Death. In addition, religious pilgrimages, the construction of new
shrines, and public processions of piety became commonplace at-

341
1320: The Black Death

tempts to gain spiritual strength in the fight against the Plague. Chris-
tians and Muslims also donned special religious charms to protect
themselves. Not all clerics tried to stave off the Plague, however. Many
stressed an acceptance of God’s will. Muslim religious leaders, for ex-
ample, often taught that fleeing the Plague was futile, if not contrary,
to divine plan. Allah, they said, was responsible for all things, includ-
ing pestilence.
Sometimes, the panic-stricken took spiritual matters into their
own hands. Many Christians dug up graves of various Catholic saints
to obtain relics of skull fragments or bones believed to have anti-
plague powers. Others launched spiritual crusades against the dis-
ease. The biggest such campaign was the Flagellant Movement, which
emerged in Germany and spread into France and the Low Countries.
Detached from the Catholic Church, the movement urged atone-
ment for personal sins and an end to the Plague through public acts
of penitence and self-debasement. Members of the movement were
called Flagellants because of the flagella or barbed whips they used to
lash their naked backs in mass public demonstrations carried out in
churchyards or town centers.
Sometimes numbering in the tens of thousands, the Flagellants
marched on bare feet from one community to the next debas-
ing themselves with whips, praying, singing, and seeking forgiveness
before the eyes of thousands of onlookers. At times, their exhibi-
tions also became fiercely anti-Semitic and resulted in mob violence
against local Jews. Convinced the Flagellants were heretical and
usurping Church authority, Pope Clement VI eventually ordered an
end to their activities. Secular officials, including the kings of En-
gland and France, equally worried about civil disorder, provided en-
forcement of the papal order, and by 1350 the movement ceased to
exist.
Human Response. Wherever the Black Death raged, terrified hu-
mans responded in various ways. Displays of fear, rancor, suspicion,
apathy, violence, and resignation, along with nobler responses of al-
truism, self-sacrifice, and heroism, all appeared wherever the Plague
struck. Some people faithfully nursed those who lay sick and dying,
while others shunned all Black Death victims and fled. Many, terri-
fied of contagion, refused to tend to even their loved ones; many phy-
sicians and priests abandoned their duties and ran away. Fear even

342
 1320: The Black Death

prompted many to avoid the possessions of the dead and dying. Ac-
cording to Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio in his collection of sto-
ries Decameron: O, Prencipe Galetto (1349-1351; The Decameron, 1620),
many people of Florence isolated themselves from the sick and spent
their time carousing and living lives of wild abandon until death
came or the disease went away. Similar behavior was reported in
other plague-stricken cities.
The Black Death caused panic and social breakdown wherever it
struck. Merchants closed shops. Trade ceased. Construction projects
halted. Crops and livestock were abandoned. Even some churches
closed their gates to keep away terrified mobs. The English Parlia-
ment shut down twice during the worst days of the Plague. Though
many civil authorities died or fled the disease, most governments did
not entirely cease to function. Hard-pressed to maintain a semblance
of law and order, those left in charge of civil matters often passed
antiplague ordinances. Some of these decrees were designed to fight
the Plague by improving public moral behavior to please God. Au-
thorities in Tournai, France, for example, ordered men and women,
who lived together outside of matrimony, to marry at once. They also
banned swearing, playing dice, and working on Sundays. Medieval of-
ficials also imposed travel bans and quarantines on travelers to re-
duce contact with the infected. In many places, the sick were forced
into buildings hastily designated as Plague hospitals, where they in-
variably died. Authorities in Milan took even more drastic measures
by ordering laborers to seal up homes of Plague victims, entombing
both the alive and the dead.
Disposal of the dead became a logistical nightmare for both
church and civil authorities. Because most European Catholics be-
lieved Christian burials in consecrated graves were necessary for sal-
vation, church graveyards quickly filled. As a result, grave diggers, if
they could be hired, hastily dug new mass graves, into which corpses
were unceremoniously dumped. In many communities, only the ab-
ject poor and released criminals were willing to nurse the dying or
bury the dead. In Italy, for example, slaves from galley ships were
freed and ordered to undertake these tasks. All too soon, however,
the new class of grave diggers—called the Becchini—took advantage
of their newfound freedom and robbed, raped, murdered, and ex-
torted the living. Civil authorities, exhausted by death and desertion

343
1320: The Black Death

within their own ranks, were often too weak to control the Becchini
and their counterparts in other cities and towns.
Aftermath. Humanity had never before witnessed such a mas-
sive death toll as that of the Black Death. According to a study com-
missioned by papal authorities, the Plague killed more than 24 mil-
lion Europeans. Throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, the
Plague killed anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of local populations.
Some scholars estimate that as many as 1 out of every 3 died through-
out the Muslim Empire. Although exact figures will never be known,
and many may have been exaggerated by shocked survivors of the dis-
ease, most modern historians agree the impact of untold millions of
human deaths caused great trauma among the living. Some scholars,
in fact, suggest that the widespread mental suffering caused by the
Plague paralleled that of the world wars of the twentieth century.
Many people responded to the pestilence by becoming more pi-
ous, in an attempt to appease God and keep such a calamity from re-
curring. Religious faith for others, however, was shaken or destroyed
by the horrors of the Black Death. Many disillusioned Christians
failed to understand how a loving god they had worshiped had failed
to protect them from the terrors of the Plague, nor could they readily
forgive the priests who had fled and failed to administer last rites to
dying Christians.
Some disenchanted Christians, including religious reformers such
as England’s John Wyclif and Bohemia’s Jan Hus, openly questioned
many Church doctrines and practices and may have paved the way for
the Protestant Reformation two centuries later. Others rejected Chris-
tianity altogether and joined various new cults based on mysticism or
even satanic beliefs. Though the Catholic Church remained a power-
ful institution in Europe, its authority was forever weakened.
The Black Death also brought about other major changes. Ac-
cording to many firsthand reports, outbreaks of immorality, crime, vi-
olence, and civil breakdown followed in the wake of the Black Death.
In addition, a preoccupation with death and the macabre expressed
itself in many areas. Young people, for example, in many plague-
stricken areas began to socialize in graveyards, where they danced
and played games, as if to flaunt their indifference to death. Various
folk dances that emphasized death also appeared in parts of Europe.
The death dance also became a popular subject for artists and writers

344
 1320: The Black Death

who concentrated on the ghoulish and inescapable aspects of dying.

Although cities and towns were growing, a majority of Europeans
lived as feudal peasants or poor urban laborers when the Black Death
first struck. This situation began to change in the wake of the Plague,
however. The massive loss of life caused by the disease produced a se-
vere widespread labor shortage that ultimately benefited the working
poor. For one thing, the dearth of workers caused a rise in wages and
gave laborers more negotiating power with employers and greater
mobility than they had ever had before. Farm workers, artisans, and
workers of all types no longer felt obliged to adhere to fixed working
conditions imposed by a ruling nobility. In response to the newfound
economic strength of workers, the ruling classes imposed various
sumptuary laws both to prevent chaos and to control inflation gener-
ated by rising wages. Some of these new laws set wages and fined any
employer who violated the restrictions, but many others were estab-
lished primarily to maintain distinctions among the social classes.
Some of these rules, for example, attempted to control what kinds of
clothes and food the poor could buy to prevent them from trying to
imitate their social superiors. Though often effective, the sumptuary
laws proved unpopular and hard to enforce.
Despite such attempts to maintain the old order, the shake-up
caused by the Black Death helped to dismantle many of the centuries-
old assumptions, traditions, and institutions of medieval Europe. The
changes wrought by the Plague also lead to widespread questioning
of the social and economic order that had existed in Europe for cen-
turies. This assault on the old manner that had benefited a privileged
class of nobles and the Church for centuries now opened the door
for the coming of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the mod-
ern age.
John M. Dunn

For Further Information:

Benedictow, Ole J. The Black Death, 1346-1353: The Complete History.
Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 2006.
Byrne, Joseph P. The Black Death. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
2004.
Cantor, Norman F. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the
World It Made. New York: Perennial/HarperCollins, 2002.

345
1320: The Black Death

Herlitly, David. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Horrox, Rosemary, trans. and ed. The Black Death. Manchester, En-
gland: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Karlen, Arno. Man and Microbes: Disease and Plagues in History and
Modern Times. New York: Putnam, 1995.
Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death,
the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. New York: HarperCollins,
2005.
Nohl, Johannes. The Black Death: A Chronicle of the Plague Compiled from
Contemporary Sources. Translated by C. H. Clarke. London: Unwin
Books, 1961.
Orent, Wendy. Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the
World’s Most Dangerous Disease. New York: Free Press, 2004.

346
■ 1520: Aztec Empire smallpox
epidemic
Epidemic

Date: 1520-1521
Place: Tenochtitlán, Aztec Empire
Result: 2 to 5 million dead

S panish conquest and colonization of Mexico began in

1519 when Hernán Cortés was ordered by Diego Veláz-
quez, governor of Cuba, to command an expedition to the mainland
of Mesoamerica. The smallpox epidemic of 1520-1521 figured im-
portantly in the unlikely conquest of an empire of millions by a much
smaller force of Spaniards accompanied by their Native American al-
lies. Landing on the Yucatán peninsula, Cortés marched inland, col-
lecting allies en route to the capital of the Aztec Empire, Tenoch-
titlán, where he took the emperor, Moctezuma II, prisoner. In 1520,
Cortés left Tenochtitlán, leaving some of his men behind to hold the
city, in order to meet an expedition on the coast sent by Velázquez,
who suspected the ambitious Cortés of exceeding his orders. Cortés
convinced these forces to join him rather than arrest him, and he re-
turned to Tenochtitlán. He found a capital where the Indians were in
the throes of rebellion against the Spanish. In June of 1520 the Aztecs
succeeded in repelling the Spanish. Few Spaniards survived la noche
triste (the sad night). Cortés and the remainder of his troops re-
treated to Tlaxcala to rebuild his fighting forces.
Meanwhile, a smallpox epidemic was proceeding from Yucatán to
Tenochtitlán. A soldier who had an active case of smallpox came with
the expedition to arrest Cortés. According to some chroniclers his
name was Francisco Eguia. He infected Indians with the viral disease,
and it was quickly spread from person to person and from village to
village, progressing rapidly from the coast to the interior. The disease
was reported to have arrived in April or May of 1520; it spread inland
from May to September, and it reached Tenochtitlán in September
or October.

347
1520: Aztec Empire smallpox epidemic

The effects of the outbreak in America were far greater than were
experienced during an outbreak in Europe during the same period.
The susceptibility of the American Indians compared to the Spanish
can be accounted for by the fact that this disease was unknown to
them. The Aztecs had no specific word in their language for smallpox
and usually described it in their writings by its characteristic pustules.
In Europe the disease had been extant for centuries, and when it re-
appeared there were usually many persons who were immune be-
cause of previous exposure. In contrast, the Indian population was
extremely vulnerable to the disease. There were no immune persons
in the population, and the people were highly homogeneous geneti-
cally, which meant that the virus did not have to adapt to various ge-
netic makeups to be successful in infecting the host. In addition, the
first outbreak of a disease within a group is generally the most severe.
This disease wreaked disaster on the indigenous population. It is
estimated that one-third to one-half of the population died during
the epidemic. In contrast, only about 10 percent of a European popu-
lation died in an outbreak in the sixteenth century. Because all seg-
ments of the population in America were vulnerable, there were few
healthy caregivers to sustain the sick. In addition, many rulers were
struck down. In Cortés’s letters to the king, he reported that he was
asked by many Indian groups who were allied with him against the Az-
tecs to choose a leader to replace someone who had died of smallpox.
Most important, the epidemic reached Tenochtitlán at a crucial
moment in history. The Aztecs had forced Cortés to retreat, but dur-
ing his time of rest and rebuilding he sent spies into Tenochtitlán to
determine the strength of his opponents. He learned that the Aztecs
had been struck down with smallpox and were greatly weakened. At
times, the disease struck so many persons that no one in a family was
able to give care to the others, and whole families died, not only of
smallpox but also of thirst and starvation. Homes were destroyed with
the corpses inside to diminish the fetid odor wafting through the
once-great city. Bodies were thrown into the water, offering a wretched
sight of bloated, bobbing flesh. Warriors who survived were weakened
by the disease, and their chain of command was compromised. The
emperor named to replace Moctezuma died of smallpox. The loss of
continuity and experience in leadership greatly weakened the ability
of the Aztecs to mount a defense against the Spaniards.

348
 1520: Aztec Empire smallpox epidemic

Having replenished his forces, Cortés struck Tenochtitlán again in

May of 1521, and within months he had conquered the seat of the Az-
tec Empire. Debate continues over the role of the smallpox epidemic
in this conquest. Cortés did not give it much weight in his chronicles,
but Indian chronicles of the time emphasize its importance. The year
1520 is called the year of the pustules, according to Aztec chronicles.
Though there is great disagreement among historians over the num-
ber of deaths and the importance of the smallpox epidemic in the
conquest, there is no doubt that this epidemic was one of the most se-
rious disasters in Mexico in the sixteenth century.
Bonnie L. Ford

For Further Information:

Crosby, Alfred, Jr. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Con-
sequences of 1492. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
Glynn, Ian, and Jenifer Glynn. The Life and Death of Smallpox. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
McCaa, Robert. “Spanish and Nahuatl Views on Smallpox and Demo-
graphic Catastrophe in Mexico.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary His-
tory 25 (Winter, 1995): 397-432.
Noble, David Cook. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-
1650. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

349
■ 1657: The Meireki Fire
Fire
Also known as: The Furisode Fire, the Great Edo Fire
Date: March, 1657
Place: Edo (now Tokyo), Japan
Result: More than 100,000 dead

T he city of Edo, located where the eastern part of the

central city of Tokyo stands today, became the most im-
portant city in Japan at the start of the seventeenth century. In the
year 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated other daimyos (provincial mili-
tary governors) at the Battle of Sekigahara. Tokugawa established
himself as shogun (hereditary military dictator) of Japan, with his
headquarters in Edo. Although the emperor of Japan remained in
the ancient capital city of Kyoto as the symbolic ruler, the Tokugawa
shogunate retained all political power until 1867.
Like all Japanese cities of the time, Edo was built of wood. Fire was
always a potential hazard. The first official fire-defense system in Ja-
pan was established by the shogunate in 1629. At first, the shogunate
employed a small number of resident daimyos to protect important
sites within the castle and the family shrines of the shogun. By 1650,
this system, known as the daimyo hikeshi, was expanded to include
firefighters who watched over the residences, shrines, and temples of
the daimyos who lived near the castle. This new system was known as
the jobikeshi.
The Meireki Fire took place in March of 1657, the third year of the
Meireki era. A year of drought had left the wooden buildings of Edo
particularly vulnerable to fire. In addition, a wind blowing from the
northwest at hurricane speed ensured that a fire would spread rap-
idly throughout the city. Because the fire was thought to have been
caused by the burning of a furisode (young girl’s kimono) during an
exorcism ceremony, it was also known as the Furisode Fire.
The fire began in the Hommyoji Temple in the Hongo District of
Edo. It quickly spread to the Kanda District, then south to the Kyo-
bashi District and east to the Fukagawa District. Zacharias Waganaer,

350
 1657: The Meireki Fire

Kuril
Islands

CHINA RUSSIA
HOKKAIDO
Sapporo

NORTH
KOREA
Sea of
Japan North
Pacific
J A PA N Ocean
SOUTH HONSHU
KOREA Kyoto Tokyo
Nagoya
Kobe
Hiroshima
Yokohama
Osaka
SHIKOKU
Nagasaki
KYUSHU
East
China
Sea
s

d
an
Isl
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ky
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Okinawa

a Dutch trader who left an eyewitness account of the fire, reported

that the heat from the flames could be felt from a quarter of a mile
away. He described the approaching wall of fire as a mile wide, with
sparks falling from it “like a strong rain.” The sun was completely
blocked out by the huge amounts of black smoke.
The next day, the wind changed direction. The fire spread north
to the Kojimachi District, destroying the houses of the servants of the
daimyos. Soon the flames spread to the homes of the daimyos who
lived near the castle, burning them to the ground. The castle itself

351
1657: The Meireki Fire

suffered extensive damage. Although the inner section was saved,

much of the outer section was destroyed. The castle’s central tower,
about 200 feet tall, was lost and never rebuilt.
By the end of the third day, the wind and the flames decreased, but
the smoke was so thick and the city so full of ruins that it was difficult
to move from place to place for several days. Meanwhile, those who
had lost their homes in the fire faced severe winter weather. More
than 100,000 people lost their lives to the fire, either directly or as a
result of exposure to the snowstorm that struck the city the day after
the fire. When movement was possible again, the dead were loaded
on boats and transported up the Sumida River to the suburb of
Honjo. Here they were buried in large pits as funeral prayers were re-
cited by monks of many different sects. A memorial temple, known as
the Ekoin, was built on the site and remained until the twentieth cen-
tury.
The shogunate responded to the disaster by setting up medical fa-
cilities and distributing food and money to those left homeless. The
rebuilding of the city took two years and depleted the shogunate’s
treasury. The commercial sections of Edo were the first to be rebuilt,
in an effort to restore the economy. The houses of the resident dai-
myos were not rebuilt; instead, the daimyos were sent back to their
home provinces. The restoration of the castle was the last task to be
completed. In an elaborate ceremony, the shogun entered the new
castle in 1659.
The devastation caused by the fire led to reforms in fire preven-
tion. During the rebuilding of Edo, the width of roads and the spac-
ing of houses were standardized, in order to ease movement during
an emergency. Special fire lanes were constructed at various intersec-
tions to allow for rapid motion. Laws were passed forbidding the
common practice of stacking surplus goods along the banks of rivers,
in an attempt to prevent fires from spreading by way of these large
piles of flammable objects. The Ryogoku Bridge was built across the
Sumida River in 1660, both to allow the city to expand and to ease
movement across the river. Wide streets were placed on both sides of
the bridge, in order to prevent fires from spreading to it. In 1718, vol-
unteer firefighting units made up of commoners were organized in
Edo. This system was known as the machi hikeshi. This system, which
eventually included more than 10,000 volunteers, served as the main

352
 1657: The Meireki Fire

defense against fire in areas where the common people lived until
the late nineteenth century. In 1868, when the emperor regained
power from the shogunate, the daimyo hikeshi and the jobikeshi systems
were disbanded, and the machi hikeshi system was reorganized into
companies of firefighters known as the shobogumi. The shobogumi were
placed under the control of the police in 1881, renamed the keibodan
in 1939, and renamed the shobodon in 1947. In 1948, the first inde-
pendent, professional fire departments in Japan were created.
Rose Secrest

For Further Information:

Kornicki, Peter. “The Meireki Fire.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Japan, edited by Richard Bowring and Peter Kornicki. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
McClain, James L., John M. Merriman, and Ugawa Kaoru, eds. Edo
and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.
“Meireki Fire.” In Encyclopedia of Japan. New York: Kodansha, 1983.
Naito, Akira. “The Great Meiriki Fire.” In Edo, the City That Became To-
kyo: An Illustrated History. Translated by H. Mack Horton. Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 2003.
Sansom, George. “The Great Fire of Meireki.” In A History of Japan,
1615-1867. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1963.

353
■ 1665: The Great Plague of
London
Epidemic

Date: May-December, 1665

Place: London, England
Result: Approximately 100,000 dead

P lague in England was a constant visitor for many centu-

ries. The Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century
had killed off between one-fourth and one-third of the country s pop-
ulation. In London, before the devastating Great Plague of 1665,
there were serious epidemics in 1593 that killed 15,000; in 1603,
33,000; in 1625, 41,000; in 1636, 10,000; and in 1647, 3,600. In the in-
terval between 1603 and 1665, there were only a few years in which
London did not record any plague deaths.
Reasons for the Plague. In 1665, London was a city of fewer
than 500,000 people. The core of this vast metropolis was the city it-
self, the historic area of about 1 square mile still enclosed by an im-
pressive wall. Surrounding the city were growing suburbs, where
most of the poor lived under wretched conditions. It is not known
what brought the plague to London, but it is likely that it either came
from abroad—perhaps from Holland, which experienced a terrible
plague the previous year—or was already endemic to England and
waiting for favorable conditions to break out. The Bills of Mortality,
the official statistics that recorded deaths in London, reveal only 3
deaths from plague in the first four months of the year, but plague
deaths jumped to double digits in May, and for the first time there
was widespread concern about the plague. By the end of June, the
weekly total had risen to 267; the plague was definitely spreading.
Unfortunately, neither the civic authorities nor the medical pro-
fessionals had any knowledge of what the plague was or how it was
transmitted. In fact, it was not until 1894 that the bacillus that caused
the disease was isolated, discovered almost simultaneously by two sci-
entists working independently of each other, Swiss bacteriologist

354
 1665: The Great Plague of London

Alexandre Yersin and Japanese physician Shibasaburo Kitasato. It was

given the name Pasteurella pestis (later Yersinia pestis), and eventually
the method of transmission was also discovered. It was carried by the
black rat, which in turn infected fleas. Unfortunately, the black rat
was a sociable creature that lived comfortably with human beings,
and this close proximity made it easier for fleas to transfer themselves
from the rats, which became plague victims, to nearby human hosts.
The reason the plague was most ferocious in the summer months
was likely due to the fact that rat fleas tended to flourish in hot
weather. The type of plague that afflicted London was the bubonic
variety, characterized chiefly by the telltale buboes that appeared on
the body of victims, large swellings about the size of eggs that ap-
peared in the joints, groin, armpits, and neck. The disease had an in-
cubation period of usually two to five days, and the victim suffered
from fever, chills, weakness, and headaches, eventually becoming le-
thargic or delirious. Bubonic plague had a death rate of 50 to 90 per-
cent.
At the time of the plague, London was a filthy, unsanitary city, made
up mostly of dilapidated, unventilated wooden dwellings, fronted by
open sewers masquerading as streets and having no proper methods
for disposal of garbage and human waste—in short, an ideal environ-
ment for rats. Conditions were most appalling in the suburbs, and
the plague broke out in one of the worst slum areas, St. Giles-in-the-
Fields, eventually spreading eastward, as well as to the south and west.
By the end of July the weekly plague figure had risen to over 1,800
victims, but the deadliest moments of the epidemic were in August
and September, when the total plague deaths exceeded 46,000. In
late October, the figures began to decline noticeably, and by the first
week of December only 210 deaths were recorded. For the entire
year, the official total was 68,596, of which the ravished suburbs ac-
counted for 85 percent of the deaths. In general, this was a “poor
man’s plague” and a suburban phenomena. As alarming as these fig-
ures were, scholars believe the death toll was seriously undercounted,
and a more likely total is about 100,000. Still, the plague lingered,
and in the following year over 1,700 died. It was not until 1670 that
London recorded no plague deaths for the entire year.
Methods of Containment. A series of events conspired to make
the death tolls even higher than they should have been, since the au-

355
1665: The Great Plague of London

thorities often took measures that were counterproductive. For ex-

ample, civic authorities mistakenly believed that dogs and cats may
well have carried the disease, and officials ordered their extermina-
tion, resulting in the killing of tens of thousands of the creatures. Yet
these were the very animals that could have possibly checked the rat
population.
The most disastrous decision was to invoke a quarantine as the
principal method of containing the plague. Authorities decreed that
any house containing a case of plague was to be closed and locked,
with all the residents sealed inside. Armed watchmen guarded the
house to ensure that no one escaped from the infected dwelling. The
door of the house was painted with a large red cross with the words
“Lord Have Mercy upon Us” inscribed on it. This action simply guar-
anteed that the plague would likely spread to everyone trapped in-
side, and it was common for entire families to perish, one member af-
ter the other. In retrospect, a more successful policy would have been
to separate the infected from the uninfected, perhaps by transferring
all the infected to the local pesthouse or other such building, thus
isolating the sick from the healthy.
Authorities believed that the contagion was carried in the air.
Therefore, the city officials decreed in early September that fires
should be burned throughout London, and for three days the city’s air
was fouled by a heavy pall of suffocating smoke and a terrible stench
until rains mercifully doused these fires. Individuals had their own
remedies for fighting the plague but all too frequently relied upon
quack potions, amulets, charms, and mystical signs and numbers.
Aftereffects. London still managed to function during the
plague, however imperfectly, despite the fact that the king, his court,
and parliament fled the city for safety reasons. Among the few heroes
to emerge from this period otherwise filled with much cowardice and
stupidity were the Lord Mayor Sir John Lawrence and several of the
city’s aldermen. During the plague, they ensured a steady supply of
food from the surrounding farmlands, kept prices from rising, pre-
vented any riots, and raised money, mostly from private charities, to
offer assistance to an increasingly destitute population.
A bureaucracy of sorts was established to cope with the demands
of the plague. Watchmen were appointed to guard the infected
houses. Nurses lived in the infected dwellings and administered to

356
 1665: The Great Plague of London

A victim of the plague shows physicians the bubo under his arm. (Library of
Congress)

the needs of the sick. However, this dangerous and depressing work
was done only by the truly desperate, who quickly established a repu-
tation for venality and callousness, frequently misusing their position
to steal from their patients and even expedite their deaths.
Perhaps the most notorious workers were the “searchers,” people
who were to visit the houses of the deceased and establish the cause
of death. This dangerous job was usually taken only by elderly impov-
erished women, who were often ignorant, illiterate, and corrupt. Fre-
quently, they either misdiagnosed the cause of death or were bribed
to attribute the cause of death to something other than the plague, so
that family members could leave the house immediately and not be
placed under further quarantine. Other unfortunates pushed their

357
1665: The Great Plague of London

carts through the city during the night in order to collect those who
died, shouting “Bring out your dead” to announce their arrival.
Gravediggers, who were almost overwhelmed at times by the tide of
thousands of people dying weekly, frequently had to dig mass pits
into which bodies, nude or wrapped in sacks or cloths, were tossed,
without the dignity of a coffin or proper burial service.
Economic Results. London was economically devastated during
the plague. Commercial activity almost vanished from the city. Shops
were closed, the houses of the wealthy were shuttered, and many
dwellings were kept under quarantine. Even the port of London, one
of the most active in the world, saw deserted docks and little cargo,
with foreign ships fearing to sail to this plague-infested destination
and foreign customers reluctant to accept London goods that might
be contaminated.
When the nobility and the professional classes fled the city by the
tens of thousands, they often dismissed their workers or servants
from employment. Newly impoverished, these unemployed sought
cheap housing, which meant they were forced to live in the very sub-
urbs that had the highest death tolls, thereby providing the human
fodder that fed the deadly toll. There was a dramatic decline in hu-
man interaction. The authorities either forbade or discouraged large
gatherings of people, whether in churches, alehouses, funerals, or
inns. London, once one of the most noisy, bustling, and industrious
of cities, became strangely silent and largely devoid of human activity.
The Last Plague. This was the last major plague epidemic to af-
flict London. The question of why a plague never struck London
again is one of the great historical mysteries. Although a precise an-
swer has confounded both the historical and the medical professions,
there are a number of possible explanations. First, it has been argued
that the Great Fire of 1666, which burned almost the entire city
within its ancient walls, destroyed the plague by burning the old un-
sanitary wooden city and killing off the rats in the process. However,
this does not explain why the plague did not return to the unsanitary
suburbs, which were untouched by the Great Fire.
Another popular explanation is that the brown or Norwegian rat
supplanted the black rat as the chief urban rodent. Unlike its prede-
cessor, the brown rat tended to avoid human contact, preferring sew-
ers, garbage dumps, and other areas free of human beings. This may

358
 1665: The Great Plague of London

have eventually been an important component in containing the

plague, but the brown rat did not supplant the black rat immediately
after 1665. Rather, the displacement occurred over a period of sev-
eral decades, thereby not accounting for the era before it became
dominant. There are also medical theories concerning how human
beings may have developed immunities to bubonic plague or that the
plague’s bacillus had mutated into a more benign form, but these
ideas are considered suspect by medical authorities.
Perhaps the most persuasive explanation emphasizes measures
undertaken by public authorities. Central governments around the
globe developed sophisticated methods of isolating their nations
from plagues by strict quarantines imposed upon ships and cargoes
from infected regions of the world. Also, societies witnessed impor-
tant developments in the areas of public health and standards of pub-
lic sanitation. Over a period of decades and centuries, people have
become healthier, water supplies purer, housing more sanitary, re-
fuse collection more efficient, and disposal of human waste more ef-
fective. All these measures have made cities healthier and safer places
to live. Undoubtedly, it was a combination of several of the above ex-
planations that have helped modern society escape the horrors that
London experienced in 1665.
David C. Lukowitz

For Further Information:

Bell, Walter George. The Great Plague in London. Reprint. New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1994.
Butler, Thomas. Plague and Other “Yersinia” Infections. London: Ple-
num Medical Books, 1983.
Cowie, Leonard W. Plague and Fire: London, 1665-6. New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1970.
Moote, A. Lloyd, and Dorothy C. Moote. The Great Plague: The Story of
London’s Most Deadly Year. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2004.
Mullett, Charles F. “London’s Last Dreadful Visitation” and “The
Plague of 1965 in Literature.” In The Bubonic Plague and England.
Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956.
Orent, Wendy. Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the
World’s Most Dangerous Disease. New York: Free Press, 2004.

359
■ 1666: The Great Fire of London
Fire
Date: September 2-6, 1666
Place: London, England
Result: 8 dead; 13,200 homes destroyed; 87 churches destroyed; 44
livery halls, 373 acres within the city walls, and 63 acres outside the
city walls burned; more than 100,000 people left homeless; be-
tween 6 and 10 million British pounds in damage

T he Great Fire of London, which raged from early Sun-

day morning, September 2, 1666, until early Thursday
morning, September 6, 1666, was regarded by many contemporaries
as the worst catastrophe in London’s history. Coming shortly after
the Great Plague of 1665 and during the Second Anglo-Dutch War
(1665-1667), the fire caused substantial changes to be brought to
London. Because much of older, medieval London was destroyed—an
area 1.5 miles long by 0.5 mile wide—400 streets ceased to exist, and
major landmarks such as St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Ex-
change burned, a major rebuilding project overseen by prominent
architect Christopher Wren was undertaken. New regulations and
strict building codes were implemented that aimed to prevent future
conflagrations. Some have argued such massive destruction and the
rebuilding of London was a factor in the prevention of additional
outbreaks of the plague.
Background. During the 1600’s there were a number of substan-
tial fires in London and throughout England. Fires in London in
1630 consumed 50 houses; in 1633 the houses on London Bridge
plus 80 more burned; and a gunpowder fire in 1650 killed 27 people,
destroyed 15 homes, and severely damaged 26 more. Provincial fires
proved to be much more damaging: In 1644, 300 houses burned in
Oxford; in 1653, 224 houses in Marlborough; in 1659, 238 houses in
Southwold; and in 1665, 156 houses in Newport, Shropshire. The
danger of fire was ever-present from household fires; clogged chim-
neys; and from the businesses of tradesmen, such as bakers, brewers,
blacksmiths, and chandlers. No fire departments existed, and fire-

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fighting equipment was primitive by modern standards. Leather

buckets for carrying water, fire hooks for pulling down buildings, lad-
ders, axes, brooms, and “water engines” and “water guns”—devices
for drawing water from wells, rivers, ponds, and aqueducts and spray-
ing the fire—were of some use.
London, the largest city in the British Isles and the second largest
in Europe, with a population of about 350,000 to 400,000, occupied
458 acres within the city walls and sprawled beyond the walls into the
“out parishes” or suburbs. In April, 1665, King Charles II wrote to the
lord mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bludworth, and the aldermen of
the city, warning them of the danger of fire due to buildings over-
hanging the streets. He authorized them to imprison people who
built overhanging dwellings and to tear the buildings down. Many su-
perstitious people had feared that the year 1666 would bring disaster
because of the number 666, which was viewed as a sign of the Anti-
christ mentioned in the biblical book of Revelation, and there were
many predictions issued by self-proclaimed prophets about London’s
destruction as a result of God’s judgment.
The Fire. The fire started in the house of the king’s baker,
Thomas Farriner (also spelled Farrinor or Farynor), between 1 and 2
a.m. Sunday morning on September 2, 1666, on Pudding Lane near
London Bridge, in what is now EC3 in modern London. The streets
in this part of London were congested and narrow, wide enough for
only a wheelbarrow. Farriner’s family escaped the fire by climbing
out an upper-story window to the roof of the next-door building. A fe-
male servant’s fear of heights prevented her from using this escape
route, and she became the first fatality. Wood-frame buildings with
pitch on their roofs and combustible materials, such as flax, rosin, oil,
tallow, wines, brandy, and other alcoholic beverages, in warehouses
on Thames Street fueled the fire, which was blown westward toward
the center of the city by a strong wind. Samuel Pepys, the famous dia-
rist, was awakened by Jane Birch, his female servant, at 3 a.m. to see
the flames, but he was not concerned by the fire some distance from
his residence.
Initially, the fire spread slowly, and most people were able to re-
move their belongings from their houses. Some ferried them down
the Thames River and were charged exorbitant prices; others stored
them in churches, only to have to move them again or lose them as

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1666: The Great Fire of London

London during the Great Fire of 1666, from a print by Visscher. (Robert Chambers)

the fire spread more extensively than anyone could have imagined.
Lord Mayor Bludworth was awakened and surveyed the scene around
3 a.m. and concluded that it was not serious. An inoperative “water
engine” near the scene, low water levels, and the failure to pull down
nearby buildings allowed the fire to continue to spread. Some con-
temporaries said that an alderman opposed pulling down the build-
ings because his home would have been one of the first to be de-
stroyed. The occurrence of the fire on a Sunday caught officials off
guard and added to the confusion.
Rumors spread quickly that the fire had been deliberately set by
Catholics or foreigners, such as the Dutch or French, and London
mobs began assaulting immigrants. A French Huguenot watchmaker,
Robert Hubert, later “confessed” to having set the fire. Although his
story was full of inconsistencies and changed repeatedly, he was con-
victed and hanged in October, 1666.
The fire spread throughout Sunday; the streets were clogged with
people fleeing and with household goods. The Thames River became
crowded with sightseers on boats and goods floating in the river. The
sound of crackling flames, crashing buildings, occasional explosions,
and peoples’ cries filled the air. King Charles II and his brother,
James, duke of York, alerted by Pepys, arrived on the scene and began
to supervise and assist the firefighting efforts, as did William Lindsay,

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earl of Craven, who had stayed in London during the Great Plague
the previous year.
People from the countryside came to London with carts and wag-
ons to make money by helping to transport peoples’ belongings.
Some charged £30 for use of a cart, and thievery was commonplace.
Some contemporary eyewitnesses were critical of citizens for being
more concerned with saving their household belongings than with
attempting to extinguish the fire. People rendered homeless by the
fire began to congregate in large open spaces and fields in Moor-
fields, Finsbury and Islington, and Highgate in the north and St.
Giles Fields and Soho in the west. Citizens of different social classes,
along with whatever possessions they could transport, crowded into
these areas. The fire’s impact was unlike that of the plague the previ-
ous year; the plague killed the poor, while the rich had fled. The fire
destroyed the property of both the rich and the poor.
Although the fire had advanced only 150 yards east of Pudding
Lane to Billingsgate, damage caused by the northern and westward
movement of the fire started to become substantial. Citizens had
been reluctant to pull down buildings to create a firebreak because of
ordinances requiring people to pay to rebuild any structures pulled
down. Eventually, sailors and watermen from the Thames River be-
gan pulling down houses with ropes and using gunpowder to blow up
buildings. Samuel Pepys was concerned enough by Sunday evening
to move his money into his cellar and to have his gold and important
papers ready to carry away if flames threatened his home. At about 4
a.m. Monday, September 3, Pepys moved his belongings in carts while
riding in his nightgown. By Sunday’s end, the fire had burned half a
mile westward along the Thames.
The fire’s spread on Monday, September 3, continued to cause as-
tonishment, and it seemed as if the air itself had been ignited, with
the sky resembling “the top of a burning oven,” according to diarist
and eyewitness John Evelyn. He also noted that the Thames was still
choked with floating goods, boats, and barges loaded with all manner
of items. Charles II, concerned about a possible breakdown in law
and order and the lack of success in stemming the fire’s spread, estab-
lished eight “fire posts” throughout the city, with the duke of York in
charge. These posts, under the command of a nobleman assisted by
justices of the peace and constables and supported by soldiers, pro-

363
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vided for the protection of property and were a symbol of authority in

that chaotic time. Coleman Street in the east; Smithfield, Adlersgate,
and Cripplegate to the north; and Temple Bar, Clifford’s Inn Gar-
dens, Fetter Lane, and Shoe Lane in the west were the locations of
these posts. Militia from the counties surrounding London were
called up to be ready to assist.
Hopes that the fire might be stopped along the Thames at Bay-
ard’s Castle, a large, tall stone structure, were dashed, as this building
burned and the fire continued to move westward along the river. The
portions of the city along the river that had been destroyed were the
poorer ones, but as the conflagration remained unchecked it began
to consume some of the wealthiest portions, including Lombard
Street, where many merchants, bankers, and goldsmiths plied their
trade. Most of these individuals moved their valuables, primarily
money and bonds, to Gresham College much more easily than could
the tradesmen who had bulky goods and materials stored in ware-
houses along the Thames. The most important structure lost to the
flames on Monday was the Royal Exchange, the principal location in
London for trading commodities, such as pepper and silk. The one
bright spot on Monday was the halt of the fire at Leadenhall, a mar-
ketplace for grain and poultry products, in what would be EC2 in
modern London, which marked the extent of the fire to the north
and east. Although the financial center of London had been burned,
its relocation along with the city government to Gresham College to
the north was a positive development that provided for a semblance
of financial and political stability.
The worst day of the fire was Tuesday, September 4. Contempo-
raries living in the countryside reported that the red glow of the fire
could be seen 10 to 40 miles away at night, and residents of Oxford,
60 miles to the west, noted that the smoke obscured the daytime sun-
light. A strong east wind blew embers, spreading the fire rapidly. The
Guildhall in the north burned, and the fire jumped the city walls and
moved into the out parishes. The Fleet River, which ran to the
Thames to the west of the city walls, was regarded as a potential fire-
break, but the flames leaped across it and continued westward.
St. Paul’s Cathedral, the most prominent landmark in London,
burned, along with 150,000 British pounds worth of books that book-
sellers had moved into its basement for safekeeping. Eyewitnesses re-

364
 1666: The Great Fire of London

ported that chunks of stone between 20 and 100 pounds fell from the
cathedral, and lead from its roof melted into the streets. The Exche-
quer (national treasury) was moved to Nonesuch, Surrey, and the
Queen Mother, Henrietta Maria, moved to Hampton Court, west of
London.
The Tower of London was spared because the nearby buildings
had been blown up, preventing the fire from reaching it. Had fire
reached the stores of gunpowder in the Tower, a tremendous explo-
sion would have resulted. Samuel Pepys and William Penn, father of
the founder of Pennsylvania, dug holes in their gardens to bury their
wine and cheese, believing that this would preserve them. Charles II
and the duke of York helped to man water buckets and shovels and
scattered gold coins among the workers as payment for their effort.
Such actions helped elevate popular opinion of the monarchy.
Late Tuesday night the wind began to drop. Because of the abate-
ment of the wind and demolition work, the fire began to be con-
tained on Wednesday, September 5. The Temple, one of the Inns of
Court (law school), was the last significant structure to burn. Rumors
spread throughout London that the French and Dutch, 50,000
strong, had landed in England and were marching on London. Such
notions were fueled by the fact that the postal service from London
had been disrupted, and newsletters that were routinely sent to the
provinces had stopped, causing puzzlement and suspicion. By Thurs-
day, September 6, when dawn broke, the fire ended after it reached
its furthest border at Fetter Lane in the west, where brick buildings
halted the flames, Cock Lane in the north and west, and All Hallows
Church, Barking, in the east.
Pepys noted that it was “the saddest sight of desolation” that he
ever saw. Citizens who walked through the city noted that the ground
was hot enough to burn the soles of their shoes; ash was inches deep,
and debris was piled up in mounds. Fires smoldered in basements for
weeks and even months, and acrid odors permeated the air.
Aftermath. On Wednesday, September 5, 1666, Charles II issued
two royal proclamations to begin the process of recovery from the di-
saster. In order to feed the displaced and homeless, the king ordered
local magistrates to bring bread to London. He also had markets set
up throughout the city and let people store their goods in public
places. The second proclamation urged the inhabitants of surround-

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ing towns to accept refugees and allow them to practice their trades.
On Thursday, September 6, the king went to Moorfields to address
the thousands of refugees there and to explain that the fire was the
judgment of God—not a conspiracy of Catholics, the French, or the
Dutch. Charles II ordered 500 pounds of navy sea biscuits, or “hard-
tack,” released for the refugees to eat, but the food was too dense for
the people who were not used to it. Army tents were used to house
the homeless, who also had built makeshift huts or had slept out in
the open.
Another significant problem was sorting out the owners of the
personal effects, household belongings, business papers, and wares
that had been quickly deposited at several locations throughout the
city. In the hope of recovering additional misplaced or stolen items,
amnesty was declared for people who might have taken property ille-
gally or by mistake. Scavenging among the ruins yielded items that
were relatively undamaged or at least usable, especially precious and
base metals that had melted. Although some merchants had no hope
of such finds, the loss to booksellers was probably the most spectacu-
lar. Estimated at £150,000, it represented total ruin for a number of
prominent merchants, and many scarce and rare titles were de-
stroyed, leading to a substantial increase in the price of certain desir-
able volumes. Some contemporaries claimed that the price of paper
doubled after the fire.
Another commodity that rapidly increased in price was coal, espe-
cially as cold weather would be coming in the following months; ac-
cusations of price gouging were common. Because of the massive de-
struction of housing and the large number of homeless people,
competition for housing space was fierce, and rents quickly esca-
lated, as they did for tradesmen seeking to relocate their businesses.
Because of the massive destruction, which left only a few recogniz-
able landmarks standing, people had a completely clear view of the
city from west to east, and the Thames River could be seen from
Cheapside in the center of the city. The rebuilding of London was a
daunting undertaking that started slowly. The London Common
Council ordered inhabitants to clear the debris from the streets.
Tradesmen and craftsmen were resettled, city offices were relocated,
churchwardens were to report those who were in need of assistance,
and donations came in from wealthy citizens who were either spared

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by the fire and from other cities. Because most charitable contribu-
tions for other previous disasters had come from London’s citizens,
the collection of donations was rather modest—£16,201 coming
from collections in 1666 and 1668. Some provincial cities were con-
cerned that the source of money to aid their plague victims would be
reduced because that money had come from London, which was now
in dire straits itself.
Rain on Sunday, September 9, helped dampen the embers, and
contemporaries noted that the attendance at church was greatly in-
creased. Ten days of heavy rain in mid-October brought additional
misery to the homeless but helped extinguish remaining hot spots.
On Monday, September 10, Charles II ordered Wenceslaus Hollar,
the prominent landscape designer, and Francis Sandford, a historian
and author, to make a survey of the city, and their report formed the
basis for most of the statistical information about the extent of the
damage caused by the fire. Their work was completed and published
later in 1666 and showed a before-and-after perspective to visually in-
dicate the extent of the destruction. The king issued another royal
proclamation on Thursday, September 13, 1666, mandating rebuild-
ing with brick and stone and allowing authorities to pull down houses
built contrary to regulations. Streets were to be wide and a wharf,
which was to be free from houses, was to run along the Thames River.
October 10 was established as a day of fasting by royal proclamation.
Also on that day, contractors or surveyors were appointed to prepare
a list of all the properties destroyed and their owners or renters in
preparation for delineating the path and layout of streets.
Within days of the end of the fire, several influential citizens, in-
cluding John Evelyn and Christopher Wren, had submitted plans for
rebuilding the burned area. Town planning was developed as a more
serious undertaking in the seventeenth century, and the fire and
such widespread physical damage in a major city offered an unprece-
dented opportunity to put it to the test. Wren was appointed Deputy
Surveyor of His Majesty’s Works, and he drew up a plan for rebuild-
ing London, which improved access to London Bridge, developed a
wharf from the Temple to the Tower along the Thames, set the Royal
Exchange as the center of town, and redesigned St. Paul’s Cathedral
and 51 other churches.
Legislation established a special fire court, which first met on Feb-

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ruary 27, 1667, to settle disputes over land, rents, and rebuilding. The
judges’ verdicts were final, and they did not have to abide by ordinary
court procedures. They could even order new leases and extend exist-
ing ones. The Rebuilding Act (1667) provided for the seizing of any
land not built upon after three years and its sale to someone who
would rebuild. Four types of houses were permitted: two-story houses
built on lanes, three-story houses on streets, four-story houses on
larger streets, and four-story “mansion houses” for wealthy citizens.
For each style of home the thickness of walls and heights from floor to
ceiling were specified. Guild regulations were set aside in order to fa-
cilitate rebuilding, and wages and prices of materials were fixed. The
revenue for supporting this law was to be financed by a tax on coal of 1
shilling per ton, which was raised in 1670 to 3 shillings per ton. This
was London’s first major set of building codes.
Despite regulations and legislation, the actual rebuilding went
slowly because of the increased cost resulting from the specifications
set forth in the codes and the disputes that arose over the widening of
streets, which caused a loss of property or a reduction in the size of
property. Other factors that caused delay were the difficulties in ob-
taining building materials such as lead, timber, brick, tile, and stone.
This did open up new trade opportunities in the Baltic Sea area, a
major producer of timber. By 1667 the streets had been laid out, but
only 150 houses had been rebuilt. Almost 7,000 had been completed
by 1671, although as late as the 1690’s there were fewer houses in
London than before the fire. An important development in the
rebuilding was Charles II’s laying of the first stone for the recon-
struction of the Royal Exchange on October 23, 1667, which was
completed by September, 1669, when the merchants occupied it.
Ironically, the Royal Exchange was destroyed by fire again in 1838.
Another major project was the straightening of the Fleet River and
the building of quays on its banks, which became the location for nu-
merous warehouses. The monument to the fire, a 202-foot high
Doric column of Portland stone, was erected between 1671 and 1677
and stood 202 feet from where the fire started. An inscription that
blamed the fire on Catholics was removed during the reign of Catho-
lic king James II (ruled 1685-1688), the former duke of York. The re-
building of St. Paul’s Cathedral began in 1675 and was completed in
1710.

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A number of positive developments resulted from the Great Fire.

It destroyed a substantial portion of a very unsanitary city, fire insur-
ance was developed, new fire equipment was purchased, and fires re-
ceived quicker responses. The London Common Council developed
a plan that divided the city into four fire districts, each of which was to
provide buckets, ladders, axes, and water engines. In addition, the
various merchants’ companies were to store firefighting equipment.
Such plans were copied by other English towns and cities, and Lon-
don’s redesign influenced the layout of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
and Savannah, Georgia, in the United States.
Mark C. Herman

For Further Information:

Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Edited by E. S. DeBeer. Oxford,
England: Clarendon Press, 2000.
Hanson, Neil. The Great Fire of London: In That Apocalyptic Year, 1666.
Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Edited by Robert Latham
and William Matthews. Berkeley: University of California Press,
2000.
Picard, Liza. Restoration London. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Porter, Roy. London: A Social History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1995.
Porter, Stephen. The Great Fire of London. Phoenix Mill, Gloucester-
shire, England: Sutton, 2002.
Tinniswood, Adrian. By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire
of London. New York: Riverhead Books, 2004.

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■ 1669: Etna eruption
Volcano
Date: March 11, 1669
Place: Sicily, Italy
Result: More than 20,000 dead, 14 villages destroyed, 27,000 home-
less

F or three days in March of 1669, earthquakes shook Sic-

ily’s Mount Etna. Such seismic activity was not unusual.
People who lived on the slopes of Sicily’s highest mountain had ex-
perienced them frequently before, but they were aware that such
tremors often preceded what they most feared: a devastating and cat-
astrophic eruption of the smoldering volcano, whose frequent erup-
tions date to prehistoric times.
On March 11, 1669, the worst fears of the peasants who lived near
the towering mountain became realities. Etna exploded in a series of
eruptions stronger than anyone then alive could remember. The sky
blackened as ash from the explosions rose toward the stratosphere.
Debris fell over the eastern half of Sicily, even making its way well up
into the southern Italian province of Calabria, across the Strait of
Messina.
The eruptions were not confined to a single day. Two weeks after
the first series, on March 25, the sky was still ominously dark and ash
was falling everywhere. A wide river of molten lava was flowing relent-
lessly down Etna’s south side, glowing orange in the subdued atmo-
sphere. It hungrily devoured everything in its path, wiping out 14 vil-
lages in its course. Directly in the volcano’s path lay the seaside town
of Catania, whose population of about 20,000 people made it one of
Sicily’s largest cities. It lay just over 18 miles (29 kilometers) from
Mount Etna’s summit, and its sole protection against the oncoming
lava flow were the city’s defensive walls that dated back to the feudal
era and surrounded the city.
These walls would prove useless against an adversary as enormous
as the river of fire now lumbering toward the ill-fated town. By the
time Etna returned to a quiescent state, it had reduced Catania’s pop-

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ulation from 20,000 to about 3,000. Another 3,000 people who lived
in villages on Etna’s slope died, mostly from suffocation, as the nox-
ious fumes from the hot lava engulfed them.
A Towering Giant. On a clear day, nearly everyone in eastern
Sicily can see Mount Etna, rising almost 11,000 feet above sea level
and towering over the plain below. The highest active volcano in Eu-
rope, it dominates the eastern half of Sicily, which is Italy’s largest is-
land. Sicily is situated to the east and slightly to the south of Italy’s

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toe. A mere 2 miles across the Strait of Messina directly across from
the town of Reggio in Calabria, Sicily was in prehistoric times a part of
Italy’s land mass. As the oceans rose, however, it came to be separated
from what is now the lower part of the Italian mainland.
Mount Etna, named Aitne by the ancient Greeks and Aetna by the
ancient Romans, is classified as a greenhouse type of volcano. Such
volcanoes constantly belch gases out into the atmosphere, with Etna
sending more than 25 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air
above it every year. These emissions contribute significantly to the
phenomenon of global warming. The typical products of the green-
house type of volcano, besides carbon dioxide, are methane, ozone,
nitrous oxides, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapor.
The first recorded eruptions of Etna occurred in 475 b.c.e. They
were noted and described in some detail by both the poet Pindar and
the dramatist Aeschylus. Since then, over two hundred eruptions
have been documented, but none so great or so devastating to hu-
man life as the one that occurred in 1669.
Mount Etna covers a substantial geographical area, a total of some
460 square miles. The Catania plain that lies below it is the largest
lowland in Sicily. Around Etna’s base runs a railway. Small villages
and terraced fields in which vegetables are grown still dot its slopes.
From the cone of the volcano, the area around which is usually cov-
ered with snow, rise thin ribbons of smoke. Travelers ascending the
mountain first pass through cultivated areas, where produce grows
well in the rich, volcanic soil available on the mountain’s lower two-
thirds. At higher levels, pine forests extend almost to the top of the
mountain, where the landscape becomes more bleak and where
strong winds usually blow and snow often falls.
The Looming Threat. Rumblings that occurred on Etna on
March 8, 1669, alerted those who lived on its slopes to a possible
eruption. Those who lived in villages below the volanco’s summit had
frequently experienced such rumblings in the past. They were con-
cerned by them but generally were not unduly alarmed. They had
survived such seismic activity before and had continued to grow their
produce in the fertile soil that Etna’s previous eruptions, dating to
prehistoric times, provided for them.
It was three days before Etna finally erupted, with a force that had
not been equaled by any of the previous recorded eruptions. Lava

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flows began to course down the mountain, hot rivers of molten lava
that obliterated everything in their paths. Pine forests were quickly
leveled. Small settlements disappeared, often with most of their in-
habitants. Suddenly, the south side of the huge mountain turned into
a cauldron of intensely hot molten rock that slid down its sides and
seemingly could be stopped only by the Ionian Sea, which stretched
out to the east of Catania. The flow continued for more than two
weeks, resisting every effort to thwart it.
Trying to Divert the Lava Flow. Desperate peasants whose
dwellings were in villages that lay in the path of the great river of fire
now advancing down the mountain had no defenses against the fiery
onslaught. The air they breathed was poisoned by the fumes that rose
from the volcano. Most fell helpless upon the ground, unable to
breathe. They usually were dead before the molten lava reached their
prostrate bodies.
The city of Catania, which from ancient times had endured Mount
Etna’s eruptions, was now threatened as it seldom had been before.
Although some of the city’s populace took the few possessions they
could carry and tried to flee before the lava reached the city walls, a
stalwart group of 50 men, led by Diego de Pappalardo, sought to di-
vert the course of the flow. These men donned cowhides soaked in
water to protect them from the incredible heat that the flow pro-
duced.
Carrying long iron rods, picks, and shovels, they ascended the
mountain toward the slowly moving flow, which by now had created a
well-defined central channel down the mountainside. High walls of
cooling lava lined the channel through which the molten material
was flowing. Working under extremely adverse conditions in air that
was almost too polluted and fetid to sustain life, this stalwart band of
brave men hacked an opening in one of the high lava walls, thereby
diverting the flow of material down the central channel through
which the molten lava was heading relentlessly toward Catania.
This heroic act of civil engineering appeared to be working. The
flow in the central channel diminished considerably as a new chan-
nel formed outside the break in the lava wall. Keeping that break
open, however, became a major problem. The Catanians were jubi-
lant at the seeming success of their prodigious efforts, but their jubi-
lation was short-lived.

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Almost immediately, a group of 500 desperate citizens from the vil-

lage of Paterno, noticing that the newly created flow was aimed di-
rectly at their village, assaulted the Catanians, forcing them away
from the breaches in the lava walls that they had created with such
great difficulty. Soon these breaches filled in, and the molten lava re-
sumed its inexorable course down the central channel.
A consequence of the assault of the infuriated people from Pa-
terno on the Catanians was the issuance of a royal decree stating that
in the future no one was to interfere with the natural flow of molten
lava from a volcano. Anyone doing so was to be held responsible for
any damage that ensued from such efforts. This decree, in effect
since 1669, was officially ratified in the nineteenth century by the
Bourbon monarchy then in command. It was in force until 1983,
when another eruption caused advanced engineering efforts to be
employed in order to minimize the damage. The law was suspended
so that these efforts could be carried out.
Actually, opening vents in the lava wall was not a viable long-term
solution to controlling the lava flow during the 1669 eruption. At an
elevation of about 2,600 feet, vents had been opened by the Catan-
ians near the village of Nicolosi, but within less than twenty-four
hours, the lava had flowed on and destroyed another village in its
path about 2 miles farther downhill.
A century after the 1669 eruption, the devastating event was still
prominently discussed by scientists. Sir William Hamilton, who pub-
lished what is considered the first modern work on volcanology,
Campi Phlegraei, in 1776, visited Mount Etna before he wrote his book,
drawn there by what he had heard about the devastation in 1669.
The Destruction of Catania. Thirty-three days elapsed be-
tween the eruption of Etna on March 11, 1669, and the arrival of its
lava flow at the feudal gates of Catania. Remarkably few of the city’s
citizens had fled as the oncoming lava approached the venerable
walls, which accounts for the loss of some 17,000 Catanians in the di-
saster that followed.
Typically, as a lava flow proceeds on its downward journey, it builds
up lava walls on both sides but also creates a lava roof, resulting in a
tube through which the molten material passes. The result is that the
lava stays blisteringly hot because it is not exposed to the outside air,
which would reduce its temperature. This is what happened as the

374
 1669: Etna eruption

lava from the 1669 eruption flowed toward Catania and the sea.
This eruption was not the first to devastate Catania. In 1169, an es-
timated 15,000 Catanians were lost when an eruption of Mount Etna
followed a huge tectonic earthquake that leveled most of the build-
ings in Catania and left many people dead in the rubble long before
the lava flows reached the city. This disaster was on a scale compara-
ble to that of the 1669 eruption.
R. Baird Shuman

For Further Information:

Bonaccorso, Alessandro, et al., eds. Mt. Etna: Volcano Laboratory.
Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union, 2004.
Chester, D. K., et al. Mount Etna: The Anatomy of a Volcano. Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985.
Rosi, Mauro, et al. Volcanoes. Buffalo, N.Y.: Firefly Books, 2003.
Scarth, Alwyn. Volcanoes: An Introduction. College Station: Texas A&M
University Press, 1994.
_______. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Sparks, R. S. J., et al. Volcanic Plumes. New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1997.
Sutherland, Lin. The Volcanic Earth: Volcanoes and Plate Tectonics, Past,
Present, and Future. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press,
1995.
Wohletz, Kenneth, and Grant Heiken. Volcanology and Geothermal En-
ergy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

375
■ 1692: The Port Royal earthquake
Earthquake and tsunami
Date: June 7, 1692
Place: Port Royal, Jamaica
Magnitude: X on the Modified Mercalli scale (estimated)
Result: About 3,000 dead, more than 1,000 homes and other struc-
tures destroyed

I n the late seventeenth century, the Jamaican city of Port

Royal was a major trade center for the New World. Situ-
ated on a cay, or small low island, off the Palisadoes sands on Ja-
maica’s southern coast, this Caribbean seaport owed its prosperity
largely to smuggling and plundering. By the 1690’s, Port Royal
boasted at least 6,500 inhabitants and more than 2,000 densely
packed buildings, some of which were constructed on pilings driven
into the harbor.
Formerly a popular haunt for pirates, the city retained a reputation
for hedonism and godlessness. Typical contemporaneous accounts
called it “the most wicked and sinful city in the world” and “one of the
lewdest [places] in the Christian World, a sink of all filthiness, and a
mere Sodom.” Those citizens who warned that Port Royal’s wide-
spread drunkenness, gambling, and debauchery were inviting divine
retribution believed their fears were realized when, in the spring of
1692, a devastating earthquake destroyed most of the city.
Earthquakes were nothing new to Port Royal. Jamaica lies along
the boundary between the Caribbean and North American tectonic
plates and is seismically active. Since 1655, when England captured
Jamaica from Spain and founded the port, settlers had reported
earth tremors almost every year. However, most of these quakes
caused little or no damage. One of the more severe quakes, which oc-
curred in 1688, was large enough to destroy 3 houses and damage
many other structures. The major earthquake that would follow it
four years later was to prove far more destructive.
On Tuesday, June 7, 1692, between 11 a.m. and noon, a series of
three strong earthquakes struck Port Royal within a period of a few

376
 1692: The Port Royal earthquake

minutes. After the third and most severe quake, a large tsunami
pounded the seaport, snapping the anchor cables of ships moored in
Kingston Harbor, smashing those ships nearest the wharves, and
pouring into the city. In this case, not the crest but the trough of the
tsunami struck land first, pulling out the harbor waters, then sending
them back to finish off the town. The tsunami submerged half the
town in up to 40 feet of water, pulling down what remained of the
structures, causing hundreds more fatalities, and capsizing the ves-
sels at anchor in the harbor.
One of Jamaica’s two warships, the HMS Swan, had recently had its
ballast removed during maintenance; the tsunami tossed this rela-
tively light ship from the harbor into the middle of town and depos-
ited it upright on top of some buildings. Such a ride through the city
would have revealed streets littered with corpses, of those killed by
both the quake and the tsunami, and those washed out of tombs by
the waves. While the ship’s masts and rigging were lost and its can-
nons dislodged, the Swan remained intact enough to serve as a ref-
uge for more than 200 people who survived the devastation by cling-
ing to the boat.
Multiple eyewitness accounts of the disaster describe the earth
swallowing up whatever or whoever stood upon it, leading modern
researchers to conclude that liquefaction played a major role in the
devastation of Port Royal. In liquefaction, a process observed in
loose, fine-grained, water-saturated sands subjected to shaking, the
soil behaves like a dense fluid rather than a wet solid mass. This phe-
nomenon is believed to be what caused “the sand in the streets [to]

Montego Bay
Saint Ann’s Bay

JAMAICA
Port Antonio
Savanna-la-Mar
Mandeville Kingston
May
U.S.A. Atlantic Ocean Spanish Morant
Pen
HISPANIOLA
Town Bay
Port Royal
CUBA PUERTO RICO

JAMAICA
Caribbean Sea
CENTRAL
C a e a
AMERICA r i b S
b e a n
SOUTH AMERICA

377
1692: The Port Royal earthquake

rise like the waves of the sea,” as one witness reported, and many of
Port Royal’s buildings to topple, partially sink, or disappear entirely.
Much of the city’s population was also engulfed by the flowing sands.
The disaster killed roughly 2,000 people in Port Royal and left al-
most 60 percent of the city submerged below Kingston Harbor. Of
those buildings left standing, most were uninhabitable. Two of the
city’s three forts, which had been heavily manned in anticipation of
French attack, sank beneath the harbor. Several ships that had been
moored in the harbor disappeared. Fill material that English settlers
had dumped in the shallow marshy area between Port Royal and the
Palisadoes to connect the cay to the sandspit was washed away. In
Kingston Harbor, the bodies of the drowned floated with corpses the
tsunami tore from the cemetery at the Palisadoes.
The devastation in Jamaica was not confined to Port Royal. In the
settlement of Spanish Town, located 6 miles inland from Kingston
Harbor, almost no buildings were left standing. On the island’s north
coast, roughly 1,000 acres of woodland slid into St. Ann’s Bay, killing
53 Frenchmen. Plantations and sugar mills throughout Jamaica were
damaged or destroyed. The island suffered about 1,000 fatalities in
addition to those killed at Port Royal.
The evening of the disaster, with aftershocks still rattling Port
Royal, pillaging and stealing began among the ruins of the city.
Looters had free run of the seaport for almost two weeks. During this
time, law-abiding citizens took refuge aboard ships in Kingston Har-
bor. With few doctors and limited medical supplies, many of the in-
jured soon died. Still more survivors succumbed to illness spread by
unhealthy conditions aboard the crowded rescue ships. Injury and
sickness claimed about 2,000 more lives in the weeks immediately fol-
lowing the disaster.
Survivors hesitated to return to Port Royal and rebuild. What was
left of the city appeared to be sinking gradually into Kingston Har-
bor, and there was concern that the entire island would slip beneath
the water. Aftershocks large enough to feel persisted for at least two
months after the June 7 disaster, contributing to the people’s doubts
concerning Port Royal’s safety. Members of the Council of Jamaica
(who were in Port Royal for a meeting on the day the quake struck)
and Port Royal’s remaining residents decided to establish a new town
across the harbor, a settlement that later became Kingston.

378
 1692: The Port Royal earthquake

While Port Royal was too important strategically for the English to
abandon entirely, it never regained its importance as a commercial
center. It became primarily a base for the British navy, and for the re-
mainder of Jamaica’s history as a British colony its civilian population
remained small.
Karen N. Kähler and David M. Soule

For Further Information:

Briggs, Peter. Buccaneer Harbor: The Fabulous History of Port Royal, Ja-
maica. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970.
Marx, Robert F. Pirate Port: The Story of the Sunken City of Port Royal.
Cleveland: World, 1967.
Pawson, Michael, and David Buisseret. Port Royal, Jamaica. Kingston,
Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2000.
Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle, and Donald Theodore Sanders. Earthquakes in
Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Seismic Disruptions. Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005.

379
■ 1755: The Lisbon earthquake
Earthquake
Date: November 1, 1755
Place: Lisbon, Portugal
Magnitude: In the 8.0 range on the Richter scale (estimated), X for
the central city and IX for the outskirts on the Modified Mercalli
scale (estimated)
Result: 5,000-50,000 or more dead

D uring the eighteenth century Portugal enjoyed one of

its greatest periods of wealth and prosperity. Gold had
been discovered in its colony of Brazil, which held the largest depos-
its then known of this precious metal. Moreover, extensive diamond
fields were also found there. The greater part of this wealth flowed to
the mother country and concentrated principally in the capital, Lis-
bon.
The population of Portugal was almost 3 million, with about 10
percent residing in Lisbon. This city, on the north bank of the Tagus
River, was situated where the river, flowing from the northeast, bent
gradually to the west and entered the Atlantic. The city was shaped
like an amphitheater. It was flat in its central area, where the ports, to-
gether with the major commercial and royal government buildings,
were located. In the low hills rising and arching around the center
were houses, shops, churches, monasteries, and convents. A magnet
of world trade, the city housed a cosmopolitan population. In addi-
tion, an exceptionally large proportion of its populace were mem-
bers of the Catholic clergy and religious orders.
Quake, Fire, Flood. The serenity and assurance of this city were
irrevocably shaken on November 1, 1755, the holy day of All Saints.
An earthquake of unprecedented strength and consequences struck
the city, leaving it by dusk a broken ruin of its former self. For about
ten minutes during midmorning the earth shook, rolled, and col-
lapsed underneath the city three times. The shaking was so severe
that the damage extended throughout southern Portugal and Spain
and across the Strait of Gibraltar into Morocco.

380
 1755: The Lisbon earthquake

La Coruna
Bilbao

Valladolid
Braga R io D our o
Porto
Salamanca

Covilha
Madrid
Coimbra Tagus River
Atlantic
Ocean SPAIN
PORTUGAL
a
di an
Lisbon Gua
Ri o

Cordoba
Sevilla

Malaga

Strait of Gibraltar
Tangier

MOROCCO

Near the port area, the quake leveled numerous major buildings
and destroyed the royal palace. The king was not, however, in resi-
dence. Many of the city’s over 100 religious buildings were damaged
or leveled. Because it was a holy day and Lisbon was known for its reli-
gious fervor, most churches were filled with morning worshipers.
They were crushed under the crashing walls and roofs. Aftershocks at
almost hourly intervals caused further damage. Indeed, aftershocks
of less frequent intervals but great violence would continue well into
the next year.
Fires began to appear in the city, progressively becoming a general

381
1755: The Lisbon earthquake

conflagration fed by a northeast wind. Lasting for almost a week,

these fires charred part of the outskirts and the entire central part of
the city. Their damage was the costliest because they destroyed the
contents of opulent churches and palaces, consuming paintings,
manuscripts, books, and tapestries.
In a final assault, three seismic waves from the sea struck the cen-
tral harbor and coastal area just before midday. Some of these tsuna-
mis towered at over 20 feet. What the quake had not shaken nor fires
destroyed, water in crashing cascades now leveled. Thus, within a few
morning hours, quake, fire, and flood had destroyed one of the ma-
jor ports of Europe.
Deaths from this destruction were, in the days immediately follow-
ing the events, estimated to be as high as 50,000 or more. A systematic,
contemporary attempt through parish surveys to account for the dead
was unsuccessful due to its uneven application. Modern estimates now
go as low as 5,000 or 15,000 for the fatalities from this disaster.
However, not only death but also fear, hunger, and disease fol-
lowed the destruction. To flee the conflagration and repeated trem-
ors, thousands tried to escape the city for the countryside, struggling
over blocked roads and passages. Prisoners escaped from jails and as-
saulted the living and the dead. Food could not be brought into the
city. The thousands who had been injured but not killed languished
without care, hospitals having been destroyed and caregivers having
fled or been killed. Infectious diseases began to spread.
Rebuilding. The king’s principal minister, Sebastião de Car-
valho, later known as the Marquis of Pombal, energetically took con-
trol of recovery and rebuilding. Public health needed immediate at-
tention. Bodies that had not burned in the fires were collected onto
boats that were sunk in the Tagus. The army was called in to put out
fires and clear streets and passages of debris. Anyone caught stealing
was immediately executed. Prices for food and building materials
were fixed. Field tents for shelter and feeding were erected.
The reconstructors of the city gave priority to replanning its lay-
out. The new plan eliminated the old twisting, narrow streets. The
flat central part of the city was redesigned to have straight streets that
crossed at right angles in a grid pattern. These streets were 60 to 40
feet wide. Near the harbor area a spacious plaza was built, called
Commerce Square.

382
 1755: The Lisbon earthquake

To expedite construction, buildings were prefabricated. The sizes

of doors, windows, and walls were standardized. To protect these build-
ings against future earthquakes, their inner frames were made of wood
that could sway but not break under pressure. The style of building for
these structures was a kind of simple or plain baroque and came to be
known as “pombaline.” These buildings were made according to the
most advanced standards of hygiene so that there was adequate circu-
lation of air and measures for sanitation. Because of the great wealth
that Portugal commanded from its colonies, principally Brazil, Lisbon
and other Portuguese cities recovered relatively quickly.
Consequences. One consequence of the Lisbon earthquake was
that as the result of the extensive rebuilding, the city’s port and cen-
tral area came to be among the best planned and constructed in eigh-
teenth century Europe. Another consequence affected economic
nationalism. Great Britain dominated Portuguese imports of manu-
factured goods. Indeed, much of the wealth that Portugal received
from Brazil passed to English hands due to these purchases of British
goods. To pay for the rebuilding, a tax was placed on the import of
certain British products. This measure sought not only to raise reve-

A 1755 engraving titled The Ruins of Lisbon shows a tent city outside the quake-
ravaged port, criminal activity, and wrongdoers being hanged.

383
1755: The Lisbon earthquake

nue for reconstruction but also to make British goods more expen-
sive and thereby encourage the production of native Portuguese
products at a relatively lower price.
The consequences of the earthquake were felt not only in terms of
engineering and economics but also in theology and philosophy. In
fact, it was in these areas that the quake had its most resonant social
significance. No sooner had the quake struck than the clergy of Lis-
bon began preaching that the disaster represented the wrath of God
striking against the city’s sinful inhabitants. So strong was the fervor
of these preachers that they aroused parts of the populace into par-
oxysms of hysterical fear. This hysteria made dealing with the crisis in
an organized, rational manner difficult. The civil authorities begged
the clergy not to preach such fear, but their admonitions were only
somewhat successful.
Western Europe as a whole was in the midst of a period known as
the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason. Pombal, with his rational, utili-
tarian views of government, was representative of this movement.
Confronting the religious hysteria, reasonable men argued that the
Lisbon earthquake needed to be studied not as a supernatural event
but as a natural one. They demonstrated that thunder and lightning
were known to be natural events, so an earthquake should also be
considered as such. The Lisbon earthquake thus prompted a great
debate between the emerging rational forces of the modern age and
the declining religious emotions of the medieval.
A further philosophical debate also occurred among those who
were followers of the Enlightenment. Many of them believed that in a
reasoned, organized world everything happened for the best. Thus,
they explained that while the earthquake in Lisbon was a horrible di-
saster, it nonetheless resulted in a rebuilt and modernized city.
Others argued that one could not be so sanguine and optimistic
about the world. Among the leading voices of this point of view was
the French philosopher and poet Voltaire. In a long poem written im-
mediately after the earthquake and in a later, famous novel, Candide
(1759; English translation, 1759), he argued that the Lisbon tragedy
proved the existence of irrational, totally unbeneficial evil in the
world.
Voltaire’s hero, Candide, voyages the world, traveling throughout
Europe, America, and Asia, encountering perils and dangers at every

384
 1755: The Lisbon earthquake

corner. He is in Lisbon during the earthquake. Numerous times he

or his friends are tortured or almost killed. People around them lead
miserable lives. He pursues a girl for a love that is ultimately futile. Ac-
companying Candide is a teacher, the philosopher Pangloss, who be-
lieves that everything that happens in the world happens for the best.
Pangloss adheres to this belief to the end of the novel, despite all the
horrors he witnesses. Ultimately, therefore, the reader of Candide
learns that the superficiality and rigidity of the thought of Pangloss
and people like him betray the inherent error of their position.
Voltaire maintained that it was naïve and self-serving to say that
evil was always balanced by good. There were people everywhere who
suffered for no reason and who would never be compensated for
their suffering. He argued that those who believed that everything
that happened was for the best were those who wanted to keep things
as they were, who wanted acceptance of the status quo. Such an atti-
tude ignored those who suffered under the conditions of the present
and failed to respond effectively to alleviate their suffering. If ig-
nored over a long period, such suffering could prove unbearable and
violent. In relation to these arguments it should be noted that less
than half a century after the Lisbon earthquake, the suffering and
outrage of these masses burst forth against the Old Regime in the
French Revolution.
The Lisbon earthquake resounded in Europe not only as a physi-
cal event but also as a cultural one. Its force shook not only the earth
but also men’s minds, in terms of old and new ideas.
Edward A. Riedinger

For Further Information:

Braun, Theodore E. D., and John B. Radner, eds. The Lisbon Earth-
quake of 1755: Representations and Reactions. Oxford, England: Vol-
taire Foundation, 2005.
Brooks, Charles B. Disaster at Lisbon: The Great Earthquake of 1755.
Long Beach, Calif.: Shangton Longley Press, 1994.
Davison, Charles. Great Earthquakes, with 122 Illustrations. London:
Thomas Murby, 1936.
Dynes, Russell Rowe. The Lisbon Earthquake in 1755: Contested Mean-
ings of the First Modern Disaster. Newark: Disaster Research Center,
University of Delaware, 1997.

385
1755: The Lisbon earthquake

Kendrick, T. D. The Lisbon Earthquake. London: Methuen, 1956.

Laidlar, John, comp. Lisbon. Vol. 199 in World Bibliographical Series. Ox-
ford: ABC-Clio Press, 1997.
Mullin, John K. “The Reconstruction of Lisbon Following the Earth-
quake of 1755: A Study in Despotic Planning.” Planning Perspec-
tives 7 (1992): 157-179.

386
■ 1783: Laki eruption
Volcano
Date: June, 1783-February, 1784
Place: Southern Iceland
Result: Gaseous volcanic haze and its effects killed over two-thirds
of the nation’s livestock and caused a year of famine, resulting in
10,000 dead

I celand is an island nation that sits astride the Mid-Atlantic

Ridge in the north Atlantic Ocean. As the ridge and
seafloor spread apart here at the rate of 0.8 inch (2 centimeters) per
year—at the rift where the North American Plate is drifting westward
and the Eurasian Plate is drifting eastward—Iceland is also on top of
a hot spot of magma (molten rock) in the mantle below. It is thus one
of the world’s most volcanically active locations, on an island plateau
formed primarily of basaltic lava rock. It is a land of volcanic fire and
glacial ice, which is regularly reminded of the power and challenge of
natural events—volcanoes, earthquakes, glacial flooding, and severe
weather.
There are over 150 volcanoes in Iceland that have been active
since the last ice age—ending about ten thousand years ago—and
about 30 of them have erupted since settlement of the island, primar-
ily by Vikings of northern Europe, eleven hundred years ago. Iceland
has an eruption, on the average, every five years or so.
The 1783 Eruption. It was here in 1783 that the largest lava
eruption and flow of humankind’s recorded history occurred. This
geologic event devastated the agricultural environment, resulted in
an ensuing famine in which over one-fifth of the nation’s people
died, and even altered the climate of the Northern Hemisphere for a
couple of years. That latter consequence—the effect of volcanism on
climate change—was speculated on for the first time in 1784 by
Benjamin Franklin, then was seriously studied and explained after
the 1980’s, two hundred years later.
In early June of 1783, there were a number of small earthquakes in
the region of the volcano Laki in southern Iceland. Its crater peak

387
1783: Laki eruption

was undistinguished, rising only about 656 feet (200 meters) above its
surroundings. Trending up to the northeast was a volcanic zone of
fractured earth’s crust where the plate-tectonic spreading of Iceland
was inexorably occurring. About 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the
northeast, now under the large Vatnajökull (“Vatna glacier”), was the
occasionally active volcanic region called Grimsvotn.
On June 8, fissures from Laki and extending to the southwest began
erupting lava, which flowed down the Skafta River Valley. There was lit-
tle explosive venting of ash. In the area, fairly remote and sparsely set-
tled, the event was termed the Skaftareldar (“Skafta fires”). Then fissur-
ing and erupting lava appeared from Laki toward the northeast, with
the lava flowing down the Hverfisfljot River Valley. Lava flowed south-
ward as far away as 37 miles (60 kilometers) before cooling enough to
congeal and then solidify to rock. The zone of fissures and the 110 to
115 erupting volcanic craters and vents extended 15 miles (25 kilome-
ters) in total, with Mount Laki about in the middle.
By the time of the cessation of lava flows, eight months later in
February, 1784, the Lakagigar (“Laki craters”) eruption had pro-
duced a volume of basaltic lava of 434,368 cubic feet (12.3 cubic kilo-
meters), mostly erupted in June and July, plus 10,594 cubic feet (0.3
cubic kilometers) of ashfall. The latter is solid-rock equivalent; the ac-
tual volume was about 30,017 cubic feet (0.85 cubic kilometers). That
volume of lava is the largest of any eruption in recorded history. The
volume of ashfall, while only a small part of this event, is itself about
the same as the ashfall from the Mount St. Helens eruption in Wash-
ington State in 1980.
The lava flow covered 217 square miles (565 square kilometers),
to an average depth of 72 feet (22 meters). That volume of lava would
fill Yosemite Valley, California, to a depth of 984 feet (300 meters), or
cover Washington, D.C. (61 square miles), to a depth of 256 feet (78
meters), or the state of Delaware (2,000 square miles) to a depth of
21 feet (6.3 meters). The Icelandic lava field from Lakagigar is now a
jagged, jumbled plain of lava. It is mostly covered by a growth of li-
chens and moss, the only vegetation that can establish itself even af-
ter a couple of centuries because of the northern-latitude climate
and slowness of rock weathering to soil there.
Aftereffects. The massive eruption itself caused no deaths and
little damage. However, it did produce the most severe environmen-

388
 1783: Laki eruption

ICELAND

Grimsvotn
Reykjavik
Lakagigar Öræfajökull

Eldfell Vestmannaeyjar
Surtsey Atlantic Ocean

tal effects, and threat to health and life, that Iceland has experienced
in its one thousand years of documented human history.
The huge lava outpouring of the summer of 1783 was accompa-
nied by some ashfall, which could be carried farther afield to affect
crops and grasslands for grazing. More significant was the enormous
amount of gas vented. The gases included carbon dioxide and water
vapor, as well as unusually large quantities of the toxic gases sulphur
dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chlorine, and fluorine. It is estimated
from chemical analysis of the volcanic products that 130 million to
490 million tons of sulphur dioxide and 5 million tons of fluorine
were released into the atmosphere. Sulphur dioxide reacts with water
vapor to produce sulphuric acid, a prime component of acid rain.
Ejected high in the atmosphere, the result can be a sulphuric acid
aerosol of tiny droplets.
As a result of the gas-rich eruption, a bluish haze or “dry fog” en-
veloped Iceland and drifted eastward over northern Europe for the
winter months. In Iceland, the combination of volcanic ash and gases
stunting grass and ruining pastures and fluorine contaminating the
grass caused grazing livestock to be both starved and slowly poisoned.
Half the nation’s cattle and three-quarters of the horses (used for
transportation) and sheep (used for wool and meat) perished. The

389
1783: Laki eruption

loss of livestock, the damage to croplands, the short growing season

in this northerly climate, and a severe winter combined to produce a
devastating famine in the country. In the next couple of years, 10,000
people died—over one-fifth of the total population of 49,000—from
starvation and disease, as well as the effects of the haze.
As a postscript to the great “haze famine” of 1783-1784, it might be
noted that almost a century later, in 1875, Mount Askja—northeast of
Laki in central Iceland—had an explosive eruption. Its 6.2-mile-
diameter crater showered 70,629 cubic feet of ash over much of east-
ern Iceland. The resulting near-famine prompted many Icelanders
to immigrate to the United States and Canada.
Long-Term and Global Effects. There was to be a more wide-
spread, and unexpected, consequence of the massive 1783 eruption;
it was a precursor to modern discussions of atmospheric conditions
and global climate change. The sulfur-dioxide-produced acidic aero-
sol “dry fog” that reached Europe was more annoying than poison-
ous there, but it was present for much of the summer and fall of 1783.
While it and some ash were carried over Europe by the prevailing
winds—giving Scotland the “Year of the Ashie” and dropping ash
dust in Italy, 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Iceland—haze was
spread as far as central Russia.
Benjamin Franklin was American representative to France and
the court of King Louis XVI from 1778 to 1785. A scientist, as well as
an author, printer, statesman, diplomat, philosopher, and contribu-
tor to the cause of the recent American Revolution and its subse-
quent government, Franklin noted the prevalent blue haze and the
abnormally cold and severe winter in Europe in 1783-1784. He specu-
lated on a possible link between the “smoke” (fine ash and haze), per-
haps being from the Iceland eruption the preceding year, and the
cooling effect it might have on weather. He wrote a paper, “Meteoro-
logical Imaginations and Conjectures,” which was subsequently deliv-
ered for him at a learned conference in Manchester, England, in De-
cember, 1784. It included the following:

During several of the summer months of the year 1783, when the ef-
fect of the sun’s rays to heat the Earth in these northern regions
should have been greater, there existed a constant fog over all Eu-
rope, and a great part of North America. The fog was of a permanent

390
 1783: Laki eruption

nature; it was dry . . . [The rays of the sun] were indeed rendered so
faint in passing through it, that when collected in a burning glass
[lens] they would scarce kindle brown paper. . . . The cause of this un-
usual fog is not yet ascertained . . . whether it was the vast quantity of
smoke, long continuing to issue during the summer from Hecla in
Iceland [Mount Hekla, a well-known volcano not erupting at the
time, is just to the west of the Laki area], and that other volcano which
arose out of the sea near that island [there had been a new volcano
erupt and emerge from the sea off southwest Iceland in the spring of
1783], which smoke might be spread by various winds over the north-
ern part of the world is yet uncertain.

The scenario now understood is that some major volcanic erup-

tions can eject enough sulphur dioxide to produce a sulphate (sul-
phuric acid) aerosol layer into the stratosphere, where it can reside
for months or even a few years. This acts to absorb, or backscatter, the
warming radiation from the sun, so there is less heating of the under-
lying troposphere—our zone of weather. This can result in global cli-
mate cooling in at least a belt of latitudes by a couple of degrees for
many months, and thus in cooler local weather. Volcanic ash can also
help to screen out incoming solar radiation, but except for an ex-
traordinary explosion (such as dust from a large meteorite impact on
Earth) it usually does not rise high enough or last in the stratosphere
long enough to have a significant climate effect.
The Lakagigar eruption may be the most dramatic example in his-
torical time of this connection between volcanically induced atmo-
spheric change and the resulting climate cooling. In addition to the
pronounced cooler winter in Iceland and much of Europe, the win-
ter temperature during 1783-1784 in the eastern United States was 7
degrees Fahrenheit below the 225-year average there.
Similar detectable, but more modest, climate-cooling effects—by
a degree or two for a couple of years, from ash and gas producing a
high-altitude “mist”—were noticed for the eruptions of Krakatau in
Indonesia in 1883, El Chichón in southern Mexico in 1982, and
Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991.
It is believed that the magma for the Laki eruption had migrated
and flowed laterally through crustal cracks opened by the ongoing
tectonic rifting as Iceland spread apart astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

391
1783: Laki eruption

The origin was probably the large active hot spot under the volcano
Grimsvotn, under the Vatnajökull glacier. If the great 1783 Laki erup-
tion had been localized under the glacier, the eruption would have
been much more explosive—producing more ash as well as the gas—
and would have created great ice melting and massive flooding.
In early October, 1996, there was a modest subglacial eruption
near Grimsvotn, not far from the Laki eruption site. This one lasted
for two weeks, caused subsidence of the overlying glacier over a fis-
sure zone about 4.4 miles (7 kilometers) long, and produced a gla-
cier burst of subglacial meltwater that flooded out and caused $15
million in damage to bridges, roads, and utility systems. A similar
event had occurred there in 1938.
Robert S. Carmichael

For Further Information:

Jacoby, Gordon, and Rosanne D’Arrigo. “The Laki Eruption and Ob-
served Dendroclimatic Effects of Volcanism.” In Volcanism and the
Earth’s Atmosphere, edited by Alan Robock and Clive Oppenhei-
mer. Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union, 2003.
Decker, Robert, and Barbara Decker. Volcanoes. 4th ed. New York:
W. H. Freeman, 2006.
Scarth, Alwyn. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Sigurdsson, H. “Volcanic Pollution and Climate—the 1783 Laki Erup-
tion.” EOS/Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, August
10, 1982, 601-602.
Thorarinsson, S. “The Lakagigar Eruption of 1783.” Bulletin Volcano-
logique 33 (1969): 910-927.
Witham, C. S., and C. Oppenheimer. “Mortality in England During
the 1783-4 Laki Craters Eruption.” Bulletin of Volcanology 67 (2005):
15-26.
Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle, and Donald Theodore Sanders. Volcanoes in
Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions. Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.

392
■ 1811: New Madrid earthquakes
Earthquakes
Date: December 16, 1811-March 15, 1812
Place: Missouri; also Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ten-
nessee
Magnitude: Estimated 8.6 (December 16, 1811), 8.4 (January 23,
1812), 8.8 (February 7, 1812), with other quakes estimated up to
7.0
Result: 1,000 estimated dead, 5 settlements and 2 islands destroyed

I n 1811, the New Madrid region encompassed the states of

Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the territories of Mis-
souri, Mississippi, Indiana, and Illinois. Within this sparsely populated
region, the town of New Madrid, Missouri, with a population of about
1,000, dominated boat traffic on the Mississippi River from the mouth
of the Ohio to Natchez, Mississippi. Founded in 1789 by Colonel
George Morgan, New Madrid was the third-largest city between St.
Louis and New Orleans. It was situated at a point where high banks
seemingly would protect it against even the highest flood and at a
point where the current brought river traffic close to the western bank
on which the town stood. Farmers, hunters, and fur trappers came to
the town for supplies; riverboats stopped to buy and sell provisions.
New Madrid County stretched from the Mississippi River to within
30 miles of what would become the Missouri state western border. It
included land 60 miles deep into what became Arkansas. Settlers in
the entire county numbered only 3,200, but census figures did not in-
clude unknown numbers of slaves and Native Americans. These fig-
ures also would not have included isolated hunters and fur trappers.
The Earthquakes. In 1811, scientific knowledge could not have
provided information about the New Madrid seismic zone, which in-
cludes northeastern Arkansas, southeastern Missouri, southern Illi-
nois, western Tennessee, and western Kentucky. The towns of Cape
Girardeau, Missouri; Carbondale, Illinois; Paducah, Kentucky; Mem-
phis, Tennessee; and Little Rock, Arkansas, mark the boundaries of
the zone; only Cape Girardeau existed in 1811. The unique events of

393
1811: New Madrid earthquakes

1811 and 1812 brought this zone, later, to national attention. The
number of earthquakes and tremors, the length of time they contin-
ued, and the geographic area affected made the New Madrid earth-
quakes unique in U.S. history. The sparse population and the ab-
sence of multistory buildings were credited for the low death rate,
about 1,000, during the quakes. In addition, many settlement resi-
dents had moved from log homes into tents after the initial quake.
The death rate, however, may have been far higher than contempo-
rary or later estimates. Deaths among Native Americans, slaves, and
travelers on the Mississippi are not known.
The first tremors were felt about 2 a.m. on December 16, 1811. Ac-
cording to an anonymous New Madrid resident writing to a friend,
the earth moved, houses shook, and chimneys fell, to the accompani-
ment of loud roaring noises and the screams and shouts of fright-
ened people. At 7:15 a.m., a more serious shock occurred.
The shocks would continue. The Richter scale for measuring
earthquake intensity had not been invented, but, in Louisville, Ken-
tucky, engineer and surveyor Jared Brooks devised an instrument to
measure severity, using pendulums and springs to detect horizontal
and vertical motion. Working in Louisville, hundreds of miles from
the probable epicenters, he recorded 1,874 separate shocks between
December 16, 1811, and March 15, 1812. In New Madrid, according
to eyewitness reports, quakes were an almost daily occurrence until
1814. The most violent shocks were felt on December 16, 1811; Janu-
ary 23, 1812; and February 7, 1812. Epicenters for the first two
quakes were probably in northeastern Arkansas, about 60 miles south
of New Madrid; the last was most likely in southern Missouri.
Eyewitnesses reported experiencing nausea and dizziness, some-
times severe, from the constant motion, saying that they could not
maintain their balance during the worst of the quakes. Fissures, some
as long as 600 to 700 feet, appeared in the earth. Various accounts
told of eerie lights, dense smog, sulfurous smells, and darkness at the
time of the quakes. Many pointed to unusual animal behavior before
the quakes. Naturalist John Jacob Audubon, riding in Kentucky, was
one of several people who found that horses refused to move for mo-
ments before the quakes. Bears, wolves, panthers, and foxes ap-
peared in some of the settlements. After the quakes, panicked ani-
mals presented problems.

394
 1811: New Madrid earthquakes

General Geographic Effects. Settlements along the Missis-

sippi River were obliterated by quakes and subsequent flooding or
landslides. Other settlements were abandoned. Little Prairie, Missouri,
was destroyed on December 16, 1811. As water rose, almost the entire
population of the town fled, wading through waist-deep water, carry-
ing children and belongings. They were surrounded by wild animals
and snakes also struggling for their lives. Among humans and animals
alike, the sick and injured had to be abandoned. The Little Prairie ref-
ugees finally reached New Madrid on Christmas Eve, only to find that
town in ruins. New Prairie eventually was entirely flooded by the Missis-
sippi River. Big Prairie, Arkansas, near the later town of Helena, was de-
stroyed the same day, also by flood. Point Pleasant, Missouri, was de-
stroyed by bank slides into the Mississippi on January 23, 1812, and in
January and February, Fort Jefferson, Kentucky, was lost to landslides.
New Madrid itself suffered serious damage from December through
February and was finally obliterated by floods in April and May, 1812.
Decades later, New Madrid was reestablished north of the original
site. Other settlements, such as Spanish Mill, Missouri, were aban-
doned when their economic base was destroyed. As the configura-
tions of river channels changed, Spanish Mill was left without enough
water to run its mill and without direct access to river traffic.
The land was also changed by the formation of many new lakes,
some of them large, during the course of the quakes. These included
Big Lake, on the Arkansas-Missouri border, 10 miles long and 4 miles
wide, and Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee, 65 square miles when first
formed. Native Americans reported that their villages were destroyed
and that many persons drowned in the formation of the lakes. Else-
where, large tracts of ground sank. Near Piney River, Tennessee, 18
or 20 acres sank until treetops were level with surrounding ground;
the same thing happened to a smaller tract on the Illinois side of the
River near Paducah, Kentucky.
Ultimately, the earthquakes were felt over an area of about 1 mil-
lion square miles, including two-thirds of what were then the United
States and its territories. Residents of St. Louis, approximately 200
miles from the epicenter, felt the first shocks around 2:15 a.m. on De-
cember 16, 1811. Windows and doors rattled, some chimneys were
destroyed, and some stone buildings fell. At Natchez, Mississippi, 300
miles south, four shocks were felt on December 16. Tremors were felt

395
1811: New Madrid earthquakes

from Washington, D.C., to Boston, Massachusetts; and from Charles-

ton, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, north to upper Canada
and south to Mexico and Cuba. To the east, considerable damage was
reported in Louisville, Kentucky. In Cincinnati, Ohio, the first quake
tore down chimneys; the quake of February 7, 1812, destroyed brick
walls. Almost 800 miles away, in Washington, D.C., residents woke on
December 16, 1811, to the slamming of doors and the rattling of
furniture and dishes. Dolley Madison, wife of U.S. president James
Madison, was awakened by the shock, which also caused scaffolding
around the U.S. Capitol to collapse. The quakes triggered landslides
in North Carolina, where, at the statehouse in Raleigh, legislators ad-
journed, alarmed by the building’s motion. In Charleston, South
Carolina, clocks stopped, furniture moved, and church bells rang.
During the severe quake of February 7, bells rang in Boston, more
than 1,000 miles from New Madrid.
The River and River Traffic. While damage to the Mississippi
River and to river traffic was probably more severe than to the land it-
self, the extent is unknown. The number of boats, workers, and pas-
sengers and the amount of cargo on the river is impossible to gauge.
Traffic probably was heavy, however, since the Mississippi was the only
efficient means of transportation between the midwestern United
States and the Gulf of Mexico.
Contemporary accounts point to dramatic effects of the earth-
quakes. One anonymous traveler saw violent movement of boats at
the moment of the first quake. As the traveler watched, massive trees
snapped in two. Another, hearing the crash of trees and the scream-
ing of waterfowl, watched as riverbanks began their fall into the
water. Eyewitnesses reported that the water changed from clear to
rusty brown and became thick with debris tossed up from the bottom.
Dead trees shot up from the riverbed into the air. Fissures, opening at
the river’s bottom, created whirlpools; water spouted. The quakes
also created great waves, which overwhelmed many boats. The largest
of the quakes caused the river to heave and boil.
The Mississippi was too dangerous to navigate after dark. River
maps were unreliable; stumps and sandbars could shift. Thus, boats
moored for the night. Those moored to river islands remained rela-
tively safe, but many boats moored to the western shore were crushed
by falling banks.

396
 1811: New Madrid earthquakes

The most terrifying experience occurred on February 7, 1812,

when the most violent of the quakes caused a huge series of waves in
the river, in a phenomenon called a fluvial tsunami. This began about
3:15 a.m., when boats were still moored. Flooding New Madrid, the
tsunami caused the Mississippi to run backward for a period that
seemed, to observers, to last several hours. Lakes were created as the
river poured into newly formed depressions, and thousands of acres
of forest were dumped into the turbulent water.
The quake created temporary waterfalls, one about half a mile
north of New Madrid and the other 8 miles downstream. A boatman,
Captain Mathias Speed, had experienced the tsunami. Forced to cut
his boat loose from the sinking bar to which it was moored, he found
himself moving backward up the river. Safe on shore, he watched the
disastrous effects of the waterfalls. River pilots had no way to antici-
pate the new hazards. Speed and his men counted 30 boats going
over the falls. Twenty-eight capsized in the three days before the falls
vanished as the river bottom settled. Those on shore could do noth-
ing except listen to the screams for help. There were few survivors.
The first of the quakes, however, helped prove the value of steam-
boats. The New Orleans, commanded by Nicholas Roosevelt, was mak-
ing its initial Mississippi River voyage in December of 1811. Provided
with 116 feet of length, a 20-foot beam, and a 34-cylinder engine, as
well as intelligent navigation, the boat arrived safely at New Orleans,
despite the pilot’s despair because all the normal navigation markers
of the river had vanished. Since no one along the river had previously
seen steam-driven craft, some blamed the subsequent disasters on
the steamboat.
By the end of the quakes, the configuration of the river was al-
tered. Many small islands vanished without a trace. Of the larger is-
lands, some several miles in length, two were lost. Island No. 94,
known as Stack or Crows Nest Island, inhabited by river pirates, disap-
peared on December 16, while island No. 32, off the Tennessee
shore, disappeared on the night of December 21 while the New Or-
leans was moored there. Elsewhere, dry land became swamp, and
wetlands were uplifted and dried. Smaller rivers that had flowed into
the Mississippi were diverted, the shape of New Madrid Bend was
changed, and three inlets to the Mississippi were destroyed.
Betty Richardson

397
1811: New Madrid earthquakes

For Further Information:

Bagnell, Norma Hayes. On Shaky Ground: The New Madrid Earthquakes
of 1811-1812. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
Fuller, Myron L. The New Madrid Earthquake: A Scientific Factual Field
Account. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1912.
Logsdon, David, ed. I Was There! In the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-
1812 (Eyewitness Accounts by Survivors of the Worst Earthquake in Amer-
ican History). Nashville: Kettle Mills Press, 1990.
Page, Jake, and Charles Officer. The Big One: The Earthquake That
Rocked Early America and Helped Create a Science. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 2004.
Penick, James, Jr. The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812. Rev. ed.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981.
Stewart, David, and Ray Knox. The Earthquake America Forgot: 2,000
Temblors in Five Months. Marble Hill, Mo.: Guttenberg-Richter,
1995.

398
■ 1815: Tambora eruption
Volcano
Date: April 5-11, 1815
Place: Sumbawa, Indonesia
Volcanic Explosivity Index: 7
Result: 92,000 dead

T ambora is located on Sumbawa Island near the eastern

end of the Indonesian archipelago. For at least five
thousand years prior to its great 1815 eruption, the volcano had ex-
hibited only minor activity. This prolonged dormant period, how-
ever, set the stage for what is, to date, the world’s largest known his-
toric eruption and also its most deadly. Tambora, even today, is
relatively remote and was much more so when the eruption took
place. Nevertheless, a chronology of the events of that time have
been pieced together by correlating the volcanic layers deposited
during the eruption with eyewitness observations as reported by Sir
Thomas Raffles, who in 1815 was the Dutch East Indies’ temporary
lieutenant governor.
Tambora began showing signs of life in the form of minor rum-
blings and earthquakes several years prior to the 1815 eruption, but
the events that quickly led to the cataclysmic eruption began with an
enormous explosion on the evening of April 5, 1815. The eruption
produced a column of ash that raced upward 20.5 miles (33 kilome-
ters) into the atmosphere. Although this was only a preliminary stage
to the main eruption and it lasted just two hours, more ash was pro-
duced than during the entire Vesuvius eruption of 79 c.e., which bur-
ied Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Following this brief, violent outburst Tambora fell relatively si-
lent until the evening of April 10, 1815, when, at about 7 p.m., an ex-
tremely violent explosion sent a plume of ash to an altitude of about
27 miles (44 kilometers). Observers reported columns of flame ris-
ing to a very great height from the crater and a rain of ash and pum-
ice. As the violent eruption continued, the throat of the volcano be-
came increasingly cleared of debris and grew wider, allowing it to

399
1815: Tambora eruption
PALAU
S tr a i PHILIPPINES
t o
f
Kuala MALAYSIA BRUNEI Pacific Ocean
M
al
Lumpur
ac
Medan Malucca
ca Singapore Manado Islands
Aceh Borneo
Pontianak Celebes
Samarinda
Palembang Jayapura
Sumatra
Banjarmasin Irian Jaya
Jakarta Java Sea Makasar
PAPUA
Surabaya Lombok INDONESIA NEW
Bandung GUINEA
Indian Tambora
Yogyakarta
Java Bali Kupang Arafura Sea
Port Moresby
Sumbawa Timor
Ocean Gulf of
Lesser Sunda Islands Timor Sea
Carpentaria

eject ever-increasing amounts of ash, pumice, and rock.

By about 10 p.m., three hours into the climactic event, the volcanic
plume became so loaded that its density exceeded that of the sur-
rounding atmosphere. At this point parts of the volcanic cloud began
collapsing under their own weight to produce an incandescent cloud
known as an ignimbrite flow. Survivors of the eruption reported this
phase of the eruption as appearing like a flowing mass of liquid fire,
and high winds attending the ignimbrite flows destroyed building
and uprooted trees. The ignimbrite plunged down the volcanic
slopes in all directions and out across the sea, where it interacted with
water to produce steam explosions. These detonations hurled fine
ash upward, dispersing it widely and plunging the region into two to
three days of darkness. Ignimbrite flows entering the sea are also be-
lieved to be responsible for the mild tsunamis of from 3.3 to 13 feet (1
to 4 meters) in height that were recorded in the eastern Indonesian
area during the eruption.
Tambora continued in violent eruption for about twenty-four
hours with repeated explosions that were heard up to 1,616 miles
(2,600 kilometers) away. About 1.8 million cubic feet (50 cubic kilo-
meters) of magma was expelled from beneath Tambora and ex-
ploded into the atmosphere as some 5.3 million cubic feet (150 cubic
kilometers) of porous ash and pumice. As a result, the unsupported
central part of the volcano collapsed, reducing the volcano’s height
from an estimated 14,107 feet (4,300 meters) to 9,383 feet (2,860 me-
ters), and forming a caldera 3.7 by 4.4 miles (6 by 7 kilometers) in di-
ameter and more than 3,609 feet (1,100 meters) deep. Tambora’s cal-
dera is similar in size to Crater Lake, Oregon, but it contains only a

400
 1815: Tambora eruption

small lake that comes and goes with the seasons and vents that still
send vapors up along the caldera walls.
About 92,000 people, the greatest loss of any volcanic eruption to
date, are estimated to have died on Sumbawa and the nearby island
of Lombok. At least 10,000 people are believed to have perished di-
rectly from the volcanic blast and from the tsunamis it generated.
Most of these fatalities occurred on the island of Sumbawa, where
ignimbrite flows covered all but the western coast of the island. An es-
timated additional 38,000 people on Sumbawa and 44,000 on nearby
Lombok died as a result of starvation and disease following the erup-
tion. Moreover, the lingering effects of Tambora’s fine ash and sulfur
dioxide are believed to have had an affect on global weather patterns
during the following year or two.
As with the caldera-forming eruption of Krakatau sixty-eight years
later, spectacular sunsets and prolonged twilights were noted as far as
England in the months following the Tambora eruption. The stars
appeared less bright, and sunlight was dimmed to such an extent that
sunspots were visible to the naked eye, even when the sun was well
above the horizon. The geographic location of Tambora, only slightly
south of the equator, allowed its eruption cloud to be dispersed in
the stratosphere above both the Southern and Northern Hemi-
spheres. Although an examination of temperature records and sun-
light reduction suggests that the eruption of Tambora reduced global
average temperatures in 1816 by less than 34 degrees Fahrenheit (1
degree Celsius), much colder weather was experienced in eastern
Canada and New England. The summer of 1816, in fact, brought
such misery to parts of North America and Europe that it became
known as the Year Without a Summer.
Snow fell as far south as western Massachusetts in June of 1816,
and northern New England experienced frost in July and again in
August. Warm-weather birds were killed, and crops, particularly
corn, were lost to the freezing weather. Cold, wet weather also af-
fected Western Europe, where there were crop failures and famine.
Ireland’s famine led to a typhus outbreak, which by 1819 had become
a European epidemic afflicting 1.5 million people and killing 65,000.
The European wine harvest was unusually late, food was in short sup-
ply, and there was public violence related to food shortages. Those
who could pursued indoor activities during the dank, dark, and

401
1815: Tambora eruption

stormy summer of 1816, but they too were affected. In Geneva, Swit-
zerland, for example, Lord Byron produced a gloomy poem entitled
“Darkness,” while his acquaintance Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
worked on the famous gothic horror novel Frankenstein (1818).
Eric R. Swanson

For Further Information:

Fagan, Brian. The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850.
New York: Basic Books, 2000.
Francis, Peter, and Clive Oppenheimer. Volcanoes. 2d ed. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004.
Harington, C. R., ed. The Year Without a Summer? World Climate in 1816.
Ottawa, Ont.: Canadian Museum of Nature, 1992.
Oppenheimer, Clive “Climatic, Environmental, and Human Conse-
quences of the Largest Known Historic Eruption: Tambora Vol-
cano (Indonesia) 1815.” Progress in Physical Geography 27, no. 2
(2003): 230-259.
Stommel, Henry, and Elizabeth Stommel. Volcano Weather: The Story of
1816, the Year Without a Summer. Newport, R.I.: Seven Seas Press,
1983.
Stothers, Richard B. “The Great Tambora Eruption of 1815 and Its
Aftermath.” Science 224 (June, 1984): 1191-1198.

402
■ 1845: The Great Irish Famine
Famine
Also known as: The Great Hunger, the Great Starvation
Date: 1845-1849
Place: Ireland
Result: 700,000-1.1 million dead

T he Great Irish Famine was the worst famine to occur in

Europe in the nineteenth century and the most severe
famine in the history of European agriculture. Indeed, some scholars
argue that it was one of the greatest human ecological disasters in the
history of the world. In addition to mass starvation, the Great Irish
Famine changed the social and cultural structure of Ireland through
eviction, mass emigration, and a heightened sense of Irish national
awareness. It also hastened the end of the centuries-old agricultural
practice of dividing family estates into paltry plots capable of sustain-
ing life only through the potato crop.
This natural disaster, caused by a disease known as late blight (Phy-
tophthora infestans) resulted in the country’s potato-crop failure in
successive years between 1845 and 1849. Ireland’s population of al-
most 8.5 million people in 1844 plummeted to 6.5 million by 1850.
Although historical sources differ (250,000-2 million dead), during
the famine about 1 million people died from starvation, typhus, and
other famine-related diseases. In addition, as many as 1.5 million of
Ireland’s people immigrated to English-speaking countries, such as
the United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Austra-
lia, because of the famine.
Historical Background. When the New World white potato
(Irish potato), native to the Andes Mountains in South America, was
introduced into Ireland in the seventeenth century, the new crop
flourished in the damp Irish climate, quickly becoming the country’s
major food source. Before the introduction of the potato, beef, milk,
butter, and buttermilk were the staples of the Irish diet. The potato
grew in ever-increasing importance during the 1600’s and 1700’s,
and the population exploded. The lower classes became more and

403
1845: The Great Irish Famine

Coleraine North
Creeslough Channel
Londonderry
Letterkenny Ballymena
Lifford NORTHERN
Ardara Newtownabbey
IRELAND Bangor
Donegal
(U.K.) Lough
Lower Omagh Neagh Belfast
Donegal Bay Lough Lurgan
Erne
Upper Banbridge
Sligo Armagh
Bangor Lough Monaghan
Erne
Erris
Ballina
Lough
Lough Charlestown Dundalk
Allen Cavan
Conn Carrick on
Lough
Castlebar Shannon Sheelin Drogheda Irish Sea
Westport
Claremorris Longford
Navan
Lough Roscommon Lough
Mask Ree Trim
Tuam
Clifden Mullingar
Athlone
Lough Dublin
Corrib Galway Tullamore
REPUBLIC OF Naas
IRELAND Port Laoise
Lough Wicklow
North Ennistimon Roscrea
Derg
Atlantic Ennis Nenagh Durrow Arklow
Ocean Carlow
Kilkee Kilkenny
Limerick

Tipperary
Caher Clonmel Wexford
Tralee
Rosslare
Waterford
Fermoy
Mallow Dungarvan
Kilarney
Youghal
Kenmare Macroom Cork

Saint George’s Channel

Bantry

more reliant on the potato they called the “lumper.” Before the fam-
ine, an average Irish man consumed daily between 7 and 15 pounds
of potatoes. Children ate potatoes for their school lunch. Since many
did not own knives, one thumbnail was grown long to peel the po-
tato. After the potatoes were boiled, they were strained in a basket.
The family would gather and sit around the basket in the middle of
the floor. Potatoes, accompanied with buttermilk or skim milk, com-
posed the entire meal, which peasant families ate at every mealtime
gathering.
The historical record leading up to the Great Irish Famine, argu-
ably Europe’s worst natural disaster of the nineteenth century, must

404
 1845: The Great Irish Famine

be examined so the impact of this tragedy can be understood. Since

its colonization of Ireland in the twelfth century, Britain’s primary
economic goal was to extract the greatest amount of resources from
its colony for the benefit of British and Anglo-Irish landowners. With
the loss of its American colonies in 1775, and with the depression that
resulted at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Britain’s at-
tempts to increase agricultural profits in Ireland escalated. Seeking
to force the Irish into greater submission, the British legislated penal
laws that denied the Irish the freedom to speak their own language
(Gaelic), to practice Catholicism, to attend school, to hold public of-
fice, or to own land. A tenant system was introduced into Ireland that
gave British and Anglo-Irish landlords control of 95 percent of Ire-
land’s land. Landowners who, for the most part, resided in England
became known as absentee landlords and rented land to their Irish
tenants, providing each tenant family with a cottage. Each cottage
was surrounded by an acre and a half of land.
Some historians blame the ultimate depopulation of Ireland on
the Malthusian notion of overpopulation, arguing that because the
Irish population was too high, there was not enough food to feed
everyone when the potato crops failed. After 1815, the expanding
population increased the competition for land and forced peasant
holdings to be divided and subdivided into ever-decreasing lots,
eventually forcing many people to move to less fertile areas, where
only potatoes would grow. The potato crop needed little labor to har-
vest, and a small acreage furnished a large crop yield. Some families
had to survive on a quarter of an acre of land, and the potato was the
only crop that would feed many mouths. Even before the famine,
during the 1840’s, it was common for laborers to hunger in the late
summer before harvest. In addition, before the famine, housing and
clothing were inadequate, and huts and rags were often the norm for
the Irish peasants; a bed or a blanket was a luxury.
By the beginning of the 1840’s, almost one-half of the Irish popu-
lation, especially the poor agricultural communities, relied almost
solely on the potato—which supplied vitamin C, amino acids, pro-
tein, thiamin, and nicotinic acid—for sustenance. In addition, the
other half of the population consumed the starchy vegetable in
massive amounts. Researchers explain that because of the nutritive
value of the potato, Ireland’s population had increased rapidly and

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1845: The Great Irish Famine

reached 8 million by 1841. By then, two-thirds of the population de-

pended on agriculture for sustenance. The Irish economy became
completely dependent on the potato, and the failure of the potato
crop in 1845 had disastrous results.
Causes of the Famine. The causes of famine are numerous and
include drought, heavy rain and flooding, unseasonably cold weather,
typhoons, and disease. In the late summer of 1845, the Phytophthora
fungus, an airborne fungal pathogen that destroys both the leaves
and roots (the actual potato) of the potato plant, and which origi-
nated in North America, established itself in Ireland, where it com-
menced to destroy the potato crop. The summer of 1845 also saw un-
usually cool, moist weather. Blight thrives in such climatic conditions
and drastically affects even stored crops. In that season, the potato
blight destroyed 40 percent of the Irish potatoes. After it struck in
1845, even more potatoes were planted because the pestilence was
not expected to strike again. Unfortunately, the potato crop did fail
again in 1846, and the results were even worse in 1847, when 100 per-
cent of the crop was ruined. That year, 1847, when suffering reached
its climax, is referred to as “Black ’47.”
In all, the potato harvest failed four years in a row, and the peas-
ants had no food reserves. The famine situation continued unabated
because of a deficiency of seed potatoes for new crops and the insuffi-
cient quantity planted for fear of continued blight. Unfortunately,
the availability of only two genetic varieties of potato in Ireland at that
time greatly increased the odds of crop decimation by famine. In
hindsight, had other varieties of potato been available in Ireland the
entire crop might not have failed.
Potato blight was not unknown in Ireland before 1845. A famine
in 1740-1741 killed a quarter of a million people. The island nation
struggled through crop failures and subsistence crises throughout
the nineteenth century, including 14 partial and complete famines
between 1816 and 1842. Because the Industrial Revolution never
reached most of Ireland, there was little opportunity for employment
other than agriculture.
Effects of the Famine. Although at the beginning of the blight
the potato plants appeared green, lush, and healthy, as they did most
years, overnight the blight struck them down, leaving acre upon acre
of Irish farmland covered with black rot. Leaves curled up and shriv-

406
 1845: The Great Irish Famine

eled, black spots appeared on the potatoes, and an unbearable putre-

fying stench that could be smelled for miles lay over the land. When
the fungus had run its course, Irish farmers saw that the crop they re-
lied on for life was destroyed. Ireland was not the only country hit by
hardship. Although infected crops were present the United States,
southern Canada, and Western Europe in 1845-1846, the results were
not nearly as severe or deadly as in Ireland. While other countries
turned to alternative food sources, the Irish were dependent on the
potato, so the results of the blight were disastrous. As harvests across
Europe failed, the price of food soared.
The hardest hit were the landless laborers who rented the small
plots of land to feed themselves and their families. When their crops
failed, they had to buy food with money they did not have, and prices
continued to rise. Although in 1845 only part of the entire Irish po-
tato crop rotted in the fields, as the years went on the blight contin-
ued unabated. When much more devastating crop failures followed
in 1846 and 1847, millions lost everything: their homes, their few be-
longings, their families, and eventually their lives. The hardest hit re-
gions were the south and the west of Ireland. During this time,
roughly 1 million people, previously well fed on a diet made up pri-
marily of potatoes, died. Peasants forced to eat the rotten potatoes
fell ill. People died of starvation in their houses, in the fields, and on
the roads.
Disease became rampant and widespread, and most who suffered
from long starvation finally surrendered to typhoid, cholera, dysen-
tery, or scurvy. Entire villages fell victim to cholera and typhoid. In-
deed, more people died of disease than of starvation. Money became
so scarce that the dead were often buried without coffins. Some
sources record that during the worst of the famine, peasants died in
the night and their bodies would be found in the morning partially
devoured by rats. As time went on, unmarked mass graves became the
resting place for many Irish. At the worst in 1847, the dead were be-
ing buried in trenches. The famine together with the accompanying
plagues became known as the Great Famine to the British, the Great
Hunger to the Irish middle class, and the Great Starvation to the Irish
peasantry.
Results of the Famine. Before the famine struck, nearly half of
all rural families lived in windowless, one-room cottages owned by

407
1845: The Great Irish Famine

landlords who were often ruthless. Also before the famine, some
peasants were able to grow plots of oats or raise pigs to pay for the
rent to their British landlords. After the famine, families who relied
on the potato to keep themselves alive were left with nothing and had
to choose between either selling their food to pay the rent or eating
the food and facing eviction. If tenants failed to pay the landlord, the
family was thrown out on the road and their homes were immediately
burned to the ground so they could not return. During the Great
Hunger, approximately 500,000 people were evicted, many of whom
died of starvation or disease, while many others were relocated to
poorhouses.
The British government legislated the Coercion Act in support of
landlords who evicted those who failed to pay their rent. It also pro-
vided British soldiers and a police force to oversee the eviction of ten-
ant farmers. Landlords evicted hundreds of thousands of starving
peasants, who then flocked to disease-infested workhouses or per-
ished on the roadside. Many times only grass made up their last meal.
The streets swarmed with wretched, unsightly, half-naked beggars or,
as they have been called, “the living skeletons” of the Irish. Villages
were demolished; Cottages crumbled in ruins, abandoned by their
tenants.
Britain provided financial assistance to Ireland in the form of
loans amounting to 365,000 pounds sterling. In an effort to encour-
age an infrastructure to promote industrialization and modernize
Ireland and avoid public revolt, the British government set up public
works projects. However, these schemes proved useless because they
were designed to not interfere with private enterprise. For instance,
bridges were built over nonexistent rivers. Today, roads built by im-
poverished peasants—going from nowhere to nowhere—can still be
viewed as part of the Irish landscape. For their efforts, the laborers re-
ceived such low wages that they could hardly buy enough food to live
on. In addition, this work was available to only a small percentage of
the population. For example, in one Irish county, Kerry, in 1846,
400,000 people applied for 13,000 public works jobs. In March of
1847, the public works schemes were abandoned.
The responsibility to feed and house the poor fell to various chari-
ties. During the famine, 173 workhouses, built adjacent to dangerous
fever hospitals, were constructed throughout Ireland. Some were so

408
 1845: The Great Irish Famine

In this 1880 Harper’s Weekly cover, a woman on the Irish shore beck-
ons for help with her starving family at her feet and the specter of death
looming over the country. (Library of Congress)

overcrowded and inadequate that one workhouse in County Lim-

erick, built to accommodate 800 occupants, housed over 3,000 des-
titute people. Workhouse residents were fed watery oatmeal soup
and were forced to wear prisonlike uniforms. Families were split

409
1845: The Great Irish Famine

apart into male and female dormitories. Soup kitchens were set up
throughout Ireland by religious groups such as the Quakers. How-
ever, many times the soup was so weak that it was of little nutritional
value. Even this inferior food did not meet the demand as crowds
waited for hours outside the distribution centers.
By August, 1847, as many as 3 million people accepted food at
soup kitchens. Although soup was given free to the infirm, widows,
orphans, and children, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1847 main-
tained that no peasant with a holding of one-quarter of an acre or
more was eligible for relief, which resulted in tens of thousands of
farmers parting with their land. In its own efforts to alleviate Ire-
land’s famine, the United States imported cornmeal, or Indian corn,
which somewhat eased the food shortage, but the Irish found it un-
palatable.
The Emigration of the Irish. Emigration was the only alterna-
tive to eviction or the poorhouse. Although the practice predated the
famine, emigration rose to over 2 million from 1845 to 1855. When
landlords began to issue notices to their tenants to appear in court
for nonpayment of rent, the fear of imprisonment caused families to
flee their homes for English towns and cities, and if they had the
money, to the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
Most who emigrated did so at their own expense and sent money
back to their relatives to follow them. Although during the famine
more than 1 million Irish fled their country, many of the Catholic
peasantry remained in their native land. The Catholic Church in part
discouraged emigration out of fear that the Irish would lose their
faith if they lived in Protestant Britain and America.
The famine, however, continued to drive new waves of emigration,
thus shaping the histories of the countries where Irish immigrants
found new homes. The peak rate of emigration occurred in 1851,
when 250,000 left Ireland, continuing through the 1850’s and into
the 1860’s. Centuries after the famine, the far-reaching impact and
results are evident in the number of Irish descendants scattered
throughout the globe.
Even emigration proved no remedy for the plight of the starving
Irish. According to British Poor Laws, landlords were responsible for
12 pounds a year support for peasants sent to the workhouses. In-
stead, some landlords sent their tenants to Canada at a cost of 6

410
 1845: The Great Irish Famine

pounds each. Many of those who survived later made their way
across the Canadian border into the United States. Desperate Irish
often crowded onto structurally unsafe, overcrowded, understocked,
disease-ridden boats called “coffin ships.” Thousands of fleeing Irish
carried diseases aboard or developed fever on the voyage. Many
never saw land again or died shortly after they reached their destina-
tion. In several cases, these vessels reached the end of their voyage af-
ter losing one-third to one-half of their passengers.
The survivors arrived in North America hardly able to walk, owing
to sickness and starvation. The streets of Montreal, Canada, were
filled with impoverished emigrants from Ireland, many with typhoid.
The Grosse Île, Quebec, fever hospital was overrun with sick and dy-
ing infants. In August of 1989, during an address on Grosse Île, Dr.
Edward J. Brennan, Ireland’s ambassador to Canada, called the Great
Famine Ireland’s holocaust and the Irish people the first boat people
of modern Europe.
Irish Anger Rises. The famine convinced Irish citizens and Irish
Americans of the compelling necessity for intensified national aware-
ness and political change. The poor did not readily accept their fate;
food riots broke out, and secret political and militant societies in-
creased their activity. Some greatly alarmed Irish believed that the
potato would be permanently destroyed. Spiraling crime and disobe-
dience were countered with repression and violence. The unem-
ployed roamed the country, begging and sleeping in ditches. Fifty
thousand British soldiers occupied the country, backed up in every
town and village by an armed police force. Landlords were shot. Dur-
ing one of the worst famine years, landlord Major Denis Mahon was
assassinated by his tenants following his attempt to mass-evict 8,000 of
his destitute tenants from his 30,000-acre estate. Ireland was in ruins.
Although the British government spent an estimated £8 million
on Irish relief, ineffective measures aimed at alleviating its neighbor-
ing island’s distress resulted in deep and increased hostilities against
British rule. Particularly disturbing was the increased exportation of
Irish grain and meat to Britain during this time of famine because the
starving Irish people could not afford to purchase these provisions
themselves. Landowners continued to make profits through the ex-
port of Irish food as well as wool and flax. Historical records show that
all through the famine, food—wheat, oats, barley, butter, eggs, beef,

411
1845: The Great Irish Famine

and pork—was exported from Ireland in large quantities. In fact,

eight ships left Ireland daily carrying food that could have saved
thousands of lives. About 4,000 shiploads of food sailed into Liver-
pool alone in the darkest famine year, 1847.
Despite famine conditions, taxes, rents, and food exports were
collected in excess of £6 million and sent to British landlords. During
the famine, an average of 2 million tons of wheat were annually
shipped out of Ireland, an amount that could have fed the whole
population. One scholar claimed that for every ship that came to Ire-
land with food, there were six ships sailing out. The British govern-
ment’s Coercion Act ensured that British soldiers and a police force
were used to protect food for export from the starving.
Responsibility for the Famine. Many historians still place
blame on Britain for allowing so many of Ireland’s population to die.
After all, Ireland was at this time part of the United Kingdom, the
wealthiest empire in the world. Although the British government
provided relief for Ireland’s starving, it was severely criticized for its
delayed response; their efforts to relieve the famine were insufficient.
For instance, the first step the British took to relieve the catastrophic
situation was to send a shipload of scientists to study the cause of the
potato failure. The British were further condemned for centuries of
political oppression of Ireland as the underlying cause of the famine.
Starvation among the peasants was blamed on a colonial system that
made Ireland financially and physically dependent on the potato in
the first place. The Irish patriot labor leader James Connolly argued
that the British administration of Ireland during the famine was an
enormous crime against the human race.
No doubt insensitivity toward the Irish contributed to Britain’s
failure to take swift and comprehensive action in the force of Ire-
land’s disaster. Charles Trevelyn, secretary of the British Treasury
during the famine, claimed outright that the government’s function
was not to supply food, and Lord Clarendon, Viceroy of Ireland dur-
ing the famine, referred to the evictions and emigrations that re-
sulted from the famine as a blessing for the Irish economy. Addi-
tionally, although Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel attempted relief
efforts in 1845 and early 1846 by repealing the Corn Laws (protective
tariffs that enabled the Irish to import grain from North America),
his successor, the liberal Lord John Russell, supported a policy of

412
 1845: The Great Irish Famine

nonintervention, in keeping with the laissez-faire philosophy that

dominated the era’s British economic policy. Government officials
maintained the belief that it was counterproductive to interfere in
economics and placed the burden of relief for the starving peasantry
unto the Irish landowners.
Historians today are attempting to shed light on the reasons be-
hind the famine, stressing that although the potato crop failed, a
state of famine per se did not exist in Ireland, because other food,
such as grain, poultry, beef, lamb, and pork, was available. Basically,
there was no shortage of food. Profits, some scholars stress, came be-
fore people’s needs, and while the blight provided the catalyst for the
famine, the disaster was essentially human-made—the Irish people
were the victims of economics, politics, and ignorance. Well-known
Irish short-story writer Frank O’Connor once observed that “famine”
is a useful word used instead of “genocide” or “extermination.” The
author John Mitchell in 1861 declared that the Irish people died of
hunger in the midst of food they themselves had created, and in 1904
Michael Davitt, the founder of the Irish Land League, called the Irish
famine a holocaust.
Long-Term Consequences of the Famine. The famine proved
to be a watershed in the demographic history of Ireland. Ireland’s
population continued to decline in the decades following the fam-
ine, owing to emigration and lower birth rates, which ultimately al-
lowed for increased landholdings. By 1900, 2.5 million more of Ire-
land’s people had crossed the Atlantic. By the time Ireland achieved
independence in 1921, its population was barely half of what it had
been in the early 1840’s. In their new homes, emigrant men were
provided with manual labor jobs on construction sites, roads, and
railways, while Irish women were hired as domestics. In time, Irish
emigrants found opportunities for success never known in their
homeland. For instance, automobile tycoon Henry Ford’s grandfa-
ther was one such Irish famine emigrant, as was twenty-six-year-old
Patrick Kennedy, the great-grandfather of President John F. Ken-
nedy.
The famine was the most tragic and significant event in Irish his-
tory. Mary Robinson, the president of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, de-
scribed the famine as the instrumental event in shaping the Irish as a
people, defining their will to survive and their sense of human vul-

413
1845: The Great Irish Famine

nerability. No one can fully voice the extent or the severity of the suf-
fering endured by the Irish people from 1845 to 1850.
M. Casey Diana

For Further Information:

Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish
Famine, 1845-1850. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Donnelly, James S., Jr. The Great Irish Potato Famine. Phoenix Mill,
Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 2001.
Gray, Peter, and Sarah Burns. The Irish Famine. New York: Harry N.
Abrams, 1995.
Kinealy, Christine. The Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52. New
York: Roberts Rinehardt, 1995.
O’Cathaoir, Brendan. Famine Diary. Dublin: Irish Academic Press,
1998.
Tóibín, Colm, and Diarmaid Ferriter. The Irish Famine: A Documentary.
New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
Valone, David A., and Christine Kinealy, eds. Ireland’s Great Hunger: Si-
lence, Memory, and Commemoration. Lanham, Md.: University Press
of America, 2002.
Woodham-Smith, Cecil, and Charles Woodham. The Great Hunger: Ire-
land, 1846-1849. New York: Penguin, 1995.

414
■ 1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire
Fire
Date: October 8, 1871
Place: Peshtigo, Wisconsin
Result: At least 1,200 dead, 2 billion trees burned

A t 9 p.m. on October 8, 1871, a forest fire that had devel-

oped into a rapidly moving firestorm swept over the
small lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin. The fire began almost at
the same minute as the Great Chicago Fire, which was raging some
240 miles to the south, and a similar forest conflagration burning to
the east in Upper Michigan. Within half an hour Peshtigo was de-
stroyed. The fire that engulfed and destroyed Peshtigo, Wisconsin,
ranks as the deadliest fire in United States history to date. More than
1,200 people perished in the fire, and over 2 billion trees covering
1.25 million acres were destroyed. By the morning of October 9,
1871, the Peshtigo and Michigan fires combined to destroy 3.5 mil-
lion acres of forest lands.
Peshtigo was a company town. The Peshtigo Company sawmill was
owned by Chicago entrepreneur William B. Ogden and ran 97 saws,
averaging a daily cut of 150,000 board feet of lumber. In addition,
Ogden was principal owner of a three-story woodenware factory in
Peshtigo. At the time it was the largest woodenware factory in the
United States, producing thousands of wooden tubs, pails, shingles,
clothespins, and broom handles daily. Lumber company officials,
concerned for the safety of the factory and lumber mills located in
the area, convened a management council to discuss the possible fire
danger, but no decisive plan of action was agreed upon other than to
clear a 30-foot-wide firebreak along the north side of the Peshtigo
River and to fell trees in the immediate vicinity of the mills.
Conditions Leading to the Fire. During the late 1800’s, the
practice of clearing scrub brush and slash-and-burning in grassland
regions of the eastern Dakotas, compounded by a year of regional
drought and atypical meteorological conditions, established an envi-
ronmental condition that started a chain reaction of unchecked prai-

415
1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire

Lake Superior
Duluth

Minnesota Michigan

Peshtigo
Minneapolis St. Paul

Bloomington Eau Claire

Green Bay

WISCONSIN Appleton
Rochester

Lake
Michigan

Madison Wauwatosa
Waukesha Milwaukee
West Allis
Iowa
Janesville Racine
Dubuque Kenosha
Waterloo
Waukegan
Rockford
Illinois

rie fires that burned through the weeks of August and September,
1871. Driven by the prevailing westerly winds, the fires crossed the
Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers into drought-inflicted areas of old-
growth timberlands to the east and north. These forest fires spread
rapidly by crowning, or traveling between treetops, then dropping to
the ground and starting more intensive fires from the additional fuel
on the forest floor. Strong thermal updrafts then carry sparks and
firebrands to ignite more fires.
Communications in this region of the country were almost nonex-
istent. It was not uncommon for major fires to take a minimum of sev-
eral days, and often several weeks, to be reported in metropolitan
newspapers. The only warning of swift-moving fires was often issued
by stagecoach and railroad passengers, or by those fleeing the fire’s

416
 1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire

rapid advance. As a result, these great fires moved eastward un-

checked and relatively unannounced. By September 1, 1871, a series
of great interlinked prairie fires stretched from the Canadian border
through Iowa and remained unreported to the communities far
ahead.
By the end of the first week of September, 1871, the sky from the
Straits of Mackinac in Michigan, throughout northern Wisconsin,
and as far south as Chicago, Illinois, and South Bend, Indiana, were
choking under a cloud of smoke. During the early days of September
several small jump fires, caused by burning firebrands carried high
into the sky by fire-generated convection currents and then blown
downrange by prevailing winds, had occurred west of Peshtigo. The
forests surrounding Peshtigo were thick-barked, old-growth timber,
which were usually not harmed by ordinary forest fires. Fires were of-
ten considered a nuisance rather than a threat.
On September 23, 1871, a jump fire came within several miles of
Peshtigo. A firebrand from this fire ignited the main sawdust pile of
the Peshtigo Company, but the fire was extinguished by a bucket bri-
gade of 60 men. After this episode the management of the Peshtigo
Company, now mindful of the potential danger of the advancing
range and forest fires and the unchecked spread of smaller slash fires
caused by nearby railroad construction, ordered large barrels of
water placed by the side of every business establishment, bunkhouse,
and hotel. Flammable goods were packed in crates, moved from
company-owned stores to the riverside, and covered with dampened
earth. As a lumber town, Peshtigo was constructed almost entirely of
timber-frame buildings, wood-shingle roofs, and wooden sidewalks.
The roads were covered with sawdust and wood chips to control mud
formation and dust. Workers at the local bank dug holes in the soil
beside their buildings into which they could dump money and valu-
ables if fire reached Peshtigo. Many families soaked woolen blankets
and laid them over their cedar-shingled cabin roofs. However, by Sep-
tember 25, the winds abated, veered to the southeast, and the direct
fire threat to Peshtigo was removed.
With the exception of a small fire the next week, ignited by care-
less railroad workers, mill operations and daily life returned to nor-
mal in Peshtigo. Autumn weather in the U.S. upper tier states is dom-
inated by shifting winds as advancing cold fronts plunge southward

417
1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire

from the Arctic and meet moist tropical winds moving northward
from the Gulf of Mexico. The clash of these air masses typically re-
sults in cold rains and churning winds, until winter snows begin. In
1871, however, the autumn rains did not arrive; drought conditions
existed throughout the central United States. In the east, as far as
New York City and Boston, the air was smoke-laden from the great
fires burning unchecked to the west. Great Lakes shipping traffic was
being negatively affected by the thick smoke because ships were un-
able to safely enter harbors due to poor visibility. Yet the fires contin-
ued to burn unchecked.
The Fire Reaches Peshtigo. Just prior to 9 p.m. on the evening
of October 8, 1871, a fine ash began to drift over Peshtigo. There was
no wind, and the ash settled like a fine snow. Residents noted that as
the ash fell wild birds and pet animals began to utter noises and act in
frantic bursts of behavior. Then the sky to the southwest began to
turn a dark red color, silhouetting the surrounding trees against the
dark of night. Unknown to the residents of Peshtigo, over 300 fami-
lies in the nearby Sugar Bush communities were being engulfed in a
raging firestorm with flames estimated to have reached a height of
over 200 feet. There is no record of what happened in Sugar Bush;
nearly every resident of the communities perished in a matter of min-
utes as they tried to flee the advancing firestorm along the road to
Peshtigo. There was no warning in Peshtigo.
The firestorm raced northeastward, spreading in all directions
as it consumed old-growth trees and drought-ridden underlying
ground cover. Winds accompanying the advancing fire, and driving it
forward, are estimated to have been of hurricane velocity, swirling in
gusts of over 100 miles an hour and even higher in the center of the
firestorm.
Survivors of the fire reported that the previously still evening air
suddenly developed a slight breeze, at which time the air instantly be-
came very hot; survivors equated the rush of heat to that of a blast
furnace. This was accompanied by a low moaning sound from the
southwest, which grew louder, building to a deep rumbling roar like a
train approaching from the distance. It was reported that as the roar-
ing sound escalated, the sky to the west of Peshtigo flashed a brilliant
red color almost blinding in its intensity, then faded to a glowing yel-
low as bright as the sun. Within seconds a violent wind struck the

418
 1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire

town, and the forest surrounding Peshtigo was engulfed in a wall of

rolling and tumbling flames hundreds of feet high, moving at tre-
mendous velocity. The rushing wind was so strong that trees were up-
rooted, roofs were lifted off of houses, and chimneys blew over.
The Effects of the Fire. Many of the buildings in Peshtigo
were reported to have simply exploded into flames; one second they
were standing, the next they were blown apart into flaming pieces of
debris. The tremendous heat of the oncoming firestorm ignited the
wooden bridge and the wooden railroad trestle crossing the Peshtigo
River while still nearly a mile away. It has been estimated that the for-
ward edge of the firestorm may have been close to 2,000 degrees
Fahrenheit. As Peshtigo erupted into flames the glow could be seen
as far away as Menominee and across Green Bay to Door County.
The mill, wooden structures, sawdust-covered streets, and pine-
plank sidewalks leapt into flames, cutting off the escape routes of
many Peshtigo citizens. Many people tried to seek shelter within
buildings. Though the Peshtigo River was being engulfed by walls of

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

A drawing of the Great Peshtigo Fire that appeared in an 1871 issue of Harper’s
Weekly. (Wisconsin Historical Society/#3728)

419
1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

A deer carcass and charred tree trunks are all that remain of the town of Peshtigo, Wis-
consin, following the fire. (Wisconsin Historical Society/#1859)

flame and jammed with toppled burning logs, it was the only location
to offer any hope of safety. Humans, pets, draft and farm animals,
and forest denizens all rushed to reach the river’s waters. It was im-
possible to flee from the fire—it was moving too fast. Survivors re-
ported seeing humans and animals running toward the river simply
burst into flames. Other eyewitness accounts describe the thermal
updrafts and convection currents of the fire as twisting like torna-
does. Others reported that the air seemed to be aflame as balls of fire
would appear out of nowhere and suddenly disappear or as hot gases
struck a supply of oxygen not yet consumed by the advancing fire-
storm.
The Peshtigo River was deep, and many of those who reached it
drowned quickly. Others were injured by panicked animals, carried
away by the current, or struck by logs and debris. Those citizens who

420
 1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire

reached the river slapped their hands on the water’s surface and
splashed each other in an attempt to cool their skin and hair. Many
stripped off clothing and wrapped it around their heads to keep their
hair from bursting into flames from the intense heat. Even with a con-
tinuous soaking of water, skin and cloth dried out almost immedi-
ately from the terrific heat. Flaming debris falling into the river burst
into steam. When the woodenware factory exploded, it showered
those in the river with flaming tubs, pails, shingles, and broom han-
dles.
Within the town, anyone who sought shelter in a structure died. In
one tavern, over 200 victims were trapped and incinerated. Only
those who found refuge in the river and several more who struggled
to a nearby marsh survived the inferno. Within twenty minutes, the
town of Peshtigo had been obliterated, and at least 1,200 citizens had
perished.
After nearly six hours, the few survivors climbed out of the water
and waited until dawn for the ashes to cool so the search for possible
survivors and noncremated bodies could begin. Three victims were
found in a large water tank near the mill, but the water had become
so hot that all of them died. Several people were found dead under
similar circumstances at the bottom of a well. Many of the bodies
were found huddled at the bases of trees.
Most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition. As a result,
350 victims of the fire were buried in a mass grave. Many victims who
were not cremated died of suffocation as oxygen was sucked out of
the air and into the firestorm. While the Peshtigo fire was the most
deadly fire in American history, its destruction was overshadowed by
the Great Chicago Fire that raged out of control the same night. For
weeks after the disaster, the nation’s press paid little attention to
Peshtigo while devoting major coverage to the Chicago fire. The gov-
ernor of Wisconsin was eventually forced to issue a special proclama-
tion begging the nation to divert their charity and gifts from Chicago
to Peshtigo.
Though much is known about the existing meteorological and en-
vironmental conditions at the time of the tragic Peshtigo fire, a new
theory was offered in the late 1990’s concerning the cause of the
super outbreak of firestorms the night of October 8, 1871. Based on
eyewitness accounts, regional observations, damage patterns, and

421
1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire

the curious circumstance of several large conflagrations all igniting

at approximately the same time over a wide, yet confined, geographic
area, some investigators suggested the firestorms may have resulted
from a Tunguska-like atmospheric meteor explosion.
Randall L. Milstein

For Further Information:

Gess, Denise, and William Lutz. Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People,
and the Deadliest Fire in American History. New York: Henry Holt,
2002.
Lyons, Paul R. Fire in America. Boston: National Fire Protection Asso-
ciation, 1976.
McClement, Fred. The Flaming Forests. Toronto: McClelland and Stew-
art, 1969.
Pernin, Peter. The Great Peshtigo Fire: An Eyewitness Account. Madison:
University of Wisconsin, 1999.
Soddens, Betty. Michigan on Fire. Thunder Bay, Ont.: Thunder Bay
Press, 1998.
Wells, Robert W. Fire at Peshtigo. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1968.

422
■ 1871: The Great Chicago Fire
Fire
Date: October 8-10, 1871
Place: Chicago, Illinois
Result: 250 dead, more than 17,420 buildings destroyed, more than
100,000 left homeless, more than $200 million in damage

U ndoubtedly one of the most crushing catastrophes

ever to strike the city of Chicago, Illinois, was the
Great Chicago Fire that raged for three days, from October 8 until
October 10, 1871, twice jumping the Chicago River and igniting
buildings on the other side. The city, tinder-dry after a virtually
rainless summer and early autumn, had grown very rapidly as the
United States experienced a great western expansion. Buildings
erected quickly to house the heavy influx of new residents and to
meet the requirements of the city’s burgeoning industrial and com-
mercial enterprises were often flimsy structures that served an imme-
diate and pressing need but could not withstand the ravages of a rag-
ing fire propelled by strong winds.
When the final tally was in, 250 people lay dead, thousands were
homeless, an estimated 17,420 buildings had been destroyed, and
property damage was set at over $200 million, an inconceivably large
sum at that time, representing about one-third of the city’s total
worth. The fire put the mettle of the city to an extreme test. Many
thought this catastrophe would mark the death knell of Chicago as a
major transportation crossroads and industrial hub. The city, how-
ever, soon emerged stronger than ever, fully meeting the challenge
posed by its great loss.
The Chicago of 1871. In 1871, Chicago was unquestionably a
boomtown. A decade earlier, it had been the site of the 1860 Republi-
can National Convention, at which longtime Illinois resident Abra-
ham Lincoln was nominated to run for the presidency of the United
States. By 1870, its population of 334,000 exceeded that of St. Louis,
Missouri, the only other contender in the Midwest for the title of me-
tropolis. The city, intersected by the Chicago River, with Lake Michi-

423
1871: The Great Chicago Fire

gan on its eastern border, enjoyed a virtual monopoly in transporta-

tion, with ships coming from the eastern United States by way of the
Great Lakes and railroads from the East converging in Chicago with
those serving the West. The city’s industries produced meat, lumber,
shoes, farm machinery, and scores of other items. Chicago was also
among the country’s largest distributors of farm products.
In the year of the fire, Chicago sprawled over some 23,000 acres,
on which nearly 60,000 buildings had been erected. The overall
property value of the city at that time was slightly more than $600 mil-
lion. Prosperity was evident on every hand, and an ebullient opti-
mism was in the air. People had flocked to Chicago because it offered
them a better life than they could find almost anywhere else in the
United States, certainly better than they could anticipate anywhere
else in the Midwest. Immigrants from Eastern Europe, Scandinavia,
Italy, and Greece poured into the city, which could offer them the im-
mediate opportunity of employment.
Beginning and Spread of the Fire. Shortly after 9:00 on the
evening of October 8, 1871, a fire broke out in a barn behind the cot-
tage of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary at 137 De Koven Street in the
southwestern part of the city, a working-class neighborhood whose
humble structures were mostly wooden. Close to De Koven Street
were planing mills, lumberyards, and furniture factories, all of which
could add fuel to any flames that might rage near them.
When the alarm was sounded, the fire brigade rushed to the
scene, realizing the danger that any such fire might pose when the
town was so dangerously dry following a prolonged drought. A mere
2.5 inches of rain had fallen between July 3 and October 8, whereas
normal rainfall for that period was between 8 and 9 inches. Only the
night before, nervous spectators watched as 5 acres burned violently
very close to the O’Leary barn, the site of the new fire.
Persistent legend has it that the fire in the O’Leary barn began
when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern that ignited some
nearby hay. This bit of lore has never been substantiated, although it
is altogether possible that this was the actual origin of the fire. What is
known for sure is that when the fire bells sounded, the firefighters,
exhausted from having fought a blaze that destroyed four blocks of
the city the day before, arrived to find an inferno that was spreading
rapidly. It was hoped that when the flames reached the four blocks

424
 1871: The Great Chicago Fire

Chicago in Flames—The Rush for Lives over Randolph Street Bridge. (John R.
Chapin)

that had been devastated the night before, the fire would be brought
under control, but this was not the case, although this four-block bar-
rier prevented the flames from spreading to the west, which was
spared the worst of the damage during the conflagration.
By 10:30 on the evening of October 8, less than two hours after the
first alarm was sounded, the fire on De Koven Street was declared out
of control. Nearby residents were urged to evacuate their homes, but
many, accustomed to hearing the fire warnings several times a week,
paid little heed to the admonitions to flee, convinced that the danger
was not great. The fire raged so strongly that by 11:30 a wall of flames
had jumped the Chicago River and advanced into the business district.
What made the fire of October 8 an extraordinary one was that it
was fed by gale-force winds out of the southwest that soon caused the
great bursts of flames to become walls of fire. The air quickly became
superheated; blinding ash and swirling dust were blown into people’s
faces by the fierce winds, blinding them and making breathing all but
impossible; the force of the flames created a roar like that of a run-
away locomotive. Soon those who had gone to their beds blandly
assuming that this was just another fire found themselves facing a sit-
uation from which many could find no escape. The wind was so

425
1871: The Great Chicago Fire

strong that no one could outrun it. Turmoil and confusion gripped
all of those downwind from the fire as it proceeded in a northeasterly
direction.
Before it was over on October 10, the fire, driven by the strong
winds, had twice leaped across the Chicago River, proceeding as far as
Fullerton Avenue, the city limits, and stopping only when it reached
Lake Michigan to the east. It left a burned area 4 miles long and 0.66
mile wide. An estimated 1,687 acres had been burned by the fire, and
nearly everything on those acres had been reduced to ash.

Frightened residents of Chicago flee the flames of the Great Fire, carrying
what possessions they can. (Library of Congress)

426
 1871: The Great Chicago Fire

Great Peshtigo and Western Michigan Fires. It is a matter

of mere coincidence that as the Great Chicago Fire was raging, an-
other fire brought on by the dry conditions and high winds that
plagued the Midwest on October 8, 1871, was raging north of Chi-
cago in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, a small lumbering community north of
Green Bay. This fire, once ignited, spread with such rapidity that
there was no way to control it. The pine forests that surrounded the
town provided ample fuel for the conflagration. As the flames hit the
trees, they actually exploded, their sap igniting like gasoline.
As it turned out, the Peshtigo fire, although it is less well known
than the Great Chicago Fire, was the most devastating in the history
of the United States. It resulted in over 1,200 deaths. Everyone in its
path perished. The Chicago fire received more publicity than the
Peshtigo fire merely because Chicago was a commercial and transpor-
tation center through which many Americans had passed, thereby be-
coming familiar with it. The Peshtigo fire wiped out an entire small
community; the Chicago fire almost destroyed a major metropolis.
On the evening of October 8, yet another fire erupted in western
Michigan. This forest fire in a sparsely populated area claimed few
lives, but it left nearly everyone in the area homeless, some 15,000
people losing their residences to the advancing flames. All sorts of ru-
mors circulated about these three coincident fires. In each case, a
parched landscape had somehow been ignited. Any parched land-
scape is vulnerable, sometimes being set ablaze by a lightning strike.
Some thought that a comet had struck the earth or a meteor had ex-
ploded in the atmosphere.
Extent of the Damage. Despite the vast destruction caused by
the Great Chicago Fire, a few buildings in the city’s central part re-
mained in its wake, among them the Chicago Water Tower, which
stands to this day as a city landmark. Ironically, the De Koven Street
residence of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary was spared by the fire,
although almost nothing was left standing around it. The famed
Palmer House was completely destroyed, but the Michigan Avenue
Hotel, whose panicked owner sold it for what he could get as the fire
advanced, came through unscathed, much to the gratification and
profit of its new owner, John B. Drake. It was saved because buildings
adjacent to it were demolished before the fire arrived.
Only two of the exclusive residences on the elegant north side of

427
1871: The Great Chicago Fire

Chicago, home to such notable families as the Ogdens, the Ramseys,

the McCormicks, and the Arnolds, remained standing after the fire.
The courthouse, which had been built at a cost of $1 million and
whose bell had announced such memorable and historic events as
the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, was de-
stroyed, its bell crashing down from its dome at 2:30 a.m. on Octo-
ber 9. Crosby’s Opera House, Hooley’s Theater, and the Washington
Street Theater also went up in flames. The celebrated Field and
Leiter Department Store on State Street was soon consumed by the
advancing fire, along with some $2 million worth of merchandise
with which it was stocked.
One of the major problems posed by the fire was that the wind
propelled it in such unpredictable directions that firefighters often
found themselves caught by a raging inferno in front of them and an-
other such inferno behind them. The speed with which the flames
spread was phenomenal. The dry, wooden buildings that lay in its
path virtually exploded when the fire reached them.
Early Warnings About Flimsy Construction. Chicagoans
had been warned well in advance about the dangers inherent in
many of the buildings that had been built in great haste to accommo-
date the city’s rapid expansion. The Chicago Tribune, whose own head-
quarters were completely destroyed by the fire, had warned its read-
ers in a blistering editorial a month before the disaster that many of
Chicago’s brick buildings were only one brick thick. Their facades
frequently crumbled and fell into the streets below. The cornices on
many stone buildings had collapsed as the buildings weakened,
sometimes crashing into the street and injuring pedestrians who hap-
pened to be in their paths.
Some of Chicago’s most imposing buildings were impressive shells
whose construction was so substandard that, had the fire not con-
sumed them, they would surely have collapsed in the normal course
of everyday use. The city’s cast-iron buildings were not well secured
on their foundations, so that even they were rapidly deteriorating
and in some cases rusting away.
If the buildings in the business district were shoddy, residential
construction throughout the city, particularly in the working-class
neighborhoods such as De Koven Street, was even worse. Residential
construction on the tonier north side of Chicago around Dearborn,

428
 1871: The Great Chicago Fire

Rush, Ontario, Cass, and Huron Streets seemed elegant at first

glance, but most of the mansions in these exclusive neighborhoods
had been built more for show than for safety.
The houses on the north side of town were filled with valuable fur-
niture, oriental rugs, paintings, statuaries, and tapestries, but these
priceless treasures were displayed in buildings that would go up in
flames instantly in the sort of dire situation that marked the Great
Chicago Fire. It took just flames and a strong wind to turn Chicago’s
most illustrious neighborhood into a field of smoldering rubble.
Firefighting Methods in 1871. Certainly, given the firefighting
equipment of that day, there was little chance of controlling a fire
that advanced as quickly as the Great Chicago Fire. Much fire fight-
ing at that time was done by bucket brigades, lines of people who
passed buckets of water toward a fire. This meant that those fighting
the fire, which generated a killing heat and which moved so rapidly as
to threaten everything in its path, had to stand close enough to the
conflagration to throw water upon it.
By 1871, Chicago was more advanced than many cities in its fire-
fighting equipment. It had fire engines with steam-powered pumps
to direct water onto fires that were burning out of control. However,
these pumps were no match for the walls of flame that stretched
nearly a mile wide in some places during the Great Chicago Fire.
By 3:00 on the morning of October 9, the pumps of Chicago’s wa-
terworks on Pine Street had failed, so the steam fire engines had little
or no water to use in fighting the blaze. The only salvation now
seemed to be Lake Michigan in the east, where the fire would neces-
sarily stop. This natural barrier was some 4 miles from the fire’s ori-
gin on De Koven Street.
Looting and Drunkenness in the Face of Disaster. As the
Great Chicago Fire advanced, chaos broke out in the city. Distraught
citizens poured into the streets. The owners of saloons, fearing that
the advancing crowds would ransack their establishments, rolled bar-
rels of whiskey into the streets, where the assembled crowds drank
freely from them. Soon the streets were filled with drunkards, many
of whom thought that the end of the world was nigh.
Soon wholesale looting began as the less honest of the spectators
broke into shops and residences, taking from them anything of value
that they could carry away. Some of these miscreants, running away

429
1871: The Great Chicago Fire

with their loot, misjudged the extent and speed of the fire and were
burned in their tracks as they tried to escape.
It was not until October 11 that Lieutenant General Philip Sheri-
dan led five companies of infantry, which had been rushed from
Omaha and Fort Leavenworth, into the city where, declaring martial
law, they were accorded all of the authority of the police department.
The city’s most respected citizens welcomed Sheridan and his troops
after living for three days in a lawless and chaotic environment. These
troops maintained order in the city for the next two weeks.
The imposition of martial law was deemed necessary because, al-
though there was little left in the city to loot, many citizens feared
that professional criminals and confidence men might flood into
town trying to rifle buried safes and vaults and trying to exploit the
homeless. Some thoughtful citizens, however, feared that it was dan-
gerous to place a city under martial law in peacetime because soldiers
had not been trained to deal with urban populations. They had been
schooled to deal with enemies, and it was feared that they might now,
under martial law, act as though innocent citizens were the enemies.
End of the Fire. On the morning of October 10, the fire was be-
ginning to burn itself out. At its northeastern extreme, it had been
stopped by Lake Michigan. On the morning of the 10th, a steady rain
fell upon the city, quenching most of the lingering flames.
As survivors straggled along the shores of Lake Michigan trying to
find friends and family, they found that people, blackened by the
smoke, were virtually unrecognizable. Many who had fled toward the
lake as the flames moved in an easterly direction sought refuge on
the beaches, but these beaches became so overheated that the only
way for people to survive was to immerse themselves in the freezing
waters of the lake, sometimes staying immersed for hours.
The morning was brisk and damp. Survivors of the fire huddled in
shock in a cemetery near Lake Michigan that had recently been emp-
tied of its corpses so that a park, eventually to become Lincoln Park,
could be built. As they began to take stock, they realized not only that
some 250 lives had been lost and many of the city’s business establish-
ments and residences destroyed but also that art museums, archives,
public records, libraries, and other valuable and irreplaceable assets
had been lost to the flames.
Much personal property entrusted to bank vaults for safekeeping

430
 1871: The Great Chicago Fire

The corner of Dearborn and Monroe Streets after the Great Chicago Fire.

had been destroyed. The Federal Building at the northwest corner of

Dearborn and Monroe Streets, which housed a major post office and
a customs house, was no more. Inside it, over $1 million in currency
had been incinerated. It is not surprising that some people thought
Chicago could not rise from its ashes, but those who thought the mat-
ter through realized that its ideal location as an inland port would as-
sure its endurance as a city of considerable note.
Aftermath. Remarkably, despite the massive havoc that the Great
Chicago Fire wreaked, the city’s infrastructure remained virtually in-
tact. The water and sewer systems continued to operate, despite the
temporary disabling of the Chicago Waterworks during the fire.
Transportation facilities, both ports and railways, still connected Chi-
cago with the rest of the country.

431
1871: The Great Chicago Fire

Had the sewer system been destroyed by the fire, epidemics might
have broken out. Had the water system been severely compromised,
the city would have been brought to its knees. As it turned out, how-
ever, Chicago was in an excellent position to rebuild. Before rebuild-
ing, however, the legislature would pass ordinances that imposed
stringent building codes upon those who were to reconstruct the city.
One of the outcomes of the fire was the election the next month of
Joseph Medill as mayor of Chicago. Medill ran on a platform of
stricter building codes and fire prevention and won handily, al-
though one might question the validity of the vote—voting records
had been lost in the fire so that allowing people to vote was a matter
of faith. People who showed up at the polls and claimed to be regis-
tered voters were permitted to vote as long as they met two require-
ments: They had to be male and they had to be or appear to be of age.
The central business district of Chicago was laid waste by the fire.
This main part of the city was built south and west of the Chicago
River and extended as far as the railroad that ran along Lake Michi-
gan to the east. Besides being the city’s main shopping district, with
its array of department stores and specialty shops, it was the home of
a number of national corporations and of the renowned Chicago
Board of Trade. This part of the city was now a shambles. A total of
3,650 buildings were destroyed in the central part of the city alone.
Some 1,600 stores went up in flames, and 60 factories that employed
thousands of people were totally destroyed. Temporary headquarters
had to be set up for many businesses as plans were made to rebuild,
this time with structures that passed the strict new fire codes that had
been put into place as a result of the recent disaster. Six thousand
temporary structures were quickly erected to house the thousands of
homeless and to provide at least minimal shelter for the businesses
whose buildings had been destroyed.
The elegant north side of Chicago accommodated almost 14,000
dwellings before the fire, ranging from the lakeside mansions of the
rich to the humble cottages of those who served them. This section of
town incurred the most substantial damage from the fire. When the
flames had subsided, only 500 structures were left standing.
Rebuilding Chicago. Before long, a postfire building boom was
under way. Such architects as Dankmar Adler, Daniel H. Burnham,
and Louis H. Sullivan worked tirelessly to create a new Chicago that

432
 1871: The Great Chicago Fire

would be the architectural envy of the rest of the nation. The Home
Insurance Company Building, opened in 1885, was the first of many
steel-frame skyscrapers to be built. Within the next decade, 21 new
steel-frame buildings ranging from twelve to sixteen stories in height
graced the downtown area, which now has some of the highest build-
ings in the world, including the famed Sears Tower that rises more
than a hundred stories above the street.
As an aftermath of the fire, Chicago’s public transportation system
also underwent a great revitalization. Trams—horse-drawn, cable-
drawn, and electric—began to appear on city streets. The elevated
train, which serves thousands of commuters every day, was erected to
provide rapid transportation to the Loop.
Within three years of the fire, Chicago had rebuilt sufficiently to
regain its stature as the preeminent city in the midwestern United
States. Workers poured into the devastated city to help rebuild it. It
was not unusual to see hundreds of new houses being built simulta-
neously in a given area. About 100,000 construction workers raced to
build some 10,000 houses as quickly as they could.
R. Baird Shuman

For Further Information:

Balcavage, Dynise. The Great Chicago Fire. Philadelphia: Chelsea House,
2002.
Bales, Richard F. The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O’Leary’s
Cow. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002.
Lewis, Lloyd, and Henry Justin Smith. Chicago: The History of Its Repu-
tation. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.
Lowe, David, ed. The Great Chicago Fire: In Eyewitness Accounts and Sev-
enty Contemporary Photographs and Illustrations. New York: Dover,
1979.
Murphy, Jim. The Great Fire. New York: Scholastic, 1995.
Pauly, John J. “The Great Chicago Fire as a National Event.” American
Quarterly 36 (Fall, 1985): 668-683.
Sawislak, Karen. Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871-
1874. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Waskin, Mel. Mrs. O’Leary’s Comet! Cosmic Explanations for the Great Chi-
cago Fire. Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1984.

433
■ 1872: The Great Boston Fire
Fire
Date: November 9-10, 1872
Place: Boston, Massachusetts
Result: 13 dead, 776 buildings destroyed, $75 million in damage

T he Great Boston Fire originated in the basement of a

warehouse on the corner of Kingston and Summer
Streets near the bottom of an elevator shaft that extended to the attic.
The warehouse was about 72 feet high, including a wooden mansard
roof, and covered an area of 50 by 100 feet. As soon as the flames en-
tered the shaft, they were carried upwards with tremendous convec-
tive force and burst through the roof shortly afterward.
The fire spread from the original building throughout the down-
town area of the city by five major mechanisms. The primary mecha-
nism of fire spread was from roof to roof by firebrands. A firebrand is
a piece of burning material from a building that is carried by convec-
tive forces, such as wind, to a nearby building. The firebrands would
land on the flammable wooden mansard roofs of adjacent buildings
and spread the fire. The second method of fire spread was large
tongues of flame that burst through window openings and spread the
fire across narrow streets. Third, gas mains exploded in buildings and
started new fires in adjacent buildings. It was not until hours into the
fire that the gas mains were finally turned off. Fourth, heat was trans-
ferred by radiation from buildings on fire across the narrow streets.
The fifth means of fire spread was explosions used by untrained per-
sonnel in an attempt to make firebreaks.
From Summer Street the fire raged north, consuming large areas
of Franklin, Milk, Water, and State Streets before being stopped at
the doors of historic Faneuil Hall. To the east it spread rapidly along
High and Purchase Streets, destroying the waterfront area. The help
of fire departments from 30 cities from as far away as New Haven,
Connecticut, and Biddeford, Maine, was needed to bring the fire un-
der control. This finally happened at 4 p.m. on Sunday, when it
reached Washington, Broad, and State Streets because the engines

434
 1872: The Great Boston Fire

The Great Fire at Boston, November 9 & 10th 1872, by Currier & Ives. (Li-
brary of Congress)

could draw their water supply directly from the large water mains lo-
cated there. A large number of water streams could finally be di-
rected at the tops of the burning buildings with adequate pressure to
reach the mansard roofs and penetrate through the windows into the
interior of the buildings to extinguish the fire.
The factors that contributed to the conflagration can be placed
into four major categories: urban planning and infrastructure, build-
ing and construction, natural factors, and fire service.
The streets were very narrow, with relatively tall buildings on all
sides. Fire can spread across the narrow openings by convection and
radiation once one building is fully involved in a fire. The height of
the buildings limited the angle at which hose streams could be pro-
jected at them.
There was an insufficient water supply in the district where the fire
occurred. The area had originally been a residential neighborhood,
and the water mains and hydrants were drastically undersized for the
amount of combustibles present in the warehouses. Water reservoirs
were located under some of the streets, but their capacity was not ade-
quate either. The hoses and hydrants had couplings of different sizes,

435
1872: The Great Boston Fire

which prevented the many fire departments assisting in the fire from
coupling directly to the hydrants without using adapters. The pipes,
which were only 6 inches in diameter to begin with, were restricted
to 5 inches in diameter due to corrosion in the aging pipes. The hose
streams projected at the buildings could not reach the upper stories
or the roofs because of the limited pressure and the older-style hy-
drants. This was a major factor in the spread of the fire. Once an ade-
quate quantity and pressure of water were available, the fire could be
extinguished.
The mansard roofs were constructed of wood rather than the stone
of the French buildings from which they were copied. The wood frame
on the roof presented a large combustible surface to the fire, allowing
it to spread rapidly above the heads of the firefighters. Wood trim
around windows and doors, as well as timber floors, contributed com-
bustible material to the fire. The granite veneers used on many build-
ings heated up and broke off or split apart, and the facades collapsed
as the veneers separated from the main structure. The warehouse
buildings were large, open-plan structures that were filled with great
amounts of flammable contents. Compartmentation of the ware-
houses would have reduced the spread of the fire within the buildings.
Another problem was the warehouses’ continuous vertical open-
ings from the basement of the buildings to the roof. Once a fire be-
gins in an open shaft, convective forces will naturally push the fire up-
wards. The fire will then spread onto intervening floors, moving
horizontally as well as vertically, finally penetrating the roof.
Natural factors also existed. There was a 5- to 9-mile-per-hour wind
the evening of the fire. Currents of air created by the fire gave the ap-
pearance of a firestorm or fierce wind. Large amounts of oxygen
were drawn into the fire, creating local convective currents.
There was a critical delay in sounding the alarm for the fire be-
cause the policemen were between shifts. This allowed enough time
for the fire to become fully developed in the building of origin before
fire department personnel arrived on the scene. Many of the horses
used to pull the fire engines were sick, and the engines and pumpers
had to be pulled by firefighters from the stations to the fire. The
firefighters became fatigued after fighting the fire for over twenty-
five hours. The chief engineer could not command the entire fire
front on foot.

436
 1872: The Great Boston Fire

As a result of the hearings held after the fire, the department was
reorganized and placed under the Board of Fire Commissioners. All
companies in high-value areas were staffed with full-time personnel.
A number of new companies, including a fireboat company, were
placed in service. Modern equipment was purchased, and additional
hydrants were installed on larger pipes to improve water pressure.
The fire-alarm system was transferred to the fire department, and dis-
trict chief positions were made permanent. The board instituted a
training program and a separate maintenance department.
In 1871 a bureau for the survey and inspection of buildings was es-
tablished as the first agency to regulate building in Boston. Its author-
ity was greatly expanded after the fire. Strict regulations were put into
effect with regard to the thickness of walls and the materials to be
used on the exposed portions of buildings. The fire service was reor-
ganized. Boston thus entered the modern age of fire protection for
its citizens after learning a valuable lesson in fire prevention from the
disaster of 1872.
Gary W. Siebein

For Further Information:

Bugbee, James M. “Fires and Fire Departments.” The American Review,
July, 1873, 112-141.
Coffin, Charles Carleton. The Story of the Great Fire in Boston, November
9 to 10, 1872. 1872, Reprint. Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger, 2005.
Lyons, Paul R. Fire in America! Boston: National Fire Protection Asso-
ciation, 1976.
Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell. The Great Boston Fire of 1872. Dover,
N.H.: Arcadia, 1997.
Schorow, Stephanie. Boston on Fire: A History of Fires and Firefighting in
Boston. Beverly, Mass.: Commonwealth Editions, 2006.

437
■ 1878: The Great Yellow Fever
Epidemic
Epidemic

Date: August 13-October 29, 1878

Place: Memphis, Tennessee
Result: Over 100,000 cases of yellow fever, over 20,000 dead in the
lower Mississippi Valley

T he summer of 1878 was wet and hot in the lower Missis-

sippi Valley. The climate provided the ideal breeding
grounds for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which dwelt up and down the
Mississippi River. The female Aedes aegypti mosquito is the carrier, or
vector, of the yellow-fever disease. When the female mosquito bites a
person whose blood contains the yellow fever virus, subsequent bites
infect susceptible individuals. However, in 1878, yellow fever, also
known as Yellow Jack or the yellow plague, was still a mysterious dis-
ease of unknown cause. Yellow fever is endemic to West Africa, and it
traveled to the Americas aboard trading ships importing slaves from
Africa. With the open water casks on the ships, the mosquitoes easily
survived the ocean crossings. Yellow fever then flourished wherever
its vector could—where the temperature remained above 72 degrees
Fahrenheit and where there was still water for the female mosquito to
lay eggs.
The symptoms of yellow fever appear three to six days after the
bite of an infected mosquito and range from mild, flulike symptoms
to a severe, three-stage course of infection. Most Africans and their
descendants exhibit mild to moderate symptoms of headache, fever,
nausea, and vomiting. However, most victims recover within a few
days. For Caucasians, Native Americans, and Asians, the first stage of
the infection begins with a fever of 102 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
The fever lasts three to four days and is accompanied by severe head-
ache, backache, nausea, and vomiting. It is during this first stage that
the patient is infectious and can pass the virus to a mosquito. In the
second stage, which may last only a few hours, a remission of the fever

438
 1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic
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occurs, the headache disappears, and the patient feels better. There-
after, in the third stage, the temperature rises rapidly again and the
pulse rate drops. The first-stage symptoms recur but in a more severe
form. Liver injury from the infection disrupts normal blood clotting,
and some patients vomit blood, or a black vomit, and may also bleed
from the nose, gums, and spots on the skin. Jaundice from liver and
renal failure may yellow the skin, but the color is seldom as pro-
nounced as the name “yellow fever” may suggest. Liver, heart, and re-
nal failure often result in delirium. Most deaths occur on the sixth or
seventh day after the reappearance of symptoms. Survivors remain ill
for another seventeen to thirty days.
Reports of outbreaks of yellow fever in North American port cities
began to appear in the late seventeenth century. The plagues in
northern port cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, occurred
only in the summer because the Aedes aegypti mosquito does not sur-
vive after a frost. It was in the tropical climates of the southern United
States that the mosquito flourished and caused repeated epidemics.
New Orleans’ first reported epidemic occurred in 1796, and over the
next century epidemics occurred regularly. Once people knew of the
devastation of yellow fever, they lived in dread of its return. For peo-
ple of the nineteenth century, the greatest fear of yellow fever came
from a fear of the unknown—how it came about and how it was
spread. What was known about yellow fever was that once it entered a
city, it spread rapidly and easily among the people.
Yellow Fever Strikes Memphis. Before the Civil War, Mem-
phis had a population of 22,000. By 1878, the population had risen to
48,000. At that time, Memphis was a major hub of cotton production
in the United States. The city was located on the Mississippi River—a

439
1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic

major trade route—and had three railroad lines. Yellow fever was no
stranger to the citizens of Memphis. It had visited Memphis three
times before, killing 75 people in 1855, 250 people in 1867, and 2,000
in 1873. As the city grew, the people realized that the attacks of yellow
fever were growing worse. Although the disease was not spread from
person to person by direct contact, it was understood that people
fleeing from a city where yellow fever had struck could spread the dis-
ease to another community. Realizing that yellow fever patients must
be isolated from other patients, staff members of a British hospital
dressed the segregated patients in gowns with yellow patches to warn
of their disease. The patients were nicknamed “Yellow Jackets” and
the yellow flag flown over the quarantined area was known as the “Yel-
low Jack.” Cities would also attempt to prevent escapees from other
diseased communities from entry and prohibit their own inhabitants
from entering affected areas.
When outbreaks of yellow fever in the West Indies, islands involved
in trade with cities along the Mississippi River, were reported in the late
spring of 1878, Memphis began to fear the possibility of another epi-
demic. Physicians and board of health members argued for quaran-
tine measures. The city council rejected the quarantine so as not to in-
terfere with Memphis’s lucrative trade. In protest, the president of the
Memphis board of health resigned his position. Outbreaks of yellow
fever were reported in New Orleans by late July; however, a Memphis
newspaper reassured the public that the sanitary conditions of the
streets and private premises would prevent the arrival of the disease as
long as the sanitary laws were enforced. When yellow fever was re-
ported in Vicksburg, only 240 miles away from Memphis, on July 27,
Memphis established quarantine stations for goods and people from
cities south of Memphis on the Mississippi River.
On August 1, 1878, William Warren, a hand on a quarantined
steamboat, slipped into Memphis and stopped at a restaurant located
in Front Row along the Mississippi River. This small establishment
was run by Kate Bionda and her husband, whose main trade was to ca-
ter food and drink to riverboat men. On August 2, William Warren
became sick and was admitted to the city hospital. His illness was diag-
nosed as yellow fever, and he was moved to a quarantine hospital on
President’s Island, where he died on August 5.
Fear began to spread through Memphis as rumors of the riverboat

440
 1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic

hand’s death multiplied, and on August 9, yellow fever was reported

in the city of Grenada, Mississippi—only 90 miles south of Memphis.
Again, newspapers tried to calm the public, cautioning them to avoid
patent medicines and bad whiskey and to be cheerful and laugh as
much as possible. By this time, Kate Bionda, age thirty-four, had be-
come ill. On August 13, in her rooms above the snack shop, she died.
A physician saw her, noted her symptoms and her jaundice and, after
consulting with other physicians, diagnosed her as the first official
case of yellow fever in Memphis in 1878.
On August 14, an additional 55 cases of yellow fever were an-
nounced. By August 15 and 16, the city of Memphis was in full panic.
Thousands of people began to leave the city. There were processions
of wagons piled high with possessions. Railroad companies attached
extra cars, yet these were not enough for all of the people trying to
flee the city. The city council members fled, and one-third of the po-
lice force deserted the city.
By August 17, four days after Kate Bionda’s death, more than
25,000 people, over half the population of Memphis, had fled the
city. However, news of the Memphis epidemic had spread just as
swiftly. Other communities established quarantines against those
coming from Memphis. Barricades were enforced with shotguns.
Railroad trains from Memphis were refused by many cities, and refu-
gees on riverboats were forced to stay on board for months as port af-
ter port denied them permission to land.
The refugees camped in forests and fled to small towns along the
Mississippi River as well as to St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, East
Tennessee, and Virginia. Many did carry the yellow-fever virus, and
over 100 Memphis citizens died outside the city. When the infected
refugees entered areas where the Aedes aegypti mosquito lived, they
continued the spread of the disease.
Of the 20,000 citizens who remained in Memphis, approximately
14,000 were African Americans and 6,000 were Caucasians. Through
the first half of September of 1878, at least 200 people died per day.
Survivors of the epidemic described some of the terrible conditions in
the city. Carts would be loaded with 8 or 9 corpses in rough-hewn
boxes, and the coffins were piled in tiers on the sidewalk in front of the
undertaker’s shop. Entire families were wiped out, and many victims
died alone, covered with the black vomit characteristic of the disease.

441
1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic

Survivors recalled sights of piles of burned clothing and bedding out-

side houses—each a reminder that someone had died there. At first fu-
neral bells tolled continuously, but the custom was suspended so as not
to upset the sick and the dying. The stillness in the streets was occasion-
ally broken by loud blasts of gunpowder, and at night burning tar bar-
rels lit the streets—both futile attempts to clear the air of yellow fever.
The weather remained unseasonably hot and humid for September
and October, and ironically, one newspaper editor remarked that the
mosquitoes were as vigorous and desperate as ever.
The African American population, which is usually resistant to the
disease, also succumbed to the infection as never before. More than
11,000 African Americans in Memphis were infected, approximately
77 percent of their population. Of those infected, 946 died—a 10
percent mortality rate, considerably higher than in other epidemics.
For Caucasians, the mortality rate was around 70 percent, with more
than 4,000 deaths among the 6,000 that remained in the city. Other
states quickly sent supplies and funds.
Aid to the Victims. Volunteer agencies arose to take care of the
government and of the sick. The Citizen’s Relief Committee was
formed, composed mostly of prominent and wealthy citizens. Their
first act was to establish a camp outside the city in an effort to remove
any uninfected persons. About 1,000 persons occupied Camp Joe
Williams, named for a Memphis physician who died of yellow fever in
1873, and only a few people died in the camp. The committee also as-
sumed command of what remained of the police force. Under com-
mand of the African American janitor and cook, thirteen other Afri-
can Americans were added to the police force. Fear of looting
prompted them to call up the local militia, with both white and black
companies guarding the city. Because business and commercial activ-
ity had ceased, people began to fear starvation. With donations of
money and supplies from Memphis and elsewhere, the committee set
up a welfare and rations program.
The difficult task of medical care was assumed by the Howard Asso-
ciation. Formed in Memphis in 1867, it was patterned after a similar
group founded in New Orleans during the yellow fever epidemic of
1837. Its membership was composed mostly of businessmen, and its
sole task was to serve in yellow fever epidemics. The members met on
the day of Mrs. Bionda’s death and assembled a corps of nearly 3,000

442
 1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic

nurses and 111 physicians. Seventy-two of those physicians came from

other states, because physicians in Memphis had enormous loads of
patients. To treat yellow fever, many physicians relied on heavy medica-
tion, such as purges of calomel, rhubarb, or jalap (a plant root). Oth-
ers used cold bath treatments, dousing the patients with cold water
and then covering them with blankets to induce perspiration.
Most physicians, however, came to realize they could not cure yel-
low fever but could only alleviate its symptoms. Deeply frustrated,
most Memphis physicians could only reduce fevers with sponge
baths, alleviate warm chills with blankets, and give medicine to calm
delirium. Few patients were admitted to hospitals as there were not
enough beds for the thousands who were sick. Most of the sick were
cared for in their homes by nurses. Both Caucasian and African
American, male and female, most of the nurses were residents of
Memphis. Nursing was not yet a recognized profession, and their
function was mainly to sit with the patient. Much criticism was di-
rected at the nurses. Although their motives ranged from a selfless
devotion to the sick to a desire to make money, reports of theft, drink-
ing, and misconduct by the nurses were common.
Despite physical and mental exhaustion, the physicians made at-
tempts to understand the disease and performed about 300 autop-
sies. Yet afterward, they knew no more than they had before except
that they probably had been confronted by a new and deadlier strain
of the virus. More than 60 percent of these physicians gave their lives
caring for the victims of the epidemic.
When the frosts of October 18 and 19 came, so did a decrease in
the rate of yellow fever infection. On October 29, 1878, eleven weeks
after the first reported case, the epidemic was declared over. Those
who had fled the city returned home, and on November 28, Thanks-
giving Day, the city held a mass meeting to praise the heroes of the ep-
idemic, to thank the nation for its assistance, and to mourn their
dead.
The Results of the Epidemic. The yellow fever epidemic of
1878 had begun in New Orleans. It traveled up the Mississippi River
to Vicksburg, then to Memphis, and to Cairo, Illinois, eventually
reaching St. Louis. It was carried up the Tennessee River to Chatta-
nooga, and up the Ohio River to Louisville and Cincinnati. Through-
out the Mississippi Valley, over 100,000 had yellow fever, and more

443
1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic

than 20,000 died. It was Memphis with its large population that felt
the worst impact, however. Of the fewer than 20,000 who remained in
the city, over 17,000 had yellow fever. Of the 14,000 African Ameri-
cans, roughly 11,000 contracted the disease and 946 died. Of the
6,000 Caucasians, 4,204 died of yellow fever.
The future of Memphis was now in doubt, as it was considered an
incurable pesthole. The value of lives lost was incalculable. Loss of
trade was estimated as high as $100 million. Some outsiders sug-
gested that the city be abandoned. However, under the direction of a
new and more powerful board of health, Memphis began to clean it-
self up and accomplished remarkable improvements in public sanita-
tion, with the creation of a waste-disposal system, approved water sup-
ply, street-paving program, and rigid health ordinances. Although
still unaware of the cause of the disease, these cleanup measures did
reduce the risk of yellow fever by eliminating the open sewers and
outside privies where the mosquitoes bred.
The epidemic of 1878 also generated widespread interest in public
health. The U.S. Congress instituted the National Board of Health,
and a full-scale research program was also prompted by the epi-
demic. However, it would be another twenty-two years before mem-
bers of the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission would discover that
yellow fever was transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito and that
the agent of the disease was a virus.
The impact of the epidemic would be felt by Memphis for many
years. The population had declined drastically, many businesses left
the city, and others were dissuaded from moving to Memphis. Mean-
while, other cities such as Atlanta and Birmingham attracted new
wealth and population in the South. Yet the city of Memphis would
not forget the devastation of the 1878 epidemic nor the heroes who
stayed to help its victims. Dr. John Erskine was the Memphis Health
Officer in 1878. His fearlessness and tireless work to treat the plague
victims were inspirational to his fellow physicians, yet he himself died
of yellow fever. In 1974, the city of Memphis named one of its libraries
in his memory and filled its shelves with accounts of the city’s health
disasters and triumphs. In 1990, St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Mem-
phis established an annual lectureship to honor his memory.
Mary Bosch Farone

444
 1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic

For Further Information:

Bloom, Khaled J. The Mississippi Valley’s Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of
1878. Baton Rouge: Louisana State University Press, 1993.
Crosby, Molly Caldwell. The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow
Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History. New York: Berkley, 2006.
Gehlbach, Stephen H. American Plagues: Lessons from Our Battles with
Disease. New York: McGraw-Hill Medical Publishing, 2005.
Hall, Randal L. “Southern Conservatism at Work: Women, Nurses,
and the 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Memphis.” Tennessee Histor-
ical Quarterly 56, no. 4 (Winter, 1997).
Oldstone, Michael B. A. Viruses, Plagues, and History. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1998.
Pierce, John R., and Jim Writer. Yellow Jack: How Yellow Fever Ravaged
America and Walter Reed Discovered Its Deadly Secrets. Hoboken, N.J.:
John Wiley & Sons, 2005.

445
■ 1880: The Seaham Colliery
Disaster
Explosion

Date: September 8, 1880

Place: Sunderland, England
Result: 164 dead

U nder the rolling countryside of Durham County, lo-

cated in the northeast corner of England, rested
great coal fields. Evidence suggested that the early Romans who occu-
pied England mined and burned coal in this region. The first re-
corded report of coal mining, however, came in the twelfth century.
In 1183, Bolden Buke wrote of a coal miner providing coal for use at
the ironworks of Coundon, a town located in Durham County. In the
western part of the Durham coalfield, the coal seams were close to
the surface of the earth and were relatively easy to mine. Most of the
early mines were located along the bank of the Tyne River.
The Explosion. Coal mining in northeast England included a
long history of disasters. One of the worst disasters occurred at Sea-
ham Colliery on September 8, 1880. “Colliery” is the British term for
“mine.” Seaham Colliery, located near Durham and Sunderland,
consisted of five seams of coal, one on top of another. These seams
were between 38 and 600 yards below the surface. Three separate
shafts connected the seams to the surface. The explosion occurred at
2:20 a.m., and it was loud enough to be heard by people on ships in
the harbor and at a neighboring mine. Clouds of dust blowing sky-
ward spewed from the shafts. The first people to arrive at the scene
discovered that all three shafts of the mine were blocked. Cages used
to raise and lower men from the mine were fastened in each shaft,
blocking them.
A rope was tied around Mr. Stratton, a mine supervisor, and he was
lowered a small distance down into the main seam. Although he was
unable to proceed very far, he could hear men talking in the highest
seam; they were believed to be safe and were later recovered alive. At

446
 1880: The Seaham Colliery Disaster

Edinburgh
Glasgow

SCOTLAND
Newcastle
upon Tyne North Sea

Sunderland

Middlesborough

Manchester
Liverpool
ENGLAND

Nottingham
Norwich
Leicester
WALES Birmingham Northampton
Ipswich

Newport London
Cardiff
Reading
Bristol
Portsmouth

Plymouth
English Channel

the time of the explosion, roughly 230 men and boys were working in
the mine. In 1880, it was against the law for boys younger than twelve
years of age to work in mines.
Initial rescue attempts were hampered by the debris in the shafts.
Twelve hours went by before volunteers could be lowered into the
shafts. A kibble, an iron bucket, was used because the cages were out
of action. The main rescue work was conducted from what was called
the High Pit shaft. From this shaft, 48 men were rescued alive and

447
1880: The Seaham Colliery Disaster

brought up in the kibble, while 19 survivors were brought up from

the Low Pit shaft. Therefore, by midnight, twenty-one hours after the
explosion, 67 men had been rescued alive. Tragically, 164 men and
boys, some as young as fourteen, died in the explosion; 181 pit po-
nies, which were used to haul coal underground, were also killed.
Vast scenes of destruction met the rescue teams when they were fi-
nally able to reach the lower seams. Piles of stones were mixed with
the mutilated bodies of miners and pit ponies. Several fires burn-
ing near the shafts needed to be put out before rescue attempts
could continue. The potential for new explosions remained an ever-
constant danger. As bodies were recovered, they were wrapped in
flannel and canvas and numbered. Each miner’s lamp was placed
with his body, which was then transported to the surface by the
kibble. Since the lamps were numbered, they aided in the process of
identifying the bodies. Recovering the bodies was a slow and difficult
procedure. By October 1, 1880, 136 bodies had been recovered. The
final body was not retrieved until a full year after the explosion oc-
curred.
Inquiry and Outcomes. In the seven months following the ex-
plosion, the Londonary Institute conducted an official inquiry. An
official report was presented to Parliament in 1881. Two different
theories were proposed regarding the cause of the explosion. The
first theory stated that stones fell and released gases, which came into
contact with a miner’s safety lamp and triggered the explosion. The
second theory focused on shots fired in the mine where holes were
being enlarged. In the final report, the jury that studied the findings
of the inquiry did not designate which theory was the actual cause.
The report also stated that the issues of firing shots and clearing the
dry coal dust, also considered a possible contributing factor to mine
explosions, were best left to the mine managers.
The miners were unhappy that the report did not push for further
study into the dangers of firing shots in mines and the presence of
dry coal dust. Through their lawyer, Atherley Jones, the Miners Asso-
ciation—a union—requested that experimental chemists test the
Seaham Colliery’s coal dust. The miners’ request was granted, and a
series of experiments was initiated by Sir Frederick Abel at the Insti-
tute of Chemistry. Professor Abel amassed a document that included
results of experiments conducted by him, as well as experiments

448
 1880: The Seaham Colliery Disaster

from other countries. His work stressed the potential danger caused
by large amounts of dry coal dust lying around. Despite this evidence,
no new laws regarding mine safety were enacted until 1887.
Louise Magoon

For Further Information:

McCutcheon, John. Troubled Seams. Reprint. Durham, England:
County Durham Books, 1994.
Mitchell, William Cranmer. A History of Sunderland. Reprint. Man-
chester, England: E. J. Morten, 1972.
The New York Times, September 9-11, 1880.
Steinberg, S. H., and I. H. Evans, eds. Steinberg’s Dictionary of British
History. 2d ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971.
Sunderland Daily Echo (England), September 8-10, 1880.
Wright, R. S. “Report on the Explosion Which Occurred at the Sea-
ham Colliery on the 8th September 1880.” Durham Mining Mu-
seum. http://www.dmm.org.uk/reports/2924-01.htm.

449
■ 1883: Krakatau eruption
Volcano
Date: August 26-27, 1883
Place: Indonesia
Result: 36,417 dead, 165 villages and towns destroyed, 132 towns
and villages damaged, two-thirds of island destroyed

I n 1883, Krakatau (or Krakatoa) was a small, uninhabited

island covered in lush vegetation. Lying in the Sunda
Strait between Java and Sumatra, then part of the Dutch East Indies
(now Indonesia), it was known to be volcanic but was thought to be
extinct or at least insignificant. Native legends existed about an erup-
tion there in 416 c.e., as well as a secondhand report from a Dutch of-
ficial about another eruption in 1680, but the 1680 eruption was not
widely reported and had been virtually forgotten by 1883.
Thus on May 20, 1883, when windows rattled and a noise like can-
non fire was heard in the capital city of Batavia (now Jakarta) on Java,
almost 100 miles away, no one’s first thought was that the source was
Krakatau. Some people thought they were experiencing an earth-
quake, but the noise was not coming from the ground. A volcanic
eruption was then suspected, but still no one thought the source was
Krakatau; when it was discovered that the volcano Karang, a much
larger volcano than Krakatau in western Java, was not erupting, the
thought was that perhaps one of the volcanoes across the strait in Su-
matra was the source.
When some native fishermen reported to Dutch officials that they
had been on Krakatau gathering wood and that while they were there
an eruption had started beneath their feet, they were not believed at
first. Reports soon came in to confirm their story: Krakatau was in
eruption, producing clouds of steam, smoke, fire, and ash rising 6 or
7 miles high, along with lightning flashes, sulfurous fumes, and de-
posits of pumice on the surface of the sea.
The eruption cloud looked like “a giant cauliflower head,” accord-
ing to one eyewitness, the chaplain aboard the German warship Elisa-
beth, which was sailing through the Sunda Strait at the time. This wit-

450
 1883: Krakatau eruption
PALAU
S tr a i PHILIPPINES
t o
f
Kuala MALAYSIA BRUNEI Pacific Ocean

M
al
Lumpur

ac
Medan Malucca

ca
Singapore Manado Islands
Aceh Borneo
Pontianak Celebes
Samarinda
Palembang Jayapura
Sumatra
Banjarmasin Irian Jaya
Jakarta Java Sea Makasar
PAPUA
Merak
Surabaya
INDONESIA NEW
Bandung GUINEA
Krakatau
Yogyakarta
Indian Java Kupang Arafura Sea
Bali Port Moresby
Timor
Lesser Sunda Islands Gulf of
Ocean Timor Sea
Carpentaria

ness also provided a striking account of the effect of ashfall; by May

21 it had turned a newly cleaned ship into something that looked
“like a floating cement factory.” All surfaces were covered with a gray,
sticky dust more than 0.5 inch thick, which was aggravating to the
eyes and lungs.
Ash continued to fall on the Elisabeth until it was more than 300
miles away. Ash also fell on other ships in the area and on the neigh-
boring island of Verlaten (now Sertung), destroying the vegetation
there. Vegetation on Krakatau itself was also destroyed. Ash fell as
well on the two other islands in the Krakatau group, Lang (now
Panjang) and Polish Hat, but did not destroy the vegetation there.
On May 22, the ship Sunda reported a heavy fall of ash when it was
7 miles from Krakatau; at a distance of 10 miles from the island it re-
ported pieces of pumice floating in the sea, and at a distance of 30
miles the pumice was so thick that a bucket lowered into the sea came
up filled almost entirely with pumice and hardly any water.
The May eruption caused no casualties and stimulated more inter-
est than alarm. In fact, on May 27 a group of sightseers took a plea-
sure trip to the island and looked into the smoking crater of Perboe-
watan, one of Krakatau’s three volcanic cones (the other two being
Danan and Rakata). With steam billowing around them and explo-
sions sounding periodically, some of the sightseers even clambered
into the crater to pick up pieces of pumice and lava as souvenirs. One
of them took photographs, the only ones that exist of Krakatau in
eruption in 1883.
Volcanic activity decreased at the end of May but picked up again
after mid-June. Explosions were heard on Java and Sumatra. One wit-

451
1883: Krakatau eruption

ness described a thick cloud of smoke and ash hanging over the vol-
cano for five days in late June; when this cleared away, two dense col-
umns of rising smoke could be seen. In mid-August, ships passing by
Krakatau reported heavy ashfalls that turned the sky black, along with
columns of smoke, rumbling noises, and flashes of lightning.
The First August Eruption. The eruption for which Krakatau
is famous began early in the afternoon of Sunday, August 26, 1883.
R. D. M. Verbeek, a Dutch geologist who later wrote the first full-
length study of the eruption, reported that at 1:00 p.m. he heard a
rumbling sound at his home in Buitenzorg (now Bogor), a town on
Java about 100 miles from Krakatau. The director of the Batavia Ob-
servatory noted that the sound was first heard there at 1:06 p.m. At
first it was mistaken for thunder and, as in May, even after residents
realized that they were hearing a volcanic eruption, they assumed
that some volcano other than Krakatau was producing the increas-
ingly violent explosions.
Closer to Krakatau, there was no mistaking the sounds. The ship
the Charles Bal, which passed within 10 miles of Krakatau, reported
hearing explosions from the volcano that sounded like heavy artil-
lery. The ship later reported “chains of fire” and white balls of fire at
the volcano, along with continued explosive roars, choking sulfurous
fumes, and a hail of pumice stone and ash which covered the decks to
a thickness of 3 or 4 inches.
The captain of the Medea, 76 miles away, recorded two explosions
from Krakatau at 2 p.m. that shook his ship, and he noted a black
eruption cloud above the volcano, calculated to be 17 miles high.
Later estimates put the height of the cloud at between 15 and 50
miles.
Reports from the Javanese port of Anjer, about 30 miles from the
volcano across the Sunda Strait, noted that by 2 p.m. Krakatau was en-
veloped in smoke, and it had become so dark that people could not
see their own hands. One witness said a column of steam rose above
Krakatau, looking like thousands of large white balloons, and added
that the sea looked agitated. Another witness said the eruption cloud
kept shifting color between black and white; he, too, noticed the agi-
tation of the sea, which he said was turning an inky black color. A
third witness reported a fiery glare above the volcano and said that
the explosions grew louder after nightfall. Houses shook, and panic

452
 1883: Krakatau eruption

set in. Residents of Anjer and other towns and villages gathered their
belongings and prepared to flee.
There was panic even in Batavia. Even that far from Krakatau, the
noise was so loud that the sound of the regular evening gun was al-
most inaudible. Doors and windows rattled, walls shook, and at 2 a.m.
a powerful explosion knocked out the city’s gas lighting system. Resi-
dents woke and rushed into the streets. However, there were very few
casualties in Batavia. Most of the deaths occurred in coastal towns
and villages closer to the volcano, and most were caused not directly
by the eruption or the fall of ash and stone but from the massive tsu-
namis that ensued on Monday morning.
The Second August Eruption. Overnight, ash continued to
fall, and unusual electrical phenomena were reported on ships in the
strait. The Berbice, about 50 miles to the west, reported hot ash falling,
which burned holes in the sailors’ clothes and the sails, and which
was soon piled 3 feet deep on the deck. The ship was also struck by
fireballs and flashes of lightning, and several members of the crew re-
ceived electric shocks. On the Gouverneur General Loudon, 40 or 50
miles to the northwest, a mud rain fell, and lightning struck several
times, creating phosphorescent effects (Saint Elmo’s fire) on the
masts and rigging. Saint Elmo’s fire was also reported on the Charles
Bal; its captain said “a peculiar pink flame came from fleecy clouds
which seemed to touch the mast-heads and yard-arms.” He also re-
ported that the sky alternated between being pitch black one mo-
ment and ablaze with light the next.
It was not until after dawn on Monday, August 27 that the full force
of Krakatau was felt. There had been numerous explosions before
this, including a large one just after 5:00 p.m. on the 26th, but be-
tween dawn and 11:00 a.m. on the 27th there were four mammoth ex-
plosions (at 5:30, 6:44, 10:02, and 10:52) that dwarfed the earlier
ones. The first three of these, especially the one at 10:02, were fol-
lowed by tidal waves that caused most of the destruction associated
with Krakatau.
Sometime between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m. a wave 33 feet high struck
Anjer. The town was destroyed. All who did not flee died. The next
day, a messenger sent to investigate returned from Anjer with the re-
port that “there was no longer any such place.” The houses and other
buildings were gone, except for ruined remnants of the town fort;

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the trees were all uprooted, except for a few leafless ones covered
in ash; the Anjer lighthouse had vanished; and all the monuments
in the town’s cemetery had been washed away. The situation was
summed up by one witness in a few brief words: “All gone,” he wrote.
“Plenty lives lost.”
An even bigger wave struck at about 10:30 a.m. and destroyed the
town of Merak, about 7 miles north of Anjer along the Java coast. All
but 2 or 3 of the approximately 2,700 inhabitants died, even though
many of them had taken shelter on a hill behind the town, where they
had survived earlier waves. The 10:30 wave seems to have been higher
at Merak than anywhere else, perhaps because of the funnel-shaped
strait there formed by a tiny island just offshore. Estimates put the
wave height at 135 feet; elsewhere the wave attained heights esti-
mated at between 50 and 100 feet.
In Merak, as at Anjer, all the buildings vanished, except for the
floor of the house of the resident engineer on top of the hill. The rail-
road line leading to the Merak quarry was torn up and twisted, and
locomotives and railcars were battered and tossed aside. One loco-
motive was carried out to sea and lay 50 yards from the beach, a bat-
tered wreck with the waves breaking over it.
The area around Merak was similarly devastated. It was a “scene of
desolation,” according to one witness, who added: “For miles there
was not a tree standing, and where formerly stood numerous cam-
pongs (native villages), surrounded by paddy fields and cocoanut

The island of Krakatau before the eruption of 1883. (Library of Congress)

454
 1883: Krakatau eruption

groves, there was nothing but a wilderness, more resembling the bot-
tom of the sea than anywhere else.” He saw rocks of coral that the
wave had deposited several miles inland, some of them weighing as
much as 100 tons. Closer to Merak he noted remnants of bedding
and furniture, along with shreds of clothing.
All together, in the Merak-Anjer area the death toll was set at
7,610. In the neighboring district of Tjiringin, another 12,022 per-
ished, 1,880 of them in the town of Tjiringin, which was swept away by
the 10:30 wave. Corpses lay on the ground in Tjiringin for days, and
there was much looting.
Sumatra. Parts of Sumatra, to the north of Krakatau, are closer to
the volcano than Java and were directly in line with its blasts. In these
areas, unlike the situation elsewhere, there were deaths from the vol-
cano’s hot ash and pumice in addition to deaths from the tidal waves.
About 1,000 residents in the area north of Katimbang, on the south-
east point of Sumatra 25 miles from Krakatau, died of burns; another
2,000 were burned but survived. The ash here struck not only from
above but also, according to one witness, from below: spurting up like
a fountain through cracks in the floor of the hut in which she had
taken shelter on the slopes of Mount Radjah Bassa, north of Katim-
bang. Besides causing human casualties, the ash killed vegetation
and, through its weight on roofs, destroyed many houses.
Even in Sumatra, however, most deaths were caused by the waves.
Waves struck Katimbang as early as Sunday night, throwing small
boats up on the shore. The whole town was washed away by the same
wave that destroyed Anjer at 6:30 a.m. Monday.
Waves also struck farther west, at Teluk Betong on Lampong Bay,
about 50 miles from Krakatau, beginning at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, Au-
gust 26. These early waves damaged a bridge and a pier and cast some
boats on the shore. The real damage came the next day, primarily
from the wave that struck at 10:30 a.m. Half an hour earlier the larg-
est of Krakatau’s eruptions had been heard in Teluk Betong; then ash
and mud began to fall on the town, and it became dark as night, so
dark that the effects of the wave that followed were not seen until the
next day. Those who went to inspect then found only ruins, corpses,
and iron government cash boxes. One witness described the scene by
saying “there was no destruction. There was simply . . . nothing.”
One of the most remarkable episodes in this area involved a

455
1883: Krakatau eruption

Dutch gunboat, the Berouw, which had been anchored in Teluk

Betong harbor. Early Monday morning one of the big waves tore the
Berouw from its moorings and carried it into the Chinese quarter of
the town. The big wave at 10:30 a.m. lifted the Berouw again and de-
posited it almost 2 miles inland amid some palm trees. All 28 of its
crew members died.
Altogether 2,260 people died in the Teluk Betong area, and it was
difficult to send relief to the survivors because pumice in Lampong
Bay made it impossible to reach the area by sea for weeks. However,
amid all the devastation and suffering, one witness did note a positive
result: All the mosquitoes in the area had been destroyed, by ash or
mud.
Survivors’ Tales. In the midst of death and destruction, some
people made miraculous escapes. The telegraph master at Anjer
managed to outrun the tidal wave. “Never have I run so fast in my
life,” he said later, “for, in the most literal sense of the word, death was
at my heels.” An elderly Dutch pilot in Anjer told an even more re-
markable tale. He was unable to outrun the wave but found himself
swept by it into a palm tree. He stayed in the tree watching corpses
float by him and later made his way to safety. One resident survived by
riding on the back of an alligator. A Dutch auctioneer in a small vil-
lage near Batavia survived by climbing on a dead cow that floated by,
where he stayed until encountering a tree onto which he climbed. A
Dutch official in Beneawang on Semangka Bay in Sumatra floated for
hours, first on a shelf and then on a tree trunk, after his house col-
lapsed around him.
Aftermath. In addition to the deaths and damage caused on Java
and Sumatra, Krakatau caused much damage to itself. After the erup-
tion, it was discovered that the northern two-thirds of the island had
disappeared, apparently sunk beneath the sea. All that remained was
a sheared-off part of one of the three volcanic cones, Rakata, and one
tiny rock 10 yards square sometimes called by the name Bootsman-
rots. The neighboring islet of Polish Hat also disappeared. On the
other hand, the nearby island of Verlaten tripled in size due to rock
landing on it from the volcano, and two new islands formed: Steers
and Calmeyer. However, the latter two, being composed entirely of
pumice, were washed away by the sea within months.
All plant and animal life on Krakatau seems to have perished in

456
 1883: Krakatau eruption

A drawing of Krakatau in eruption. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration)

the eruption, although some scientists have argued that seeds, insect
larvae, and earthworms may have survived below ground. In any
case, life did return to Krakatau fairly quickly: By 1889 plant life,
bugs, and lizards were reported on the island.
Volcanic activity returned as well, in 1927, with the appearance of

457
1883: Krakatau eruption

a new volcanic island where the northern two-thirds of the old island
used to be. Anak Krakatau (“child of Krakatau”), occupying a small
but growing portion of what used to be the northern part of Kra-
katau, has erupted periodically since its first appearance.
Causes of the Waves. Besides the dispute over the survival of life
after the eruption, there has been disagreement among scientists
over the process that caused the massive tidal waves, or tsunamis, at
Krakatau. Several theories have been put forward: that the pumice
and other ejected materials landing on the water caused the waves,
that some underwater explosion caused them, that they were caused
by a “lateral blast” from the side of the volcano, that a pyroclastic flow
of ash and heated volcanic gases was responsible, and that the col-
lapse of two-thirds of the island into the sea produced the effect. The
last view, which posits that by ejecting masses of material into the at-
mosphere Krakatau created a void beneath itself into which it eventu-
ally collapsed, seems to have the most support, but scientists remain
divided because the evidence is inconclusive. One scientist, in dis-
cussing this issue, has remarked that Krakatau, though one of the
best-known, is also one of the least-understood volcanic eruptions.
Long-Term and Long-Range Effects. Even after the end of
the eruptions, late at night on Monday, August 27, effects of Kraka-
tau’s blast continued to be felt. Darkness lingered for fifty-seven
hours within 50 miles of the volcano and for twenty-two hours up to
125 miles away. Pumice choked the bays of Java and Sumatra until De-
cember and floated as far away as South Africa, nearly 5,000 miles dis-
tant, over the next two years. In the middle of the Indian Ocean, in
December, 1883, the steamer Bothwell Castle encountered a vast field
of pumice that stretched for 1,250 miles and was so thick upon the
sea that the sailors were able climb onto it in some places and walk
about.
The sounds of Krakatau also traveled to distant parts. In Singa-
pore, over 500 miles from the volcano, vessels were sent out to investi-
gate what sounded like the firing of a ship’s guns. The explosion was
also heard in Saigon (1,164 miles away), Borneo (1,235 miles away),
Bangkok (1,413 miles away), Manila (1,800 miles away), and Ceylon
(now Sri Lanka) and western Australia (up to 2,000 miles away). The
most distant report came from Rodriguez Island in the Indian
Ocean, 2,968 miles from the source of the blast. The waves produced

458
 1883: Krakatau eruption

by Krakatau also traveled long distances. High waves struck the coast
of India on August 27, about 2,000 miles from the volcano. Tidal dis-
turbances were also reported in New Zealand and even as far away as
the English Channel.
The atmospheric effects of the eruption were among the most
startling and long-lasting. Dust thrown up by Krakatau circled the
globe and remained suspended in the atmosphere for two or three
years. As a result, much of the globe was treated to spectacular, blood-
red sunsets and a very odd-looking sun, which sometimes appeared
blue or green. At times the sun also appeared with a pinkish halo
around it; this halo, described at the time by the Reverend Sereno
Bishop, has since been seen after other volcanic eruptions and is re-
ferred to as Bishop’s ring.
Blue suns were reported in September in the Virgin Islands, Peru,
and points in between. A green sun was reported in Hawaii, Panama,
and Venezuela. In November the fire departments of Poughkeepsie,
New York, and New Haven, Connecticut, were called out because a
red glare in the sky convinced onlookers that a great fire was under-
way. There were so many fiery sunsets and brilliant after-sunset glows,
especially in the winter of 1883-1884, that letters poured into the
magazine Nature, which began a special department in its pages
called “The Remarkable Sunsets.”
Another probable consequence of the dust in the atmosphere was
a cooling in the world’s climate. There has been some scientific de-
bate over this, but it is generally agreed that the volcanic dust re-
duced solar radiation reaching the earth by as much as 10 percent
and that as a result world temperatures over the next three years
dropped by 0.25 to 0.5 degrees Celsius. Cooler temperatures were es-
pecially noticeable in the Northern Hemisphere.
Reputation and Misconceptions. The 1883 eruption of Kra-
katau was one of the largest, loudest, and most devastating in re-
corded history. Perhaps as a result it captured the popular imagina-
tion, giving rise to numerous legends and erroneous reports. The
very earliest newspaper stories contained wild statements about mil-
lions dying and sixteen volcanoes being in eruption. Years later, in
1969, Hollywood was equally inaccurate in producing a motion pic-
ture called Krakatoa, East of Java (Krakatau is west of Java).
It is also not true, at least according to the scientific consensus,

459
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that Krakatau blew off its top or decapitated itself and completely dis-
appeared. Rather than blowing itself up into the air, Krakatau, as
most scientists see it, collapsed into the sea. Moreover, not all of it dis-
appeared; one-third of the original island survived.
The fact that Krakatau was uninhabited is also not widely known.
It is true that Krakatau had been inhabited at earlier times in its his-
tory. Captain James Cook’s ships landed at the island in the 1770’s
and discovered a village and cultivation; a village was also reported on
the island in 1809, and there are reports of a penal settlement there.
However, by the time of the eruption the island was completely de-
serted, except for local fishermen who occasionally visited it.
The popular view of volcanic destruction through ash and rock
and fast-flowing lava also does not apply to Krakatau, which produced
most of its deaths indirectly by tidal waves. On the other hand, the
tidal waves resulted from volcanic processes; there was no simulta-
neous earthquake.
Finally, Krakatau was not located in some obscure, out-of-the-way
region. On the contrary, it was right in the middle of a major ship-
ping route, the Sunda Strait, not far from heavily populated coastal
regions with access to the rest of the world by telegraph. It may be, in
fact, that it is precisely because Krakatau was well connected to the
rest of the world that its eruption has become world-famous.
Sheldon Goldfarb

For Further Information:

Bullard, Fred M. Volcanoes of the Earth. 2d rev. ed. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1984.
Francis, Peter, and Clive Oppenheimer. Volcanoes. 2d ed. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004.
Francis, Peter, and Stephen Self. “The Eruption of Krakatoa.” Scien-
tific American 249, no. 5 (November, 1983): 172-187.
Scarth, Alwyn. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Simkin, Tom, and Richard S. Fiske, eds. Krakatau, 1883: The Volcanic
Eruption and Its Effects. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1983.
Thornton, Ian. Krakatau: The Destruction and Reassembly of an Island
Ecosystem. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.

460
 1883: Krakatau eruption

Winchester, Simon. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27,
1883. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Woolley, Alan, and Clive Bishop. “Krakatoa: The Decapitation of a
Volcano.” In The Making of the Earth, edited by Richard Fifield. New
York: Basil Blackwell, 1985.

461
■ 1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888
Blizzard
Also known as: The Great White Embargo, the White Hurricane
Date: March 11-14, 1888
Place: Northeastern United States
Result: 400 dead, $7 million in property damage

T he Great White Embargo, the Great Blizzard of 1888,

the White Hurricane—whatever name the folklore
legends give it, the March 11-14, 1888, snowstorm was one of the big-
gest to hit the northeastern United States. A roaring blizzard, sus-
tained for four days by hurricane-force winds, extended from Mary-
land to Maine. It claimed 400 lives and caused $7 million in property
damage. Two hundred boats off the coast and in harbors were
swamped and sunk, taking the lives of about 100 seamen. Countless
numbers of wild birds, animals, and livestock froze to death. New
York was hardest hit, with 200 deaths reported there alone. The stock
exchanges on Wall Street closed for three days.
The day before the blizzard, March 10, was unusually mild. At 9:30
p.m. the thermometer registered in the mid-50’s. It had been the
warmest day of the year, during one of the mildest winters in seventeen
years. However, the following afternoon—Sunday, March 11—a driz-
zling rain turned to a downpour, and the temperature steadily fell.
If the meteorological equipment of the time had been more so-
phisticated, and communication between Washington, D.C., and
New York more efficient than telegraph messages, perhaps the U.S.
Signal Service’s weather observatory in New York could have been
warned about a severe storm brewing off the coast of Delaware.
There, two massive weather systems were headed for collision. Frigid
Arctic air, coming from northwestern Canada, was traveling south
along the eastern coast of North America at 30 miles per hour. Warm,
moisture-packed air from the Gulf of Mexico headed north, into the
Arctic air. The two huge systems clashed, resulting in a winter hurri-
cane saturated with moisture and fueled by violent winds. As the sys-
tem turned to travel northwest, it picked up speed.

462
 1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888

MAINE

VERMONT
Augusta

Montpelier

NEW HAMPSHIRE
rio NEW YORK Concord
Lansing
Onta
Lake
Albany Boston MASSACHUSETTS

Buffalo
Hartford
ie
e Er
Lak New Haven

RHODE ISLAND
PENNSYLVANIA New York

Trenton CONNECTICUT
Philadelphia
Harrisburg
Pittsburgh
NEW JERSEY Atlantic Ocean

The first winds of the storm reached small craft and fishing boats
on Chesapeake Bay late Sunday afternoon. The mercury plum-
meted, and the downpour quickly changed to a blinding wall of snow.
Anchor cables on boats snapped, causing them to run aground or
smash into each other. Vessels in the open waters were overtaken by
the churning waters and sank. The storm, dubbed “The White Hurri-
cane,” moved from Chesapeake Bay north to Boston.
By midnight in New York, the rain had been replaced by snow, and
the winds were gusting to 85 miles per hour. To qualify as a blizzard,
the wind must blow at 35 miles per hour or more. During a hurri-
cane, winds near the eye range from 74 miles per hour to as much as
150 miles per hour or more. The Great Blizzard of 1888 was virtually a
hurricane with blizzard conditions. According to an eyewitness ac-
count from Arthur Bier, recorded in Great Disasters (Reader’s Digest

463
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper devotes an issue to the Great Blizzard of
1888 in New York City. (Library of Congress)

464
 1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888

Association, 1989), “The air looked as though some people were

throwing buckets full of flour from all the roof tops,” sometime after
midnight on March 12, 1888.
Disaster in New York City. New Yorkers awaking Monday,
March 12, found 10 inches of snowfall with drifts as high as 20 feet. In
many areas one side of the street was blown free of snow, while the
other side had snow piled to the second-story windows of buildings.
Used to heavy snowfalls and trying to go about their business as usual,
many New Yorkers bundled up against the weather and headed off to
work. As the temperature continued to drop, and the snow showed
no sign of letting up, the city slowly ground to a halt. Horse-drawn
street cars struggled to remain on snow-covered tracks. The elevated
trains ran very slowly, eventually coming to a standstill on frozen
tracks. Commuters waited in vain, among the swirling snow and fall-
ing temperatures, on elevated-train platforms for trains that did not
arrive. An estimated 15,000 passengers were stranded in the trains, el-
evated above the streets, across the city. With no way to get down they
were at the mercy of enterprising “entrepreneurs” who carried lad-
ders to the train cars but charged a steep fee of one dollar per passen-
ger for the short climb down to the street. One train, stalled on the
tracks between stations, was hit by another from behind. The colli-
sion killed an engineer and injured 20 passengers. Winds picked up
to nearly 100 miles per hour. Abandoned streetcars were pushed over
in these winds.
Fire stations were also immobilized. Many people tried lighting
fires in their homes to keep warm. When the fires raged out of con-
trol, fire trucks could not reach the victims, and the raging winds
spread the fire. Property damage from fire alone was estimated at sev-
eral million dollars. Those left homeless or trying to survive with
walls or roofs missing from wind or fire damage often succumbed to
the elements and died of exposure.
The financial district on Wall Street actually shut down for three
days, something unheard of even today, because only 30 of 1,100
members of the stock exchange showed up Monday morning. People
braving the elements on foot were later found frozen to death in
snowdrifts along the sidewalks. One such victim was George D.
Barremore, a merchant from the financial district. Finding the ele-
vated trains closed down, he decided to walk to work. He apparently

465
1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888

collapsed in a snowdrift and froze only four blocks from his home.
Those who did make it to work found the buildings deserted and
the return trip home too hazardous to make. Many people camped
out in hotel or business lobbies. By Monday evening New York City
was at a standstill. Thousands were stranded in a city with hotels so
overcrowded that cots were set up in hallways and even bathrooms.
Author Mark Twain was one such reluctant visitor. Having come in
from Hartford, Connecticut, Twain is said to have sent word to his
wife that he was “Crusoeing on a desert hotel.” Some blizzard-tossed
refugees found shelter on cots in the city’s public buildings. One
such location was the city’s jails. At Grand Central Station an esti-
mated 300 people slept on benches, since normal passenger traffic
was immobilized. Business was brisk at pubs and places of entertain-
ment, such as Madison Square Garden, where circus man P. T.
Barnum performed to crowds of more than one hundred.
On Tuesday the East River was frozen. The ice bridge, connecting
Manhattan and Queens, rarely formed because of the flowing waters
of the river. Some adventurers bravely used the ice bridge as a short-
cut between the two cities. When the tide changed, however, the ice
bridge shattered, tossing some foolhardy travelers into the freezing
waters of the river. Nearly 100 other adventurers were trapped on the
ice floes and narrowly escaped with their lives.
On Tuesday afternoon the snow tapered off and the winds died
down. By midday the thermometer began climbing from its 5-degree-
Fahrenheit low. Wednesday, March 14, saw the snow yield to flurries.
In the aftermath, a total of 20.9 inches had fallen, with drifts as high
as 30 feet in Herald Square. This snowfall record would exist for at
least the next sixty years.
Other Locations. New York saw light snowfall compared to
other locations such as New Haven, Connecticut, which accumulated
45 inches. The driving winds there had also packed the snow into
hardened drifts. Of the eastern cities, only Boston managed to avoid
the worst of the storm. Alternating rain and sleet eventually led to an
accumulated 12 inches of snow, but it did not bring the city to a stand-
still.
Traveling from Maryland to Maine, the Great Blizzard of 1888 af-
fected one-quarter of the American population. High winds toppled
telegraph poles from Washington, D.C., north to Philadelphia. Rail

466
 1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888

lines were blocked by the mangled cabling. In Philadelphia, freezing

rain glazed the streets on March 12. When snow did fall, the ice-
glazed streets were buried beneath 10 inches of drifts. Keene, New
Hampshire, was blanketed in 3 feet of snow, and nearby Dublin re-
ceived 42 inches. New York’s state capital, Albany, received 47 inches,
and Troy, New York, recorded 55 inches of snowfall—perhaps the
largest amount of the Great Blizzard of 1888. City officials ordered
paths plowed through the snow rather than having the snow com-
pletely removed. In New York City, men and boys eagerly worked at
the drifts—using axes and picks on those of hard-packed snow—and
earning between $2 and $10 for shoveling people out. An estimated
700 wagons and 1,000 workers cleared away the snow, dumping it
along the piers of the Brooklyn Bridge. The public bill for the
cleanup came to $25,000.
Aftermath. By Friday, New York City was that back to nearly nor-
mal. Bonfires lit to warm pedestrians, as well as the warming March
sun, soon melted the mounds of snow piled alongside buildings and
sidewalks. Cleaning up, restoring power, and counting the dead was a

A man stands next to a snow hut in Washington, D.C., following the Great Blizzard
of 1888. (Library of Congress)

467
1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888

long task for the citizens. Melting snow revealed not only frozen bod-
ies and dead animals but also heaps of debris discarded during the
heavy snowfall. In areas outside New York hit by the blizzard, the
melting snow revealed the bodies of thousands of dead birds, ani-
mals, and livestock.
The search for survivors was intense. In Brooklyn, at least 20 postal
workers were pulled from the snow unconscious. New York’s Republi-
can Party leader, Roscoe Conkling, had collapsed in the snow from
exhaustion. He became ill and died on April 18, making him the final
victim of the White Hurricane.
Despite the devastation and loss of lives as a result of the Great
Blizzard of 1888, it did have a positive impact on the largest cities shut
down by the storm. To ensure that communications networks in the
Northeast would never again be disrupted, the U.S. Congress de-
cided that telegraph and telephone wires and public transit routes
would be moved underground. Vulnerable gas lines and water mains,
located above ground, were also redirected underground to safety.
Within a quarter century, the subway systems for New York and Bos-
ton were proposed. New York’s subway system was approved in 1894,
with construction beginning in 1900.
Lisa A. Wroble

For Further Information:

Allaby, Michael. Dangerous Weather: Blizzards. Rev. ed. New York: Facts
On File, 2003.
Cable, Mary. The Blizzard of ’88. New York: Atheneum, 1988.
Davis, Lee. Natural Disasters: From the Black Plague to the Eruption of Mt.
Pinatubo. New York: Facts On File, 1992.
Erickson, Jon. Violent Storms. Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab Books,
1988.
Laskin, David. The Children’s Blizzard. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
Murphy, Jim. Blizzard! The Storm That Changed America. New York:
Scholastic Press, 2000.
Ward, Kaari, ed. Great Disasters. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader’s Digest As-
sociation, 1989.
Watson, Benjamin A. Acts of God: “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” Unpredict-
able Guide to Weather and Natural Disasters. New York: Random
House, 1993.

468
■ 1889: The Johnstown Flood
Flood
Date: May 31, 1889
Place: Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Result: About 2,209 dead, 1,600 homes lost, 280 businesses de-
stroyed, $17 million in property damage

S trictly speaking, the Johnstown Flood of 1889 was not a

natural disaster. Nature was only partly responsible; ne-
glect and human error also contributed. Without the latter two, the
disaster would not have occurred.
Flooding in the narrow valley of western Pennsylvania was a com-
mon occurrence, and while creating a certain amount of water dam-
age in buildings, it also led to a casual attitude about these natural
events. The great loss of life, however, was the result of a tremendous
wave caused by the breaking of a dam 14 miles upstream from
Johnstown.
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The first white settlers came to the
valley around 1771, but the area was abandoned several times before
it became a backwoods trading center. Population started growing
when the canal system from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh was finished,
and by 1889, ten thousand people lived in Johnstown, with a total of
thirty thousand crowded in the narrow valley. Johnstown was built on
a nearly level floodplain at the confluence of the Little Conemaugh
and Stony Creek Rivers in Cambria County. In the early 1800’s, Penn-
sylvania’s canal system, when completed, had too little water in the
summer to be usable; in 1836 the state legislature appropriated
$30,000 for a reservoir dam on the South Fork River. The final cost
was $240,000, and it was completed in 1852, six months before the
Pennsylvania Railroad was built from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh,
making the canal obsolete. The canal system was put up for sale in
1854 and in 1857 was bought by the Pennsylvania Railroad for $7.5
million.
In June, 1862, the dam broke after heavy rains. Little damage re-
sulted downstream as the reservoir was only half-full, and a watchman

469
1889: The Johnstown Flood

had opened the valves and released much of the pressure before the
break. The reservoir, then only about 10 feet deep, was abandoned
until Congressman John Reilly bought it in 1875 for $2,500. Four
years later he sold it to Benjamin F. Ruff, a onetime railroad tunnel
contractor, coke salesman, and real-estate broker, for $2,000. Before
selling it, Reilly removed the cast-iron discharge pipes and sold them
for scrap.
The dam had been constructed according to the best engineering
knowledge of the day. It was composed of layers of clay covered with
an inner and outer coating of stones. A spillway, 72 feet wide, was cut
at the eastern end of the rock of the mountain. The dam breast was
more than 900 feet long and 20 feet wide, and the dam itself was 850
feet high with a 270-foot base, at the center of which were five cast-
iron sluice pipes, each 2 feet in diameter and set into a stone culvert.
These pipes were controlled from a nearby wooden tower. It was
these sluice pipes which had been removed by Reilly, and the control
tower burned in 1862.
In 1879, Ruff persuaded fifteen Pittsburgh men to buy shares in
the venture, and on November 15 the South Fork Fishing and Hunt-
ing Club was chartered in Pittsburgh. Members, eventually number-
ing 61, included Andrew Carnegie; Henry Clay Frick, the coke king
associated with him; several other Carnegie associates and officials;
banker Andrew Mellon; Robert Pitcairn, the powerful head of the

Lake Erie New York

Erie Binghamton

Scranton
Warren
Wilkes-Barre

Youngstown PENNSYLVANIA

Ohio
Con Allentown Bethlehem
e ma Altoona
ugh
Pittsburgh Rive
r Reading
Johnstown Harrisburg

Lancaster Philadelphia

New
West Virginia Maryland Jersey

470
 1889: The Johnstown Flood

Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad; and other indus-

trial, commercial, and political leaders from Pittsburgh. Named pres-
ident, Ruff boarded up one side of the stone culvert and dumped
rock, mud, brush, hay, and anything else he found, including horse
manure, into the hole left by the pipes; lowered the height of the
dam several feet to provide a roadway wide enough for two carriages
to be driven abreast on its top; installed a bridge over the spillway and
under it a screen of iron rods to keep in the fish with which the lake
was to be stocked; and built a clubhouse, boathouses, and stables. Six-
teen members added private summer homes. Renamed Lake Cone-
maugh, 450 acres, 1 mile across and 2 miles long, it drained 60 square
miles of mountainside, including many creeks, was 70 feet deep in
the spring, and contained water weighing 20 million tons.
Watching this activity with some concern was Daniel J. Morrell,
head of the Cambria Iron Works downstream, which had about $50
million invested in the valley. In November, 1880, Morrell sent John
Fulton, an engineer and his designated successor, to look over the
dam. Fulton’s report, a copy of which Morrell sent to Ruff, noted that
“repairs were not done in a careful and substantial manner, or with
the care demanded in a large structure of this kind.” He reported
that the lake had no discharge pipe nor any other method to reduce
or take the water out of the lake, and that it had been repaired badly,
leaving a large leak at its center. In a brusque answer, Ruff main-
tained that there were no leaks, the weight of the water had been
overestimated by Fulton, and the Iron Works was in no danger from
the dam. He was later to declare that the “leaks” were springs at the
base of the dam.
Still unsatisfied, Morrell, in a second letter, offered to cooperate
in the work, helping financially to make the dam safe. The offer was
declined, with renewed assurances of safety. Morrell died in 1885 and
Ruff in 1887; two years later, Colonel Elias J. Unger, a retired Pitts-
burgh hotel owner, was named club president and manager and took
up full-time residence at the lake.
In February, 1881, heavy rains had caused serious damage, and in
June of the same year during a flash flood rumors flew that the dam
was about to break. These rumors were renewed each year but for the
next eight years proved groundless, leading to an attitude of compla-
cency on the part of everyone in the area.

471
1889: The Johnstown Flood

The first record of a flood in Johnstown is from 1808, when a small

dam across Stony Creek, put in as a millrace for one of the first forges,
was breached. As the years went by, floods became more serious be-
cause timber was being stripped off the mountainsides to provide
lumber for building, and the river channels were narrowed to make
room for buildings and bridges. Thus, there was less river to handle
more runoff. From 1881 to 1888, seven floods were recorded, three
of them serious.
The Year of the Johnstown Flood. In April of 1889, 14 inches
of heavy snow fell, then melted rapidly in the warm weather. In May
rain fell for eleven days. On May 28 a storm that had originated out of
Kansas and Nebraska caused hard rains over a wide area. On May 29
the U.S. Signal Corps warned the mid-Atlantic states that they were in
for severe local storms, and parts of Pennsylvania had the worst down-
pour ever recorded; at the South Fork Club 7 inches fell.
On Thursday, May 30, a fine rain fell for most of the day, but by 4
p.m. the sky was lighter and the wind was up. People who lived in areas
that had been flooded assumed the storm was over and the waters
would recede. However, by 11 p.m. heavy rain and high winds had re-
turned. During the night, families in the valley heard “rumbling and
roaring” sounds as the heavy storm water tore big holes in the satu-
rated ground. Crops washed away, roads became creeks, and little
streams rampaged torrents.
By Friday morning the rain had eased off, but the sky was very dark
and a thick mist hung in the valley. Rivers were rising faster than 1
foot an hour, and by 7 a.m., when men arrived for their shift at the
Cambria mills, they were told to go home and take care of their fami-
lies. By 8 a.m., much debris was observed in the lake, and it was rising
rapidly. At 10 a.m. schools were let out. The Chicago and Pittsburgh
trains arrived on time at Johnstown, but some areas of track were al-
ready in precarious condition, and at 11 a.m. a log boom burst up the
Stony Creek, sending logs to jam against the massive Johnstown stone
railroad bridge. By noon the water level in Johnstown was at a record
high, and after the Stony Creek ripped out the Poplar Street and
Cambria City bridges, George T. Swank, editor and proprietor of the
Johnstown Tribune, started a running log of events.
Meanwhile, at the dam, young John G. Parke, Jr., new resident en-
gineer for the South Fork Club, was busy that morning supervising

472
 1889: The Johnstown Flood

twenty Italian laborers who were installing a new indoor plumbing

system. Parke noted about 7 a.m. that the water level of the lake was
only about 2 feet from the top of the dam, while the previous day it
had been 4 to 6 feet below. He heard a sound from the head of the
lake like “the terrible roaring as of a cataract.” He went inside to have
breakfast and then with a young workman took out a rowboat and
surveyed the incoming creeks, finding the upper quarter of the lake
filled with debris.
When Parke returned to shore, he was told he was needed at the
dam immediately, and he saddled his horse to ride there. He found
nearly fifty people observing the sewer diggers trying without much
success to throw up a ridge of earth to heighten the dam. At the west
end a dozen men were trying to cut a new spillway through the tough
shale of the hillside but succeeded in providing a trench only knee-
deep and about 2 feet wide. Local onlookers advised Colonel Unger,
who was directing the work, to tear out the bridge and the iron-mesh
spillway, but he did not want to lose the fish. At 11 a.m., the lake water
was at the level of the dam, eating at the new ridge, and there were
several large new leaks at the base.
Around 12:15, when Unger ordered the spillway cleared, it was too
late: Debris had piled up to the extent that the bridge and mesh were
jammed in, and the spillway was virtually blocked. At 12:30, Parke
considered cutting a new spillway through one end of the dam, but
he did not want to take the responsibility for ruining the dam. He rea-
soned that there would be no way later to prove the dam had been
about to break. He went into the clubhouse for dinner. By 2 p.m. the
water was running over the center of the dam, at its lowest point.
The Flood Itself. The dam gave way at 3:10 p.m. John Parke in-
sisted it did not break, it “just moved away.” It took about forty min-
utes for the entire lake to empty. Civil engineers later calculated the
velocity was akin to “turning Niagara Falls into the valley.” They
blamed the lack of outlet pipes, the lowered height of the dam in re-
lation to the spillway (which was itself crammed with debris), and the
fact that due to earlier damage the dam was weakest and lowest at its
center.
The men stood and watched as huge trees were snapped off the
ground and disappeared and the water scraped the hill down to bed-
rock to a height of 50 feet; the farmhouse and buildings belonging to

473
1889: The Johnstown Flood

The aftermath of the Johnstown Flood. (Library of Congress)

George Fisher vanished in an instant, and Lamb’s Bridge and the

buildings of George Lamb climbed the 60-foot crest, then rolled and
smashed against the hill. Then the valley turned sharply to the right
and blocked their view. The Fisher and Lamb families had escaped
minutes before, but at South Fork, Michael Mann, who lived in a
shanty on the creek bank, was the first casualty. His body was found a
week later, 1.5 miles downstream, stripped of all clothing and half
buried in mud. South Fork Village, stacked on the hillside in a bend
in the valley, suffered little damage: About 20 buildings, a planing
mill, and the bridge were swept away and then deposited about 200
feet upstream by the water’s backwash as it slammed into the moun-
tain on the north side of the Little Conemaugh River. However, the
40-foot “mountain” of water, moving about 10 to 15 miles per hour,
claimed another 3 lives.
For the first mile of its 14-mile journey to Johnstown, the river had
only railroad tracks and equipment to swallow up. As the valley nar-

474
 1889: The Johnstown Flood

rowed and twisted, the water height grew to over 60 feet. As it hit the
tremendous stone viaduct built fifty years earlier and still used for the
main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, there was a booming crunch
as debris piled up and momentarily formed another lake. Then the
bridge collapsed all at once, and the water exploded with concen-
trated power down the valley, taking with it the entire small village of
Mineral Point. Fortunately, most of the inhabitants had left earlier in
the day as the water rose due to normal flooding, but the death toll
reached 16 as those left went racing off downstream on their own
rooftops or were caught in the maelstrom.
As the water advanced down the valley (average decline in eleva-
tion, 33 feet per mile), the debris caught in various places, damming
up the water and then releasing it to flow more violently. The debris
and the friction with the hillside also caused the top water to travel
more rapidly, so that a “surf” effect developed, pounding debris and
bodies deep into the mud and making later retrieval difficult. Now
several hundred freight cars, a dozen or more locomotives, passenger
cars, nearly a hundred more houses, and quite a few corpses were
part of the wave that surged on down the valley. Past East Cone-
maugh, the flood was on a straightaway, and it began to gather speed.
Woodvale with its woolen mill was wiped out, along with 314, or 1 of
every 3, people in town. Miles of barbed wire from Gautier Works
were added to the wreckage, which swept into Johnstown at 4:07 p.m.
In Johnstown, the floodwaters had actually begun to recede. Most
people, perched in upper stories, never saw the water coming, but
they heard it. It began as a deep, steady rumble and accelerated into a
roar. Those who actually saw the wall of water, now an estimated
40 feet high, remembered “trees snapped off like pipestems” and
“houses crushed like eggshells.” Most impressive was the cloud of
dark spray that hung over the front of the wave. Preceding the spray
was a high wind.
The water hit Johnstown harder than anything it had encountered
in its 14-mile course from the dam. It bounced off the mountain in its
path and washed back up it 2 miles, carrying debris and people with
it. The devastation took just ten minutes. However, the suffering and
loss of life were more protracted.
The massive stone-arched Pennsylvania Railroad bridge on the
downriver side of Johnstown had been protected by a curve in the

475
1889: The Johnstown Flood

river and held. Debris piled up 40 feet high against it, to an area of 40
acres, and as night came on it caught fire. Editor Swank, who had
been watching everything from his Johnstown Tribune office window,
wrote that the fire burned “with all the fury of the hell you read
about—cremation alive in your own home, perhaps a mile from its
foundation; dear ones slowly consumed before your eyes, and the
same fate yours a moment later.”
The finest and newest hotel in town, the Hulbert House, had been
used as a place of refuge by many people seeking safety. It collapsed
almost the instant it was hit by the flood. Of the 60 people inside the
building, only 9 got out alive.
It was later wondered if so many lives were lost because no warning
was given. Most of the blame for loss of life can be placed on the fact
that flooding was common in the valley, and each year brought ru-
mors that the dam was going to fail, but in the nine years since the
lake had been filled no major upsets had occurred. Unger sent Parke
to South Fork at 11:30 a.m. with a warning of danger, but two local
men who had just gone to the dam said there was nothing to worry
about. Sometime before 1 p.m., the East Conemaugh dispatcher’s of-
fice received a message to warn the people of Johnstown that the dam
was liable to break. He set it aside without reading it; his assistant read
it and laughed. An hour later another message was sent to East
Conemaugh, Johnstown, and Pittsburgh, and in thirty minutes an-
other. Still, no one was unduly alarmed.
The only meaningful warning was received in East Conemaugh,
when a railroad engineer whose crew was repairing tracks just upriver
heard the water coming. He jumped into his engine, tied down the
whistle and steamed down the tracks. Nearly everyone in East Cone-
maugh heard the whistle and understood almost instantly what it
meant. Otherwise, as one telegraph operator noted of the messages,
people paid no attention to the few warnings. As a matter of fact, the
common attitude was that anyone taking any precautions was at best
gullible and at worst a coward.
Aftermath and Cleanup. Dawn on Saturday, June 1, was dark
and misty, and the river was still rising. A few random buildings stood
amid the wreckage that was piled as high as the roofs of houses. Every
bridge was gone except the stone bridge, and against it lay a good
part of what had been Johnstown, in a blazing heap. Below the bridge

476
 1889: The Johnstown Flood

A house in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, lies on its side, pierced by a large tree trunk. (Li-
brary of Congress)

the Iron Works, though damaged, still stood, but at least two-thirds of
the houses in Cambria City had been wiped out, and a tremendous
pile of mud and rock had been dumped the entire length of the main
street.

477
1889: The Johnstown Flood

Amid the wreckage were strewn corpses and portions of corpses of

horses and humans. Rescue parties had worked through the night to
free people trapped alive in the burning pile, but an estimated 80
died. Now others helped bring the marooned down from rooftops
and searched among the ruins for signs of life. Roads were impass-
able. The railroad had been destroyed. Every telegraph and tele-
phone line to the outside was down. There was no drinkable water, lit-
tle food, and no stores from which to obtain either.
Five Pittsburgh newspapers had sent journalists, and the first
newspapermen arrived on foot at about 7 a.m. on June 1. The pres-
ence of reporters at the scene the following day and for several weeks
to come, as well as later remembrances by people who lived through
the event, provided records of individual experiences. Many of the
contemporary newspaper accounts, however, were sensationalized
and based on rumor as much as fact.
By noon rafts were built; people on the hillsides whose homes had
escaped harm and farmers from miles out in the country began com-
ing into town, bringing food, water, and clothing; unclaimed chil-
dren were looked after. At 3 p.m., a meeting was called at the Adams
Street schoolhouse. Arthur J. Moxham, a young, self-made, wealthy,
and popular industrialist was put in charge of business. He immedi-
ately organized committees to establish morgues, remove dead bod-
ies from the wreckage, establish temporary hospitals, organize a po-
lice force, and find supplies and funds. A fear of typhoid as well as
concern for the survivors made retrieval, identification, and burial of
the bodies imperative. Those who were not identified were num-
bered, their descriptions recorded, and they were buried. One out of
every 3 bodies would never be identified. Hundreds of people who
were lost would never be found; it is supposed that some simply
walked away and never came back. Not for months would there be
any realistic count of the dead, and there would never be an exact, fi-
nal count. Two bodies were found as late as 1906. Ninety-nine whole
families had been wiped out, 98 children had lost both parents, and
hardly a family had not suffered a death. The flood had killed about 1
out of every 9 people.
On Sunday the weather eased off. Bodies were taken across the
Little Conemaugh in skiffs and buried in shallow graves. A post office
was set up, and all survivors were instructed to register. The first pa-

478
 1889: The Johnstown Flood

tients were cared for in a temporary hospital, and the first train came
through. Supplies and volunteers, more newspapermen and police,
doctors and work crews, a shipment of tents, an eleven-car train con-
taining nothing but coffins with more to come, and a Pittsburgh fire
department arrived, extinguishing the fire at the bridge by midnight.
At the end of the day more than 1,000 people had arrived to help the
27,000 who needed aid. Thousands more were on their way.
On Tuesday, Moxham resigned, and James B. Scott, head of the
Pittsburgh Committee, took over as civilian head of the area. From
Washington, D.C., came nurse Clara Barton and her newly organized
American Red Cross to set up tent hospitals and six hotels with hot
and cold running water, kitchens, and laundries. In five months she
distributed nearly half a million dollars worth of blankets, clothing,
food, and cash. Upon her departure she was presented with a dia-
mond locket by the people of Johnstown, and she was later feted in
Washington at a dinner attended by President Benjamin Harrison.
By the end of the month a book on the disaster had been pub-
lished, and within six months, a dozen would appear. Newspapers
carried sensational stories for weeks and published extra editions, all
of which sold out. Songs were written about the flood, several of
which became best sellers. Sightseers with picnic baskets arrived and
bought souvenirs. In all, cash contributions from around the world
would total more than $3.7 million.
In spite of assiduous cleanup, including the sprinkling of four
thousand barrels of lime over the area, typhoid broke out, affecting
461 people and killing 40. Everyone took it for granted that Johns-
town would be rebuilt, and on its original site, and so it was. John
Fulton made public the faults of the dam. In Pittsburgh, members of
the South Fork Club met and officially decided that it would be best
to say nothing about their role in the disaster. Suits were brought
against them, but the club had nothing except the now-worthless site
and widespread negative publicity; no one was awarded anything.
Cyrus Elder, who had lost his wife and daughter and his home, and
who was the only local member of the club, concluded, “If anybody
be to blame I suppose we ourselves are among them, for we have in-
deed been very careless in this most important matter and most of us
have paid the penalty of our neglect.”
Erika E. Pilver

479
1889: The Johnstown Flood

For Further Information:

Degen, Paula, and Carl Degen. The Johnstown Flood of 1889: The Trag-
edy of the Conemaugh. Philadelphia: Eastern Acorn Press, 1984.
Evans, T. William. Though the Mountains May Fall: The Story of the Great
Johnstown Flood of 1889. New York: Writers Club Press, 2002.
Johnson, Willis Fletcher. History of the Johnstown Flood. Reprint. West-
minster, Md.: Heritage Books, 2001.
McCullough, David. The Johnstown Flood. Reprint. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1987.
_______. “Run for Your Lives!” American Heritage Magazine 16, no. 4
(1966): 5-11, 66-75.
Walker, James Herbert. The Johnstown Horror!!! Or, Valley of Death. Phil-
adelphia: H. J. Smith, 1889.

480
■ 1892: Cholera pandemic
Epidemic
Date: 1892-1894
Place: India, Russia, Asia, the United States, Great Britain, Europe,
and Africa
Result: Millions dead, development of health departments and in-
fectious disease surveillance

C holera epidemics plagued humankind for most of

the nineteenth century. The final worldwide cholera
epidemic of that century occurred between 1892 and 1894. This ep-
idemic was similar to the cholera epidemics that had preceded it in
that it caused great devastation; millions of people died. The 1892
to 1894 epidemic was unique, however, in that it occurred just at the
time when science was determining beyond a doubt that the cause
of cholera was bacterial infection passed through contaminated
water.
Cholera is caused by the organism Vibrio cholerae. It lives in various
marine animals, which are consumed by humans, and it is present in
contaminated water. Most humans become infected by eating raw
fish or shellfish, or by drinking contaminated water. Not all people in-
fected with cholera show symptoms, and they can spread the disease
unknowingly. Cholera causes severe diarrhea and vomiting, which
leads to a drastic loss of fluids within the body. Dehydration, collapse
of the circulatory system, and death occur if the fluids are not re-
placed. Without treatment, cholera kills 20 to 50 percent of its victims
and death occurs within hours. Today, prompt treatment can bring
the death toll down to 1 percent.
Ancient Sanskrit writings from 2,500 years ago described a disease
with symptoms that were similar to cholera. Although cholera existed
before the 1800’s, it remained primarily in the area of Bengal, with
some brief occurrences in China. Originating in the Bengal basin at
the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers, V. cholerae lived in
the shellfish present in the waters. Hindu pilgrimages drew crowds of
faithful to the Ganges River for ceremonies, where many were in-

481
1892: Cholera pandemic

fected with cholera. Some died promptly; others carried the disease
back to their villages, causing local infestations. These outbreaks of
cholera remained local; thus, when cholera made its appearance
throughout the world in the early 1800’s, it was described as a new
disease. In 1817, cholera spread from Bengal to other parts of the
world. Over the next one hundred years the world would suffer six
major outbreaks of cholera.
The spread of cholera was closely linked to the increase in interna-
tional commerce, military actions, the increase in travel, and the in-
crease in immigration of people. When cholera broke out in India in
1817, English ships and troops were stationed there. They carried
cholera overland to Nepal and Afghanistan. Far more critically, their
ships passed cholera along to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Indonesia,
China, Japan, Arabia, and Africa. The Industrial Revolution and an
increase in urban population and crowded living conditions also con-
tributed to the spread of cholera.
The devastation caused by cholera was so great that port towns
made attempts to control it by mandating quarantines. Ship were not
allowed to disembark for weeks until they were determined to be free
of disease. Scientists struggled to find the cause of the dreaded dis-
ease. Although Robert Koch, one of the great microbiologists of the
nineteenth century, had found the bacillus that caused cholera back
in 1883, his explanation was not accepted by other experts of the
time.
In 1887, the federal government of the United States ordered a
study of cholera to begin. Dr. Joseph Kinyoun directed the program,
which later evolved into the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Kin-
youn’s research became more urgent in 1892, when an Asiatic chol-
era epidemic reached the United States.
When the cholera epidemic of 1892 struck the city of Hamburg,
Germany, a unique situation within the area gave credence to Koch’s
theory that germ-contaminated water was responsible for spreading
cholera. Hamburg obtained its water directly from the Elbe River,
which was untreated. An adjacent town, Altona, had installed a water-
filtration plant, so its citizens drank treated water. When the epi-
demic hit, the people in Hamburg succumbed, but the people of
Altona were spared. The street that divided the towns experienced
cholera on one side and none on the other side. Since the air was the

482
 1892: Cholera pandemic

same on both sides of the street and the ground was the same, it was
apparently the water that made the difference.
The cholera epidemic of 1892-1894 appeared in India, Russia,
Asia, the United States, Great Britain, Europe, and Africa. In Russia
alone, over 1 million people died, including the great composer Pe-
ter Tchaikovsky. The exact circumstances surrounding his death
were unclear. Some speculate that Tchaikovsky committed suicide by
drinking water known to be contaminated; others believe that he
took a poison that mimicked the symptoms of cholera. Tchaikovsky’s
doctor, however, pronounced him dead of cholera on November 6,
1893.
One result of the cholera epidemic of 1892 was the improvement
in sanitation measures taken by the large cities. Water-treatment sys-
tems were instituted, and sanitation was greatly improved. Even in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where resources were not available
to provide sanitary water and sewage systems for all citizens, simple
precautions like boiling drinking water made it possible to avoid ex-
posure to waterborne infections.
Cholera epidemics prompted the formation of public health de-
partments, which conducted surveillance and reporting of the dis-
ease. In the international classification of diseases, the code for chol-
era is 001 because it was the first disease for which public health
surveillance was developed. Although cholera is still present in vari-
ous parts of the world, improved sanitation, increased surveillance,
and modern medical treatment have helped prevent the occurrence
of new, widespread epidemics.
Louise Magoon

For Further Information:

Bollet, Alfred J. Plagues and Poxes: The Impact of Human History on Epi-
demic Disease. New York: Demos, 2004.
Clemow, Frank G. The Cholera Epidemic of 1892 in the Russian Empire.
London: Longmans, 1893.
Evans, Alfred S., and Philip S. Brachman. Bacterial Infections of Hu-
mans: Epidemiology and Control. 3d ed. New York: Plenum Medical
Book Company, 1998.
Evans, Richard J. Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera
Years. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.

483
1892: Cholera pandemic

Karlen, Arno. Man and Microbes: Disease and Plagues in History and
Modern Times. New York: Putnam, 1995.
McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Anchor Press/
Doubleday, 1998.
Markel, Howard. Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the
New York City Epidemics of 1892. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1999.

484
■ 1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896
Tornado
Date: May 27, 1896
Place: St. Louis, Missouri
Classification: F4
Result: 306 dead, 2,500 injured, 311 buildings destroyed, 7,200
other buildings severely damaged, tremendous damage to river
boats and railroad lines

B ecause the previous three weeks had witnessed violent

weather across the United States, it must have come as
a relief to St. Louis that the weather report for Wednesday, May 27,
1896, called for a partly cloudy day with only a chance of local thun-
derstorms. No one would have suspected that St. Louis could suffer
the ravages of a tornado; it was considered common knowledge that
tornadoes do not strike large cities. The tornado that nearly hit St.
Louis on March 8, 1871, was believed to be as close as a tornado could
come.
Until 3 p.m. on May 27, 1896, it was a hot, humid, and sunny day in
St. Louis, just as the newspapers predicted. The city was a booming
metropolis whose population already exceeded 500,000—it was the
fourth-largest city in the United States. Union Station was in its sec-
ond year of operation as the mid-America passenger hub of an in-
creasingly mobile nation. Crowning its new status in industrialized
America, preparations were well under way to house the Republican
presidential nominating convention, scheduled for June. Across the
mighty Mississippi River, East St. Louis had become a commercial
railroad center with a rapidly growing population.
After 3 p.m. the sky slowly began to darken as the barometer and
thermometer began to fall. By 4:30 p.m. large black and green cloud
masses could be seen approaching the city. By 5 p.m. many parts of
the city were enveloped in darkness, except for forked lightning illu-
minating the sky. Sizzling telegraph wires and burning telegraph
poles cast an eerie bluish light pattern in the streets below. People
scurried for the relative security of temporary shelter wherever they

485
1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896

could find it, a fact substantiated by the location of bodies found after
the storm. Shelter in cellars offered the best protection, providing
that an individual was not crushed by the upper floors caving in.
At about 5:15 p.m. the tornado struck at the southwest edge of St.
Louis. It widened into a 0.5-mile-wide complex of tornado and
downburst wind, heading due east toward the central city area. Along
its path it demolished 311 buildings and severely damaged 7,200 oth-
ers. Stone and brick houses of the affluent were smashed almost as
easily as the flimsy wooden houses of the poor. The tornado devas-
tated 6 churches and damaged 15 others. Several city hospitals suf-
fered varying degrees of destruction.
The storm cut a 10-mile path, leaving in many places a mile-wide
swath of devastation. Witnesses described the tail of the storm as be-
ing like the lash of a whip, moving north to south, while the massive
body of the storm slowly moved on its eastern path of destruction.

Iowa Peoria

Springfield Decatur
St. Joseph

Illinois
Topeka Kansas City
Kansas City Columbia
Alton
Lawrence Overland
Park MISSOURI Florissant Edwardsville
Clayton East St. Louis
Jefferson City Ballwin
Concord St. Louis
Arnold
Kansas

Springfield

Oklahoma

Arkansas Tennessee
Tulsa

486
 1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896

Entire neighborhoods, such as the Soulard area, were left in sham-

bles. Nearly 500 workers were building a thirteen-building complex
for Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company when the storm hit. Struc-
tures collapsed, and miraculously, only 13 workers died. However, at
Seventh and Rutgers Street 17 people died when a three-story brick
tenement collapsed. The new Ralston Purina Mill was also destroyed.
However, a bank loan would allow the new headquarters to be re-
built.
The storm reached maximum intensity when it came to the Missis-
sippi River. Because of a slight turn in the storm, the tall buildings of
downtown St. Louis were spared the test of whether or not they could
survive tornadic winds. However, poverty-stricken families living in
houseboats disappeared into the river. Sixteen boats moored in St.
Louis harbor were wrecked. By the time they hit the Eads Bridge, tor-
nadic winds were strong enough to drive a 2-by-10-inch wood plank
through the 5 16 -inch thick wrought-iron plate of the bridge.
The great tornado then tore into East St. Louis, leveling half of the
city. Thirty-five people died in the Vandalia railroad freight yard in
East St. Louis. It took about twenty minutes for the worst single disas-
ter in the history of the St. Louis metropolitan area to take its deadly
and destructive toll. The storm system left 306 dead, over 2,500 in-
jured, and 600 families homeless.
Drenching rains and lightning continued in St. Louis until about
9 p.m. Because the Edison Plant was destroyed, the city was without
electricity. Rescue workers worked through the night by torchlight
and through the sunshine of the next morning. Survivors were still
being pulled from the rubble two days later. Meanwhile, long lines of
friends, relatives, and the curious waited at the city morgue as the
dead wagons unloaded their crushed and mutilated human cargo.
Many bodies were blackened and unrecognizable. Others had been
turned into human pin cushions as splintered wood and other debris
had been hurled at tremendous speeds into their bodies.
As news of the disaster spread, the weekend brought tens of thou-
sands of sightseers to St. Louis, anxious to see firsthand the destruc-
tion that was wrought. Among their number were hundreds of thieves,
eager to uncover valuables from demolished homes and stores. On the
Sunday following the “great tornado” over 140,000 people crammed
through Union Station into the streets of St. Louis. Tours had already

487
1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896

been organized to see the destruction. For weeks after the storm St.
Louis newspapers were filled with stories of miraculous escapes, tear-
ful tragedies, and tales of heroic citizens coming to the aid of other
citizens. These accounts and others were pieced together by the Cy-
clone Publishing Company, a group of newsmen who copyrighted
their work in Washington, D.C., only nine days after the storm. An ea-
ger American public read in awe and horror about the powers of na-
ture and the human dimensions of natural disasters.
Irwin Halfond

For Further Information:

Curzon, Julian, comp. and ed. The Great Cyclone at St. Louis and East St.
Louis, May 27, 1896: Being a Full History of the Most Terrifying and De-
structive Tornado in the History of the World. 1896. Reprint. Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997.
Montesi, Albert, and Richard Deposki. “The Great Cyclone of 1896.”
In Soulard, St. Louis. Images of America. Chicago: Arcadia, 2000.
O’Neil, Tim. “The Great Cyclone of 1896.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May
26, 1996.
“The Top Ten US Killer Tornadoes—#3: The St. Louis/East St.
Louis Tornado of 1896.” The Tornado Project Online. http://www
.tornadoproject.com.

488
■ 1900: The Galveston hurricane
Hurricane
Date: September 8, 1900
Place: Galveston, Texas
Classification: Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale; Category 4
Speed: At least 84 miles per hour, estimated 110-120 miles per hour
Result: 3,000-12,000 dead

T he hurricane that swept in from the Gulf of Mexico

and devastated Galveston, Texas, on Saturday, Septem-
ber 8, 1900, killed more people than any other natural disaster in the
history of the United States at the time. It was a turning point in the
lives of the people of the Upper Texas Gulf Coast.
Galveston Island was a low sand-barrier island, almost 28 miles
long and from 1.5 to 3.5 miles wide. Its surface at that time rose to an
average height of 4 to 5 feet above mean tide level. The average rise
and fall of the tide at Galveston was 1.1 feet. The harbor at Galveston,
on the bay side, served Texas and the Trans-Mississippi West Rail-
road. Rail connections, including those of the Southern Pacific and
the Santa Fe along with smaller rail lines, focused upon Galveston.
The Formation of the Hurricane. In the first week of Septem-
ber, 1900, an air mass from the north cooled the island after a stifling
period of heat. The weather front was known as a “norther.” It was ac-
companied by a line of dark clouds from the northwest. At the same
time a hurricane was reported first in the Caribbean Sea and then
across Cuba in the Gulf of Mexico. It moved across Key West and then
turned in a westerly direction, headed almost straight for Galveston.
The cool front kept the slow-moving hurricane out over the Gulf of
Mexico, where it gathered strength.
Until September 4, the storm had not developed a very destruc-
tive force. It did cause rough seas and heavy rains, however, dropping
12.5 inches of rain in twenty-four hours as it passed over Santiago,
Cuba. On September 6, the center of the storm was reported a short
distance northwest of Key West. In 1900, the Weather Bureau relied
solely on information from its stations ashore. There were no reports

489
1900: The Galveston hurricane

radioed from ships at sea. Not until December 3, 1905, did a ship ra-
dio a weather observation to be received by the U.S. Weather Bureau.
Not until August 26, 1908, was a hurricane report radioed from a
ship, the SS Cartago off the coast of Yucatán.
The central office of the Weather Bureau ordered storm and hur-
ricane warnings from Port Eads, Louisiana, on the Gulf to Cape
Hatteras on the Atlantic. On Friday morning, September 7, the cen-
ter of the hurricane was estimated to be southeast of the Louisiana
coast. The hurricane flags were hoisted in Galveston that morning.
Increasing swells were observed to the southeast, and cirrus clouds
marked the blue sky.
The Effects of the Storm. By noon of Saturday, September 8,
it was evident that the hurricane was bearing down on Galveston. The
hurricane flags flew over the Levi Building, which held the Weather
Bureau offices, and across the island. Families along the beachfront
boarded up their residences and moved to higher ground in the city.
The winds were rising constantly, and it rained in torrents. By 3 p.m.
the waters of the Gulf and the bay met, covering the low areas across
the island. By evening the entire city was submerged. Gigantic waves
destroyed the houses nearest the beach first. Debris from these struc-
tures was then hurled into the next rows of houses. The wreckage
from each street was then thrown by the pounding surf into the next.
These buildings also fell and offered more wreckage for the storm to
cast against the next block of buildings. The east and west portions of
Galveston for three blocks inland were swept clean of residential and
commercial structures.
Slate from the roofs flew through the air to endanger anyone out
in the torrent. A disastrous fire in 1885 had destroyed a large section
of the city, so slate roofs became a requirement in building construc-
tion. In the storm these were lethal weapons, but so were falling
bricks and wood carried by 100-mile-per-hour winds. From 5 p.m. un-
til midnight, the people were caught where they were, in homes and
in buildings, until these collapsed around them under the pressure
of the hurricane-force winds. The public buildings, courthouse, cus-
toms house, and hotels offered apparent safe refuge. They rapidly be-
came overcrowded, however. Telephone, telegraph, and electric-
light poles snapped, and the wires were strewn across the streets,
which were becoming impassable. Corpses of people, horses, mules,

490
 1900: The Galveston hurricane

A house upended by the Galveston hurricane. (Library of Congress)

and pets began to float through the streets. The collapse of buildings
and the cries for help could not be heard above the roar of the wind.
Nearly 1,000 people gathered in the large Ursuline Convent, two
blocks from the beach. A 10-foot wall around the convent crumbled.
People, animals, and debris were being washed against the walls of
the building. Four expectant mothers gave birth during the storm in
the nuns’ cells. The babies were baptized immediately, for no one
knew if they would make it through the night.
Shortly after 8:30 p.m., the wind blowing from the southeast shat-
tered the east windows on the top floor of the city hall. The crowd
that had gathered there nearly stampeded. The front part of the
building collapsed shortly thereafter. Police Chief Edwin Ketchum
was able to quiet the crowd at first, then lost control. Only music

491
1900: The Galveston hurricane

could quiet those who remained in the building. A few blocks away in
the Telephone Building, the telephone operators were frantic until
they began to sing. Strangely enough, one song was heard repeat-
edly—“My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean.” The operators moved from
room to room as the windows were smashed and the plaster began to
give way.
Between 8 and 9 p.m., the water reached its maximum depth over
Galveston Island. It was 15.6 feet deep above mean tide on the east
side of the city at St. Mary’s Infirmary. Downtown, the depth was 12.1
feet at the YMCA Building and 10.5 feet at the Union Passenger Sta-
tion. Of the sick in St. Mary’s Infirmary, together with the attendants,
only 8 survived. St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Orphans’ Home on Fifty-
seventh Street fell in portions—the east wing collapsed and then the
roof and remaining part of the structure fell—during the height of
the storm. All the children and the nuns, along with two workmen,
perished. Many of the bodies were tied together with ropes, one nun
to several children, in an apparent attempt to survive the storm. The
numbers of dead children and refugees were never accurately ascer-
tained.
Fort Crockett on the west side of the city near the beach was
flooded. It held a heavy battery of 10-inch guns, a battery of eight 10-
inch mortars, and a rapid-fire battery. Manning these guns were Bat-
tery 0 soldiers of the First Artillery. The men there rode out the first
part of the storm in the barracks, but most soon left for higher
ground and the safety of the Denver Resurvey School; three drowned
on the way. The barracks building was destroyed, and the other men
were lost. The shoreline at Fort Crockett had moved back about 600
feet. All fortifications except the rapid-fire battery at Battery 0’s Fort
San Jacinto on Fort Point, on the eastern bay side of the island, were
practically destroyed. At the fort every building except the quaran-
tine station was swept away. Twenty-eight men of the Battery 0 were
lost in the storm.
Damage to Ships. The 2-mile channel between Bolivar Peninsula
and Galveston Island was the only passage for ocean-going ships into
Galveston harbor. The channel was protected by two jetties extend-
ing from the peninsula and the island. Moored in the Bolivar Roads
across from Fort San Jacinto and the quarantine station were three
English steamships—the Taunton, the Hilarious, and the Mexican—in

492
 1900: The Galveston hurricane

quarantine. The American City of Everett was also anchored in the Bo-
livar Roads. The federal government dredge boat General C. B. Com-
stock was tied up at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers coal wharf,
which was built out into the water from the south jetty near the quar-
antine station on Galveston Island.
Twelve other steamers were in port at Galveston, moored along
the wharf on the bay side of the city. Among them was the English
steamship Kendal Castle at Pier 31, on the west of the port facility. The
American ship Alamo was docked at Pier 24, the Norwegian Guyller at
Pier 21, the English ships Benedict and Roma, as well as the Norna, at
Pier 15. The Comino was moored at Pier 14, and the Red Cross rested at
Pier 12 on the east side of the wharf front. By midday, most of the
ships were ordered to put out extra mooring lines. Later, the water on
the rising tide began to submerge the wharves. The bay was rough,
and a drenching rain soaked everything. Smaller craft—shrimpers,
tugs, barges, and schooners—were dashed against the wharves.
Every ship in port battled for survival. The Taunton was driven by
the wind 30 miles to Cedar Point on the mainland. The Roma broke
its last moorings when the anchors parted from the chains. The ship
was carried up the channel broadside to the current. The Roma ca-
reened into the Kendal Castle, then went broadside into the three rail-
way bridges. It finally came to a stop between the last railroad bridge
and the 2-mile-long wagon bridge that ran from Virginia Point to the
island.
Galveston’s rail traffic was cut off from the mainland for several
days. The Guyller also plowed into the Kendal Castle, which began to
drift when its lines broke. The ship was blown across Pelican Island,
which was completely submerged, into the shallow water at the port
of Texas City on the mainland. After the storm the Kendal Castle
rested in 3 feet of water in the wreckage of the Inman Pier. The
Guyller became stranded between Pelican Island and Virginia Point.
The Alamo and the Red Cross broke loose and were driven across the
channel to run aground on the eastern edge of Pelican Island. The
Comino and the Norna stayed in their berths but were extensively dam-
aged. For 10 miles inland from the shore on the mainland it was com-
mon to see small craft such as steam launches, schooners, and oyster
sloops.
At the Bolivar Point Lighthouse, near the entrance to the harbor,

493
1900: The Galveston hurricane

people began to gather, because it was the best-built structure across

the channel on the Bolivar Peninsula. About 125 people sought ref-
uge from the storm there Saturday evening. The supply of fresh water
was exhausted in a short time. An effort was made to collect rainwater
in buckets tied to the top of the lighthouse. The lighthouse was 115
feet high, but the saltwater spray was blown over 100 feet in the air,
mixing with the rainwater that fell into the buckets.
At 5:15 p.m., the U.S. Weather Bureau’s anemometer blew away.
The last recorded velocity was 84 miles per hour for the five-minute
period the Weather Bureau accepted as official. The weathermen es-
timated winds later at a velocity of 110 or 120 miles per hour during
the period from 6 p.m. to 10:45 p.m., after which they began to sub-
side. Gusts were much higher.
At 7:30 p.m. the barometer fell to 28.05 inches. It then began to
rise slowly. Galveston was awash in flood tide and debris; the water
reached a depth of 8 feet on Strand Street, the heart of the financial
district, by 10 p.m. The wind was in a southerly direction and dimin-
ishing. Then the water began to ebb and ran off very rapidly. By 5
a.m. of the next day, the center of the street was free of water. Slime an
inch thick covered everything. People emerged, trying to find their
loved ones. Others just wandered aimlessly through the streets.
Recovery Efforts. Death estimates ranged from 3,000 to 12,000
people. A partial list of the dead compiled by the Galveston Daily
News after the storm comprised more than 4,200 names. Hundreds
more were never identified. The best estimate is that more than 6,000
people lost their lives in Galveston and approximately 2,000 died on
the coastal mainland. Morrison and Fourmey, publishers of the
Galveston City Directory, also gave a figure of approximately 6,000 peo-
ple dead.
Great piles of corpses, uprooted vegetation, household furniture,
and fragments of buildings themselves were piled in confused heaps
in the main streets of Galveston. Along the Strand close to the
bayfront, where the big wholesale warehouses and stores were situ-
ated, great piles of debris lay in massive heaps where the tide had left
them. The warehouses became tombs, holding human bodies and
animal carcasses. The masses of debris were not confined to any one
particular section of the city. There was hardly a family on the island
whose household did not suffer loss or injury. In some instances en-

494
 1900: The Galveston hurricane

tire families were washed away or killed. Hundreds who escaped from
the waves did so only to be crushed by falling structures.
The days following the storm were ones of privation and sadness.
There were enough provisions on hand to feed the remaining popu-
lation in Galveston for a week, but the problem was in properly dis-
tributing the supplies. There was an immediate rush to obtain food
and water, but this slacked off in time. After finding food and water,
attention turned to the wounded and the dead. All pretense at hold-
ing inquests was abandoned. More than 2,000 bodies were carried by
barge, weighted, and thrown into the Gulf. Hundreds were taken to
the mainland and buried at Virginia Point. Ninety-six bodies were
buried at Texas City, all but 8 of which had floated to the mainland
from Galveston during the storm. Cases were known where people
buried their dead in their yards. As soon as possible, the work of cre-
mating bodies began. Vast funeral pyres were erected, and the fire de-
partment personnel supervised the incineration.
An estimated 4,000 houses were destroyed, as were many commer-
cial, religious, and public buildings. The first three blocks closest to
the water, running the entire length of the city, were completely de-
stroyed on the Gulf side of the island. The water works’ powerhouse
was ruined, as was the electric plant, so that the city recovered from
the storm without fresh water and in the dark. Every structure in the
city suffered some storm damage, as the seawater completely covered
the island to a depth as much as 15.2 feet above the mean tide. The
highest elevation on the island at that time was about 8 to 10 feet
above sea level.
After the railway bridges were repaired in a few days, Houston
served as the center of relief distribution. It also served as the way out
of Galveston for people seeking inland shelter over the next few
weeks. Hundreds of refugees passed through every day. Free trans-
portation was furnished to any point in Texas, provided people had
relatives who would care for them. Clara Barton, head of the Ameri-
can Red Cross, came to Galveston to personally direct the Red Cross
relief effort in cooperation with other agencies, such as the Salvation
Army. She wrote during that first week:

It would be difficult to exaggerate the awful scene that meets the visi-
tors everywhere. . . . In those parts of the city where destruction was

495
1900: The Galveston hurricane

the greatest there still must be hundreds of bodies under the debris.
At the end of the island first struck by the storm, and which was swept
clean of every vestige of the splendid residences that covered it, the
ruin is inclosed by a towering wall of debris, under which many bodies
are buried. The removal of this has scarcely even begun.

This description written by a lady who had witnessed many disasters

provided a singular image of a city in desperate straits.
The 1900 hurricane that devastated the Gulf Coast caused a re-
duction in the volume of business in the South. Prices of staple com-
modities were higher during the weeks following the storm. There
was a sharp rise in the price of cotton, which reached a ten-year high.
There was little change in the price of manufactured products, how-
ever.
Mayor W. C. Jones took decisive measures in the days immediately
following the storm. He organized the General Committee of Public
Safety, which took charge of the early restoration of services in
Galveston. The water-supply system was put back into order and was
cleared of contamination. The mayor imposed price controls. La-
borers were brought into the city to replace skilled mechanics in
deposal of the bodies; they were then free to return to their regular
jobs and repair of the industrial and residential structures and the in-
frastructure. The work of opening the streets and disinfecting them
was pursued vigorously—the debris and garbage were removed by
250 vehicles of every description. They carried the waste out of the
city, and it was burned. Eleven hundred tents were received by the
Board of Health. All except 300, which were retained for hospital
purposes, were distributed through the various ward subcommittees
to shelter the homeless. As the rail bridges were repaired, Thomas
Scurry, Adjutant General of the State of Texas, arrived with 200 vol-
unteer guardsmen. The governor placed Galveston under martial
law.
Galveston civic leaders had organized the Deepwater Committee
in the late nineteenth century to promote the port facilities. In the
first days after the storm, the Deepwater Committee was able to gain
the attention of the Texas state legislature. Leaders such as I. H.
Kempner proposed that Galveston be ruled by a commission system
of government. The old mayor and ward system did not seem able to

496
 1900: The Galveston hurricane

marshal the confidence and strength to start the reconstruction of

Galveston. With the new system, each of four commissioners had con-
trol over one city department: finance and revenue, water and sew-
ers, streets and public property, and fire and police departments. The
Galveston model became one for the progressive movement in com-
bating the “political machines” that ran many city governments at the
time.
Looking to the Future. The new city government hired Gen-
eral Henry M. Robert and two other engineers, Alfred Noble and
H. C. Ripley, to devise some means of protecting Galveston from fu-
ture storms. Robert had recently retired from the Army Corps of En-
gineers and had gained fame as the author of Robert’s Rules of Order
(1876). Their recommendation included a seawall and a grade rais-
ing of the city’s elevation. Galvestonians approved a bond issue to
raise the money to begin the work on the seawall. The state also
agreed to rebate taxes for thirty-five years to help them finance the
grade raising. The seawall was to extend from the east end of the is-
land to Fort Crockett. The work began on October 27, 1902, and was

A man stands on a portion of the seawall constructed to protect Galveston, Texas, after
the 1900 disaster. (Library of Congress)

497
1900: The Galveston hurricane

finished on July 30, 1904. The seawall, 16 feet wide at the base and 17
feet high, was constructed of cement and stone around a network of
steel pilings and reinforcement bars. Large blocks of granite from
central Texas comprised a stone breakwater on the beach side of the
wall.
The United States Army also planned to construct a protective
seawall at Fort Crockett. Galveston County gave land to the federal
government that expanded the fort by 25 acres. This allowed the
Army seawall to connect with that on the Gulf side of the city. The
Army agreed to fill in the gap and extend the seawall to Fifty-third
Street. When completed, the seawall connected with the south jetty
at the channel entrance to Galveston harbor at Eighth Street and Av-
enue A, angled to Sixth and Market, followed Sixth to Broadway, an-
gled again from Broadway to the beach, then ran along the beach-
front to Fifty-third Street.
The Goedhart and Bates engineering firm started work on raising
grade level on the island around the time the first section of the
seawall was completed. The contractors dredged a canal into the
heart of the city, then built dikes around sections of the city. They
filled the sections with silt their dredges had acquired from the bot-
tom of the bay and the Gulf. Each existing structure was jacked up
into place. The filled areas took weeks to dry. Residents had to walk to
and from their houses on frame catwalks. The fill simply spread un-
der the houses that had been raised above ground level.
Houses, churches, and commercial buildings all went through this
process at the owners’ expense. Some sizable masonry buildings were
jacked up to new elevations. The grade raising took six years and was
finished in July, 1910; all the streets had to be rebuilt. Utilities had to
be relocated, and all the planting of trees and shrubs had to be done
after the grade raising. The Galveston City Railway Company reestab-
lished public transportation, completing the conversion to electricity
from mule-drawn trolleys in 1905.
There was talk of restoring the wagon bridge after its destruction
in 1900. Instead, the Texas Railroad Commission condemned the
wooden railway trestle and ordered the construction of a causeway to
carry rail traffic and automobiles, which were coming into wide-
spread use. The causeway was modeled on a viaduct along the Florida
Keys, utilizing twenty-eight concrete arches with 70-foot spans. In the

498
 1900: The Galveston hurricane

center, a rolling lift gave a stretch of 100 feet for boat traffic to pass
through. The bridge accommodated two railroad tracks, interurban
rails, a highway for cars, and a 30-inch water main for Galveston from
mainland wells. The causeway opened in 1912.
The population of Galveston increased again in the first decade of
the twentieth century. The census of 1910 placed the total at 36,981,
making Galveston the sixth largest city in the state. Its port facilities
continued to be of importance to the U.S. Southwest. Galveston also
grew as a popular tourist resort. All the rail lines serving Galveston
ran excursions from Houston on Sunday mornings; there continued
to be three sets of rail tracks. The railroads cut back on their ex-
cursion schedules when the Galveston-Houston Interurban service
started in 1911. The Galvez Hostel opened in 1911 to provide visitors
with beachfront accommodations on a grander scale than previously
known in Galveston. Twenty-six passenger trains were going in and
out of Galveston every day by 1912. Thus, in the twelve years after the
great Galveston hurricane, the people of the city had completed a
massive seawall, raised the level of the city, continued to compete as a
deep-water port, and strengthened transportation links with the
mainland.
A hurricane in 1915 proved to be of comparable strength to that
of the 1900 storm. Tides were slightly higher, and the wind velocity
was about the same. The storm came ashore on August 16, 1915, and
the winds and tides continued to buffet the city through the next day.
The hurricane washed away the earthen approaches to the causeway
and broke the water main; every ship in the harbor suffered damage.
At Galveston 8 people died, while elsewhere on the mainland the
death toll was 267—compared to the 1900 storm, the loss of life was
minimal. The protective devices built after the 1900 hurricane were
successful in protecting the city in the 1915 storm. Flooding did take
a toll, but this was almost entirely from the bay side. The seawall and
the grade raising kept the storm losses at a bearable level. Other ma-
jor hurricanes in 1943, 1961, and 1983 caused considerable damage
but little loss of life. Technology had ensured that Galveston would
continue to thrive as a city.
Howard Meredith

499
1900: The Galveston hurricane

For Further Information:

Bixel, Patricia Bellis, and Elizabeth Hayes Turner. Galveston and the
1900 Storm: Castastrophe and Catalyst. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2000.
Coulter, John, ed. The Complete Story of the Galveston Horror. New York:
United Publishers of America, 1900.
Emanuel, Kerry. Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Green, Nathan C., ed. Story of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane. Gretna,
La.: Pelican, 2000.
Greene, Casey Edward, and Shelly Henley Kelly, eds. Through a Night
of Horrors: Voices from the 1900 Galveston Storm. College Station:
Texas A&M University Press, 2000.
Halstead, Murat. Galveston: The Horrors of a Stricken City. New York:
American Publishers’ Association, 1900.
Larson, Erik. Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in
History. New York: Crown, 1999.
Lester, Paul. The Great Galveston Disaster: Containing a Full and Thrilling
Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times. Reprint.
Gretna, La.: Pelican, 2000.

500
■ 1900: Typhoid Mary
Epidemic
Date: 1900-1915
Place: New York State
Result: 3 dead, more than 50 ill from contact with “Typhoid Mary”
Mallon

M ary Mallon, an Irish immigrant who served as a cook

for various families and institutions, unwittingly
spread typhoid fever to more than 50 people between the years of
1900 and 1915, and three deaths are linked directly to her.
Typhoid fever is a highly infectious disease caused by Salmonella
typhosa bacteria and spread through contaminated food and water.
Typhoid fever was a common epidemic until the early twentieth cen-
tury, due to poor sewage and sanitation methods. The most common
way of contraction was through contaminated drinking water. Symp-
toms include a high fever lasting a few weeks, pains, headache,
cough, drowsiness, and chills. The bacteria lodge in the small intes-
tine, where they proliferate and in severe cases may perforate the in-
testine or cause hemorrhaging. Typhoid ranges from mild, flulike
symptoms to severe cases resulting in death within one or two weeks.
About 3 percent of individuals who have suffered from typhoid be-
come carriers, which means that although they appear healthy and
show no symptoms of the disease, their bodies contain the bacteria
and they may spread it to others. Such is the case with Mallon, who ei-
ther had typhoid before she could remember or had such a slight
case in her early life that she thought it to be a minor influenza.
Mary Mallon was born in Ireland in 1869 and immigrated to the
United States in 1883, where she began working as a domestic ser-
vant, cooking and cleaning in the homes of wealthy New Yorkers. In
the summer of 1906, Mallon was working as a cook for a New York
banker. When 6 of the 11 members of the household contracted ty-
phoid fever, the house’s owner hired George Soper, a sanitary engi-
neer and specialist in typhoid fever outbreaks, to investigate the pos-
sible cause. Soper determined that Mallon had begun working for

501
1900: Typhoid Mary

Development of Typhoid Fever

Salmonella typhi bacteria

enter digestive system after
ingestion of contaminated
water or food.

Phase 1 (2 weeks):
Bacteria invade intestines’
lymphoid tissue. Usually
no symptoms.

Phase 2 (10 days): Blood

Bacteria invade bloodstream, vessels
often causing toxemia.
Fever, immune system response.
Spleen

Liver

Gall-
Phase 3: bladder
Bacteria are localized in
intestines’ lymphoid tissue,
mesenteric nodes, gallbladder,
liver, spleen, occasionally
bones. Lesions are caused by Intestine
local tissue death (necrosis).

the family shortly before the outbreak began. He traced Mallon’s

work history back through eight families she had worked for and dis-
covered that seven of the families had been affected by the fever. All
totaled, Soper found 22 cases of typhoid that he believed were linked
to contact with food that Mallon had prepared.
The idea of a disease carrier was new to doctors and scientists, and
the general public knew nothing about it. Soper believed Mallon

502
 1900: Typhoid Mary

to be a carrier but needed laboratory proof of his hypothesis. He

approached Mallon, telling her she was spreading typhoid fever
through the food she prepared, and that samples of her urine, blood,
and feces were needed for testing. Mallon refused, and after further
unsuccessful attempts the New York City Health Department called
in the police to remove her. Laboratory tests showed high levels of ty-
phoid bacilli in her feces, and Mallon was moved to an isolated cot-
tage on North Brother Island, close to the Bronx in New York City
and the site of Riverside Hospital.
Mallon was kept in isolation in the cottage for two years. In 1909
she sued the health department for release; the judge was sympa-
thetic but sent Mallon back to the island. In 1910 a new city health
commissioner allowed her to leave, on the promise that she would no
longer work as a cook. Around 1914 the health department lost track
of Mallon. She most likely had trouble making a living outside her ex-
pertise and returned to cooking. In 1915, after a typhoid fever break-
out in Manhattan’s Sloane Maternity Hospital, Mallon was found
working in the kitchen, under the pseudonym “Mrs. Brown.” She had
infected 25 more people, 2 of whom died. She was apprehended and
returned to the island, where she lived for the rest of her life.
Mallon came to be known as “Typhoid Mary,” a term that began
among the medical community as a descriptive term, perhaps to pro-
tect her identity, but came to signify anyone who is a public health
threat. News reporters sensationalized “Typhoid Mary,” turning her
into a further outcast. Although the popular view in society declared
that Mallon purposely infected others, there is no evidence to show
this is true. Rather, her refusal to believe that she was a carrier was
probably an extreme disbelief in new scientific thought. She denied
the accusations until the end of her life, convinced that health offi-
cials were picking on her. Mallon resented her imprisonment and
was extremely distrustful of the health personnel involved in her
case. Her feces and urine were tested frequently, at times on several
occasions per week, which added to her reportedly sullen and irrita-
ble nature with doctors.
Mallon was one of hundreds of healthy typhoid carriers tracked
over a period of time in New York City, but she was the first to be mon-
itored and the only one to be isolated for life. At the time of her first
capture, the number of typhoid cases was greatly expanding. In New

503
1900: Typhoid Mary

York City alone, it was estimated that about 100 new carriers were
added each year between 1907 and 1911, and this became the main
cause of infection. New York State began following those who had re-
covered from typhoid but was able to find fewer than 20 of the esti-
mated number of carriers.
The state had more success through epidemiological investiga-
tions into typhoid outbreaks, such as Soper’s. Once a potential car-
rier was identified, their feces were tested for the presence of typhoid
bacilli. If a person tested positively, the health department opened an
individual record for the carrier, keeping close contact and checking
to make sure carriers were not involved in food industries, teaching,
or nursing. This was time and labor intensive and relied on much co-
operation by the carriers themselves, most of whom were living un-
der free conditions but had to submit to frequent testing. Some carri-
ers became lost or refused to be tested, and some were traced to
outbreaks and deaths as severe as those linked to Mallon. The prob-
lem of typhoid carriers continued on well into the 1920’s.
Michelle C. K. McKowen

For Further Information:

Bourdain, Anthony. Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical. New York:
Bloomsbury, 2001.
Gordon, Richard. An Alarming History of Famous (and Difficult!) Pa-
tients: Amusing Medical Anecdotes from Typhoid Mary to FDR. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Graf, Mercedes. Quarantine: The Story of Typhoid Mary. New York: Van-
tage Press, 1998.
Leavitt, Judith Walzer. Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health. Bos-
ton: Beacon Press, 1996.

504
■ 1902: Pelée eruption
Volcano
Date: May 8, 1902
Place: Martinique
Result: Estimated 30,000 dead, city of St. Pierre destroyed

P elée rises 4,583 feet above sea level. It is located at 14.8

degrees north latitude and 61.1 degrees west longitude.
The name pele, meaning “bald,” implies that the volcano was so
named because its summit was, as it is now, an unvegetated dacitic
lava dome. A lava dome was built during the eruption of the volcano
in 1902, only to be destroyed by a subsequent eruption, then built up
again. A stratovolcano composed mainly of pyroclastic rocks, Pelée is
at the north end of the island of Martinique. It stands high over the
coastal city of St. Pierre. The island is part of the Lesser Antilles volca-
nic arc formed by the subduction of the North American Plate under
the Caribbean Plate.
Pelée is best known for the May 8, 1902, eruption, which destroyed
Martinique’s major city of St. Pierre, killing over 30,000 people. No
other twentieth century eruption caused as large a number of casual-
ties, resulting in the Pelée eruption being called the greatest killer
volcano of the century. A nuée ardente, or “glowing cloud,” type of
pyroclastic flow and ash-cloud surge caused the destruction on the is-
land. This nuée ardente detached from the lava dome and, pulled by
gravity, flowed down the sides of the volcano. Pyroclastic flows, also
known as volcanic hurricanes, are made up of hot incandescent solid
particles; the term “pyroclastic” comes from pyro (fire) and clastic
(broken).
Of six volcanic eruption styles identified by volcanologists, the
most violent and extremely destructive type is Peléan volcanism. It is
identified by glowing avalanches that spread down the mountain and
over the ground, heavy with ash and pumice, at up to 62 miles (100 ki-
lometers) an hour. Peléan volcanoes can flow over water as well as
land. Sometimes described as a hot cloud traveling at tremendous
speed, the volcanic hurricane can carry particles the size of boulders.

505
1902: Pelée eruption

It may move silently and more swiftly than any atmospheric hurri-
cane, reaching intensely hot temperatures. In fact, the heat is so in-
tense that pyroclastic fragments can remain warm for over a year af-
ter the eruption.
This type of volcano was named for the 1902 Pelée eruption, which
was the culmination of an eruption cycle that had been building for a
few years. This cycle involved small eruptions that sent ash up from the
volcano in a cloud to around 10,000 feet but that did not threaten to
overflow the city. It can be assumed that the repeated activity had cre-
ated an atmosphere of complacency that meant, in this case, that the
population of 1902 assumed that the new volcanic activity was more of
the same they had experienced over the past few years.
Pelée Erupts. The first hint that there was activity in the volcano
occurred on April 2, 1902, when new, steaming vent holes were seen
in the upper part of a ravine called La Rivière Blanche. The ravine is
on the south side of the mountain, facing St. Pierre, and leads from a
secondary crater named L’ tang Sec to the coast. Then, three weeks
following the discovery of the holes, there were some tremors, ash
clouds arose from the mountain’s summit, and volcanic ash fell onto
St. Pierre, the city at its base. The smell of sulfur filled the air as the
volcano rumbled and shook.
Known as the Paris of the Caribbean, St. Pierre was a city of rows of
well-built stone houses and downtown buildings, including an opera
house, and served as the main port city for Martinique. The city rests
on a large, open bay on the west coast of the island. St. Pierre was in-
volved in an election campaign and ill prepared for the disaster
about to befall it. Some people left as the ash began to fall, but most
stayed so they could support the candidate of their choice in the elec-
tion about to be held. Others came into the city from surrounding
towns and villages to see the phenomenon of an active volcano.
By May the ash had thickened to the point that it blocked roads.
Businesses were forced to close, and birds and small animals began to
die from the ash and poisonous gases. On May 3 the newspaper Les
Colonies wrote that the raining-down of ashes on the city “never
stops.” It reported that the ash was so thick that the wheels of moving
carriages were silent as they passed through it, and the wind blew the
ash from roofs and awnings into any open window.
The volcanologists of the time possessed only a primitive knowl-

506
 1902: Pelée eruption

Portsmouth Marigot

DOMINICA
Roseau La Plaine
Atlantic Ocean

Pelée
BassePointe
St. Pierre
MARTINIQUE
Fort-de-France
Le Vauclin
Sainte-Anne

Caribbean Sea

Castries
SAINT LUCIA
Soufrière

Vieux Fort

edge of the volcanic process and thus did not predict the disaster that
was to occur. They were not aware of the existence of volcanic hurri-
canes and so did not urge people to leave the area. In fact, Gaston
Landes, a professor at the St. Pierre high school, had said that the city
could expect very little damage from the ash and the smell of sulfur.
Even if there were lava flows, he told the city, they would be stopped
by the ridges and valleys that lay between Pelée and the city. He as-
sured them that even if the volcano should erupt, little damage
would ensue. He was correct in that there was no lava in the flow that
spewed out of Pelée. However, with the limited knowledge of volca-
noes of that time, he was not aware of pyroclastic flows and of the heat
they contained.
Early on May 8, ash clouds were still rising from Pelée. It seemed to
the residents of St. Pierre to be just another day of ash falling on their
roofs and streets. Suddenly, however, at 7:50 a.m. the volcano erupted
with four blasts, sending a black cloud, which lit up with sharp light-
ning flashes, into the sky. The cloud of steaming hot gases reached
temperatures of between 2,370 and 3,270 degrees Fahrenheit (1,300
and 1,800 degrees Celsius). Within five minutes a fifth blast sent an
avalanche of boiling ash and gases down the mountainside. Glowing

507
1902: Pelée eruption

at 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius), the avalanche

flowed so rapidly that in a few minutes the buildings and people of St.
Pierre were buried and burned, covered by searing ash and gases.
Roughly 30,000 people were killed almost instantaneously, some
perhaps surviving the initial avalanche until the fires claimed them.
Others who survived the force of the flow died from inhaling the ash
and gases that seared their respiratory systems. It is said that two peo-
ple survived. One was a prisoner named Auguste Siparis, who was
confined in an underground jail cell; the other was a shoemaker who
managed to escape the fires. The story continues that the former
prisoner became a performer in a circus sideshow as a survivor of the
Pelée disaster.

In May, 1902, Pelée erupted in Martinique, causing 30,000 deaths—the most

caused by a volcano in the twentieth century. (Library of Congress)

508
 1902: Pelée eruption

All that remained of the city was rubble and some partially stand-
ing walls. The heat had been enough to soften glass and windows, but
copper remained unmelted. No clear volcanic deposit was found on
the rubble because of the speed and violence of the flow and its
makeup of ash and gases. On the volcano itself, the vegetation was
stripped off, and any animals in the path of the flow were killed.
The hot ash had continued its flow to the sea, and 15 ships moored
in the harbor capsized. The British steamer Roddam was torn free of
its anchor and managed to flee to St. Lucia. It arrived with 12 dead
crewmen and 10 suffering severe burns. One survivor from the
Roraima stated that he watched red flames leap up from the top of the
mountain, comparing it to the biggest oil refinery in the world burn-
ing on the mountaintop. It seemed to him that the mountain had
blown apart without warning, its side ripped open, and he saw what
seemed to be a solid wall of flame coming at those on the ships.
Subsequent Activity and Effects. Two months after the May 8
volcanic eruption, a second occurred. At that time two British scien-
tists from the Royal Society were sailing past St. Pierre, studying the
ruins of the city. They watched as a red glow surrounded the summit
of Pelée, followed by an avalanche of heat and stones that poured
down the mountain and across the ruins of St. Pierre. It took only a
minute for the avalanche to reach the sea. They saw the black cloud,
which seemed to consist of lighter particles of volcanic matter rising
as heavier pieces fell to earth. The scientists described the cloud as
globular, with a surface that bulged out. In fact, they said, it was cov-
ered with rounded bulging masses that swelled and multiplied, con-
taining and moving with tremendous energy. It rushed forward to-
ward them, over the waters, continually boiling up and changing its
form. They saw it sweep over the sea, surging and moving while giving
off brilliant flashes of lightning.
The scientists reported that the black cloud slowed its movement
and faded, ash settling onto the surface of the sea. It then rose from
the surface and passed over their heads, dropping stones and pellets
of ash back down onto the sea. They smelled sulfuric acid and
watched as the cloud moved out to sea, where it appeared to cover
the sky—except for the horizon, which remained clear.
The major treatise on the eruption of Pelée, written by Alfred
Lacroix of the French Academy of Sciences, named the phenome-

509
1902: Pelée eruption

non that destroyed St. Pierre a nuée ardente, or glowing cloud.

Other terms are now used: glowing avalanche, ash flow, ignimbrite,
fluidized flow, and base surge. Lacroix wrote that the pyroclastic
eruption clouds move along the ground as hot, dense hurricanes, or
“glowing clouds.” It is suspected that a pyroclastic flow travels on a
cushion of air, which allows it to rise from the surface of the land or
water, and in some instances can even leave portions of the surface
untouched by its destructive effects. This is why the scientists in a
boat on the sea could escape unscathed by the avalanche that flowed
over the water.
There had been two prior recorded eruptions of Pelée: one in
1792 and another in 1851. However, the 1902 eruption was unique in
its destructiveness. The violence of the 1902 eruption drew attention
to pyroclastic flows and opened a new area of research for volcanolo-
gists, in which they are still engaged. Recalling the serious effects of
Pelée’s eruption, in 1976 the French government evacuated the en-
tire population of the island of Guadeloupe, fearing a similar erup-
tion might occur from the volcanic mountain La Soufrière. It did not
happen, but the memory of the destruction of St. Pierre in evidence
on the island of Martinique, also French-owned, is strong in the
French West Indies.
On Martinique, evidence of the killer volcanic eruption of 1902
still remains. Where volcanic ash was deposited, the land is a waste-
land. The sand on that side of the island is black as a result of the
black cloud of ash and gases that struck with such fury. The summit of
Pelée was forever changed, with a large crater that formed from the
explosion. It is now filled in by lava domes that, in an explosive volca-
nic eruption, form near the hole where the eruption occurred. The
summit is a large garden of flowers and ferns surrounded by a heavy
mist.
The city of St. Pierre never completely recovered from the explo-
sion, and a small, quiet town exists where once there had been a bus-
tling seaport. There is a volcanological museum with pictures and ar-
tifacts from the 1902 eruption of the volcano. The ruins of the opera
house and other buildings are still visible.
Colleen M. Driscoll

510
 1902: Pelée eruption

For Further Information:

Fisher, Richard V., Grant Heiken, and Jeffrey B. Hulen. Volcanoes:
Crucibles of Change. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1997.
Morgan, Peter. Fire Mountain: How One Man Survived the World’s Worst
Volcanic Disaster. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.
Scarth, Alwyn. La Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelee, the Worst Vol-
canic Eruption of the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
_______. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Zebrowski, Ernest. The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster That
Claimed 30,000 Lives. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 2002.

511
■ 1906: The Great San Francisco
Earthquake
Earthquake

Date: April 18, 1906

Place: The northern coast of California, from King City to Hum-
boldt Bay
Magnitude: About 8.3
Result: Approximately 700 dead, 400 injured, 200,000 homeless,
28,188 buildings burned in San Francisco, and about $500 million
in damage

I n 1906, fifty-seven years after the 1849 gold rush, San

Francisco was an active up-to-date city of 400,000. Al-
though its central business district still included a handful of Spanish
and Mexican adobe structures and comparatively few wooden build-
ings, the city comprised masonry and brick structures and newer
multistory, steel-framed office blocks. Churches and public buildings
of diverse construction were scattered throughout the city, while
most residences, primarily wooden, were either closely spaced or
shared common walls. In addition, most of the central business dis-
trict, the waterfront, and the warehouse district was built on filled-in
marshes, mudflats, and shallow water. Some newer commercial devel-
opment and most of the residential district were perched on steep
bedrock hills.
Before the 1906 earthquake, effective public utilities and fire and
police departments served the bustling city. Numerous ferries criss-
crossed the bay, steamers connected the city with Sacramento, and
many railroad lines radiated from the busy city in all directions. The
private Spring Valley Water Company pumped water through
wrought iron or cast iron pipelines from the Crystal Springs, San
Andreas, and Pilarcitos lakes, all impounded along the San Andreas
fault, to University Mound, College Hill, and Lake Honda reservoirs
inside the city. In turn, these reservoirs discharged water into the
city’s water mains. Additional water from Alameda Creek and Lake

512
 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

Merrit entered the city via a pipeline beneath the South Bay. Several
hundred firefighters manned 41 fire engines, 9 trucks, and 7 “chemi-
cal” engines as well as monitor and ladder trucks. Seven hundred po-
lice officers were assisted by sheriff’s deputies, state militia, and the
army’s garrison at the Presidio.
Reasons for the Earthquake. Most San Franciscans in 1906
did not expect a major earthquake. Prior to the 1906 earthquake, fre-
quent small earth tremors caused trivial damage and occasional con-
sternation. Spanish records from the second decade of the nine-
teenth century describe memorable earthquakes at the Presidio. A
strong quake damaged City Hall and downtown buildings in Octo-
ber, 1865. In 1868, a severe earthquake across the bay at Hayward
caused damage in downtown San Francisco and resulted in 5 deaths.
Milder earthquakes occurred in 1890 and 1898. As a result, advanced
construction codes had been adopted in San Francisco, and many
buildings were designed to be fireproof. Thus, San Franciscans on
the eve of the 1906 major earthquake judged the city well prepared to
resist damage, but geologists and insurers were deeply concerned.
Earthquakes result from sudden, instantaneous lurches in a fault’s
movement, thought to be caused by temporary “freezing” of the fault
that is followed by rupture. If the fault does not “freeze,” movement is
continuous and there are no major earthquakes. The San Andreas
fault, responsible for the 1906 earthquake, is a right lateral transform
fault separating the Pacific Ocean Plate from the North American
Plate between Cape Mendocino and Baja California. This fault began
shifting in the latest Cretaceous period, and by the present epoch cu-
mulative movement has totaled about 370 miles. Thus, California as
far north as Point Reyes and Santa Cruz was part of northern Baja
California about seventy million years ago.
Today, movement on the San Andreas fault ranges up to 1.5 inches
per year, requiring continual small repairs to structures spanning the
fault trace. During the Great San Francisco Earthquake, apparently
more than 240 miles of the San Andreas fault broke loose and
shifted. Fissures with displacements mark the San Andreas fault from
Point Arena, 100 miles northwest of San Francisco, to San Juan
Bautista, 85 miles southeast. Severe damage at Priest Valley, 60 miles
farther southeast, suggests an additional 60 miles of fault movement
that failed to crack the surface. In addition, submarine observations

513
1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

in the later twentieth century traced fault-line topography to the

San Andreas fault’s juncture with the Mendocino Fracture Zone, a
westward-trending fracture system passing far into the Pacific Plate.
Wherever displacement could be observed on the fissure, land
southwest of the fault trace moved northward relative to the north-
eastern block. Just north of Tomales Bay this horizontal displace-
ment was about 16 feet. Here the southwest block was lifted about 1
foot relative to the northeastern block. These displacements de-
crease to the north and south. Earthquakes along the San Andreas
fault in historic time include 1812, Wrightwood (estimated magni-
tude, 7.0); 1838, San Francisco peninsula (7.0, estimated); 1857, Fort
Tejon (8.0, estimated); 1906, San Francisco (8.3, estimated); and
1989, Loma Prieta (7.1, recorded).
The Earthquake. The Great San Francisco Earthquake struck
central California with a magnitude of about 8.3, on Wednesday,
April 18, 1906, at 5:12 a.m. Fortunately, most people were still safely at
home. In and around San Francisco, severe shaking lasted for about
one minute. Before the main shocks, however, many observers noted
two substantial preliminary shocks lasting several seconds. More than
1,000 aftershocks of intensity as great as V on the Modified Mercalli
scale were recorded between April 18 and June 10 by a seismograph
in Berkeley, California. Oscillatory ground movement during the
main shock was principally horizontal and was estimated, in the city,
at more than 2 inches on bedrock or firm ground. This was greatly
amplified, however, on unconsolidated soil or sediment. Damage was
substantial in a belt 20 to 40 miles wide paralleling the San Andreas
fault from Eureka to Priest Valley. Thus, Santa Rosa, Salinas, San
Mateo, Oakland, Berkeley, Vallejo, Petaluma, San Rafael, San Mateo,
Palo Alto, and San Jose, in addition to San Francisco, suffered dam-
age. Destruction was greatest adjacent to the fault trace, decreasing
with distance from the trace. Indeed, the shock was felt as far away as
Coos Bay, Oregon (390 miles); Los Angeles, California (350 miles);
and Winnemucca, Nevada (340 miles). In addition, minor damage
occurred 90 miles away on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley. As
far away as Steamboat Springs, Nevada, wells and springs were af-
fected by rising or falling water, interruption, stoppage and initiation
of spring flow, and incursion of mineralized water.
Damage to buildings differed greatly according to construction

514
 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

A house on Howard Street in San Francisco that was tipped by the 8.3-
magnitude earthquake. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-
ministration)

type and quality. Least damaged were buildings with solid founda-
tions set on bedrock. Solidly built and well-braced one- or two-story
wooden buildings suffered relatively little. The steel frames of struc-
tures as high as nineteen stories generally did not collapse, but ma-
sonry walls and cornices often shook loose. Most, however, were gut-
ted by fire that caused poorly insulated beams to soften and crumple.

515
1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

Heavy, well-constructed brick or stone buildings were also relatively

resistant to damage, but poorly constructed masonry, or masonry
with lime mortar, collapsed or disintegrated. Brick and stone
clamped or braced by steel endured, as did massive concrete and
brick fortifications. Finally, the single reinforced concrete building in
the city of San Francisco, the Bekin Storage warehouse, survived with
minor damage, as did the reinforced concrete portion of the Stan-
ford University Museum.
Federal buildings, such as the mint and post offices, along with
well-built churches, suffered least among masonry structures. How-
ever, shoddily constructed local governmental buildings, victims of
low-bid and perhaps corrupt construction practices, such as the San
Francisco and Santa Rosa city halls, the Agnews Insane Asylum, and
the San Jose hall of records, were demolished. Private buildings dif-
fered greatly in their resistance. Many spires and towers collapsed.
The amount of damage was also greatly affected by the distance
from the fault trace, topography, and the substratum, or soil founda-
tion. For example, buildings straddling the fault trace were sheared.
Although strong wood or steel-frame buildings generally did not
break apart, they were twisted or rotated. Incredibly, a few stayed put,
allowing the earth to shift beneath them, while larger structures ei-
ther bent or were sliced apart but still stood. Concrete and earth-fill
dams resisted damage. The earthen dams of the San Andreas and
Pilarcitos reservoirs, built across the fault trace, survived the shear-
ing. The massive concrete dam of the Crystal Springs Reservoir, im-
mediately adjacent to the fault trace, also was undamaged. Buildings
on weak or insecure foundations slid down slopes, while adjacent
buildings with firm foundations attached to bedrock were relatively
unharmed. Structures in the path of landslides and mudflows were
severely damaged or destroyed.
Buildings not set on firm foundations reaching bedrock either
collapsed or were severely damaged. For example, the Ferry Build-
ing, which rested on piles that reached bedrock, did not collapse;
buildings on bedrock hills downtown and in the Western Addition
were not very damaged. Approximately 20 percent of San Francisco,
including the waterfront, the South of Market District, and most of
the central business district, was built on filled-in mudflats and
marshes. There, shaking was amplified by the soft, semiliquid substra-

516
 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

tum and generated actual wave movement; outright liquefaction also

removed support for the buildings.
The earthquake reshaped the landscape in many ways. Fissures
opened along the fault trace were, perhaps, most striking. Character-
istically, these open rifts were generally about 5 feet wide and 10 feet
deep. They sometimes occurred in zones as big as 50 feet wide. They
were discontinuous, in many places consisting of a series of overlap-
ping individual ladder breaks and somewhat inclined to the trace of
the fault. In some places fissures did not open, and the fault trace was
identifiable only by offset structures. Mudflows and landslides also
occurred wherever blocks of surficial material shifted during the
shock. These were concentrated along stream channels, where unsta-
ble land slumped into stream channels or on steep hillsides. In a
landslide a coherent block of ground moves downhill in a more or
less coherent mass, while in a mudflow, the dislodged material be-
haves as a liquid and flows.
In addition, liquefaction of water-soaked, unconsolidated subsoil
was widespread. Parts of the mudflats in Tomales Bay simply flowed
off into deep water. Here and at Bolinas, waves of compression, gen-
erated by shock along the fault trace, sent concentric giant ripples
outward on the surface of the liquefied, unconsolidated material. Af-
ter the shock passed, stability was restored in the liquified material
and the ripples froze in place. Such frozen waves disrupted buildings,
streets, and car tracks on the filled land in San Francisco. Compres-
sion at depth also spewed liquified sediment up to form mud volca-
noes or craters on the surface.
The Fire. Although the event is referred to as the Great San Fran-
cisco Earthquake, the principal devastation was inflicted by the resul-
tant fire. American cities of the time, including San Francisco, were
largely built of wood. Consequently, nineteenth century American
history records many great fires, such as the 1871 Great Chicago Fire.
Actually, downtown San Francisco had been gutted by fire six times
prior to 1906. As a consequence, most commercial builders favored
brick, stone, and steel, but wood remained predominant in house-
building. Immediately after the major earthquake shock, at least 10
large fires started among the closely spaced wooden buildings south
of Market Street and in Chinatown, north of Market Street. Shattered
chimneys, broken gas lines, and scattered fires readily ignited houses.

517
1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

About 57 fires were reported before noon, despite the destruction

of the city’s modern alarm system. Also, Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan’s
fatal injury complicated the department’s response. The capacity of
the fire department to respond was far exceeded, and when an en-
gine reached a fire, the firefighters found little or no water in the hy-
drants. The earthquake had broken the large mains bringing water
into the city as well as the network of mains serving the hydrants from
the subsidiary reservoirs. Thus, San Francisco’s large, well-equipped
fire department remained essentially unable to throw water on fires
beyond reach of hose lines from the Bay Shore or one of the relatively
undamaged reservoirs.
Mayor Eugene Schmitz and Fire Chief John Doughty imple-
mented Chief Sullivan’s emergency plan to pump water up Market
Street through linked hoses, to establish a fire line along the city’s
broadest street. The already-blazing South of Market District was
thus abandoned. Unfortunately, with Chinatown already ablaze and
flames already jumping the street in a few places, the Market Street
fire line soon failed. At the same time, a determined effort was made

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 caused Union Street to buckle and become off-
set. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

518
 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

to check the westward advance of flames out of the South of Market

District and into the Mission District. Frederick Funston, command-
ing the garrison at the Presidio in the temporary absence of his supe-
rior officer, General Adolphus Greeley, immediately ordered his
troops into the city to fight fire and maintain order. Since he acted
without official orders and without consulting his superior officers or
civil authorities, his unconstitutional act was privately deplored by
the War Department. The disciplined work of most of his men, how-
ever, as well as that of naval reinforcements, prevented looting and
the breakdown of order. Thus, Funston, who eventually met with
Mayor Schmitz and established cooperation with the police and fire
departments, became a public hero and escaped discipline.
Strong measures were imperative to check the fire’s spread. At
2 p.m., Mayor Schmitz obtained an opinion from a judge to clear the
way for dynamiting buildings. Then, around 3 p.m., nine hours after
the earthquake, he posted a proclamation announcing that gas and
electricity had been cut off and warned people of the fire danger
from damaged chimneys, gas pipes, and fixtures. Furthermore, he
authorized summary execution of looters or persons defying the po-
lice or military. To enforce all of this, Schmitz also swore in 1,000
armed volunteer patrolmen. Although the proclamation of summary
execution was illegal, Funston’s men continued shooting looters and
people ignoring orders. In this they were joined by police, the militia,
and Schmitz’s volunteers. Although the shootings effectively pre-
vented civil disorder, there were many accusations of unwarranted,
summary execution by rifle or bayonet. Most of this agitation was di-
rected against relatively undisciplined militia and vigilantes, but con-
troversy over the Army’s role persisted.
In addition, Schmitz organized a committee of 50 prominent citi-
zens to advise and assist him in fighting the fire. This committee first
met at the Hall of Justice but relocated to Portsmouth Square when
the building burned. By 8 p.m. on the first day, the fire front was a 3-
mile-long crescent, and light from the flames was visible for at least 50
miles. Also by this time, Funston had met with the mayor and his com-
mittee at the Fairmount Hotel to outline plans to control the fire with
a barrier of dynamited buildings. Thereafter, his troops set up a cor-
don along Van Ness Avenue, preventing entrance into the area to the
east as troops forced all civilians out of the same area. Troops were

519
1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

also set to guard property west of Van Ness, and the dynamiting be-
gan on the east side of the avenue. Funston had made himself the de
facto military governor of the city.
The fire continued spreading for a second day. On Thursday,
April 19, the mansions on Nob Hill, the Fairmount Hotel, and the
Barbary Coast below Telegraph Hill burned before 6 a.m. By 11 a.m.,
the U.S. Navy Pacific Squadron arrived, including the hospital ship
the Preble and a water tender that immediately went to work bringing
water to the city’s fire engines. Sailors landed for demolition work,
and Marines were deployed to protect waterfront property. In con-
trast to the Army, the militia, and the volunteers, they drew no criti-
cism for misbehavior or wanton shooting. The Army, with the active
participation of Funston’s wife, Eda, set up a refugee camp on the
grounds of the Presidio and in Letterman Hospital. Additional ra-
tions were ordered from Army stocks in Los Angeles and Seattle.
Ultimately, 20,000 people were estimated to be camping out in the
Presidio. Other refugees, including the staff and patients from many
of the city’s hospitals, camped out in even larger numbers in Golden
Gate Park. The inhabitants of St. Mary’s hospital, however, escaped
en masse on the steamer Medoc, which then stood offshore, eventually
docking in Alameda. President Theodore Roosevelt requested that
the Red Cross, insofar as possible, supervise relief operations at San
Francisco. This first such effort established the Red Cross as the prin-
cipal responder to mass disaster relief in America. By Thursday after-
noon, thousands of people had gathered along the waterfront, where
the fire department, aided by a Navy firefighting detachment and us-
ing more than 20 engines to pump water from the bay, had suc-
ceeded in saving almost all of the dock area. Every six minutes the
Southern Pacific Railroad sent ferries loaded with refugees across the
Bay without charge. In addition, a large number of Bay Boatmen also
evacuated many, in some cases at exorbitant fees. Ultimately, the rail-
road transported 300,000 people across the Bay by ferry or onward by
train to any point in North America. In time the wind changed, and
by 4 p.m. the fire front was no longer wind-driven. Also, the water
mains from Lake Honda had been repaired so that some water be-
came available to the fire department. A small group of troops man-
aged to organize a successful defense of part of the Russian Hill
neighborhood. At 5 p.m., the Army, with the aid of a naval demolition

520
 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

squad, began blasting houses on the east side of Van Ness Avenue.
This was soon supplemented by artillery fire.
The third day of the fire began with flames jumping the Van Ness
Avenue fire line at midnight, but the fire department successfully
checked this advance, and the firebreak was essentially maintained.
At 5 a.m., Mayor Schmitz confronted Funston and ordered the cessa-
tion of dynamiting. One last blast, however, spread burning debris
into an unburned area north of Green Street, and the fire, driven by
the wind, expanded north and east. In the absence of troops to drive
them away, Russian Hill residents successfully saved their neighbor-
hood using water gathered in bathtubs, wet sheets, and even wine on
the flames. At 5 p.m., Funston defied the mayor and ordered artillery
bombardment along the Van Ness Avenue fire line. At 5:30 p.m.
firefighters reported that the fire along Van Ness Avenue was out,
and at 6 a.m. the following Friday morning, the Mission District was
declared safe. At 7:15 a.m., the last flames were extinguished along
the waterfront—seventy-two hours after the fire started.
Ultimately the fire was extinguished by a combination of factors.
Fire lines established along Van Ness, Dolores, Howard, and Twenti-
eth Street finally held when the wind either died down or shifted to
oppose the fire’s advance. Restoration of water service from the
Honda Reservoir enabled firefighters to hold at Van Ness Avenue,
and water pumped from the bay enabled firefightershters to save the
waterfront. Ultimately, 4.7 square miles burned. Only a few isolated
spots within the outer bounds of destruction survived: the south half
of Russian Hill, a few downtown blocks, and part of Telegraph Hill.
The strongly built mint, which contained a well in the basement, was
successfully defended. The post office, thanks to thick walls and a de-
termined crew of postal employees, managed to stave off the fire.
The Palace Hotel also survived for six hours, until its cisterns were
emptied and the roof sprays were cut off. Several additional buildings
with solid walls and fire-resistant shutters or wired glass also stood un-
burned in the midst of the burned-out area.
After the Fire. Because of the total confusion, actual enumera-
tion of casualties was impossible, and many corpses were totally con-
sumed by fire. Casualty estimates range from 450 to 1,000, with 700
the generally agreed estimate. While General Adolphus Greeley’s of-
ficial report listed 458 dead in San Francisco, only 315 dead were

521
1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

cited by city authorities. Four hundred injured were treated by medi-

cal authorities that kept records, and approximately 200,000 were left
homeless. Subsequent to the fire, an outbreak of bubonic plague,
caused by rats driven throughout the city, caused at least 160 re-
corded deaths.
Insurance companies were overwhelmed. The Fireman’s Fund,
for example, incurred liabilities of $11.5 million against total assets
of $7 million. Companies reorganized under bankruptcy and paid
claims, 55.6 percent cash and 50 percent in company stock. Only six
major companies were able to pay claims without delay and in full.
Fifty-nine companies spent months or even years fighting legal bat-
tles to avoid meeting their commitments.
Rebuilding San Francisco began immediately and, in the rush,
plans that would have made the city more fire- and earthquake-
resistant were essentially ignored. By December, 1906, plans were un-
der way for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition. By
that year the city was rebuilt. Building codes were revised following
publication of the California Earthquake Commission report. The
codes curbed use of brickwork, outlawed heavy ornamental cornices,
required improved bracing of steelwork, specified integration of
walls and frames of buildings, and required installation of automatic
sprinkler systems. In addition, a supplementary fire main system of
saltwater, additional reservoirs within the city, refurbished cisterns,
and acquisition of fireboats were recommended.
Earthquakes and other great disasters give rise to fanciful stories
that persist in popular memory. The motion picture San Francisco
(1936) dramatically shows a crevice suddenly opening in a crowded
city street. Panicked people fall into it, to be engulfed when it
promptly slams shut. This event never occurred. Also, a picture of
dead cows in an open fissure at the south end of Tomales Bay has
been published repeatedly as evidence of animals dying by falling
into a fissure. In actuality, a rancher used the crevice to dispose of a
dead cow, but the more dramatic story persists.
Folklore also has it that the San Francisco fire was stopped
through heroic efforts by the Army to dynamite firebreaks, when in
reality the dynamited wreckage of a building burns just as easily as the
building, and even more readily if the building has stone or brick
walls. Sober analysts of the California Earthquake Commission and

522
 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake

of the Fire Underwriters heavily discount blowing up buildings as a

way of stopping fires. A rumor that the U.S. mint was assaulted during
the fire by an armed gang intending to rob it was repeated as histori-
cal fact in a San Francisco paper as late as 1956. Another incident
wherein the carcass of a bull shot while charging and taken to Letter-
man Hospital to help feed refugees led to a rumor that dead horses
from all over the city were being fed to unsuspecting victims.
Perhaps the most important result of the 1906 earthquake was
that it made Californians actively conscious of the inevitability of pe-
riodic major earthquakes and the need for preparation. Thus, after
every major quake, the California Uniform Building Code has been
strengthened where found lacking. Also, continuing research on
earthquake prediction provides growing understanding of what to
expect and how to react. In spite of this, San Francisco again suffered
severe damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, escaping a major
fire only because, fortuitously, winds were calm.
M. Casey Diana

For Further Information:

Bolt, Bruce A. Earthquakes. 5th ed. New York: W. H. Freeman, 2006.
Collier, Michael. A Land in Motion: California’s San Andreas Fault.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Colvard, Elizabeth M., and James Rogers. Facing the Great Disaster:
How the Men and Women of the U.S. Geological Survey Responded to the
1906 “San Francisco Earthquake.” Reston, Va.: U.S. Geological Sur-
vey, 2006.
Fradkin, Philip L. The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San
Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2005.
Kurzman, Dan. Disaster! The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of
1906. New York: William Morrow, 2001.
Smith, Dennis. San Francisco Is Burning: The Untold Story of the 1906
Earthquake and Fires. New York: Viking, 2005.
Winchester, Simon. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the
Great California Earthquake of 1906. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

523
■ 1908: The Tunguska event
Meteorite or comet
Date: June 30, 1908
Place: Tunguska, Siberia
Classification: 8 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale; energy equiv-
alent to at least 10 to 20 megatons of TNT released
Result: 2 dead, several nomad camps destroyed, more than 1,000
reindeer killed, 811 square miles (2,100 square kilometers) of for-
est flattened

E arly on the morning of June 30, 1908, witnesses along a

621-mile (1,000-kilometer) path saw a fireball streak
across the sky from the east-southeast. It was as bright as the Sun and
cast its own set of shadows in the early morning light. The object ex-
ploded at 7:14 a.m., local time. Based upon seismic and barographic
records, and upon the destruction caused, the explosion released en-
ergy equivalent to that of 10 to 20 megatons of TNT, making it the
most devastating cosmic event on Earth during historical times. De-
pending upon the altitude of the explosion and the composition of
the object, the energy released may have been as high as 50 mega-
tons.
Had the explosion occurred over New York City, fatalities would
have been in the millions. As it was, the object exploded over a
sparsely inhabited forest in Siberia, roughly 43.5 miles (70 kilome-
ters) north of Vanavara, a small village on the Stony Tunguska River.
The region is one of primeval forests and bogs inhabited by nomads
who tend large herds of reindeer. Near the epicenter (ground zero),
trees burst into flame. Farther out, a great shock wave felled trees
over an 811-square-mile (2,100-square-kilometer) area, pointing them
radially outward, bottoms toward, and tops away from the epicenter.
Right at the epicenter where the force of the blast wave was directly
downward, a bizarre grove remained. Trees were left standing up-
right, but they were stripped of all their branches, like telephone
poles.
An eyewitness in Vanavara said the sky was split apart by fire and

524
 1908: The Tunguska event

that it was briefly hotter than he could endure. Because it was just af-
ter the summer solstice, the Sun remained above the horizon twenty-
four hours a day north of the Arctic Circle. Dust, lofted high into the
stratosphere, reflected so much sunlight back to the ground that
even south of the Arctic Circle, in northern Europe and Asia, nights
were not really dark for three days. People were amazed that they
could read, or even take photographs, in the middle of the night. At
least 1,000 reindeer were killed, and several nomad camps were
blown away or incinerated. Some nomads were knocked uncon-
scious, but remarkably, there are only 2 known human fatalities. An
old man named Vasiliy was thrown 39 feet (12 meters) through the
air into a tree. He soon died of his injuries. An elderly hunter named
Lyuburman died of shock.
Scientists supposed that the seismic waves had been caused by an
earthquake, but no scientists went immediately to investigate because
of the remoteness of the site. It was not until 1927 that Leonid Kulik,
the founder of meteorite science in Russia, reached the site after
spending many days plunging through trackless bogs on horseback.
Expecting to find a huge crater and a valuable nickel-iron mountain,
Kulik and his assistant were amazed to find only a shattered forest
stretching from horizon to horizon.
Careful research has since shown that the Tunguska object shat-
tered about 5.3 miles (8.5 kilometers) above the ground. If it were a
small comet, it must have been inactive, for there is no credible evi-
dence of a tail. It must have been at least 328 feet (100 meters) in di-
ameter and had an asteroidal core, because microscopic metallic
particles were recovered that are more closely associated with aster-
oids than with comets. Russian scientists favor this hypothesis. The
object’s trajectory and timing are consistent with it being a frag-
ment of Comet Encke. Western scientists favor the possibility that it
was a small, dark, rocky asteroid, perhaps 197 feet (60 meters) in di-
ameter.
When a solid object of this size plunges into the atmosphere, it
piles up air in front of it until the air acts like a solid wall. The object
shatters, its kinetic energy is converted to heat, and the object vapor-
izes explosively. Microscopic globules form as the vapor condenses.
Such globules have been recovered from peat bogs and tree resin at
the site, as well as from ice layers in remote Antarctica. The cosmic

525
1908: The Tunguska event

dust cloud truly spread worldwide. These globules have more of the
elements nickel and iridium than normal Earth rocks do—clear sig-
natures of their cosmic origins.
Charles W. Rogers

For Further Information:

Chaikin, Andrew. “Target: Tunguska.” Sky and Telescope, January, 1984,
18-21.
Fernie, J. Donald. “The Tunguska Event.” American Scientist, Septem-
ber/October, 1993, 412-415.
Gallant, Roy A. “Journey to Tunguska.” Sky and Telescope, June, 1994,
38-43.
Verma, Surendra. The Tunguska Fireball: Solving One of the Great Mys-
teries of the 20th Century. Cambridge, England: Icon Books, 2006.
Zanda, Brigitte, and Monica Rotaru, eds. Meteorites: Their Impact on
Science and History. Translated by Roger Hewins. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2001.

526
■ 1908: The Messina earthquake
Earthquake
Date: December 28, 1908
Place: Strait of Messina, near Messina, Italy
Magnitude: 7.5
Result: 120,000 dead, numerous communities destroyed or severely
damaged

I n 1900 the Italian island of Sicily in the Mediterranean

had a population of 3.8 million people. The island is sepa-
rated from the province of Calabria on the Italian mainland by the
20-mile-long Strait of Messina. The strait is only 2 miles wide in the
north, near the city of Messina, but expands to 10 miles in the south,
near Reggio di Calabria. Even though much of the population of
both Sicily and Calabria was employed in agriculture, one-fourth of it
was concentrated in towns with populations of over 25,000, which
proved disastrous during the earthquake in 1908. The Sicilian port
city of Messina, which is located on the northern coast of the strait,
claimed a population of 158,812 in 1905. It became Italy’s fourth
largest port, from which much of the citrus export was shipped to
northern Europe. Ten miles southeast of Messina across the strait in
Calabria is Reggio, another important Italian port city, with a popula-
tion of 45,000 in 1908.
Sicily and the southern Italian region of Calabria are on the edge
of the line that marks the collision between the European and the Af-
rican continental plates. The mountain range that runs down the
length of Italy and curves in southern Italy becomes the Calabrian
Arc. The Messina Strait is on the southern point of the Calabrian Arc.
The severe curvature of the Calabrian Arc causes lateral stretching of
the earth’s crust under the strait. Most of the earthquakes in Sicily
and Calabria result from movement along the Messina fault, a frac-
ture in the earth’s crust that is 43 miles (70 kilometers) long and al-
most 19 miles (30 kilometers) wide. Between 1793 and 1908, twenty
different earthquakes racked Messina and Reggio, although many
were minor disturbances.

527
1908: The Messina earthquake

Quake. Earthquakes that reached at least magnitude 7 on the

Richter scale have occurred repeatedly in Sicily and Calabria. An
earthquake in 1783 resulted in 29,515 casualties, and another one in
Calabria on September 8, 1905, produced property damage in excess
of $10 million (1905 value). The most devastating earthquake to
strike this region after 1783, however, occurred on December 28,
1908. The epicenter of this magnitude 7.5 earthquake was in the
Messina Strait. The focus of the earthquake was 5 miles (8 kilome-
ters) below the strait. Several weeks before December 28, shock waves
were recorded in the region.
The day before the catastrophe was a mild day in Messina. That
evening Giuseppe Verdi’s opera A da was being performed at the lo-
cal theater. People came from Reggio di Calabria, across the strait, to
attend the performance, and the hotels in town were completely full.
At 5:21 a.m., while it was still dark and most people were sound
asleep, the ground moved for thirty-five seconds and destroyed or
damaged an area from Terresa to Faro on the Sicilian coast and from
Lazzaro to Scilla on the Calabrian coast. The shock, which some sur-
vivors compared to the noise of a fast train going through a tunnel,
was most intense at the northern entrance to the strait, but it was felt
in an area 100 miles in radius.
The earthquake’s 30-mile path of destruction directly affected 40
communities north and south of Messina on both sides of the strait.
The devastation was greatest in large towns, such as Messina and
Reggio. Aftershocks were felt as late as early January, 1909. The initial
shock was followed by a tsunami, or tidal wave, which reached heights
of 8 feet in Messina and 15 feet in Reggio. The waves extended 219
yards (200 meters) inland and reached the island of Malta 115 min-
utes after the earthquake. In Messina the force of the water pushed a
2,000-ton Russian steamer from a dry dock into the bay. On the
shore, embankments collapsed 6 feet under water, and cracks ap-
peared on the ground 109 yards (100 meters) long and half a yard
(0.6 meter) deep. In Reggio the wharf was wrecked, and freight rail-
road cars near a major ferry station overturned.
Few deaths resulted from either the tsunami or fires. Most of
the 120,000 people who perished died because poorly constructed
houses collapsed in the densely populated towns of Messina and
Reggio. One-third of the population living in the 30-mile impact area

528
 1908: The Messina earthquake

SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
IA
EN
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Milan

A
Turin Venice

Genoa
F RA

BOSNIA-
Bologna Ravenna HERZEGOVINA
CE
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SAN
Pisa MARINO
Leghorn Florence
MONTE-
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uri NEGRO
L ig ITALY Adriatic
Corsica Sea
(FRANCE) Rome

VATICAN
CITY Naples Bari
Sa
rd

Ty r r h e n i a n
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Sea

Messina
Palermo Ionian
Stra
it Sea
of Sicily Reggio di
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MALTA

perished. In Messina the dead included soldiers of the local garrison,

who died when their military barracks collapsed, and the U.S. Consul
and his wife. The last survivors, a boy and two siblings, were rescued
from the ruins eighteen days after the earthquake. Until order was re-
stored by the Italian military, a number of criminals, who were freed
when the prison in Messina collapsed, added to the carnage by pillag-
ing. Witnesses claimed that former prisoners cut off fingers and ears
of earthquake victims in order to collect wedding rings and other jew-
elry.

529
1908: The Messina earthquake

Gauged by the Modified Mercalli scale, the epicentral intensity of

the destruction measured XI, which is only one level below the high-
est measurement possible on this scale. Both housing and infrastruc-
ture came down in clouds of dust and stones. The quake immediately
destroyed the region’s municipal electric, gas, and water facilities.
Ports and banks were damaged or destroyed, and the telegraph cable
was cut. The principal street in Messina, Corso Cavour, was demol-
ished. In addition, 87 of Messina’s 91 churches were destroyed, in-
cluding the famous Norman cathedral. More than 1 million tons of
debris had to be removed from Messina alone.
In addition to the destruction of the towns’ infrastructure, in
Messina and Reggio a majority of housing was completely destroyed.
The most important reason for the extent of the destruction was the
fact that most buildings were poorly built. In this poverty-stricken
land, housing had to be constructed by local labor using available lo-
cal material. Most walls were erected using rounded stones held to-
gether with weak mortar. Walls had weak girders and unsupported
cross beams to support the weight of heavy roofs. These shortcom-
ings of local construction had a long tradition. They were well known
to French geologist Déodat de Gratet de Dolomieu, who described
the poorly constructed housing in Messina in the aftermath of the
earthquake of 1783. After that natural disaster, the Bourbon govern-
ment of the kingdom of Sicily recommended construction of two-
story timber-frame houses with the space between the timbers filled
with stone embedded in mortar. This type of construction, called
baraccata, was not enforced. Only the very rich could afford houses
that were constructed adequately. A few of these baraccata buildings
actually survived the earthquake of 1908 in Messina and in Castig-
lione. A doctor’s house in Messina stood through the quake because
its foundations were nearly 5 feet thick and the masonry was made of
expensive lime and puzzolan mortar.
Response. Predictably, immediate reaction to the misery caused
by the earthquake varied. The historian Gaetano Salvemini, a profes-
sor at the University of Messina who lost his whole family, lamented
that he should have killed himself too. In one small Sicilian commu-
nity that was not destroyed by the shock, people gathered in the
church after the tremor. From there they followed their priest, who
was carrying a statue of a saint to the center of the village in order to

530
 1908: The Messina earthquake

seek divine protection for the community. Journalists who visited de-
stroyed communities reported that the population was apathetic, not
religious, and gave the appearance of stupefaction and “mental pa-
ralysis.” Outside Italy, the Russian poet Aleksandr Blok, reflecting on
the achievements of modern civilization, asked whether fate was at-
tempting to show how elemental forces could humiliate humankind,
which in its hubris thought it could control and rule nature through
technology.
Messina received foreign assistance two days before Reggio, where
communications were interrupted longer. At first, help came from a
variety of foreign ships, although one Italian warship in the region
appeared soon after the catastrophe. The north German steamer
Theropia left Naples on the afternoon of December 28 and reached
the strait by daybreak the next day to offer assistance. By December
30, Russian and British warships were actively involved in rescue
work. The injured were sent to Naples by ship and to Palermo and
Catania by train.
Because of the initial lack of communication, the Italian govern-
ment in Rome reacted slowly. Early reports suggested the loss of a few
thousand people. Only after receiving a report from the prefect of
Messina twenty-four hours after the disaster did the government ap-
preciate the seriousness of the situation. King Victor Emmanuel III
arrived in Messina by December 30. The pope offered financial assis-
tance, but, because of health reasons, he could not make the journey
to the stricken area. Systematic relief work did not come until a week
later, when the Italian premier sent soldiers and imposed martial law.
On January 9, 1909, the army secured Messina and helped in the res-
cue work. Looters were shot on sight. Military control lasted until
February 14.
The world community reacted to the catastrophe with both an
outpouring of sympathy and massive financial aid. By February 27,
1909, forty-three foreign countries, including even Peru, had pro-
vided assistance to this Italian region. The United States Congress
voted for an assistance package of $800,000, and the Red Cross do-
nated $1 million to the relief work by April, 1909. Additional funds
were raised by a variety of papers and journals, ranging from the
Christian Herald to The New York Times. The New York paper devoted
front-page coverage to the earthquake from December 29, 1908, to

531
1908: The Messina earthquake

January 6, 1909. In addition, it published appeals for help from vari-

ous American organizations, particularly the Italian American com-
munity.
In Italy a Committee to Aid was organized to assist the victims and
to guide reconstruction. This committee included a number of poli-
ticians who wanted the aid to benefit primarily landowners and pro-
fessionals rather than the masses. Peasants were urged to return to
work on local citrus-fruit farms rather than rely on welfare in other
parts of Italy. The duke of Aosta suggested that because of their pov-
erty, the poor had lost little in the earthquake. The most extreme so-
lution to the problem of recovery was suggested by the journalist
Giuseppe Piazza, who thought that the Italian navy should bombard
the ruins of Messina to the ground so that the city could be aban-
doned. Nonetheless, the population recovered and reached 177,000
by 1921. Also, by 1912, commerce in Messina reached 1909 levels and
its port was again Italy’s fourth-largest. Still, the earthquake left re-
minders. In 1958, 10,000 inhabitants of Messina still lived in “tempo-
rary” housing that had been built in 1909.
One long-term consequence of the earthquake was that it stimu-
lated scientific studies on earthquake engineering. In early 1909 a
committee was appointed, composed of nine engineers and five
professors of engineering. Its task, as defined by the Ministry of Pub-
lic Works, was to recommend earthquake-resistant buildings, which
could be afforded by rural communities that had to rely on local raw
material. The committee published its findings in Rome in 1909.
Like many earlier studies after previous earthquakes, it summarized
the weakness of housing construction in Messina and Reggio, rang-
ing from poor mortar quality to unrestrained support beams. The
committee recommended two-story wood-frame houses with walls
filled with masonry. Based on these and subsequent findings, the Ital-
ian government between 1923 and 1930 passed more stringent con-
struction laws, which in 1930 were more rigorous than those issued in
earthquake-ridden Japan at that time. The task of meeting the chal-
lenge of earthquakes in this region is not finished. In 1970, the Ital-
ian government initiated studies on how to build a 2-mile (3-kilome-
ter) single-span bridge across the Strait of Messina.
Johnpeter Horst Grill

532
 1908: The Messina earthquake

For Further Information:

Bosworth, R. J. B. “The Messina Earthquake of 28 December 1908.”
European Studies Review 11 (1981): 189-206.
Hobbs, William H. “The Latest Calabrian Disaster.” The Popular Sci-
ence Monthly 74 (February, 1909): 134-140.
Hood, Alexander Nelson. “Some Personal Experiences of the Great
Earthquake.” The Living Age 43 (May 8, 1909): 355-365.
Mulargia, F., and E. Boschi. “The 1908 Messina Earthquake and Re-
lated Seismicity.” In Earthquakes: Observation, Theory, and Interpreta-
tion, edited by E. Boschi and H. Kanamori. Amsterdam: North-
Holland, 1983.
Neri, G., et al. “Tectonic Stress and Seismogenic Faulting in the Area
of the 1908 Messina Earthquake, South Italy.” Geophysical Research
Letters 31 (2004).
The New York Times. December 28, 1908-January 6, 1909.
Perret, Frank A. “The Messina Earthquake.” The Century: Illustrated
Monthly Magazine 55 (April, 1909): 921-928.
Wright, Charles W. “The World’s Most Cruel Earthquake.” National
Geographic 10 (April, 1909): 373-396.

533
■ 1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster
Fire
Date: November 13, 1909
Place: Cherry, Illinois
Result: 259 dead

T he Cherry Mine is about 100 miles southwest of Chi-

cago at Cherry, Illinois. Opened in 1904 by the St. Paul
Mining Company, a subsidiary of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St.
Paul Railroad, the mine existed solely to supply fuel for the railroad.
Cherry, named for James Cherry, the railroad engineer in charge,
was built to house miners. Almost all of the town’s approximately
2,500 inhabitants consisted of miners and their families. On the
morning of the disaster, 484 men went underground in the mine.
Up-to-date, well-managed, and prosperous, the Cherry Mine was a
sought-after place to work. It was dry, gas-free, and, with the railroad
as its owner, largely immune from seasonal layoffs. Also, the Cherry
Mine was one of the first lit by electricity. Unfortunately, however, the
electrical system shorted out three weeks prior to the disastrous fire,
and oil torches were put temporarily into use. Such torches were, at
the time, widespread in coal mines.
The Layout of the Mine. The Cherry Mine was entered through
two shafts. The “second vein” (Illinois Springfield Number 5 Coal), a
5 foot, 2 inch seam mined at 316 feet, was the principal coal source
when the mine burned. Beneath this, the lowermost of the three hor-
izontal coal seams in the mine, the 3.5-foot “third vein” (Illinois
Colchester Number 2 Coal) was mined at a depth of 486 feet. The
“first vein” (Illinois Number 7, Streator Coal) at 271 feet was not
mined in the Cherry Mine.
On both levels, miners were isolated far from the shafts. The main
shaft hoist connected the second level to the tipple, or head frame,
but did not run down the shaft to the third seam. A second hoist in
the ventilation and escape shaft connected the second and third
seams but did not reach the surface. Thus, men and cars from the
lower level were lifted to the second level, proceeded 200 feet past

534
 1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster

Wisconsin Lake
Janesville Racine
Kenosha Michigan
Dubuque
Iowa Rockford Waukegan

Elgin Skokie Evanston

Cedar Rapids Oak Park Chicago
Aurora
Iowa City
Davenport Cherry Oak Lawn Gary
Joliet

Peoria

Champaign

Decatur
Springfield

ILLINOIS Terre
Haute

Florissant
St. Louis East St. Louis

Indiana
Missouri
Evansville

Owensboro

Kentucky

Clarksville
Arkansas Tennessee

535
1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster

the mule stables to the main hoist and, at this point, were lifted to the
tipple. There was no hoist in the air shaft above the second level, but
an enclosed wooden stairway and ladders allowed miners to climb
from the bottom to the top of the shaft. Two tunnels, mined through
coal, passed around the stables to connect the shafts. These passages
were propped with pine timbers and were partially lined with pine
planks. About 75 mules were used to haul wooden mine cars between
the working faces and the hoist landings. A “pillar” of unmined coal
surrounded and supported the two shafts, stables, and entries.
The second level of the Cherry Mine was worked by the room-and-
pillar method. Nearly a mile of “main entries,” or tunnels, extended
in an east-west direction from the shaft. Additional entries crossed
the main entries at right angles to outline rectangular panels for min-
ing. As coal was mined, “pillars,” left in a rectangular arrangement,
supported the “back,” or roof.
The third seam was mined by the long-wall method because the
seam was so thin that rock had to be excavated from the roof to per-
mit men and mules to pass. Haulage entries radiated outwards from
the shaft, and working tunnels branched out at acute angles. Here
men had to crouch under a 3.5-foot “back.” As the coal mining pro-

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

Smoke billows from the Cherry Mine after a fire there killed 259. (AP/Wide World
Photos)

536
 1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster

ceeded, the roof was allowed to collapse behind the miners, with only
the tunnels remaining open. Miners on both levels were dependent
on messengers for communication.
The Fire. At about 1:30 p.m. on November 13, 1909, a carload of
hay was apparently ignited by kerosene dripping from the open torch
at the second vein air-shaft landing. This small fire was ignored by
miner Emil Gertz as he hurried to catch the 1:30 hoist. “Cagers,” or
hoist operators, Alex Rosenjack and Robert Dean continued hoisting
coal for several minutes after they knew about the fire. Minutes later,
Rosenjack and two others tried unsuccessfully to dump the burning
car down the air shaft. Eventually, aided by a group of miners from
the third vein, they pushed the car into the air shaft, where the fire
died in the water-filled “sump” at the shaft bottom.
Meanwhile, however, timbers in the second level entries had ig-
nited, and dense smoke already prevented miners from reaching the
only water supply in the mine—a hose in the stables that supplied
water for the mules. The fire raged out of control. At least forty-five
minutes—too late for many to escape—passed before all men at the
remote mining faces heard the warning. One cageload of men came
up from the lower level before the cager fled, and a few additional
men climbed the escape shaft stairs. Some second-vein men reached
the hoist shaft from the side opposite the fire and escaped before
smoke and flame blocked the shaft. Pit boss Alex Norberg then or-
dered the fan reversed to draw air down the main shaft, and mine
manager John Bundy organized twelve volunteers to go down on the
hoist to rescue trapped miners. After six successful trips, the seventh
ended when the rescuers burned to death in the cage. Tragically, the
hoist engineer, John Crowley, delayed lifting the men because signals
from below were confused. At 8 p.m. the mine was sealed to smother
the fire.
Recovery Efforts. Soon mine inspectors, firefighters, and res-
cue experts arrived to supervise further rescue and recovery. On No-
vember 14, R. Y. Williams and his assistant, from the University of Illi-
nois, were lowered to the second level in the ventilation shaft wearing
oxygen helmets and suits, but smoke and steam forced them out, and
the shafts were again covered. The next day temperatures were fairly
comfortable, but there was still too much smoke and steam under-
ground. In an attempt to use the main shaft hoist, the fan was re-

537
1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster

paired to pull air down the main shaft. Ventilation, however, revived
the fire, so both shafts were once again covered. On the fourth day, al-
though the main shaft still retained excessive temperatures, a deci-
sion was made to enter the air shaft, and a temporary cage was con-
structed.
The next day, November 18, the “helmet men” retrieved a body
from the air shaft. Also, a hose was lowered down to the second level
late in the day, and fire fighting began. Chicago firefighters led the
effort west of the main shaft all that night, and on November 19 they
recovered four more bodies. Also, explorers got around cave-ins to
reach the south entry and penetrated east almost to the air shaft. Re-
pairs to timbering and removal of roof falls were done on these pas-
sages during the night. By the end of the first week, the fire was appar-
ently under control in areas accessible from the main shaft landing.
Finally, on November 20, when the workings (tunnels and shafts)
were stabilized and it appeared that no live men remained under-
ground, the remaining mining inspectors left at 10:30 a.m. However,
shortly after noon, 21 survivors, led by George Eddy and Walter
Waite, were found on the second level. These men had sheltered be-
hind barriers they erected to preserve breathable air, and all but one
eventually recovered. After survivors were found, the mine inspec-
tors hastily returned. Rooms east of the main south entry were ex-
plored that night and through Monday the 22nd, without finding
additional living miners: About 100 bodies were removed. On No-
vember 23 and 24, the northwest entries were searched without re-
covering men or bodies. Northern workings east of the shaft, where
many men had been employed, remained inaccessible. At this point,
smoke began issuing from the main passageway connecting the west
shaft with the air shaft. This passage was temporarily blocked by a
roof fall and a temporary barrier. Exploration of the northwest sec-
tion immediately ceased, the barrier was removed, and a hose was
turned into the passage, dousing the fire.
Also on November 24, four men reentered the third vein for the
first time since the fire began and found 3 to 4 feet of water in the
workings. Groups of bodies were discovered in dry places. However,
pumping preparations halted when fire began encroaching behind
the shaft lining south and east of the main shaft. These fires could not
be suppressed, so smoke spread west, practically driving out the res-

538
 1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster

cuers. In addition, dense coal smoke from burning pillars aroused

fear of noxious gases. Thus, after a unanimous decision that no survi-
vors remained in the mine, both shafts were sealed with steel rails and
concrete in order to smother the fire on November 25, 1909, two
weeks after the fire began.
During the crisis, the Red Cross sent supplies and workers. The
Catholic Church sent nuns to help the bereaved, and other churches
organized relief committees. The Chicago Tribune gathered money
and contributed food.
The Aftermath. Restoration began February 1, 1910, after tem-
peratures dropped to normal and the mine was ventilated. Finally,
the fire was extinguished, and the lower level was drained. By March
5, 82 bodies had been recovered from the second level, and on April
12, 51 bodies were removed from the third level. Up to 6 men re-
mained unaccounted for. Next, the second level was walled off, every-
thing of value removed, and it was abandoned. By September 3, some
third-level entries were cleared to the coal face, and the mine was ex-
pected to reopen October 10, 1910—one year and thirty-one days af-
ter the fire.
Results of the Cherry Mine disaster were many and varied. Public
indignation made it necessary to bring in the militia to guard mine
officials. Also, cagers Rosenjack and Dean fled the town, and hoist en-
gineer Crowley was placed under protection. In all, 187 bodies were
found on the second vein: 51 on the third vein and 12 victims burned
to death during rescue efforts. Three of 256 dead listed in the state
mining inspector’s report were “American,” 233 of diverse nationali-
ties, and 20 of unreported nationality. The youngest miners were
only fifteen and working in violation of the Factory Act, which pro-
hibited those under sixteen from mining.
The Cherry Relief Commission collected a total of $256,215.72
from the state legislature and death benefits from the United Mine
Workers, as well as money from the railroad, from churches, and
from many individual donors. Also, an additional $400,000 settle-
ment was negotiated with the mining company. These funds pro-
vided widows with lump-sum payments and, until they remarried,
modest pensions, as well as child support for children too young to
work. In 1910 and 1911 the Illinois state legislature passed several
bills in response to the Cherry disaster. These required improved

539
1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster

firefighting and prevention measures, telephones connecting the

faces and cages with the surface, improved workers’ compensation
laws, and establishment of regional fire and rescue stations. The
Cherry Disaster also was crucial in establishment of the Federal Bu-
reau of Mines.
Cherry’s annual memorial services and museum continue to draw
large attendance. After the disaster, the St. Paul Mining Company
continued with many of the original miners until 1927. By then un-
mechanized long-wall mines were obsolete, and the mine closed. In
1928, Mark Bartolo reopened the mine until its final closure during
the Depression. Bartolo salvaged buildings and equipment and be-
gan to farm the site.
M. Casey Diana

For Further Information:

Buck, F. P. The Cherry Mine Disaster. Chicago: M. H. Donohue, 1910.
Burns, Robert Taylor. “The Cherry Mine Disaster.” Outdoor Illinois 8,
no. 4 (1967): 36-40.
Curran, Daniel J. Dead Laws for Dead Men. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1993.
Hudson, Thomas. “The Cherry Mine Disaster.” In Twenty-ninth An-
nual Coal Report of the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics. Springfield:
Illinois State Journal, 1911.
Tintori, Karen. Trapped: The 1909 Cherry Mine Disaster. New York: Atria
Books, 2002.
U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety, and Health Administration.
National Mine Health and Safety Academy. Historical Summary of
Mine Disasters in the United States. Beaver, W.Va.: Author, 1998.
Wyatt, Edith. “Heroes of the Cherry Mine.” McClure’s Magazine 34,
no. 5 (March, 1910): 473-492.

540
■ 1914: The Eccles Mine Disaster
Explosion
Date: April 28, 1914
Place: Eccles (near Beckley), Raleigh County, West Virginia
Result: 181 dead

T he Eccles Number 5 Mine was opened in 1905. It was

owned by the Guggenheim family of New York City
and managed by the New River Collieries Company until the Stone-
age Coke and Coal Company took over operations in 1923. Stoneage
operated the mine from 1923 until 1928. Eccles was a gaseous mine,
as noted in the 1911 annual report of the Department of Mines of
West Virginia. However, the ventilation required for gaseous mines
was adequate and appeared to be up to standards. The Department
of Mines was not expecting a major tragedy at Eccles.
At 2:10 p.m., an explosion in the Number 5 Mine killed every man
among the 172 who were working there. While working the seam in
the Number 6 mine, above the Number 5 Mine, 8 men were killed by
the afterdamp from the Number 5 Mine explosion. Afterdamp is an
asphyxiating gas left in a mine after an explosion of firedamp. Fire-
damp is a gas, largely methane, formed in coal mines and is explosive
when mixed with air. Sixty-six men managed to escape from the
Number 6 Mine.
The explosion that originated in the Number 5 Mine produced
heat and violence so great that few of the 172 men in the mine work-
ings could have lived any real amount of time after the explosion.
About ten minutes after the first explosion in the Number 5 Mine, a
second and less violent explosion occurred, which carried debris out
of the Number 5 Mine’s shaft. The first and more violent explosion,
accompanied by flame, carried timber and quantities of mud up both
mines’ shafts and blew off the explosion doors of the fanhouse at the
Number 5 Mine’s shaft. The explosion did not, however, damage the
fan. The explosion wave in the Number 5 Mine traveling toward the
Number 6 Mine’s shaft blew a large quantity of water from a depres-
sion up the Number 5 Mine’s shaft. This quenched the flame and

541
1914: The Eccles Mine Disaster

prevented it from entering the Number 6 Mine. Rescue workers en-

tered through the Number 6 Mine’s shaft.
Reasons for the Explosion. The official report filed by the
mine inspectors gives the cause of the explosion as a barrier of coal
being breached a short time before the explosion occurred. A con-
tractor working on the south side of the coal barrier had been noti-
fied not to take out the barrier, as that would disrupt the ventilation
in that portion of the mine. This barrier was intact on the morning of
the explosion, as testified to by the night boss who examined it.

After the explosion the body of [Seth] Combs [the contractor] was
found on the north side of the barrier . . . while his work was on the
south side, and it is assumed that some time during the day he had
blasted out a hole in the barrier that he might have a shorter travel
way to the north section of the entry. In doing so, practically one-third
of the mine was left without ventilation and it seems that the explo-
sion originated in the main south sections of the mine.

The mine was known to liberate explosive gas, and the coal in this sec-
tion, varying in thickness from 8 to 10 feet, would allow the gas to ac-
cumulate next to the roof. Conditions suggested that this explosion
was caused by the ignition of gas and its propagation throughout the
various parts of the mine. This was aided, to some extent, by the pres-
ence of coal dust, as the force of the explosion traveled in all direc-
tions. It dropped the Eccles Number 5 Mine 500 feet down into the
Beckley coal seam.
The Aftermath. Of the 181 dead, 62 were positively identified.
Of those, 15 percent were African American and 23 percent were of
Italian descent. Some had Slavic surnames. Many of the dead miners
were immigrants. About 39 percent were married. Those who could
be identified were buried in family cemeteries if they were locals.
Some of the Catholic immigrant miners were taken to Saint Se-
bastian cemetery in nearby Beckley. Those who were not identified
were buried in the “Polish cemetery” above the tipple, where coal was
emptied from the mine cars at the Eccles mines. In 1976, the bodies
were moved to a new cemetery at the request of the Westmoreland
Coal Company, which was then working the Eccles mines.
Dana P. McDermott

542
 1914: The Eccles Mine Disaster

For Further Information:

Dillon, Lacy A. They Died in the Darkness. Ravencliff, W.Va.: Coal
Books, 1991.
Humphrey, Hiram B. Historical Summary of Coal-Mine Explosions in
the United States, 1910-1958. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, Bureau of Mines, 1959.
U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety, and Health Administration.
National Mine Health and Safety Academy. Historical Summary of
Mine Disasters in the United States. Beaver, W.Va.: Author, 1998.
Wood, James L. Raleigh County, West Virginia. Beckley, W.Va.: Raleigh
County Historical Society, 1994.

543
■ 1914: EMPRESS OF IRELAND sinking
Fog
Date: May 29, 1914
Place: St. Lawrence River, Canada
Result: More than 1,000 dead in sinking of Canadian liner Empress
of Ireland following collision with Norwegian freighter Storstad in
heavy fog

T he fame and historical significance of some disasters

certainly overshadow other tragedies and accidents.
Such is the case regarding the loss of the Empress of Ireland. The na-
tionality, location, and date of the disaster all contributed to a gen-
eral lack of knowledge about the ship’s loss, despite the fact that
more passengers lost their lives in the accident than in more famous
incidents.
Empress of Ireland (completed in 1907) and its sister ship Empress of
Britain were constructed by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engi-
neering Company of Glasgow as flagships of the Canadian Pacific
Line. At 14,200 tons, Empress of Ireland carried more than 1,000 pas-
sengers—310 first class, 350 second class, and 800 third class—on the
Quebec-to-Liverpool route. For eight years the ship enjoyed a distin-
guished reputation for service and reliability and never once was in-
volved in any sort of accident.
Empress of Ireland, with 1,057 passengers and 420 crewmen aboard,
left Quebec on May 28, 1914. Many of its passengers were prominent
leaders of the Canadian Salvation Army, on their way to Europe to
attend the organization’s worldwide convention. At approximately
1 a.m., Captain Henry Kendall, commanding the Empress of Ireland for
the first time, paused to drop off pilot Adelhard Bernier at Rimouski,
Quebec, at the point where the St. Lawrence River widens before the
approach to the open sea. At about the same time, the Norwegian
Storstad, a coal freighter, was approaching Rimouski to take on its pi-
lot before entering the narrow portion of the river. The Storstad’s
7,000-ton displacement was further burdened by 11,000 tons of coal
scheduled to be unloaded in Quebec the next day. On the Storstad’s

544
 1914: Empress of Ireland sinking

Inukjuak
Labrador Sea
Labrador
Hudson
Bay

Newfoundland
St. John’s

Gulf of
Rimouski St. Lawrence
QUEBEC R. Sydney
ce New
re n
Amos aw
Brunswick
St L

Ontario Quebec Nova Scotia

Trois-rivieres
Sudbury North Bay Halifax
Montreal Maine
L. Huron Ottawa
Kingston Vermont Atlantic
Toronto r io New New Hampshire
nta Ocean
L. O York

rie Massachusetts
L. E

bridge First Mate Alfred Toftenes stood watch, peering into the dark-
ness as intermittent fog began to develop over the river.
Not long after passing Rimouski, the two ships sighted each other.
In the darkness without any visual references, both ships misjudged
the bearing and speed of the other, with disastrous results. Before
signals could be launched and positions verified, a blanket of fog
obscured both vessels’ view of the other, leaving the ships groping to-
ward each other in the darkness. Both officers then took actions in-
tended to prevent a collision, but which in retrospect proved the op-
posite. First Mate Toftenes, obeying the established maritime rules,
proceeded on his original course and speed, presuming the other
ship would do the same and pass cleanly to port.
Captain Kendell, however, did almost the opposite. He initially or-
dered all his engines to stop in order to allow the other vessel to pass
ahead of him. The immense mass of the ship, however, carried the
vessel forward anyway. To compensate, Kendall ordered the engines

545
1914: Empress of Ireland sinking

to full reverse to halt the Empress of Ireland’s forward momentum, an-

nouncing his intent to the unseen ship by three long blasts from his
steam whistle. When First Mate Toftenes heard the whistle, he real-
ized the danger of his situation. He immediately reduced forward
speed and called the Storstad’s commanding officer, Captain Thomas
Anderson, to the bridge. Anderson had just arrived on the bridge
when the massive starboard side of the Empress of Ireland suddenly ap-
peared out of the fog less than 100 yards dead ahead. Captain Ander-
son immediately reversed engines, while Captain Kendall went to full
speed to avoid a collision, but their efforts were in vain. Storstad
rammed the Empress of Ireland amidships, nearly cutting it in two.
Captain Kendall, realizing his ship was doomed, immediately or-
dered the helmsman to turn the ship toward shore and prepare the
passengers for evacuation. Despite direct action, the Empress of Ireland
and many of its passengers had no chance. The deep wound caused
by the Storstad had flooded the boilers, and the Empress of Ireland came
to a dead stop in the channel. Electrical power also failed, plung-
ing the ship into darkness and disabling the public address system
needed to alert sleeping passengers and crew. The gash in its side also
admitted tons of water into the ship. Only ten minutes after the colli-
sion, the Empress of Ireland capsized, floated bottom up for several
minutes, then sank in 150 feet of water.
Because of the loss of power and the quick demise of the ship, the
death toll was staggering. Of 1,057 passengers, only 217 survived.
More crewmen survived the tragedy because they were awake and
working, but 172 of the 420 crewmen lost their lives. An additional 20
crewmen aboard the Storstad also died. Eager to place blame, a Cana-
dian court of inquiry cleared Captain Kendall of all responsibility for
the disaster. A Norwegian inquiry subsequently cleared the Storstad of
any fault. In actuality both were to blame. Captain Kendall had acted
indecisively and had not followed established maritime rules by fail-
ing to maintain his course. First Mate Toftenes also deserved blame
for not summoning his commanding officer until the situation had
deteriorated.
The loss of the Empress of Ireland has slipped into obscurity for sev-
eral reasons. First, its loss was overshadowed by the sinking of the Ti-
tanic two years earlier. Empress of Ireland also sank in the St. Lawrence
River instead of on the higher-profile passenger routes in the North

546
Atlantic. Finally, the growing war scare in Europe that would result in
World War I only three months after the loss of Empress of Ireland dom-
inated the news more than the loss of a passenger liner on a Cana-
dian river.
Steven J. Ramold

For Further Information:

Bonsall, Thomas E. Great Shipwrecks of the Twentieth Century. Baltimore:
Bookman, 1988.
Croall, James. Disaster at Sea: The Last Voyage of the “Empress of Ireland.”
New York: Stein & Day, 1980.
McMurray, Kevin F. Dark Descent: Diving and the Deadly Allure of the “Em-
press of Ireland.” Camden, Maine: International Marine, 2004.
Marshall, Logan. The Tragic Story of the “Empress of Ireland.” 1914. Re-
print. London: Patrick Stephens, 1972.
Wood, Herbert P. Til We Meet Again: The Sinking of the “Empress of Ire-
land.” Toronto: Image, 1982.
Zeni, David. Forgotten Empress: The “Empress of Ireland” Story. Tiverton,
N.Y.: Halsgrove, 1998.

547
■ 1916: The Great Polio Epidemic
Epidemic
Date: 1916
Place: 26 states, particularly New York
Result: At least 7,000 deaths, 27,000 reported cases

N early all Americans coming of age during the first half

of the twentieth century have childhood memories
that include the apprehension each summer brought, when polio ep-
idemics could begin without warning, leaving many paralyzed or
dead in their wake. Although poliomyelitis, or infantile paralysis, as it
was also called, had existed for hundreds of years, the first large-scale
epidemic of the disease hit the United States in 1916. An earlier out-
break had occurred in Stockholm in 1887, with 44 cases reported.
There were also outbreaks in New York City in 1907, New York City
and Cincinnati in 1911, and Buffalo, New York, in 1912, but none ap-
proached the horror and severity of the 1916 epidemic. Indeed, the
1916 polio epidemic set the pattern for polio epidemics through the
middle of the twentieth century, both in the virulence of the disease
and in the public’s response.
Rate of Infection. Typically, in the early years of the twentieth
century, the rate of polio infection in the United States was less than
7.9 cases per 100,000 people. In 1916, that figure rose dramatically,
topping out at 28.5 cases per 100,000. People in 26 states were af-
fected by the disease. All told, between roughly July of 1916 and Octo-
ber of 1916 some 27,000 cases were reported. Of these, about 7,000
people died. In New York City, the hardest hit area of the country,
there were about 9,000 cases, and nearly all of these cases occurred in
children younger than sixteen years of age. During the week of Au-
gust 5, 1916, at the height of the epidemic, there were 1,151 cases re-
ported in the city and 301 deaths. Many cases went unreported be-
cause the families of victims feared that they would be quarantined
and unable to leave their homes.
Many victims of the disease suffered mild or no symptoms, often
only complaining of a low-grade fever. However, others complained

548
 1916: The Great Polio Epidemic

of stiff necks and backs and increasingly painful limbs. Sometimes,

this muscular distress grew more severe, with the limbs becoming
paralyzed. In the worst cases, the virus destroyed the nerves control-
ling the muscles responsible for breathing, leading inevitably to
death. The swift onset of the disease, the often dire consequences,
the mysterious nature of transmission, and its predilection for attack-
ing adolescents and young adults in the prime of life made polio a
terrifying word. During epidemics, horrified populations submitted
to intrusive public health regulations that they never would have en-
dured otherwise, all in the hope of quelling the infection’s spread.
Polio Becomes Epidemic. Ironically, some researchers believe
that the improved sanitation in American cities in the twentieth cen-
tury changed the way the population experienced the virus. The im-
proved sanitation, while a boon in preventing many forms of ill-
nesses, may have contributed to polio becoming a typically epidemic

During the Great Polio Epidemic of 1916, quarantines were enforced in cities.

549
1916: The Great Polio Epidemic

disease. In the years before the twentieth century, human feces con-
taining large amounts of polio virus were the most common form of
transmission. Water contaminated with feces led to many cases. Thus,
before the twentieth century, polio infected almost all babies. These
babies only suffered a mild reaction, generally no more than a low-
grade fever or cold symptoms.
Sometimes babies who were infected did not exhibit symptoms at
all. They were, nonetheless, immune to future infection by the virus.
Further, polio had always been a far more serious disease in adults
than in infants. Improved sanitation meant that fewer babies were ex-
posed to the virus. As a result, more adults were susceptible to the dis-
ease. When the virus struck the largely unprotected population, it
reached epidemic proportions as adolescents and adults passed the
disease to other adolescents and adults, often with disastrous conse-
quences. The illness this population suffered was of a far more seri-
ous nature, often leading to paralysis or death.
Although the cause of polio had been identified as a virus as early
as 1909, no vaccine existed in 1916. Further, the medical community
was uncertain how the disease was passed from person to person, and
they did not know why the disease always peaked in the summer, only
to ease in the winter. At the time of the 1916 outbreak, popular wis-
dom attributed polio to wildly different sources. Many believed that
the disease was caused by poisonous caterpillars or moldy flour. Oth-
ers thought that gooseberries or contaminated milk could cause po-
lio. Still others thought that contact with human spit or sewage odors
might be the culprit.
In spite of popular opinion, in 1916 medical researchers generally
subscribed to the germ theory. That is, they believed that disease was
passed from person to person via invisible germs. Much of the gen-
eral public and some epidemiologists, however, still believed that
most disease was caused by dirt. If there were such a thing as germs,
they reasoned, then they must be spread by dirty people. Such rea-
soning led to the extreme measures to enforce quarantine and isola-
tion that characterized the 1916 epidemic, particularly in New York
City.
Public Health Response. Public health officials undertook
many measures to try to slow the spread of the disease in the summer
of 1916. They placed quarantine signs on the doors of victims, in-

550
 1916: The Great Polio Epidemic

In an effort to control spread of the disease, interstate travelers were required to carry a
health certificate verifying the absence of polio.

structed that all bed clothing be disinfected, and required nurses to

change their clothing immediately after visiting with patients. In the
mistaken notion that dogs and cats could spread the disease, pets
were not permitted to go into rooms with people suffering from po-
lio. As the epidemic wore on, public health officials gathered up and
destroyed many dogs and cats. On July 14, 1916, New York officials
announced a new regulation forbidding travel in or out of parts of
the city stricken with the epidemic. Further, New York City children
had to carry identification cards certifying that neither they nor any-
one in their families had polio before they were allowed to leave the
city.
The public reaction in New York to the 1916 epidemic is particu-
larly interesting because it reveals the deep resentment the upper
and middle classes bore toward the poor and immigrant populations.
When most public health and elected officials attributed the epi-
demic to dirty people, they did not have far to look in New York City,
with its large, poverty-stricken immigrant population. As a group, the
poor were generally ill educated and did not wield political clout.

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1916: The Great Polio Epidemic

Consequently, public officials took restrictive measures that were di-

rectly aimed at this population. For example, a New York City law re-
quired that any sick child living in a home without a private toilet and
whose family could not provide a private nurse must be hospitalized.
Thus, virtually any sick child who also had the misfortune to be poor
was hospitalized. Since hospitals were often the sites of secondary in-
fections, such hospitalization was not always in the best interest of the
child. Even more extreme, poor children without symptoms were
also quarantined, due to the public’s belief that such children spread
the illness to their middle-class and upper-class neighbors.
Residents attributed the large outbreak of polio in New Rochelle,
New York, to its immigrant population. Indeed, the immigrant popu-
lation was looked upon with growing suspicion as the epidemic
dragged on through the summer. Immigrant children were banned
from city functions and camps. In contrast, middle-class and wealthy
children were sent out of the city for the summer, to places their par-
ents deemed were “safe,” often meaning to places that had low immi-
grant populations. More than 50,000 children were sent out of New
York City over the course of the summer.
Several wealthy New York suburbs isolated themselves from the
rest of New York, forbidding nonresidents from entering their towns.
Hastings-on-Hudson, for example, refused to admit 150 families who
wanted to summer there, and police intervention was needed to send
them away. Some communities closed their beaches to nonresidents.
The polio epidemic of 1916, then, shows clearly how a public
health issue can quickly become an issue of politics, race, economics,
and class. In some places, such as Oyster Bay, a summer resort town,
the interests of the less wealthy permanent residents were at odds
with the wealthier summer guests. J. N. Hayes, in The Burdens of Dis-
ease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History (1998), cites a
study by Guenter Risse of the public reaction in Oyster Bay during
the time of the epidemic. The permanent residents, many of whom
made their living by supplying the summer residents with services,
did not want a quarantine imposed that would destroy their liveli-
hoods. At the same time, they did not want to pay through their taxes
for health services for the rich guests. That many of the permanent
residents were of Irish or Polish descent further convinced the sum-
mer guests that they were at risk in the resort.

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 1916: The Great Polio Epidemic

As the epidemic continued, it became clear that the transmission

model that most middle-class and upper-class members held was not
accurate. Contact with poor and immigrant populations did not lead
to the transmission of the disease; victims seemed randomly chosen.
Some public health officials began to advocate for the eradication of
the fly, on the grounds that flies spread filth and disease. Once again,
the public backed these measures because it gave them a sense that
there was something they could do. Nonetheless, killing flies did not
stop the spread of polio.
Conclusions. While such reactions seem extreme, it is difficult to
overestimate the panic the population felt with a serious epidemic
underway, an epidemic that seemed impervious to modern medi-
cine, and to all contemporary public health measures. During the
1916 epidemic, parents began keeping their children indoors and
away from crowds, a pattern that repeated itself each summer until a
vaccine was discovered.
During the polio epidemic of 1916, federal health officials kept
many records and statistics in their efforts to better understand the
cause and transmission of the disease. It took over two years to assem-
ble and analyze the data and to release their report. The results of the
report did nothing to allay public fear over future epidemics. The re-
port said that the quarantine efforts had been a failure, and the fed-
eral health officials were unable to establish the way polio moved
through communities. There was no indication that the disease was
linked to family socioeconomic status or ethnic background. The re-
port did raise hope that a cure or vaccine could be found if research
efforts were focused on those people who had contracted the disease
but had not become ill.
The polio epidemic of 1916 was only the first of a series of major
polio epidemics that raced through the nation in the subsequent
summers. This epidemic, along with the influenza epidemic of 1918,
undermined public trust in modern medicine, which had held out
such hope for the eradication of disease just a few years earlier. It
would not be until nearly 1960 before children would once again
populate beaches and pools in the heat of summer.
Diane Andrews Henningfeld

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1916: The Great Polio Epidemic

For Further Information:

Daniel, Thomas M., and Frederick C. Robbins, eds. Polio. Rochester,
N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
Gehlbach, Stephen H. American Plagues: Lessons from Our Battles with
Disease. New York: McGraw-Hill Medical, 2005.
Gould, Tony. A Summer Plague: Polio and Its Survivors. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.
Hayes, J. N. The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in
Western History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1998.
Kluger, Jeffrey. Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio.
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004.
Oshinsky, David M. Polio: An American Story. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2005.
Rogers, Naomi. Dirt and Disease: Polio Before FDR. New Brunswick, N.J.:
Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Smith, Jane S. Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine. New York:
William Morrow, 1990.

554
■ 1918: The Great Flu Pandemic
Epidemic
Also known as: The Spanish Flu Pandemic
Date: 1918-1920
Place: The United States, Europe, Africa, India, Japan, Russia,
South America, and the South Seas
Result: 550,000 dead in the United States, more than 30 million
dead worldwide

I nfluenza, an illness caused by a highly contagious, highly

mutable virus, has been a part of human history for many
years. It has been described as the kind of illness a doctor loves: every-
one ill, but no one dying. Also known by a variety of names, including
the grippe, catarrh, and knock-me-down fever, influenza generally
kills only the very young and very old. However, in the spring of 1918,
a new influenza virus began spreading throughout the world. Before
the pandemic burned itself out sometime in late 1919 or early 1920,
it had circled the globe and killed more people in less time than any
other illness in recorded history. Even more frightening, it had tar-
geted young, robust people in the prime of their lives.
Symptoms for most influenza viruses mimic a bad cold. The 1918
strain, however, devastated the human body, causing hemorrhages in
the nose and in the lungs. People who were exposed to the disease
came down with it in under three days and were often dead within
three days of their first symptoms. Contemporary doctors at first
doubted that they were dealing with influenza at all, thinking per-
haps that the world was seeing a new plague of hemorrhagic fever.
Background. Influenza is caused not by one virus, but rather by
several related viruses, which attack the respiratory system and are
highly contagious. In general, influenza symptoms include sore throat,
fever, sniffles, cough, and aches and pains. Sometimes it is difficult to
differentiate influenza from the common cold; however, when large
numbers of people in a given population begin to suffer the symptoms
in a very short period of time, it is nearly always an influenza virus caus-
ing the problems.

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1918: The Great Flu Pandemic

One of the most troubling aspects of the flu virus is its ability to
mutate quickly. Indeed, as it replicates itself, it makes small changes
in its surface genetic material. Eventually, enough changes take place
to render the virus impervious to the human immune system. That is,
although the immune system produces enough antibodies to protect
the person from further attacks by the same virus, once the virus mu-
tates sufficiently, it is no longer the same strain that the person has
become immune to. The immune system simply does not recognize
the virus.
In 1889, the world saw the first influenza pandemic in history.
Across the globe, many people suffered from the same strain of the vi-
rus. The pandemic reflected both the increased amount of travel and
the increased speed of travel that the late nineteenth century techno-
logical revolution provided. As people moved around the globe, they
carried their viruses with them.
Overview. It is likely that the 1918 influenza pandemic began in
the midwestern United States. Many researchers believe that a wide-
spread illness among the pig population of Iowa (a population that
vastly outnumbered the human population of that state) presaged
the human epidemic. Pig farmers fell ill, as did many sheep, bison,
moose, and elk. Although the 1918 influenza is generally known as
the Spanish Flu, all evidence points to an American origin.
Beginning in the United States in the spring of 1918, the pan-
demic spread to Europe and on to Africa, India, Japan, Russia, South
America, and the South Seas, returning to the United States for a sec-
ond, more deadly, round of illnesses. By very conservative estimates,
some 30 million people died worldwide, with as many as 20 million
dying in India alone.
Many have argued that World War I was the cause of the pandemic’s
devastating sweep of the world. While it is not possible to attribute the
influenza epidemic to the war itself, certainly the war created condi-
tions conducive to the spread and the virulence of the disease. Young,
healthy men, a favorite target for this strain of influenza, were housed
in close quarters as part of the armies of the combatants. In addition,
they moved across the globe, pursuing their countries’ political and
military objectives. Consequently, they spread their viruses with them
to each country they visited. Social upheaval and poor economic con-
ditions also contributed to the high death rates in some nations.

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Spring and Summer, 1918. In the spring of 1918, Europe was in

the heat of combat. The United States had recently entered the war,
and American troops were being rushed to the western front to fight
a German offensive. Between March and April, over 200,000 troops
left for Europe. These were the topics that grabbed the headlines in
the spring of 1918; few noticed a flu epidemic that made its way
across the United States. At that time, flu was not a reportable illness.
As a result, although cases of influenza occurred in virtually every
corner of the United States, the lack of a coordinated information-
gathering system meant that health care workers could not assess the
wave of flu for what it was: the first shot across the bow of what would
become the worst pandemic in history. While there are few records
from civilian sources, military and prison records suggest a pattern to
the illness that was striking the country at large. First, many of the
cases of influenza were followed by pneumonia. Second, the virus
seemed to strike and kill not only children and the elderly but also
young, healthy adults. While there was not a high death rate during
March and April, the death rate for the latter group was considerably
higher than one would expect.
Perhaps even more significant was the high rate of infection
among men being prepared to fight the war in Europe. For example,
an epidemic of influenza struck the Fifteenth U.S. Cavalry while en
route to Europe. Consequently, the flu began to appear in and
around the ports of disembarkation of American troops. By May, the
virus was firmly entrenched in Europe. It had appeared in British and
German troops in April. Not surprisingly, the German troops with
the closest proximity to American and British troops were the earliest
victims. It was widespread among French troops by May. From there,
the virus spread to Italy and Spain. At this point, the influenza was
named “Spanish influenza,” not because it had originated in that
country but because Spain did not censor the news from its borders,
as did the countries actively involved in the war. Consequently, news
of the European epidemic was largely limited to the cases reported by
the Spanish, and people began to identify the influenza as a Spanish
disease. Indeed, along with its many other nicknames, this flu was
known as “the Spanish Lady.”
Soon, the disease appeared in the civilian populations of Europe.
Like the epidemic in the United States, the virus did not kill many of

557
1918: The Great Flu Pandemic

its victims at this time; however, a surprising number of the mortali-

ties were among the young and healthy, a group that would be ex-
pected to survive an influenza epidemic. By June, the virus seemed to
be dying out in the United States. However, it had appeared in Rus-
sia, North Africa, India, Japan, China, New Zealand, and the Philip-
pines. In the following month, it appeared in Hawaii, the Panama Ca-
nal Zone, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
The first cases were nearly always reported in port towns, where
ships from nations already infected with the virus made landfall. Fre-
quently, the sailors on the vessels were infected when their ships
landed. From the port towns, the disease fanned rapidly outward
among the indigenous populations. Roughly four months after its
first appearance in the United States, the flu had circled the world.
The disease, although widespread, was fairly mild. Nonetheless, esti-
mates suggest that it had killed more than 10,000 people by the end
of the summer.
August, 1918. By August, the death rates for respiratory illnesses
began to inch upward in the United States, something that could not
have been predicted by actuarial tables. Further, the virus had mu-
tated as it traveled around the globe, sometimes manifesting itself in
a milder form, sometimes in a horrifying, virulent form. During the
third week of August, the flu exploded on three different continents,
at three different ports. Alfred Crosby, one of the foremost historians
of the pandemic, suggests that at this time, the milder form of the ill-
ness was homegrown. For example, English people who contracted
the disease in England generally developed mild cases. On the other
hand, when a British ship landed at Freetown, Sierra Leone, with 200
sailors ill with mild flu, the local workers who entered the ship be-
came violently ill. On August 27, 500 out of 600 dock laborers in Free-
town were unable to come to work due to illness.
The Sierra Leone workers then passed the virus back to the British
on a different ship. This time, the British sailors were violently ill, and
59 died. Meanwhile, the civilian population of Sierra Leone became
sicker and sicker. By the time this wave of influenza retreated, 70 per-
cent of the population had flu and about 3 percent of the entire pop-
ulation had died.
A second port affected by the mixing of the flu virus through hosts
of different nationalities was Brest, France, where most members of

558
 1918: The Great Flu Pandemic

the American expeditionary force disembarked. Here, ill French sol-

diers and ill American soldiers passed the virus back and forth. Be-
tween August 22 and September 15, 370 had died and 1,350 had
been hospitalized.
Boston, Massachusetts, was the first American city to experience
the second wave of the flu virus. In the course of two weeks, the flu
swept through 2,000 sailors before moving out into other military in-
stallations and to the civilian population.
September, 1918. In 1918, the American army was as healthy as
it had ever been. New sanitation methods and improved nutrition
meant the army suffered far fewer illnesses. However, the ranks of the
Army were swelling in 1918, as the United States sent an ever-growing
number of young men to fight in World War I. Consequently, many
Army bases were grossly overcrowded, in spite of relatively good con-
ditions for the men.
In September of 1918, an illness began striking men in Camp
Devens, Massachusetts, and then quickly spread to other camps. At
first, the disease was not even recognized as influenza; it bore little re-
semblance to the flu that had become epidemic during the previous
spring. The illness the Camp Devens soldiers contracted came on
abruptly and devastated its victims. In addition, many of the men con-
tracted pneumonia. Between September 7 and September 23, 12,604
soldiers out of a total population of 45,000 contracted influenza.
Even as the number of new cases of flu went down, the number of
cases of pneumonia went up, and many were dying. The hospital at
the base and the medical staff were completely overwhelmed, as was
the morgue. When doctors performed autopsies on the dead, they
discovered that the lungs of men who had been healthy and robust
just days before were filled with bloody liquid. Some doctors specu-
lated that this was some new form of hemorrhagic fever before they
realized that it was a new, more deadly strain of influenza causing the
illness. In any event, the doctors were horrified by the scope and the
devastation of the disease.
The Epidemic in the United States. The influenza spread rap-
idly throughout the United States. In general, while the U.S. Navy
tended to spread the infection at the ports and at training centers,
such as Great Lakes Naval Training Station, the Army moved across
the interior of the United States by rail, infecting civilian populations

559
1918: The Great Flu Pandemic

A soldier suffering from influenza in a New York Army hospital. (American

Red Cross)

along the way. The overcrowded conditions on troop trains meant

that a highly contagious, airborne infection would spread rapidly to
all those on the train. In addition, the camps the new soldiers were
moving to were overcrowded.
To make the situation even worse, the country was gripped by pa-
triotic fervor. The United States, in need of more money to support

560
 1918: The Great Flu Pandemic

the war effort, kicked off a Liberty Loan war-bond drive on Octo-
ber 4, 1918. Across the country, cities planned and carried out large-
scale parades and systematic door-to-door solicitations in order to
draw attention to the sale of bonds. While the sale of the bonds cer-
tainly raised money for the war effort, it also had the effect of spread-
ing the influenza virus at a rapid rate.
The waves of influenza sweeping the country moved at different
rates in different populations. The week ending September 28
marked the high point of the pandemic in the Navy, with 880 deaths
due to influenza and pneumonia reported. In the Army, the peak oc-
curred about two weeks later. In the week ending October 11, 1918,
6,170 soldiers died of influenza and pneumonia. In general, civilian
populations became part of the pandemic a bit later than did the mil-
itary.
Perhaps the hardest hit American city was Philadelphia. Alfred W.
Crosby offers a horrifying look at the spread of the disease through
that city in his book America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918
(2d ed., 2003). He attributes part of the problem to Philadelphia’s
proximity to Fort Dix and Fort Meade as well as the fact that the city
had its own naval yard. In addition, Philadelphia had a huge Liberty
Loan parade on September 28. Shortly after the parade, the virus rav-
aged the city. Schools, churches, and pool halls—any places that peo-
ple gathered—were closed. By the time this happened, however, it
was already too late, and there is little indication that the closing of
public buildings did anything to prevent or ameliorate the spread of
the flu.
Large cities such as Philadelphia and New York often had short-
ages of essential medical personnel. In 1918, the situation was worse
than usual, however. During the pandemic, many doctors and nurses
had gone to Europe to help care for the sick and the wounded on the
western front. Thus, the medical and hospital facilities of large cities
during the pandemic were totally inadequate to handle the numbers
of sick and dying.
The infrastructure of large cities had trouble keeping up with the
virus in other ways. Although by 1918 most cities had telephone ser-
vices, there were too few operators healthy and on the job for the sys-
tems to work adequately. Garbage collectors stayed home sick, and
garbage piled up in the streets.

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1918: The Great Flu Pandemic

The most grisly problem that large cities faced, and Philadelphia
in particular, was what to do with the ever-increasing dead bodies.
Crosby reports that the Philadelphia morgue was prepared to handle
only 36 bodies. At the height of the epidemic, there were several hun-
dred bodies stacked up in the corridors. Furthermore, there were
not enough hearses to collect the dead bodies, and often corpses
would stay in their homes or on the streets for days at a time. There
were not enough coffins to bury the dead; cities that were not yet af-
fected by the epidemic were warned by their not-so-fortunate sister
cities to begin making coffins immediately in preparation for the in-
evitable arrival of the infection. Finally, there were not enough grave
diggers to make enough graves for all the dead.
Between September 29 and November 2, 12,162 Philadelphians
died of influenza and pneumonia. Although the very young and the
very old died in the epidemic, the largest group affected consisted of
people between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four, just as they
had been in the earlier, milder version of the influenza epidemic.
The Epidemic Spreads. In September of 1918, a group of Ameri-
can soldiers were put on British troopships and sent, along with a
troopship of Italians, to Archangel, Russia, an area under British con-
trol in the midst of the Russian Revolution. The soldiers brought in-
fluenza with them. Although there are no records of how many peo-
ple in Russia ultimately died during the pandemic, it is estimated that
about 10,000 in Archangel alone contracted the flu during October.
As many as 30 people per day died during that month.
The effects of the pandemic were felt worldwide. As terrible as in-
fluenza was in the United States and Europe, it was many times worse
in other parts of the world. In the United States, about 5 people per
1,000 died of the flu. Outside the United States, these figures were
much higher. K. David Patterson and Gerald F. Pyle, in an important
study, “The Geography and Mortality of the 1918 Influenza Epi-
demic” (1991), provide careful estimates of deaths worldwide. In
Latin America, about 10 people per 1,000 died, while in Africa 15 per
1,000 died. In Asia, researchers estimate that as few as 20 and as many
as 35 people per 1,000 died.
It appears that India was the most severely hit country in the
world. In that country alone, researchers estimate that between 17
and 20 million people died. This works out to about 60 deaths per

562
 1918: The Great Flu Pandemic

1,000 people. In addition, although young men were the group most
hard hit by the disease in the United States and in Europe, in India a
disproportionate number of deaths occurred among women. Some
scholars attribute the death toll among women to the stresses put on
women by pregnancy. Others argue that the death toll was due to
caregiving arrangements in India. Women almost exclusively pro-
vided care for the ill and dying. This rendered them most susceptible
to becoming infected with the illness. In addition, when they fell ill in
large numbers, there were few remaining women to provide care for
them.
Colonial Africa was also hit extremely hard. The war in Europe
certainly contributed to high death tolls among the indigenous peo-
ple, for two reasons. In the first place, the African nations under Eu-
ropean control had large numbers of European troops coming and
going through their ports. European troops were stationed in Africa
to protect these properties from other European troops. Thus, the
Europeans brought their virus to Africa and exposed the civilian pop-
ulations. Second, the demands of the war meant that there were few
doctors or nurses available to help care for the colonial population.
In addition, medical supplies, always in short supply in these areas,
were diverted to the European front for use on soldiers there. As a
result, the death figures were extraordinarily high. In Ghana, for ex-
ample, there were about 100,000 deaths from influenza in just six
months.
Research on the pandemic outside of Europe and the United
States reveals that the poor tended to die in greater frequency than
did the wealthy. The poor tend to have inferior nutrition, less accessi-
bility to safe water supplies, and less adequate housing than do
wealthier people, and these conditions render them susceptible to
the bacterial infections that followed swiftly behind the viral influ-
enza. Furthermore, there is some indication that deaths from other
sources, such as kidney disease, heart disease, and diabetes, were
much higher during the influenza epidemic. This may be partially
due to the lack of health care in general or to the stress on the im-
mune system that even a mild case of the flu caused.
Not only the heavily populated areas of the world and the large cit-
ies were affected, however. Often, small isolated areas fared worse
than did larger countries. While the total death counts from these ar-

563
1918: The Great Flu Pandemic

eas are not as high in total numbers as those from Philadelphia, for
example, the death count per capita is often extraordinarily high.
The South Pacific islands, often considered tropical paradises, be-
came islands of death. In Tahiti, 10 percent of the entire population
died in just three weeks. The influenza was brought to Tahiti by ship
and immediately ravaged the civilian population. On Western Sa-
moa, another island nation, 7,500 people died. This figure repre-
sents nearly 20 percent of Western Samoa’s total population of
38,000.
In addition to these extraordinary figures, there were long-term,
serious consequences for the nations involved. In most places, birth
rates dropped dramatically. In India, the high death rate among
women of childbearing age led to a much smaller number of women
becoming pregnant.
Conclusions. The second and most deadly wave of influenza
burned itself out by the spring of 1919. Although influenza made one
more global sweep in 1920, it was less catastrophic, in all probability
because so much of the surviving population was already immune.
Scientists estimate that from 1918 through 1919, about 25 percent of
the population of the United States suffered from influenza. The fig-
ures could be a good deal higher, however, for several reasons. First,
flu was not a reportable illness in many places until the epidemic was
well underway. Second, the shortage of doctors and nurses during
the peak of the epidemic made it difficult for the remaining medical
personnel to spend time compiling and reporting statistics. Finally,
there were, in all probability, many people who had mild cases of the
flu who never saw a doctor or reported their illness.
Another startling statistic to come out of the research is the num-
ber of deaths in the military due to influenza. More soldiers and sail-
ors died of influenza than died of wounds during World War I.
Crosby reminds readers that the total number of Americans killed by
influenza in ten months, about 550,000, is higher than the total num-
bers of Americans killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean
War, and the Vietnam War combined.
If it is difficult to ascertain how many Americans died in sum, it is
nearly impossible to arrive at a worldwide figure. Some estimate that
30 million died; others suggest that the figures are far higher, at least
40 million or more. Even more elusive is the answer to the question of

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why this influenza virus turned so deadly. Researchers continue to in-

vestigate the causes and effects of the influenza pandemic. In the
1990’s, frozen tissue from the lungs of influenza victims was scruti-
nized with technology unavailable in the early years of the century.
Although preliminary reports suggested that the virus is a swine in-
fluenza, opinion would remain divided on the connection between
the flu virus and the linked bacterial infections.
Another important question is why the virus attacked young peo-
ple. Some researchers hypothesize that the immune system in young
adults responded too strongly to the virus and caused the buildup of
fluid in the lungs. Although there are no firm answers to all the ques-
tions surrounding the pandemic of 1918, there is little question that
some strain of influenza virus will return every several years. Whether
or not a pandemic of the scale of 1918 will ever happen again remains
to be seen.
Diane Andrews Henningfeld

For Further Information:

Barry, John M. The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague
in History. New York: Viking, 2004.
Bollet, Alfred J. “The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919.” In
Plagues and Poxes: The Impact of Human History on Epidemic Disease.
New York: Demos, 2004.
Crosby, Alfred W. America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918.
2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Hays, J. N. The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in
Western History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1998.
Iezzoni, Lynette. Influenza 1918: The Worst Epidemic in American His-
tory. New York: TV Books, 1999.
Kolata, Gina. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and
the Search for the Virus That Caused It. New York: Simon & Schuster,
2001.
Phillips, Howard, and David Killingray, eds. The Spanish Influenza Pan-
demic of 1918-19: New Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2003.

565
■ 1923: The Great Kwanto
Earthquake
Earthquake

Also known as: The Great Kanto Earthquake, the Great Tokyo Fire
Date: September 1, 1923
Place: Kwanto area (including Tokyo and Yokohama), Japan, with
the epicenter in Sagami Bay
Magnitude: 8.3
Result: 143,000 dead

O ver the past several centuries a major earthquake has

struck the Kwanto District in Japan approximately ev-
ery seventy years. Early in the twentieth century, seismologist Akitune
Imamura, after lengthy studies, discovered that Tokyo was sitting on a
seismic gap that would be corrected only when an earthquake of sub-
stantial size occurred. He predicted that there would soon be a very
strong earthquake in the Kwanto District of Japan, an area that in-
cludes Tokyo and the seaport of Yokohama, 17 miles to the south.
Imamura further predicted that the quake and consuming fires that
would follow would result in over 100,000 casualties. This prediction
was well publicized but was dismissed as irresponsible. It was, how-
ever, shortly fulfilled.
At one minute before noon on Saturday, September 1, 1923, the
quake struck. Its epicenter was in Sagami Bay, 50 miles southeast of
Tokyo near the island of Oshima. The initial shaking lasted for about
five minutes and was followed shortly thereafter by a tsunami, or a
tidal wave, that washed people and houses out to sea. In some of the
smaller inlets the tsunami reached heights of up to 40 feet, resulting
in many drownings. The tsunami had one advantage, however, in that
it extinguished many fires that otherwise would have been uncontrol-
lable.
Immense holes appeared in the streets, and buildings were tilted
at strange angles. Tokyo’s largest building, the twelve-story Asakusa
Tower, split in two and collapsed. The earthquake knocked out the

566
 1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake

Kuril
Islands

CHINA RUSSIA
HOKKAIDO
Sapporo

NORTH
KOREA
Sea of
Japan North
Pacific
J A PA N Ocean
SOUTH HONSHU
KOREA Kyoto Tokyo
Nagoya Yokohama
Kobe
Hiroshima Sagami Bay
Osaka
SHIKOKU
Nagasaki
KYUSHU
East
China
Sea
s

d
an
Isl
u
ky
u
Ry

Okinawa

seismograph at the central weather bureau in Tokyo. The seismo-

graph at Tokyo Imperial University was still functioning, however; it
recorded a series of 1,700 earthquakes and aftershocks that struck
the Tokyo area over the following three days.
Fires followed the initial quake and in general did more damage
than the quake itself. They were caused primarily by overturned char-
coal braziers or hibachis that were being used to cook the noonday
meal. Since the city was built largely of wood, the fires burned out of
control. Gas mains ruptured by the quake and leaking oil from

567
1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake

above-ground storage tanks added to the conflagration. A condition

called a fire tornado was soon created, with a wind of such velocity
that it would lift a person off the ground. These crisscrossed the city
and either burned people alive or suffocated them with dense fumes
of carbon monoxide. More than 30,000 people were reportedly
killed at a single location, a park on the east bank of the Sumida
River, when such a fire storm descended on refugees that had gath-
ered there. Fire fighting was greatly hampered because much of the
equipment was destroyed or could not be moved because of the rub-
ble that blocked the roads. Water was not available to fight the fire be-
cause the water mains were ruptured by the quake. Safe havens were
hard to find; bridges and narrow streets became deathtraps as fleeing
people could neither go forward nor turn back. Hundreds of people
who had attempted to cross one of the large bridges that spanned the
Sumida River found themselves trapped and incinerated when walls
of fire swept the bridge from both banks.
A party of 200 children on an excursion train trip were buried
alive by a falling embankment. Hundreds of people tried to escape in
small boats, only to be drowned by waves caused by aftershocks or to

This view of the Kwanto area of Japan shows almost complete destruction following
the 1923 earthquake. (Library of Congress)

568
 1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake

be burned to death in burning oil slicks. The liner Empress of Australia

was able to save several thousand people by loading them aboard and
heading out to sea to ride out the disaster.
The quake devastated a region of 45,000 square miles. In Yoko-
hama, Japan’s chief port, eyewitness accounts tell of the earthquake
announcing itself as an underground roar, followed almost immedi-
ately by a frantic shaking. Communications were completely de-
stroyed. The city authorities finally succeeded in getting messengers
through to the capital begging for help, to little avail since that capi-
tal suffered the same plight. A great cultural loss was sustained with
the destruction of the Imperial University Library, which contained
one of the world’s oldest and greatest collection of rare books, origi-
nal documents, and priceless art objects.
The typical Japanese house of wood and paper construction was
well suited by reason of its flexibility to withstand shaking, but the
heavy tile roofs often collapsed, trapping the occupants. For the most
part, steel-framed and reinforced concrete buildings remained stand-
ing with only moderate damage, but altogether 60 percent of the
buildings in Tokyo and 80 percent in Yokohama were flattened by the
quake or destroyed by the fires that followed.
The earthquake tested the design of the newly opened 250-room
Imperial Hotel, a project of the famous American architect Frank
Lloyd Wright. The hotel, financed by the royal family, was meant to
be a showpiece. When the earthquake struck, many of Tokyo’s nota-
bles were attending a party to mark its opening. Although he was not
a seismic engineer, Wright incorporated into his design features that
he thought would safeguard his structure from earthquake damage.
He ruled out a deep foundation in the alluvial mud upon which the
structure was built; he intended that the structure should float like a
ship. He was mistaken in this theory, as experience gained in the
quake demonstrated that soft earth amplifies the seismic shocks. The
solidly constructed buildings in Tokyo with deep foundations with-
stood the quake better than the central section of the hotel, which
sank 2 feet into the ground.
The hotel did survive, however, and Wright’s other safeguards
proved to be quite effective. They included reinforced and tapered
walls and separation joints that isolated parts of the structure. The
use of a light copper roof prevented collapse, which had entombed

569
1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake

so many Japanese in their homes with heavy tile roofs. Rather than
embedding utility pipes and conduit in concrete, as was the practice,
Wright had them laid in a trench or hung in the open so that they
would flex and rattle but not break in any seismic occurrence. Fortu-
itously, the hotel was designed with a large reflecting pool in front.
This served as a firefighting reservoir that protected the hotel from
the fires that raged following the quake when water was unavailable
from the municipal system. The hotel stood until 1968, when the
land upon which it rested became too valuable to accommodate it.
Aftermath. Aftershocks continued to shake the region following
the quake. A soaking rain followed on the third day, which helped ex-
tinguish the fires that were still raging. Food shortages were rampant,
and riots broke out, but there was no looting and little profiteering.
Members of the Korean community were attacked as rumors accused
them of setting fires and poisoning the wells. Several hundred were
killed by vigilantes before the authorities could reestablish order.
A week after the quake 25,000 people were still living in the open.
The prince regent, who later became Emperor Hirohito, tried by his
presence to calm the terrorized citizens. He led relief operations and
ordered the gates of the Imperial Palace opened to refugees. Many of
the refugees returned to their homes looking for loved ones. Mes-
sages seeking missing family members were posted on public build-
ings, and collection centers for stray children were set up around the
city. One of the biggest problems was disposing of dead bodies, many
of which lay undiscovered in the rubble. Usually when located they
would be piled up and cremated. The Sumida River was full of
bloated and discolored corpses.
Within forty-eight hours of the earthquake, ships of the U.S. Pa-
cific fleet arrived in Japanese ports, laden with water, food, and medi-
cine. The American Red Cross set a goal of $5 million for relief
supplies. Japan’s low foreign debt and good credit rating made funds
for rebuilding readily available. The most immediate effect on the
economy was unemployment. An estimated 9,000 factories were de-
stroyed. Massive reconstruction operations somewhat alleviated the
unemployment problem, but the drain on the Japanese economy was
ruinous. Foreign exchange dwindled, leading to a tight monetary
policy that stifled growth.
A master plan for reconstruction was formulated under the lead-

570
 1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake

ership of the new home minister, Shimpei Goto. Narrow streets were
to be replaced with broad avenues that would provide better access in
and out of the area in a future quake and also act as firebreaks. Flam-
mable wooden structures were to be banned in favor of fireproof
structures limited in height. Before these plans could be imple-
mented, however, those rendered homeless by the quake went to
work rebuilding their houses in the old manner, resulting in the flam-
mable and congested neighborhoods reappearing. Despite the
threat of future earthquake damage, high-rise buildings, refineries,
and chemical plants have been built on soft reclaimed land beside
Tokyo Bay. Even a nuclear power station has been constructed at
Shizuoka, about 100 miles from the center of Tokyo.
Plans and Forecasts. Seismologists were of one mind that
there would be a major earthquake in Tokyo or adjoining areas in the
early twenty-first century. They cited as the most likely area the
heavily industrialized Tokai region down the coast from Tokyo, which
had not experienced a great quake since December 24, 1854. Studies
indicate that tectonic forces have accumulated, and strains of these
forces have deformed the adjacent land, indicating that the breaking
points are inevitable. Following a historical pattern, this may be trig-
gered by a sizable quake near Odawara, which is located a few miles
south of Yokohama. The Japanese government designated this area
for intensive civil defense measures. When a quake strikes, Tokyo will
receive considerable damage but the industrial heartland in the
Shizuoka prefecture will be devastated both by the quake and the tsu-
nami that will follow.
Another place of concern is directly under Tokyo itself, where a
choka-gata (“directly below”) quake is likely to strike. A quake of this
type struck in 1988, but because it was 55 miles under the surface,
there was little damage.
Japan is the world leader in planning for earthquake survival. Di-
saster teams are trained and at the ready; stores of food, water, and
blankets are on hand. Clearly marked evacuation routes have been
laid out and reinforced against quake damage. An extensive public
education campaign has instructed the population as to what to do in
the event of a quake. Earthquake drills in schools and places of em-
ployment are a usual practice. Lines of apartment complexes are
strung out to act as firebreaks in the event of a major conflagration

571
1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake

among the crowded wooden houses behind them. The Tokyo fire de-
partment has detailed emergency plans to deal with a quake. Because
a major quake will rupture water mains, it is likely that water will not
be available from hydrants to fight the inevitable fires, so earthquake-
resistant fire cisterns and underground water storage areas have
been constructed. Measures have been taken to deliver water from
the sea and streams for firefighting use.
On a national level, if unusual seismic activity is detected, six mem-
bers of the Earthquake Assessment Committee are contacted imme-
diately. They then analyze data and decide whether or not to advise
the prime minister to warn the nation that a major earthquake is im-
minent.
Gilbert T. Cave

For Further Information:

Davison, Charles. The Japanese Earthquake of 1923. London: T. Murby,
1931.
Hadfield, Peter. Sixty Seconds That Will Change the World: The Coming
Tokyo Earthquake. Boston: Charles E. Tuttle, 1991.
Hammer, Joshua. Yokohama Burning: The Deadly 1923 Earthquake and
Fire That Helped Forge the Path to World War II. New York: Free Press,
2006.
Poole, Otis Manchester. The Death of Old Yokohama in the Great Japanese
Earthquake of September 1, 1923. London: Allen & Unwin, 1968.

572
■ 1925: The Great Tri-State
Tornado
Tornado

Date: March 18, 1925

Place: Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana
Classification: F5
Result: 689 dead, more than 2,000 injured, $16-18 million in damage

T he storm that spawned the Great Tri-State and several

other tornadoes on March 18, 1925, was from a north-
east Pacific storm. The depression was over western Montana on
March 16. On the morning of the 18th, it was over northwestern Ar-
kansas and was moving to the northeast at about 40 miles per hour. It
was over southern Illinois during the early afternoon and southeast-
ern Indiana by 8 p.m.
The U.S. Weather Bureau described 7 distinct tornadoes in Ala-
bama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, and Illinois generated
by the storm. Thomas P. Grazulis, in Significant Tornadoes: 1680-1991
(1993), describes the same 7 but adds an earlier one in Kansas and a
later one in Kentucky on that date. All but the Kansas tornado were
killers. Fortunately, the death toll was 4 or less for all but 2 of these tor-
nadoes. One tornado started in Summer County, Tennessee, and trav-
eled 60 miles to Metcalfe County, Kentucky, killing 39 and injuring 95.
It was of F4 force and had a path width of about 400 yards. The Great
Tri-State Tornado caused 689 deaths—741 deaths for the total storm,
with the death toll for the other 6 tornadoes at 13, with 164 injuries.
The Tri-State Tornado was the most deadly and the most destruc-
tive. The Weather Bureau noted that it was different in another way.
Most tornadoes occur in the southeast part of a storm system along a
squall line or cold front. Seldom is a tornado formed in the center of
a storm center, as the Great Tri-State Tornado was. It was especially
devastating as it traveled on the ground along a ridge of mineral re-
sources and parallel to a railroad. Thus, several mining and railroad
towns were in its path.

573
1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado

Missouri. The tornado first touched down north of Ellington in

southeast Missouri about 1 p.m. It traveled northeast to damage
Leadanna, a mining town. It continued northeast to engulf Annapo-
lis, 2 miles north of Leadanna. Annapolis was devastated, with 90 per-
cent of the town destroyed and 2 dead. All but 7 of the 400 structures
in Leadanna and Annapolis were badly damaged; the damage total
was about $500,000 in the two towns. Fortunately, one schoolhouse
that held 300 students was undamaged. The damage in and near An-
napolis was 3 miles wide. Survivors remember that the sky became
dark, and something like a smoky fog swept through the town. A fun-
nel cloud was not seen.
The next damage occurred in and near the small towns of Lixville,
Biehle, Frohna, and Altenburg. At least 32 children were injured in
two county schools in Bollinger county. Deaths occurred in Biehle
and Altenburg, 30 miles north of Cape Girardeau. In Biehle, there
were 4 dead and 11 injured out of 100 villagers. For 3 miles near
Biehle there were evidence and sightings of two parallel funnel
clouds, which reunited later before passing into Illinois. A child was
killed in a wooden schoolhouse 5 miles north of Altenburg. The toll
in Missouri was 11 to 14 dead, 63 injured, and $564,000 in damage
(in 1925 dollars).
Illinois. The damage in Illinois was much worse. In Gorham, it
had been dark and gloomy; the drizzle increased to pouring down a
flood, then the air was filled with flying debris. The town of 500 was
virtually wiped out. There were 34 deaths, and over half of the town’s
population was killed or injured. Seven of the deaths occurred at the
school. Communications were cut off such that although the tornado
struck at 2:35 p.m. no aid came until 8 p.m. There was not even a
healthy doctor present until aid arrived. The doctor in town was giv-
ing an injection when the tornado hit; the patient was killed, and the
doctor received a broken collarbone.
Murphysboro, population 11,000, was next to be decimated. The
234 deaths were the largest number in one city in U.S. history at the
time. About 800 were injured and $10 million was incurred in dam-
age. Three schools, built of brick or stone with little reinforcement,
were caved in, crushing at least 25 people. The tornado affected 152
city blocks—72 percent of the residential section and 60 percent of
the city. About 1,200 homes were damaged or destroyed, leaving

574
 1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado

A school in Murphysboro, Illinois, where 17 children where killed by the tornado. (Na-
tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

8,000 people, or two-thirds of the city, homeless. Fires ravaged the de-
stroyed area and 70 more blocks in a residential district, demolishing
homes still standing and burning victims caught under collapsed
buildings. Fires could be seen as far as 60 miles away. The tornado
had destroyed the water plant, as well as many of the hydrants. A
“rigged” system restored water pressure to fight the fires. Other casu-
alties of the tornado were the 2,000 jobs lost due to the destruction of
the Mobile and Ohio Railroad shop, the Brown’s Shoe Company, the
Isco-Bautz silica plant, and other industries. Businesses sustained al-
most $1 million in damage but had only $122,000 in insurance.
The next town hit was DeSoto, a hamlet of 600, where 33 were
killed at one school, setting the record for school deaths in a tor-
nado. A total of 69 were killed in or around DeSoto. The town itself
was obliterated. Only a dozen houses were left standing, none left un-
damaged. An outbreak of fires caused more damage to the ravaged
town.
The hamlet of Bush was next in the storm’s path; there, the tor-
nado left 7 dead and 37 injured. It also left only one building stand-

575
1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado

ing in Hurst, a town of 200. The rural area between DeSoto and West
Frankfort suffered 24 deaths. Even the Illinois Central railroad
bridge on the Zeigler branch was shifted by 6 feet. One of the rescue
jobs after the tornado was to clean the debris off of farmland so that
planting could be done within the next few weeks.
Between West Frankfort and Orient was a small school attended by
Mavis Flota. It was a warm day, but late in the afternoon it became so
dark that the students could not read by lamplight. The clouds be-
came streaked with lightning, and thunder boomed. A roar like the
sound of a train told the teacher that there was a tornado coming. It
tore off one room, spilling Flota onto the ground and into the golf-
ball-size hail. When she stood, she was picked up by the storm and
carried 2 miles, landing scratched and bruised but otherwise unhurt,
except for the soles of her new shoes being pulled off.
The tornado cut across the northwest part of West Frankfort, the
largest town in its path, with 20,000 people. This part of town was
composed mostly of small residences, many of them miners’ homes.
Sixty-four blocks of houses were damaged in the 0.25-mile-wide path,
and 13 blocks were wiped out. The 925 damaged or destroyed houses
left 3,000 homeless and $500,000 in damage. There were 127 dead,
450 injured, and 117 hospitalized, with a total $800,000 in damage.
Almost 800 miners were 500 feet below the earth’s surface when they
lost electrical power. They had to climb out a narrow escarpment and
then face the damage and injuries caused by the tornado; many of
the dead and wounded were women and children.
A small community, called Eighteen because it was near Number
18 Mine, was devastated. Nearby Parrish contained about 40 build-
ings, but only 3 were left after the tornado. Although the population
was only 300, there were 46 deaths and 100 injured. There, the tor-
nado was preceded by thunder and a violent succession of lightning
flashes, and the funnel cloud was seen by Parrish inhabitants. It
struck Parrish at 3:15 p.m. Hailstones the size of apples came after the
tornado. Parrish never rebuilt, existing only as a few older homes.
In the forty-five minutes required for the tornado to travel
through Gorham to Parrish, 541 people were killed. Leaving Parrish,
the path of the tornado went through rural areas in Hamilton and
White Counties before reaching Carmi, near the Indiana border.
The destruction and death in the rural areas was unprecedented, as

576
 1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado

many farms were completely destroyed and 65 people were killed. At

least three different White County schools claimed deaths from the
tornado. It was estimated that 1,500 farms needed debris cleaned off
of the land so that they could be planted.
Indiana. The town of Carmi had 2 deaths and the border town of
Crossville reported 1 before the tornado crossed into Indiana. In Illi-
nois the tornado caused 606 deaths, about 1,600 injuries, and $13
million in damage.
Just beyond the Wabash River was the small town of Griffin. The
tornado did not leave a habitable structure out of the 150 homes in
Griffin. Two children on a bus were killed; the total death toll there
was 34, with 200 injured out of 375 inhabitants. Identifying victims
was difficult, as mud was embedded into their skin. Fires occurred in
the ruins and added to the destruction and agony.
Leaving Griffin, the path of the tornado, 0.75-mile wide, veered
north by 9 degrees. The new path would include Owensville and
Princeton. At Owensville, 17 deaths occurred, including three gener-
ations of one family. In this rural area, 85 farms were totally de-
stroyed.
Princeton, the county seat of Gibson County, was caught, like most
other towns, unaware. A blackness moved over the south side of
town, killing 45 and injuring 152 and causing $1.8 million in damage.
One-fourth to one-half of the town was located in the devastated area,
so after 200 homes were destroyed and 100 were damaged, 1,500 peo-
ple were left homeless. The two largest industries, the $2 million
Southern Railway shops and the H. T. Heinz factory, were demol-
ished, as was the village of workers’ homes nearby. Fortunately, only 3
people lost their lives at the industries (2 at Southern, 1 at Heinz).
Luckily, the Princeton school had let out about twenty minutes ear-
lier, and the children were out of the tornado’s path; the school was
caved in. An estimated 100,000 people visited Princeton to view the
damage.
The deadly tornado finally lost its steam and lifted near Peters-
burg, 16 miles northeast of Princeton, about 4:30 p.m. East of Prince-
ton, irregular-shaped chunks of ice as large as goose eggs were re-
ported to fall. In Indiana, the tornado had appeared as three funnels
for part of its path. Many people described it as a turbulent, boiling
mass filled with debris. It often looked like a big black mass, similar to

577
1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado

a thunderstorm. The tornado had killed 30 people in Indiana, in-

jured 354, and caused $2,775,000 in damage.
Conclusions. The Great Tri-State Tornado is considered the sin-
gle deadliest tornado in U.S. history to date. It maintained contact
with the ground for the longest distance (219 miles) and for the lon-
gest time (3.5 hours). It was moving quickly for a tornado, at an aver-
age of 62 miles per hour—73 miles per hour in Indiana. The intensity
did not vary as much with this tornado as with others; it simply de-
stroyed everything in its way. Its path was wide, varying from 0.25 mile
to 1 mile, with much of the path 0.75 mile in width. It traveled an ex-
act heading of 69 degrees northeast for 183 of the 219 miles.
The killer moved so quickly that many were not able to seek shel-
ter. Country residents indicated that only about five minutes passed
after noticing the cloud before the tornado struck. However, shelter
in the form of basements, which are usually places of safety, were
deathtraps to several people. In some cases, the tornado caved the
house into the basement, and the wood or coal stove then set the ru-
ins on fire, burning the trapped survivors. Nine people were found
around a stove in a Griffin restaurant.
C. Alton Hassell

For Further Information:

Akin, Wallace E. The Forgotten Storm: The Great Tri-State Tornado of 1925.
Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2004.
Cornell, James. The Great International Disaster Book. 3d ed. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982.
Felknor, Peter E. The Tri-State Tornado. Ames: Iowa State University
Press, 1992.
Flora, Snowden D. Tornadoes of the United States. Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1953.
Grazulis, Thomas P. Significant Tornadoes: 1680-1991. St. Johnsburg,
Vt.: Environmental Films, 1993.
_______. The Tornado: Nature’s Ultimate Windstorm. Norman: Univer-
sity of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

578
■ 1926: The Great Miami Hurricane
Hurricane
Date: September 15-22, 1926
Place: Miami, Florida
Classification: Category 4
Result: 243 dead, about 2,000 injured

W ith winds approaching 138 miles per hour and a bar-

ometric pressure measured at a low 27.61 inches of
mercury, the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 is considered one of the
most powerful storms to strike the U.S. mainland in the twentieth
century. The hurricane began as a Cape Verde-type storm and ini-
tially was detected on September 11, 1926, as it moved nearly 1,000
miles east of the Leeward Islands. On September 16 it was located
near the Turks Islands, where its winds were recorded at approxi-
mately 150 miles per hour. Passing north of Puerto Rico, the storm
reached the Bahamas on the following day. Because no sophisticated
tracking system was in existence at the time, residents of the Miami
area were mostly unaware of the approaching storm. On the morn-
ing of September 17, the Miami Herald carried a small story on its
front page noting the existence of the storm but indicating it was not
expected to strike Florida. The U.S. Weather Bureau received its last
report on the storm’s location from Nassau in the Bahamas in the
early afternoon of September 17, which prompted storm warnings to
be issued for the Florida coast from Key West to Jupiter Inlet, 80 miles
north of Miami. That same afternoon the Miami Daily News published
a front-page story alerting residents to a “tropical storm.” The paper
also reported a warning issued by the Weather Bureau’s chief meteo-
rologist that late evening “destructive winds” could be expected in
the area.
It was not until the late hours of September 17, as winds began to
build, that citizens of Miami realized a major storm was about to pum-
mel them. Until that point many of the area’s residents, most of
whom had recently settled in the region, either were unfamiliar with
hurricanes or simply chose to ignore them. For the next eight hours,

579
1926: The Great Miami Hurricane

Albany

Alabama
Georgia

Tallahassee Jacksonville
Pensacola
A t l a n t i c

O c e a n
Gainesville

Daytona Beach
FLORIDA

Orlando

Clearwater
Largo Tampa
St. Petersburg

G u l f o f Fort Pierce
Lake
M e x i c o Okeechobee

West
Moore Haven Palm
Beach

Pompano
Fort Lauderdale Beach
Hialeah Hollywood
Tamiami Miami Beach
Kendall Miami
Homestead

Key West

hurricane-force winds battered the Miami region. The average wind

velocity during this period was approximately 76 miles per hour.
Never, in recorded weather history, had a hurricane sustained its
winds for such a long duration. The persistent storm dumped nearly
10 inches of rain on the city and generated a storm surge that ex-
ceeded 13 feet.
The deluge inundated Miami Beach and swept ocean waters
across Biscayne Bay into the city of Miami. All types of watercraft,
from schooners to dredges, were blown onto shores, sunk, or cap-
sized, including a steam yacht that was once owned by William II of
Germany. Thousands of homes and office buildings were destroyed
or damaged. A major contributing factor to the destruction was the
fact that many of the buildings were constructed at substandard lev-

580
 1926: The Great Miami Hurricane

els as a consequence of nonexistent or inferior code restrictions in ef-

fect during the real estate boom of the previous decade.
What was once considered the “playground” of America was left a
scene of devastation as pleasure resorts were converted into tempo-
rary hospitals and morgues and office buildings into refugee centers.
Water and debris were everywhere, transforming the appearance of
an entire stretch of the Miami waterfront into something macabre.
With roads washed out and causeways underwater, relief efforts were
slowed considerably. Moreover, the persistent winds and absence of
landing sites discouraged airplane pilots from attempting to enter
the damaged areas. Instead, at least a dozen trains loaded with physi-
cians, nurses, food, water, and other supplies descended on the city
to help with the relief efforts.
Following its strike on the city, the storm moved on a northwest-
erly course toward the Lake Okeechobee area, where it proceeded to
unleash its fury on the small community of Moore Haven, located on
the southwestern side of the lake. In 1922 and 1924 heavy rains had
raised the water level of the lake, which precipitated substantial flood-
ing in the surrounding farm districts, though no lives were lost. As a
result, the town’s citizens decided to construct a muck dike to protect

Cars drive by boats washed ashore by the Great Miami Hurricane. (Courtesy, The
Florida Memory Project)

581
1926: The Great Miami Hurricane

the region from future flooding, but local and state officials greatly
underestimated the impact a major hurricane would have on the
lake.
In due course the relentless winds drove the waters over and
through the dike, inundating the area to a depth of up to 15 feet and
taking a heavy toll in death and property. A lone watchman assigned
to patrol the dike in order to give warning in the event of potential
danger was on patrol when the dike succumbed to the rising water.
Washed away by the initial overflow, he managed to escape and im-
mediately attempted to alert others. However, his warnings either
went unheard or were disregarded in the midst of the chaos. The
rush of water drowned scores of residents and left the town without
food, water, or power. Nearly every structure in Moore Haven was de-
stroyed, except for a row of brick buildings in the town’s central com-
mercial district. Several homes were swept almost 2 miles from their
foundations. At one point, 34 bodies were lying in the town’s old post
office building, which served as an emergency morgue. Rescuers at-
tempting to reach the stricken city were met by an exodus of people
fleeing the area in small boats to points where they could continue on
foot to safe ground. Entire families, forced to carry all of their re-
maining possessions in bundles, were seen straggling along open
roads.
In the aftermath many residents of the district launched an orga-
nized protest against government officials, whom they blamed for
keeping the lake’s water above reasonable levels prior to the storm.
They pointed out that if the state had permitted the locks to be
opened during the storm season and allowed the water level to re-
main near the specified minimum depth of 15 feet instead of 19 feet
above sea level, the damage caused by the floodwaters would have
been considerably less.
After striking Moore Haven, the storm continued on its north-
westerly course, eventually dumping large amounts of rain on Pensa-
cola before moving further inland, over interior Alabama and sec-
tions of Mississippi and Louisiana, before dissipating. All together,
the storm left 243 people dead and nearly 2,000 injured in its wake.
William Hoffman

582
 1926: The Great Miami Hurricane

For Further Information:

Barnes, Jay. Florida’s Hurricane History. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1998.
“Cities Built on Sand.” Weatherwise, August/September, 1996, 20-27.
Kleinberg, Howard, and L. F. Reardon. The Florida Hurricane and Di-
saster, 1926. Miami: Centennial Press, 1992.
Williams, John M., and Iver W. Duedall. Florida Hurricanes and Tropi-
cal Storms, 1871-2001. Gainesville: University of Florida Press,
2002.

583
■ 1928: St. Francis Dam collapse
Flood
Date: March 12, 1928
Place: Near Saugus, California
Result: About 450 dead; 1,200 homes and other buildings severely
damaged or destroyed; almost 8,000 acres of farmland stripped of
livestock, orchards, crops, and topsoil; $15 million in damage

T he St. Francis Dam, named after the San Francisquito

(little Saint Francis) Canyon and Creek where it was lo-
cated, was designed and built by William Mulholland, chief engineer
for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) from
1886 to 1928. Its purpose was to create a 600-acre reservoir as a re-
serve water supply for the city of Los Angeles. Mulholland had de-
voted much of his life to making sure his beloved city had enough
water to grow and prosper. Los Angeles had never had a reliable
water supply until 1913, when Mulholland achieved world renown
with the completion of the Owens Valley Aqueduct, at that time the
longest aqueduct in existence. Its series of tunnels and concrete-
lined channels transported 258 million gallons of water every day
from the green Owens Valley south to the thirsty city of Los Angeles.
A boon to the growth of Los Angeles, the aqueduct brought death
to the Owens Valley as the drought-plagued city sucked the Owens
River dry. Owens Valley residents fought to prevent Los Angeles from
taking all of their water. When peaceful means failed, a few desperate
ranchers resorted to violence. The first dynamiting of the aqueduct
occurred in May, 1924, and it continued sporadically throughout the
remainder of the decade. Understandably, Mulholland began to
worry about the fate of Los Angeles if the water supply were cut off
for long periods of time. Because the aqueduct crossed the San
Andreas fault, it was not just vulnerable to sabotage—potential earth-
quakes were another hazard. Mulholland’s solution was the St. Fran-
cis Dam, with a reservoir big enough to hold an emergency supply of
water capable of meeting the city’s needs for at least one year. In fact,
to ensure an adequate supply in drought years, the original 175-foot

584
 1928: St. Francis Dam collapse

height of the dam was increased by 11 feet to allow for additional

water storage eleven months after construction had begun. The base
of the dam was not widened, however, a risky oversight in a gravity
dam like St. Francis, which resists the enormous pressure of its pent-
up waters through sheer weight alone.
The dam was completed in May, 1926. The St. Francis Dam was a
massive curved concrete wedge about 200 feet high and 700 feet
long. It was 156 feet thick at its base and 18 feet thick at its crest, and it
contained over 134,000 cubic yards of concrete. Despite its imposing
size, leaking cracks appeared in the dam during its initial filling in
1926-1927. Mulholland claimed they were caused by the curing of the
concrete and had them sealed. In February, 1928, as the water level
rose again with winter rains, fresh leaks appeared, which increased in
intensity with the spring runoff.
The Dam Breaks. On March 7, 1928, the dam reached its maxi-
mum holding capacity of 38,168 acre feet (over 12 billion gallons),
with water lapping within 3 feet of the parapet and wind-driven waves
breaking over the spillways near the top. The previous year’s leaks re-
opened, keeping Mulholland’s work crews busy. By Monday, March
12, the dam had been holding up its towering wall of water for five
days. That morning, Tony Harnischfeger, the damkeeper, phoned
Mulholland to report a new leak. Mulholland arrived at 10:30 a.m.
with his assistant, inspected the dam for the next two hours, and left
after assuring the damkeeper that the dam was safe. The damkeeper
and his small son would be the first victims of the dam’s collapse
twelve hours later. Their bodies were never recovered.
The St. Francis Dam burst at 11:57 p.m., unleashing a 185-foot
wave of destruction into the canyon below. About 50 miles to the
south in Los Angeles, night owls who noticed their lights flicker mo-
mentarily had no idea they were witnessing the first signs of the dead-
liest disaster in Southern California history. Closer to the dam, at the
Saugus substation of the Southern California Edison Company, the
local electric power utility, one of the transmission lines shorted out,
blowing up a switch and triggering an emergency alert. Edison per-
sonnel had no idea what had happened either.
At the electrical powerhouse directly below the dam, workman
Ray Rising, a native of the Midwest’s “Tornado Alley,” awoke to the
sound of what he thought was a tornado. Running to the door, he saw

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1928: St. Francis Dam collapse

a 140-foot-high wave loom out of the darkness. He managed to resist

being engulfed by climbing onto a rooftop that he rode like a raft
through the twisting canyon, calling for his wife and children, until it
dashed against the canyon wall, where he jumped to safety. Only 3
people survived out of 28 workmen and their families at the power-
house. The powerhouse itself, a 65-foot concrete structure, was
crushed like an eggshell by the wave 10 stories high.
Rolling over the Harry Carey Ranch near Saugus, the deadly tide,
now 80 feet high, swept up miles of barbed wire ripped from the
ranch’s pastures. By 12:40 a.m. Tuesday, Edison employees at the
Saugus substation knew the dam had failed and tried to phone a
warning to an Edison work camp of 150 men 8 miles downstream
from the dam on the banks of the Santa Clara River. The phone rang,
but there was no answer, and then the line went dead. They knew
what had happened this time. The flood arrived in Castaic Junction,
a little town 40 miles from Los Angeles, at 12:50 a.m. and wiped it off
the face of the earth. The lone survivor, George McIntyre, lived by
grabbing the branches of a cottonwood tree. The bodies of his father
and brothers were found near Santa Paula, 30 miles downstream.
At 1:30 a.m., highway patrol officer Thornton Edwards got an
emergency call that would make him the Paul Revere of Santa Paula
as he set out on his motorcycle with screaming sirens to warn the
townspeople to evacuate. To his horrified amazement, he reached
the Willard Bridge spanning the Santa Clara River only to see it
crammed end to end with excited people waiting for the show to be-
gin. He ordered the bridge cleared, posted a guard at either end, and
drove on.
The flood reached the bridge by 3 a.m. As the flood surged over
the top of the bridge, the latter snapped in half and disappeared.
Meanwhile, Deputy Sheriff Eddie Hearne responded to his call by
racing his squad car up the Santa Clara Valley toward the oncoming
flood with both sirens wailing and lights flashing, first to Santa Paula
and then to Fillmore. He got as far as crossing the Pole Creek bridge
on the edge of Fillmore when he saw the road ahead inundated by a
wide expanse of water, mud, trees, wreckage from buildings and vehi-
cles, and other debris. He immediately raced back to Fillmore to
phone a warning to evacuate the city of Oxnard and the adjacent
plain.

586
 1928: St. Francis Dam collapse

Some of the debris remaining in San Francisquito Canyon after the St. Francis Dam
collapsed in 1928, killing 450 people. (Courtesy, SCV Historical Society)

The entire Santa Clara Valley was awake by now and evacuating to
higher ground. At Saticoy, a rancher woke 19 transients sleeping un-
der a bridge to warn them. One refused to head for higher ground,
saying there was not enough water in Southern California in which to
take a bath, much less fill up the dry bed of the Santa Clara River. His
body was found soon after daylight. By now, the speed of the water

587
1928: St. Francis Dam collapse

had decreased from 18 to around 5 miles per hour, but the flow had
spread out to about 2 miles wide, consisting of about half water and
half mud and trash. The flood narrowly missed Oxnard as it flowed to
the sea. As dawn broke, hundreds gathered on the hills above Ven-
tura to watch the final leg of the flood’s journey. It left a dirty gray
streak all the way out to the Channel Islands, over 20 miles from
shore.
After the Flood. Within an hour of the St. Francis Dam’s col-
lapse, the entire reservoir had emptied, with a peak discharge rate of
over 1 million cubic feet per second. The flood swept a path of devas-
tation 55 miles through the Santa Clara Valley from the dam in San
Francisquito Canyon to the Pacific Ocean between the towns of
Ventura and Oxnard. The death toll from the flood—comparable to
California’s greatest natural disaster until that time, the 1906 San
Francisco earthquake and fire—would have been much higher in a
more populated area. However, the damage was still awesome.
The land lay in ruins. Bodies, both human and animal, were strewn
everywhere. Forests had vanished, buried in silt. Orange, lemon, and
walnut orchards were flattened. Towns were in shambles. Many valley
residents staring at the wreckage the flood had left behind that Tues-
day morning had never even heard of the dam that had wreaked such
unbelievable carnage. Many wandered around aimlessly in shock. For-
tunately, the Red Cross and other relief agencies had begun to arrive
by 3:45 a.m. Doctors, nurses, and emergency equipment poured in
from Los Angeles and San Francisco, but the doctors and nurses had
little to do because there were very few people injured, aside from
some suffering from exposure after being outside all night with little
or no clothing. Fortunately or unfortunately, this unusual situation was
due to the violent nature of the flood. Once caught in the floodwaters,
most victims perished. The majority of survivors were either lucky or
alert enough to escape before the deadly tide reached them and thus
avoided injury. Many victims were never found, forever buried under
tons of mud; the mounting number of mud-encrusted corpses was
overwhelming to the survivors.
Bodies were transported from the lowlands in farm trucks, un-
loaded and stacked in piles near mortuaries, and washed down with
garden hoses to make identification possible. One valley resident was
so angry and disgusted that she stopped trying to shovel the mud

588
 1928: St. Francis Dam collapse

from her home long enough to paint a sign she stuck in her front
yard for all to see. The sign said, Kill Mulholland!
Did the state’s greatest human-made disaster have to happen? Al-
though William Mulholland accepted full responsibility for the trag-
edy that ruined his career, many DWP officials and others, including
Mulholland himself, suspected that the dam might have been dyna-
mited by Owens Valley terrorists. However, the overwhelming con-
sensus is that the collapse was due to human error in the construc-
tion of the dam.
To avert further criticism, city officials decided to settle all claims
for damages and loss of life as soon as possible without going through
the courts. The city council passed an ordinance providing $1 mil-
lion—an enormous amount of money in 1928—to start rebuilding
and settling claims. About 2,000 workers with hundreds of tractors
and other heavy equipment tackled the huge mess. It took ninety
days working around the clock to finish the cleanup. All that re-
mained were the broken pieces of the dam itself. Fourteen months
after the disaster, an eighteen-year-old boy fell to his death while
climbing on the ruins, and the city decided to demolish them.
Mulholland’s most infamous engineering project thus became an un-
remarkable pile of concrete rubble lying just upstream of where the
dam once stood.
Despite the tragic proportions of the flood, the disaster had some
positive outcomes. Among them were the formation of the world’s
first dam-safety agency, the adoption of uniform engineering specifi-
cations for testing of dam materials still in use around the world, a
reassessment of all DWP dams and reservoirs, and an extensive retro-
fitting of the St. Francis Dam’s twin, Mulholland Dam (renamed Hol-
lywood Dam after the 1928 flood destroyed Mulholland’s reputa-
tion). Perhaps most beneficial was the development of an efficient
process for settling wrongful-death and damage suits that influenced
disaster-relief legislation used extensively by victims of later floods,
earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural calamities.
Sue Tarjan

For Further Information:

Davis, Margaret Leslie. Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the
Inventing of Los Angeles. Chicago: Olmstead Press, 2001.

589
1928: St. Francis Dam collapse

Jackson, Donald C., and Norris Hundley, Jr. “Privilege and Responsi-
bility: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster.” Cali-
fornia History 82, no. 3 (2004).
Nichols, John. St. Francis Dam Disaster. Chicago: Arcadia, 2002.
Nunis, Doyce B., Jr., ed. The Saint Francis Dam Disaster Revisited. Los
Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California, 2002.
Outland, Charles F. Man-Made Disaster: The Story of St. Francis Dam—Its
Place in Southern California’s Water System, Its Failure, and the Tragedy
in the Santa Clara River Valley, March 12 and 13, 1928. Rev. and en-
larged ed. Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California,
2002.
Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing
Water. New York: Penguin, 1993.

590
■ 1928: The San Felipe hurricane
Hurricane
Also known as: Lake Okeechobee hurricane
Date: September 10-16, 1928
Place: Florida and the Caribbean
Classification: Category 4
Result: About 4,000 dead, 350,000 homeless

T he San Felipe hurricane, also known as the Lake Okee-

chobee hurricane, was a ferocious Category 4 storm
that claimed over 4,000 lives as it roared across the Caribbean islands
of Guadeloupe, St. Kitts, and Montserrat; the Virgin Islands; and
Puerto Rico before inflicting its full fury on Florida.
The Caribbean. The storm was spotted first by the crew of the
ship SS Cormack in the Cape Verde Islands region in the eastern At-
lantic in early September, 1928. By September 10, it had reached
the mid-Atlantic, at which time it was classified as a Category 4 hurri-
cane with winds of 135 miles per hour. The powerful storm crossed
the islands of Guadeloupe, St. Kitts, and Montserrat on September
12. Its barometric pressure was recorded at 27.76 inches with winds
between 160 and 170 miles per hour. The hurricane devastated the
three islands. Buildings were destroyed, and roads were quickly in-
undated as 30-foot waves lashed against the shorelines. An esti-
mated 520 people lost their lives, many of them in the flash floods
spawned by the heavy rains accompanying the storm. The hurri-
cane then proceeded south of St. Croix after dealing substantial
damage to the Virgin Islands.
In the early morning hours of San Felipe Day on September 13,
1928 (the saint’s commemoration day for which the storm received
its name), the hurricane struck Puerto Rico near the port city of Ar-
royo, 32 miles southeast of San Juan, with the intensity of a Category
4 storm. Winds were registered at 135 miles per hour, with gusts up to
170 miles per hour, and blew steadily for four or five consecutive
hours. In San Juan the wind reached its peak strength at about mid-
afternoon. A short time earlier the Weather Bureau’s anemometer

591
1928: The San Felipe hurricane

registered 132 miles per hour, but the instrument was swept away by a
gale.
The storm threw the city of San Juan into complete darkness and
totally isolated it from the remainder of the island. All telegraph and
telephone lines were destroyed, and all transportation was halted.
Ships suffered extensive damage as a 19-foot storm surge swept
ashore. The freight steamer Helen was ripped from its anchor during
the peak of the storm, as were numerous smaller boats, and drifted
onto rocks near the entrance of the harbor. The storm flattened the
governor’s palace and blew out its doors and windows, leaving it com-
pletely exposed to the torrential rains that soon flooded the building.
The hurricane wrought massive damage across the island. More
than 19,000 buildings, representing 70 percent of the capital’s homes
and 40 percent of its businesses, were destroyed, leaving nearly
284,000 people without food or shelter. Trees by the thousands were
uprooted, many of them smashing into homes or falling into streets.
Rainfall associated with the storm system was heavy and was a ma-
jor contributing factor to the damage that occurred inland. Rain
gauges recorded up to 30 inches of precipitation during the storm,
which initiated mudslides and flash floods in the island’s mountain-
ous central regions. Whole villages were reported to have been de-
stroyed by the onslaught. Altogether, over 1,400 people were killed in
Puerto Rico during the storm that caused nearly $50 billion in dam-
age to the island.
On September 15 the storm swept through the Bahamas, bringing
heavy rains and 119-mile-per-hour winds to the eastern islands. Resi-
dents along Florida’s east coast prepared to receive the full force of
the approaching storm. On September 15 the Weather Bureau is-
sued a warning that the hurricane was moving northwestward at a
rate of 300 miles per day. Storm warnings were issued from Miami to
Titusville, Florida.
Forecasters believed the storm could follow one of three paths:
through the Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba and out into
the Gulf of Mexico, to the north up along the East Coast, or straight
ahead on a northwesterly direction that would take it to a point be-
tween Miami and Palm Beach.
Florida. On September 16, the hurricane approached to within
200 miles of Miami. Storm warnings were posted from Miami to Jack-

592
 1928: The San Felipe hurricane

A statue commemorates the San Felipe hurricane of 1928. (Courtesy, The

Florida Memory Project)

sonville, an indication that forecasters believed the storm would

move in a northeasterly direction across the state once it made land-
fall. The Naval Radio Compass Station at Jupiter Inlet on the eastern
coast, about 90 miles north of Miami, reported to the Navy Depart-

593
1928: The San Felipe hurricane

ment that the storm was blowing with winds of more than 90 miles
per hour and that the tide at Jupiter was more than 5 feet above nor-
mal. The compass station rode out the storm until early evening,
when it reported that its radio tower had been blown down. It also
sent a message informing the Navy Department that the barometric
pressure had dropped to 28.79 inches and was still falling.
On the evening of September 16, the hurricane struck the coast
near West Palm Beach, with winds estimated at over 100 miles per
hour and a barometric pressure of 27.43 inches. An 11-foot storm
surge, combined with over 10 inches of rain during the hurricane’s
passage, washed out numerous coastal roads. Many of the plush Palm
Beach resorts and mansions perched along the shoreline received
heavy damage. Close to 8,000 homes were either destroyed or dam-
aged. Nearly 700 people were reported killed in Palm Beach County
alone, many of them victims of the storm surge passing over the bar-
rier island upon which the city is situated. The fashionable New
Breakers Hotel was damaged severely when a tall chimney crashed
through the roof, as was another elegant hotel, the Royal Poinciana,
whose roof was torn.
From Boynton Beach to Lake Park, structures of all kinds were
ripped from their foundations and carried for distances of hundreds
of yards. Damage to the south in Miami was confined to broken win-
dows and the scattered ruin of frail buildings, though some water de-
struction was also reported.
As predicted, the storm moved inland toward the Lake Okee-
chobee region. The storm that had brought devastation to the Palm
Beach area was about to wield greater devastation.
Lake Okeechobee is the third largest freshwater lake within the
United States. Located approximately 40 miles northwest of Palm
Beach, it has a diameter of 40 miles and a maximum depth of 15 feet.
Acting as a catch basin for the overflows produced by the rainy sea-
sons, the lake served at the time as the chief water supply for central
Florida. Dikes built around the lake were designed to restrain the
overflows in order to protect the adjacent farming communities.
Almost totally unaware of the severity of the storm headed their
way, residents of the tiny communities surrounding the lake, many of
them migrant workers, carried on with their daily work routines.
From the moment the storm struck, its exact path and the damage it

594
 1928: The San Felipe hurricane

was bringing were, for the most part, mysteries to inland inhabitants.
There was no sophisticated communication system, so local residents
had only rumors over the radio or unreliable wire communications
to guide them.
As the storm moved across the lake’s northern shore, driving all
the water to one side of the lake, it caused the shallow waters to ex-
ceed the maximum height of 15 feet. In about thirty minutes the
surge of water, combined with the heavy rainfall, overpowered the
dikes protecting the lowlands at the lake’s southern end. Hundreds
of migrant workers were killed as a wall of water rushed through the
region. Others clung to the tops of trees, houses, or any other objects
they could grab hold of to ride out the surge. Several hundred
women and children who sought safety on barges survived the storm
when the two boats carrying them were washed ashore by the surge at
South Bay. Some people had to walk as much as 6 miles through
water higher than their waists before they were able to reach safety. It
was nearly midnight before the storm began to lose some of its fury.
Aftereffects. Relief was slow in coming to the isolated region,
since the attention of the country was focused on the damage done
to the state’s eastern shore. However, as relief workers battled their
way into West Palm Beach over water-covered roads, they quickly
spread the word of the enormity of the destruction that had occurred
inland. The hurricane leveled every building in the nearly 50-mile
stretch between Clewiston and Canal Point, except for a hotel which
was converted into a shelter for fleeing refugees from the nearby
towns of Belle Glade, Ritta, Bayport, Miami Locks, and other farming
and fishing villages. A section of State Road 25 that connects Palm
Beach and Fort Myers was left several feet under water. The Ritta Is-
lands, located in the lake itself, were swept nearly clean by the winds.
No survivors could be found on the islands following the storm.
The devastation from the storm was total. An expanse of land that
stretched from the lake south into the Everglades was left in ruin. Eye-
witnesses reported wreckage and debris scattered in every direction
and numerous bodies floating in canals. The Red Cross placed the
death toll in the region at 1,836, though there was no way to know the
exact toll for certain. It was impossible for relief workers to gather the
remains of the dead, and the original idea of sending individual cof-
fins to dry areas such as Sebring and West Palm Beach had to be aban-

595
1928: The San Felipe hurricane

doned. Instead, funeral pyres were arranged to dispose of the bodies.

Domesticated animals and wildlife also suffered. Much of the
lake’s abundant fish supply was destroyed when washed over the
dikes and left to die as the water receded. The surge also wiped out
some farmers’ entire stocks of cattle, pigs, horses, and chickens.
Following its strike on Lake Okeechobee, the hurricane curved
north-northeast and skirted the city of Jacksonville. Trees in the city
were uprooted by winds of 50 to 60 miles per hour, and several small
shacks were toppled, though the major business and prominent resi-
dential sections escaped with minor damage. A roller coaster in Jack-
sonville Beach, 18 miles away, was toppled by the winds, and a portion
of a dancing pier collapsed.
There were indications the hurricane was diminishing in intensity
on its trail north, but it still carried enough strength to destroy com-
munication wires between Tampa and Jacksonville. At one stage in
the course of the storm, an entire portion of the state located below a
diagonal line running from Palm Beach northward to the town of
Brooksville was cut off from the outside world. As the storm curved
back toward Jacksonville, another large section of the central part of
the state as well as a portion of the East Coast became isolated. The
storm eventually moved up the Georgia and South Carolina coast to-
ward Hatteras, North Carolina, where it passed back into the sea.
Despite losing much of its strength, tremendous amounts of rain-
fall accompanied the remnants of the storm on its way north. Savan-
nah, Georgia, reported 11.42 inches of rain and winds of 50 miles per
hour, while Charleston, South Carolina, registering 7.18 inches of
precipitation and winds of 48 miles per hour, reported its shoreline
strewn with the wreckage of small boats and piers. Both cities were
nearly isolated by broken communication lines.
The Lake Okeechobee hurricane is considered the most cata-
strophic storm to hit the state of Florida in terms of lives lost. The
enormity of the disaster led federal and state officials to develop a
plan to rebuild the dikes that failed on the lake’s southern shores so
that a similar disaster would not occur in the future. In the three de-
cades that followed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a 150-
mile dike constructed from mud, sand, rock, and concrete. It is
named for President Herbert Hoover.
William Hoffman

596
 1928: The San Felipe hurricane

For Further Information:

Barnes, Jay. Florida’s Hurricane History. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1998.
Kleinberg, Eliot. Black Cloud: The Great Florida Hurricane of 1928. New
York: Carroll & Graf, 2003.
Longshore, David. Encyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones.
New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Mykle, Robert. Killer ‘Cane: The Deadly Hurricane of 1928. New York:
Cooper Square Press, 2002.
Williams, John M., and Iver W. Duedall. Florida Hurricanes and Tropi-
cal Storms, 1871-2001. Gainesville: University of Florida Press,
2002.

597
■ 1932: The Dust Bowl
Drought and dust storms
Date: 1932-1937
Place: Great Plains and the southwestern United States
Result: 500,000 homeless

S ix years of severe drought combined with overuse and

improper exposure of the soil in the semi-arid and arid
prairie regions of the southeastern United States led to Dust Bowl
conditions, wind erosion of the soil, and the displacement of 500,000
farmers and townsfolk in the region. Dust Bowl conditions include
extensive and prolonged lack of rainfall extending over several years;
depletion of soil moisture to the point where plant life cannot be sus-
tained; increased heat in summer and increased cold in winter due to
the effect of airborne dust particles on atmospheric heating and
cooling; the transformation of soil into particles of dust, sand, and
minerals; and an increase in the frequency and intensity of wind due
to the combined effects of rapidly fluctuating daily air temperature,
low humidity, and a decline in the vegetative barriers and ground
covers.
Homesteaders Arrive. Before settlement in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, natural, deep-rooted prairie
grasses held the soil in place. The grasses that established themselves
on the prairie soil were able to survive severe and prolonged
drought, hot summers, and cold winters. During most of the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries, the region of the Great Plains was
known to most citizens as “The Great American Desert.” In the post-
Civil War period, railroads were given government land grants to en-
courage the western expansion of rail services. Promotional litera-
ture produced by the railroads and the national government encour-
aged settlement in the Great Plains, either along railroad lines or in
homestead areas established in the western territories by the govern-
ment. The older idea of the Great Plains as a desert was replaced by a
new myth of an agricultural empire in the “Garden of the World” and
a new marketing dictum that “rain follows the plow.” This mistaken

598
 1932: The Dust Bowl

idea that settlement could change the climate encouraged farmers to

continue plowing and planting their lands as the years of drought
progressed, and discouraged the use of new agricultural techniques
for semiarid soils even after these techniques were developed.
A period of western migration encouraged eastern, midwestern,
and European immigrant farmers to relocate to the area. Government
land-grant and homesteading programs, land marketing schemes by
railroad companies, national policies encouraging increased agricul-
tural production, and the invention of mechanized farming tools and
tractors encouraged and supported this migration to the previously
untilled land. The native grasses were plowed under, using the agricul-
tural techniques of the day, exposing the newly turned soil to potential
erosion. Most settlement and soil exposure occurred during periods of
normal or increased rainfall, and the growing crops replaced the prai-
rie grasses as protectors of the soil. Many farmers enjoyed bumper
yields in the years preceding the drought.
The settlement of the American Great Plains was similar to the
patterns experienced in semiarid areas of Australia, South Africa,
and the Russian steppes. The settlers were primarily individuals with
agricultural experience limited to the humid agricultural conditions
of Western Europe or the eastern half of North America. The settlers
began with an inaccurate perception of the possibilities and limita-
tions of agricultural production in these arid and semiarid areas and
lacked an adaptive technology to cope with extended drought. A se-
vere drought in the Great Plains in the 1890’s did not deter optimism
concerning the agricultural potential of the region.
Years of Drought. The drought beginning in 1932 led to agri-
cultural failure and to the repeated exposure of the land to wind ero-
sion. Once tilled lands began to suffer wind erosion, the blowing dust
together with the drought conditions caused the natural grasses on
untilled land to wither and die, exposing more soil to erosion. Left
unprotected, topsoil was lifted into the air, creating “black blizzards”
of dust. The previously rich topsoil was blown away. On many farms,
topsoil was eroded down to the clay base or to the bedrock. In many
cases, even the clay began to fragment and become airborne in the
wind. The loss of land fertility plus repeated crop failures led to the
bankruptcy of thousands of farmers and the townspeople who pro-
vided services to the farmers. Many of these people became displaced

599
1932: The Dust Bowl

migrants, with many traveling farther west to California or returning

to the East in search of jobs and new land.
The harvest of 1931 produced a bumper crop of wheat, depress-
ing the market price in the midst of the Great Depression, a national
and worldwide decline in economic activity which began in the
1920’s and which had already depressed prices for agricultural prod-
ucts. Farmers responded by increasing the acreage under cultivation
hoping to restore lost income by increasing output, thus further re-
ducing prices and exposing more land to potential erosion. The 1932
agricultural year began with a late freeze followed by violent rain-
storms, a plague of insects, and a summer drought affecting 50 mil-
lion acres in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and
parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Drought condi-
tions continued without relief until 1937 and gradually extended
east, west, and north, involving most of North America in some form
of drought. Lakes Michigan and Huron dropped to their lowest lev-
els on record.
Black Blizzards. The first great dust storm, or black blizzard,
occurred in November, 1933. Vast quantities of dust particles were
carried thousands of feet into the atmosphere by winter winds, block-

A collage of headlines about the Dust Bowl. (Library of Congress)

600
 1932: The Dust Bowl

ing out the sun for several days at a time. Gritty dust and dirt blew
into houses and other buildings under windowsills or through door
jambs, covering and contaminating floors, food, bedclothes, furni-
ture, and drinking water and damaging machinery and tools. Dust
storms continued to occur regularly during the next few years. In
parts of Texas and Oklahoma as many as 100 separate dust storms
were recorded in a single year. In March of 1936, there were twenty-
two days of dust storms over the Texas Panhandle. In April, 1935,
twenty-eight days of dust storms occurred in Amarillo, Texas.
Storms in April, 1934, and February, 1935, were so severe that they
darkened the skies over the entire eastern half of the United States,
with dust from the Dust Bowl falling on Washington, D.C., New York
City, and ships at sea. The finest dust particles were carried as far as
Europe. An estimated 350 million tons of topsoil was blown away
from what had been one of the world’s richest agricultural areas.
Within the most severely affected areas of the Dust Bowl, crops
sprouted only to wither and die. Drifts of dirt and sand smothered
the remaining prairie grasslands, killed trees and shrubs, and
blocked roads and railroad lines. Blowing dust scrubbed the paint off
buildings and automobiles, caused human respiratory sickness, and
created massive dry-weather electrical storms generating substantial
wind gusts but no rainfall. Hundreds of people died of respiratory ail-
ments. Cattle and wildlife starved or died of thirst. Birds found it im-
possible to nest successfully.
Government Action. In 1936-1937, Congress debated and even-
tually enacted a Soil Conservation Act, intended to relieve the eco-
nomic impact of the Dust Bowl conditions and prevent future wind
or water erosion of the soil. Dr. Hugh Hammond Bennett, working
with the Roosevelt administration as the chief proponent of the bill,
encouraged a congressional vote on the bill just as dust from a Dust
Bowl black blizzard shrouded Washington, D.C., in a brown haze.
The act allocated $500 million to subsidize farmers who converted
from growing grain crops, such as corn and wheat, to soil-building
crops, such as hay and legumes. These measures both helped stabi-
lize the soil and helped reduce grain production, resulting in agricul-
tural prices rising to pre-Depression levels. The Soil Conservation
Act called for the establishment of agricultural and conservation ed-
ucation programs, the planting of trees around farms and along

601
1932: The Dust Bowl

roads as windbreaks, and establishment of Soil Conservation Districts

in each state. Later renamed Soil and Water Conservation Districts,
these units of local government, encouraged by the national govern-
ment and established in each state by acts of the state legislature, are
an important force in encouraging farmers to add “best manage-
ment practices” to their farming techniques, constructing vegetative
barriers to reduce wind and water erosion of the soil, and protecting
the soil and water resources of America.
Actions by the national government came too late for many farm-
ers forced off the land due to mortgage foreclosures or the near-total
loss of topsoil from their lands. Many migrated west to California or
returned east to the industrial cities with only a few clothes and pos-
sessions and no money. Those with no skills other than farming
worked as migrant farm laborers wherever they could find a harvest
to work. These migrants put strains on the already overburdened
government-welfare programs in these states and increased labor
competition pressures. The migrants experienced anger and dis-
crimination in the areas to which they migrated. Several states and
many local governments enacted laws intended to prevent the migra-
tion and settlement of Dust Bowl migrants into their areas.
In 1937, the drought ended, and those who could return to agri-
cultural production did, using new farming methods designed to
protect the soil from both wind and water erosion. The 1937 crop
yield nationwide was the largest on record. The good weather contin-
ued throughout the critical years of World War II, and the improved
agricultural methods continued to protect the soil.
Gordon Neal Diem

For Further Information:

Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who
Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
2006.
Lookingbill, Brad D. Dust Bowl, USA: Depression America and the Ecologi-
cal Imagination, 1929-1941. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001.
Saarinen, Thomas F. Perception of the Drought Hazard on the Great Plains.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Stallings, Frank L. Black Sunday: The Great Dust Storm of April 14, 1935.
Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 2001.

602
 1932: The Dust Bowl

United States Great Plains Committee. The Future of the Great Plains.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1936.
Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930’s. 25th an-
niversary ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

603
■ 1937: The HINDENBURG Disaster
Explosion and fire
Date: May 6, 1937
Place: Lakehurst, New Jersey
Result: 36 dead (22 crew members, 13 passengers, and 1 person on
the ground), travel by airship comes to an end

O n May 3, 1937, the huge airship Hindenburg took off

from Frankfurt, Germany, headed for Lakehurst,
New Jersey. On board were 97 people—61 passengers and 36 crew
members. The Hindenburg had already completed more than thirty
ocean crossings in its first year of operation, having safely delivered
more than 2,000 passengers and 375,000 pounds of mail and freight.
The Hindenburg was a Nazi propaganda showpiece, with large black
swastikas displayed prominently on its tail fins.
Over the years, German-built airships (lighter-than-air aircrafts),
often called zeppelins, had acquired an excellent record for safety
and dependability. An earlier airship, called the Graf Zeppelin, had
logged more than 1 million miles without mishap on regular transat-
lantic flights from 1930 until it was retired in 1936.
The Creation of Airships. Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838-
1914) was born into a wealthy German family. As an army officer, he
was sent to the United States in 1861 to observe military maneuvers
during the Civil War. He had the opportunity to take a ride in a hot-
air balloon, which can only drift with the air currents because it has
no mechanism for steering or propulsion. That experience gave Zep-
pelin a lifelong motivation to design a lighter-than-air vehicle whose
direction of flight could be controlled by a pilot on board. Other in-
ventors had the same goal, but Zeppelin had the persistence and the
financial resources to carry out his plan. By the time he died in 1914,
Zeppelin had a fleet of thirty airships with a regular schedule of pas-
senger flights between major cities in Europe.
The Hindenburg had the designation LZ-129, the one hundred
twenty-ninth airship to be built by the Zeppelin factory since the first
successful flight on the LZ-1 took place in the year 1900. The Hinden-

604
 1937: The Hindenburg Disaster

burg looked like an enormous sausage, 803 feet long and 135 feet in
diameter. Most of its bulk consisted of a metal framework that held
sixteen large gas bags filled with hydrogen. Hydrogen is much lighter
than air, even lighter than the helium that is used in balloons. The to-
tal weight of the airship, including the framework, the gas bags, the
passenger gondola, and the propulsion and steering apparatus must
be less than the weight of air that it displaces in order for the airship
to become buoyant. Like a submarine, which gets its buoyancy from
the surrounding water, the airship literally floats in the air. Propul-
sion was provided by four 1,150-horsepower diesel engines that
turned two relatively small propellers. Cruising at an average speed
of 80 miles per hour, the transatlantic trip took only three days, less
than half the time taken by the fastest ocean liners of the 1930’s. The
passenger gondola, about 60 feet long, was fastened to the bottom of
the main balloon near its front end. It was designed for wealthy pa-
trons who were accustomed to luxury. The sleeping cabins had com-
fortable beds and modern bathroom fixtures. The dining room had

The German airship Hindenburg explodes into flame over Lakehurst, New
Jersey. (Courtesy, Navy Lakehurst Historical Society)

605
1937: The Hindenburg Disaster

elegant furnishings, adjacent to a promenade deck with large obser-

vation windows. There was a dance floor with a stage for the band.
The guest lounge was furnished with card tables and easy chairs. Be-
cause hydrogen gas is highly combustible, elaborate safety precau-
tions were needed to prevent any open flame or sparks. Smoking was
permitted only in a special smoking room, where the cigarette light-
ers were chained to the furniture. No cigarettes or matches were al-
lowed anywhere else. The hallway walls had a rubberized coating to
prevent buildup of static electricity. Riding in the gondola was very
smooth compared to ocean liners because the great bulk of the bal-
loon smoothed out any local air turbulence.
Because hydrogen gas is flammable, Germany had tried to buy he-
lium gas from the United States. Helium is a lightweight, inert gas
that provides almost the same amount of buoyancy as hydrogen. The
U.S. government opposed exporting helium to Germany because
Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party had come to power in 1933 and the threat of
war was coming closer. During World War I, the German military had
used zeppelins to drop bombs over London and other cities in Great
Britain. In some fifty air raids, large buildings had been destroyed
and over 500 people were killed. The terror caused by these air at-
tacks left a lasting memory that firmly opposed selling helium to Ger-
many as it was rearming itself.
The HINDENBURG Explodes. On May 6, 1937, after a routine three-
day flight across the Atlantic, the Hindenburg passed over New York
City. Just after 7 p.m., the airship arrived at its landing field at
Lakehurst, New Jersey. As it hovered above the mooring tower, ropes
were dropped from the front of the ship to tie it down for unloading.
A radio announcer and a newsreel photographer were on hand to re-
port on the arrival because the passenger list frequently included in-
ternational celebrities.
Without warning, the tail section of the Hindenburg suddenly burst
into flames. The fire spread very quickly, and the airship sank down
toward the ground because of the loss of hydrogen. Some of the pan-
icked passengers jumped from the gondola and survived, but others
were killed upon impact with the ground. Some waited too long to
jump and died when their clothing and hair caught fire. The radio
announcer spoke into his microphone, where his eyewitness words of
shock were recorded: “It’s burst into flames! Get out of the way! . . .

606
 1937: The Hindenburg Disaster

It’s falling on the mooring mast and all the folks between us. . . . This
is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed!” Only thirty-four seconds after
the initial explosion the Hindenburg lay on the ground with its metal
skeleton twisted and wrecked. The fire did not last long because after
the hydrogen had escaped, there was not much combustible material
left to burn.
A circus performer named Joseph Spah was one of the miraculous
survivors from the Hindenburg disaster. He was sitting in the dining
room when the explosion happened. He smashed one of the window-
panes and climbed out through the broken window, dangling from
the ledge by his hands. He realized that he was too high to let go, so
he waited for the burning airship to drop closer to the ground. The
window ledge became very hot, searing his hands. When he thought
he was about 40 feet from the ground, he let go, dropped to the
ground, landed on his feet, and ran away from the fire. His only in-
jury was a fractured heel.
There were some extraordinary acts of heroism during the disas-
ter that helped to save lives. Some of the ground crew remained un-
derneath the burning airship long enough to catch passengers who
had jumped. Captain Max Pruss, who was in the control room,
helped 7 crew members to escape through a window. He dragged an
unconscious man to safety even after his own clothes had caught on
fire. One of the casualties was Ernst Lehman, who had been in com-
mand of the Hindenburg on earlier flights. He was able to walk away
from the blazing wreckage but died of burns later.
The Hindenburg disaster made headlines in all the major newspa-
pers. Like the tragic sinking of the cruise ship Titanic, another tech-
nological marvel had come to a spectacular end, in spite of extensive
safety precautions. In the 1930’s, television was not yet available, but
newsreel photography of major events was commonly shown at movie
theaters before or after the feature film. Because a cameraman was all
set up to film the landing of the Hindenburg, he was able to capture
the whole disaster from beginning to end. Together with the voice of
the radio announcer, it was shown to horrified audiences. It was the
first major disaster with eyewitness photography. Pictures of burning
victims trying to run away from the flaming wreck left an indelible im-
age that travel by airship was too dangerous. The age of the airships
came to an end with the Hindenburg disaster.

607
1937: The Hindenburg Disaster

Reasons for the Explosion. What caused the Hindenburg to ex-

plode? As is customary after a major disaster, there was a formal in-
quiry, at which some of the survivors were able to tell their stories.
Three possible scenarios emerged from the investigation. One was
that an electric discharge from the atmosphere had initiated the ex-
plosion. Although no one had seen any lightning, there is frequently
a buildup of static electricity between low-lying clouds and the
ground. It had been raining earlier that day in Lakehurst, and news-
reels did show a cloudy sky above the airship as it was landing. A sec-
ond possibility was an electric discharge inside the balloon itself, per-
haps produced by friction between gas bags rubbing against each
other. It was almost impossible to prevent some leakage of hydrogen
through the rubberized fabric of the bags, so a spark could have ig-
nited the gas.
The third possibility, more of a speculation, was that it was an act
of sabotage. Perhaps a member of the crew who was strongly opposed
to Adolf Hitler’s militarism and persecution of Jews had set a bomb
that would bring a spectacular end to this airship that symbolized the
dominance of German technology. However, no evidence of bomb
material could be found in the wrecked remains of the Hindenburg.
Hans G. Graetzer

For Further Information:

Archbold, Rick. Hindenburg: An Illustrated History. Secaucus, N.J.:
Chartwell Books, 2005.
Botting, Douglas. Dr. Eckener’s Dream Machine: The Great Zeppelin and
the Dawn of Air Travel. New York: Henry Holt, 2001.
De Syon, Guillaume. Zeppelin! Germany and the Airship, 1900-1939. Bal-
timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
Dick, Harold G. The Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships: “Graf Zep-
pelin” and” “Hindenburg.” Reprint. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1992.
Mooney, Michael M. The Hindenburg. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972.
Robinson, Douglas H. Famous Aircraft: The LZ-129 “Hindenburg.” Dal-
las: Morgan, 1964.
Tanaka, Shirley. The Disaster of the “Hindenburg”: The Last Flight of the
Greatest Airship Ever Built. New York: Scholastic/Madison Press,
1993.

608
■ 1938: The Great New England
Hurricane of 1938
Hurricane

Date: September 21, 1938

Place: Northeastern United States
Classification: Category 3
Result: About 680 dead, more than 1,700 injured, nearly 20,000
requests for aid, $400 million in damage

S ome analysts call the Great New England Hurricane of

1938 a triple storm: hurricane, flood, and tidal surge. Un-
usually heavy rains beginning September 18, 1938, caused rivers and
streams to rise and flood low-lying areas, and the rain that accompa-
nied the up to 100-mile-per-hour winds during the brief course of the
hurricane added to these conditions. In shoreline areas and cities on
tidal rivers additional flood conditions were caused by the tidal surges
common to hurricanes, when the high winds drive the tide upon itself.
Several towns and cities also suffered from fires that were started when
electrical wires were short-circuited by water or by ships that were
driven by high winds and the tide into buildings along the coast.
The Formation of the Storm. June of 1938 was the third-
wettest June in New England weather records, followed by an ab-
normally wet and mild summer. It is suggested that a French mete-
orological observation at the Bilma Oasis in the Sahara Desert on
September 4 noting a wind shift would, with modern radar tracking
and satellite imagery not available then, have given the first hint of
trouble. The shift resulted in an area of storminess off the west coast
of Africa, entering the Atlantic in the Cape Verde region. On Septem-
ber 16 a storm of hurricane strength was reported northeast of
Puerto Rico by a lightship and the Jacksonville office of the U.S.
Weather Bureau. The bureau followed the storm’s rapid progress
westward, issuing a hurricane warning for southern Florida on Sep-
tember 19. The storm slowed and turned north, sparing Florida, and
initially it was assumed to be heading out to sea.

609
1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938

This hurricane was abnormal in that it traveled northward at an

average speed of 50 miles per hour rather than the more usual 20 to
30 miles per hour. In twelve hours it moved from a position off Cape
Hatteras to southern Vermont and New Hampshire. More important
from the standpoint of criticisms of inadequate warning by the
Weather Bureau is the fact that less than six hours elapsed from its
leaving the Florida area, traveling over water, until it hit Long Island,
New York. Because of its rapid progress, the hurricane had destruc-
tive winds about 100 miles east of its center, while there was relatively
little damage to property on the west side. Therefore, the worst of the
destruction was concentrated on Long Island, Rhode Island, eastern
Connecticut, central Massachusetts, and southern Vermont and New
Hampshire. High winds lasted only about an hour and a half in any
one area.

A storm surge causes giant waves to crash against a seawall during the
Great New England Hurricane of 1938. (National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration)

610
 1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938

The Aftereffects. In spite of its brief tenure, the hurricane had

tremendous temporary and some important lasting economic im-
pact. Whole seaside communities along the Connecticut and Rhode
Island coasts were wiped out by wind and tides, which ranged from 12
to 25 feet higher than normal. New beaches were cut, islands were
formed as the water ran through strips of shore, and navigational
charts of the time became worthless. Roads and railroad tracks along
the shore were undermined, buckled, and tossed. Railroad service
was interrupted from seven to fourteen days while crews removed
trees, houses, and several good-sized boats from the tracks.
Inland, bridges were wiped out, roads buckled where undermined
by usually small streams, and trees fell on roads and buildings. Winds
blew roofs, walls, and often top stories off brick and wooden build-
ings. Dams were breached by the high waters. Apples ready for har-
vest were blown off the trees, and whole groves of maples were
snapped, affecting the maple-syrup industry for years to come. It was
a rare church whose steeple escaped being torn down, and village
greens were permanently altered by the toppling of stately mature
elms and oaks that had lined the streets. Most important, some mills
upon which a town’s economy depended were never rebuilt after the
damage. In New England, all old mills were originally powered by
water, so they were located on dammed rivers.
Although not as hard hit, portions of northern Vermont and New
Hampshire also suffered from fallen trees and flooding. Maine was
the least affected, escaping flooding and damaged only by diminish-
ing, although still high, winds. Boats were driven ashore from Port-
land south, and train schedules were disrupted and road traffic af-
fected by downed trees.
Examination of the Storm. The major New England rivers
were already at flood stage before the hurricane struck. The wet sum-
mer meant that the heavy rains in the three days preceding the high
winds did not soak into the ground but ran off into streams, which in
turn fed the rivers. Tributaries most affected were the Farmington,
Chicopee, Millers, Deerfield, and Ashuelot Rivers of the Connecti-
cut; the Quinebaug and Shetucket of the Thames; and the Con-
toocock and Piscataquog of the Merrimack.
New England is not often subjected to serious floods or hurricanes
and is even less affected by tornadoes. Accounts of the 1938 hurri-

611
1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938

cane are compared to the Great Colonial Hurricane of August 14 or

15, 1635 (as recorded by Increase Mather in his Remarkable Providences
of 1684); the Great September Gale of September 23, 1815, recorded
by Noah Webster and others; the ice storm of 1921; and floods of
1927 and 1936, the latter providing benchmarks for high water two
years later.
The 1938 storm was termed “unique,” “unusual,” and “most inter-
esting” by meteorologists, and a “freak,” the “worst in the history of
the northeast” by Dr. Charles C. Clark, acting chief of the U.S.
Weather Bureau. It was not a tropical hurricane in the strict sense of
the word because before it reached the northeastern states it was
transformed into an extra-tropical storm, with a definite frontal
structure and two distinct air masses—tropical maritime and polar
continental, a peculiar temperature and wind distribution in the up-
per atmosphere. Although winds of 60 miles per hour were common
at the hurricane’s worst, geographic conditions contributed to winds
up to 100 miles per hour in some areas. At slightly higher elevations,
weather devices recorded much higher velocities: 186 miles per hour
at the Harvard Meteorological Observatory at the top of Blue Hill in
Milton, Massachusetts, and 120 miles per hour at the top of the Em-
pire State Building in New York City.
The Extent of the Destruction. Statistics, especially the
count of dead and injured, vary considerably. An estimated 680 to
685 lost their lives. Estimates of those injured range from 700 to over
1,700. Nearly 20,000 applied for aid. There is no uncertainty, how-
ever, in the assessment that the $400 million in total damage was the
highest for any storm to its date. One account lists 4,500 homes, sum-
mer cottages, and farm buildings destroyed; 2,605 boats lost and
3,369 damaged, with a total $2.6 million estimated in fishing boats,
equipment, docks, and shore plants destroyed; 26,000 cars smashed;
275 million trees broken off or uprooted; nearly 20,000 miles of
power and telephone lines down; and numerous farm animals killed.
Some 10,000 railroad workers filled 1,000 washouts, replaced nearly
100 bridges, and removed buildings and 30 boats from the tracks.
Bell System crews came from as far away as Virginia, Arkansas, and
Nevada to help restore service. About half the estimated 5 million
bushels of the apple crop was unharvested and destroyed.
On Fire Island, New York, the tide crossed from the ocean to the

612
 1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938

bay side over the land, sweeping everything from its path. In West-
hampton, Long Island, only 26 of 179 beach houses remained, and
most were uninhabitable. Every house in Watch Hill, Rhode Island’s
Napatree Point-Fort Road area was swept into Naragansett Bay, and
only 15 of the 42 occupants in the 39 houses survived. Downtown Prov-
idence, Rhode Island, was flooded under 10 feet of water. New Lon-
don, Connecticut, suffered $4 million in damage from water, 98-mile-
per-hour winds, and the worst fire since General Benedict Arnold’s
troops burned the city in 1781. The fire was started by electrical wires
short-circuited when a five-masted schooner was driven into a build-
ing. The town of Peterborough in southern New Hampshire also suf-
fered from fire as well as wind and water damage when wires were
short-circuited by floodwater. In one instance along the Connecticut
shore, a railroad engineer nudged a cabin cruiser and a house off the
tracks, loaded all his passengers into the dining and first Pullman cars,
disconnected the remainder of the train, and brought his riders to
safety. In several towns and cities, including Ware and North Adams,
Massachusetts, and Brandon, Vermont, rivers changed their courses
and took over main streets. While portions of Springfield, Massachu-
setts, and Hartford, Connecticut, were flooded, these cities were not
damaged as much as might have been expected because of dikes built
after the 1936 flood and sandbag walls added by volunteers in 1938.
On September 23, two days after the storm had passed, the Con-
necticut River crested at 35.42 feet. This was 2 feet below the 1936
record, but nothing else approaching this had been recorded since
1854. A total of 17 inches of rain had fallen in the Connecticut Valley
in four days. However, the amount of rain varied greatly from one
area to another, as did the velocity of the wind.
Electrical, telephone, and railroad services were interrupted for
up to two weeks, and other services and activities were disrupted as
well. Flooding and wind damage to buildings in town and city centers
made food and provisions hard to find for days. Roads were blocked
as well while crews removed the trees that had fallen across them, in-
terrupting school activity and preventing many from reaching their
homes. Business and public buildings as well as churches and homes
had to be repaired or rebuilt. The disruption to lives cannot be ade-
quately reflected in any of these statistics.
Erika E. Pilver

613
1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938

For Further Information:

Allen, Everett S. A Wind to Shake the World: The Story of the 1938 Hurri-
cane. Beverly, Mass.: Commonwealth Editions, 2006.
Burns, Cherie. The Great Hurricane—1938. New York: Atlantic Monthly
Press, 2005.
Cummings, Mary. Hurricane in the Hamptons, 1938. New York: Arca-
dia, 2006.
Goudsouzian, Aram. The Hurricane of 1938. Beverly, Mass.: Common-
wealth Editions, 2006.
Minsinger, William Elliott, comp. and ed. The 1938 Hurricane: An His-
torical and Pictorial Summary. East Milton, Mass.: Blue Hill Observa-
tory, 1988.
Scotti, R. A. Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938. Boston: Little,
Brown, 2003.
Vallee, David R., and Richael P. Dion. Southern New England Tropical
Storms and Hurricanes: A Ninety-Eight-Year Summary (1909-1997).
Taunton, Mass.: National Weather Service, 1998.

614
■ 1946: The Aleutian tsunami
Tsunami
Also known as: The April Fools’ Day Tsunami
Date: April 1, 1946
Place: Primarily Hilo, Hawaii
Result: 159 dead in Hawaiian Islands (179 dead total), $25 million
in damage on Hawaiian Islands

I t was 7 a.m. on the morning of April 1, 1946, at Hilo, on

the northeast coast of the big island of Hawaii, which is at
the southeast end of the Hawaiian Island chain. Locally based ship pi-
lot and U.S. Navy Captain W. Wickland was on the bridge of a ship
moored in Hilo Bay. Sea level in the port began falling and rising and
repeated this pattern twice more—much faster than would happen
with any normal tidal variation. Then, as he would later report, “I
looked out and saw what looked like a low, long swell at sea; way out,
but coming in awfully fast. Seemed like three separate waves, each be-
hind the other, came together in one monster wave. I was on the up-
per bridge, some 46 feet above the waterline. That wave was just
about eye-level and probably two miles long.”
The Origins of the Tsunami. A tsunami was rapidly but stealth-
ily approaching Hilo and was about to wreak destruction. It had origi-
nated with an earthquake under the seafloor, which itself was at a
depth of about 13,123 feet (4,000 meters) at the Aleutian trench. Its
epicenter was about 81 miles (130 kilometers) southeast of Unimak
Island, the latter being at the western end of the Alaskan peninsula.
At the epicenter, with location 52 degrees 80 minutes north latitude
and 162 degrees 50 minutes west longitude in the North Pacific, the
seafloor disturbance had generated a sea wave that was now spread-
ing outward in all directions.
The earthquake, having a magnitude of 7.4, occurred at 1:29 a.m.
local time. Within several minutes, the long-length wave had grown
in height as it rapidly approached the shallowing shore of Unimak Is-
land, and a wave 98 feet (30 meters) high crashed onto the coast. It
destroyed a lighthouse at Scotch Cap that was 32 feet (10 meters)

615
1946: The Aleutian tsunami

above sea level, killing the 5 inhabitants. The tsunami wave was also
spreading southward. In the open, deep ocean, the distance between
wave crests is typically greater than 62 miles (100 kilometers), the am-
plitude (wave height) about 3.3 feet (1 meter), and speed about 373
to 497 miles (600 to 800 kilometers) per hour; 497 miles (800 kilome-
ters) per hour is about the speed of a jet airliner.
Four and a half hours after the earthquake, the waves were ap-
proaching the Hawaiian Islands, 2,400 miles (3,900 kilometers) to
the southeast. As the seafloor shallows toward shore, the wave speed
typically slows to perhaps 30 miles per hour and the amplitude of the
wave crests builds dramatically.
Hilo. It was now about 7 a.m. local time—Hawaii being in the ad-
jacent time zone to the east of Unimak Island. The first wave of the se-
quence emptied the harbor of water at Hilo Bay, so that ships were
now unexpectedly sitting on the newly exposed seafloor amid the
coral reefs and some floundering fish. Then the large crest returned,
uprooting and slamming the seaside buildings inland and against
other buildings, taking out 7,500 feet of a 10,000-foot-long breakwa-
ter. With a great sucking sound it retreated out to sea, carrying with it
much debris and several people. Twice more this process of retreat
and destructive return was repeated. According to Captain Wick-
land, this tsunami had a crest that “broke, and tore up everything it
touched. Some Coast Guard boats flew by, and a yacht was thrown up
to the main highway. Every structure, building, and piece of equip-
ment on shore seemed to take off.”
The Aftereffects. One-third of the town of Hilo vanished. The
steel span of a railroad bridge across the Wailuku River was swept 328
feet (100 meters) inland. Heavy masses of coral were ripped up from
the usually submerged reefs and strewn onto the beaches. The height
of the tsunami waves had been from 23 to 32 feet (7 to 10 meters) at
Hilo, as much as 59 feet (18 meters) locally elsewhere on the coast of
the island of Hawaii, and up to 39 feet (12 meters) on the island of
Oahu to the northwest. Hilo reported 96 dead, and another 63 were
killed in other parts of the Hawaiian Islands—a total of 159. Twenty-
six of the total died at the village of Laupahoehoe, about 25 miles (40
kilometers) up the coast northwest of Hilo, where the tsunami de-
stroyed a schoolhouse and killed the 25 students and their teacher in-
side. Property damage in Hawaii was estimated to be $25 million.

616
 1946: The Aleutian tsunami

Kapaa
Kekaha Kalaheo Lihue H AWA I I
KAUAI
P a c i f i c O c e a n
NIIHAU OAHU

Honolulu MOLOKAI

Kaunakakai
Napili-Honokowai
Wailuku MAUI
Lahaina Kahului
Lanai Makawao
Pukalani
Kihei
LANAI

KAHOOLAWE

HAWAII

Hilo
Captain Cook

Twenty other persons died elsewhere from this tsunami; many of the
deaths in Hawaii occurred when people—not aware that a tsunami
was in progress—went down to the shore with curiosity after the first
wave’s water had withdrawn out to sea.
The following day in Hilo, bodies of a dozen people, recovered
from the sea or from the wreckage on shore, were laid along the side-
walk under blankets. In the words of local resident Kapua Heuer,
“You lifted the blanket to see if you could find those who you were
looking for. The stark terror in their eyes—they died in terror.”
The tsunami wave train continued spreading through the Pacific,
at close to 497 miles (800 kilometers) per hour. It arrived at Val-
paraiso, halfway down the coastline of Chile, eighteen hours after the
earthquake—and over 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) away from
the epicenter—and resulted in a shore wave that was still 6 feet (2 me-
ters) high. Tide gauges showed that the seismic sea waves were re-
flected back from Pacific coasts and hit the south side of Hawaii an-
other eighteen hours later, then sloshed around the Pacific basin for
the next couple of days.

617
1946: The Aleutian tsunami

Other Hawaiian Tsunamis. The Hawaiian Islands were hit by 7

tsunamis between 1924 and 2000, having waves at least 16 feet (5 me-
ters) high. This includes the very early hours of May 23, 1960, when
an earthquake the previous day off the coast of Chile generated a tsu-
nami that resulted in waves at Hilo up to 23 feet (7 meters) high; 61
persons were killed, and 229 buildings were destroyed or severely
damaged. On November 29, 1975, an earthquake of magnitude 7.2
on the island of Hawaii, 28 miles (45 kilometers) south of Hilo, cre-
ated enough seafloor disturbance to produce waves up to 13 feet (4
meters) high at Hilo.
Tsunami-prone areas can reduce potential property damage by re-
stricting building in low-lying coastal areas or at immediate portside.
Hilo, after the destructive tsunamis of 1946 and 1960, limited com-
mercial structures near the harbor. The area has been converted to a
waterfront park that helps serve as a natural buffer for future high
waves.
Warning Systems. The best means of reducing danger and losses,
particularly of life and injury, would be adequate warning of an on-
coming seismic sea wave that could grow into a destructive tsunami.
This shore-impacting growth into one or more walls of water depends
in part on the local seafloor topography (bathymetry) and on the
shoreline’s shape and orientation with respect to the wave. Such a
warning system is now in place for the Pacific region. In 1948, after the
destructive Aleutian-generated tsunami that hit Hawaii in April, 1946,
the U.S. government set up a Seismic Sea Wave Warning System. It is
now known as the Pacific Tsunami Warning System and is adminis-
tered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA). With coordination and data processing at a Pacific Tsunami
Warning Center in Honolulu, it quickly activates when any of its 30
participating seismic observatories, which are located around and on
islands throughout the Pacific basin, detect an earthquake or other
disturbance that could potentially generate a spreading tsunami. An-
other 78 stations have tide gauges for monitoring unusual changes in
sea level, in order to detect a tsunami as it passes by. If such a wave is in-
deed spreading, an alert is issued, with prediction of arrival times, to
Pacific nations, islands, and territories in the region.
The Warning System can typically issue a reliable Pacific-wide
warning in about an hour after the occurrence of the source (such as

618
 1946: The Aleutian tsunami

an earthquake or volcanic eruption). This allows notice of an ap-

proaching tsunami for locations more than 466 miles (750 kilome-
ters) from the source, because the wave train travels at about 750
miles per hour. This is adequate for trans-Pacific sites, as the tsunami
travel time from, for example, Chile to Hawaii is about fifteen hours,
and from the Aleutians to Northern California is about four hours.
The first use of the Warning System was on November 4, 1952,
when an earthquake, detected as occurring off the Kamchatka Pen-
insula of eastern Russia, created a spreading sea wave. The Honolulu
center predicted a time of arrival at the Hawaiian Islands about six
hours from the time the earthquake occurred. People were evacu-
ated inland, and ships or small boats were taken out to sea to ride out
the subdued waves far offshore, and no lives were lost.
There are now regional systems of more localized monitoring sta-
tions and rapid data analysis, which give early cautionary warnings
about ten minutes or so after an earthquake. This can be timely in
reaching people and sites as close as 62 miles (100 kilometers) to a
potential tsunami source. Such regional systems are in place in Ha-
waii, Alaska, Japan, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and French Polynesia.
Before the Japanese regional system was established, there had been
more than 6,000 people killed by tsunami waves in 14 events; after
the system became operational, only 215 died from the next 20 tsu-
nami events.
Robert S. Carmichael

For Further Information:

Dudley, Walter C., and Scott C. S. Stone. The Tsunami of 1946 and 1960
and the Devastation of Hilo Town. Marceline, Mo.: Walsworth, 2000.
Dvorak, J., and T. Peek. “Swept Away: The Deadly Power of Tsu-
namis.” Earth 2, no. 4. (July, 1993): 52-59.
Judson, Sheldon, and Marvin E. Kauffman. Physical Geology. 8th ed.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1990.
Karwoski, Gail Langer. Tsunami: The True Story of an April Fools’ Day Di-
saster. Plain City, Ohio: Darby Creek, 2006.
Satake, Kenji, ed. Tsunamis: Case Studies and Recent Developments. New
York: Springer, 2005.
Shepard, F. P., G. A. Macdonald, and D. C. Cox. The Tsunami of April 1,
1946. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950.

619
■ 1947: The Texas City Disaster
Explosion
Date: April 16, 1947
Place: Texas City, Texas
Result: 581 dead, 3,500 injured, 539 homes damaged or destroyed,
$100 million in property damage in explosion of the freighter
Grandcamp

V arious cargoes, including sisal twine, peanuts, cotton,

tobacco, small arms ammunition, and ammonium ni-
trate fertilizer were being loaded into the French Liberty ship
Grandcamp as it lay alongside a pier at Texas City, Texas. Under cer-
tain conditions, ammonium nitrate can explode violently, but this
fact was not widely known at the time. As a result, the longshoremen
loading the ship failed to take proper precautions as they handled
this dangerous cargo. Smoking was forbidden, according to signs
posted on the dock and on the ship, but this rule was often violated.
The longshoremen not only often smoked while working in the
ship’s hold but also sometimes laid lighted cigarettes down on the pa-
per bags containing fertilizer. On April 14, two days before the disas-
ter, a cigarette started a small fire among the bags. Luck was with the
workers that day, and the fire was put out quickly.
Events Leading to the Explosion. On the morning of April
16, 1947, longshoremen resumed loading ammonium nitrate into
hold number 4 of the ill-fated ship. About 2,300 tons had already
been loaded on previous days. Shortly after loading resumed at 8 a.m.
someone saw smoke. It appeared to be coming from several layers
deep in the hold. First the men poured a gallon jug of drinking water
on the fire. Next, two of the ship’s fire extinguishers were discharged.
Unfortunately, neither of these measures did much good. A fire hose
was lowered into the hold, but the captain refused to turn on the
water because he knew the water would ruin the cargo. As a precau-
tion the captain instructed the longshoremen to remove the small
arms ammunition from hold number 5.
As the fire worsened the workers left the hold, and the hatch cov-

620
 1947: The Texas City Disaster
Missouri
Enid
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Santa Fe
Arkansas
Oklahoma City
Amarillo
Albuquerque

New Mexico
Wichita Falls
Lubbock

Fort Worth
Dallas
Kilgore
Abilene Shreveport
Midland New London

Lo
u
El Paso Odessa TEXAS

isi
Waco

an
San Angelo

a
Austin Beaumont
Houston Port
Arthur
San Antonio Texas City
Galveston
Victoria

Chihuahua

Mexico Corpus Christi

Laredo

Gulf of

McAllen Mexico
Reynosa
Brownsville
Matamoros
Monterrey
Saltillo

ers were reinstalled. This meant laying long wooden boards across
the deck opening and covering them with tarpaulins. The ventilating
system that circulated fresh air through the hold was turned off, and
the steam-smothering system was turned on. Steam was admitted to
the hold in the hope that it would displace all air and deprive the fire
of the oxygen it needed. This did not work, because ammonium ni-
trate contains oxygen in its molecules. This oxygen is released as the
fertilizer decomposes during a fire.
As steam pressure built up in the hold, it blew off the hatch covers
at about 8:30 a.m. A photograph of the scene shows a fire hose spray-
ing water onto the ship at about 8:45. Flames erupted from the open
hatch around 9:00; at 9:12 there was a tremendous explosion that was

621
1947: The Texas City Disaster

heard as far as 150 miles away. Two small airplanes flying overhead
were knocked out of the sky. A wall of water 15 feet high surged across
the harbor and carried a large steel barge up onto dry land. Everyone
still aboard the ship and in the immediate area on the dock was killed
instantly. The ship’s anchor, which weighed 1.5 tons, was later found
about 2 miles from the site of the explosion.
Results of the Blast. Near the port area in Texas City were oil
refineries, petroleum tank farms, and the Monsanto Chemical Com-
pany. Red-hot pieces of the exploding ship caused widespread dam-
age at these facilities. Tanks of highly flammable chemicals exploded
at various locations ashore. A residential area, inhabited mostly by
poor African Americans and Hispanics, was just half a mile from the
ship. Many homes in this area were damaged or destroyed, and many
people were killed and injured.
The Monsanto plant was only about 350 feet from the explosion
site; three-quarters of this facility was heavily damaged or destroyed.
Monsanto’s steam plant and powerhouse were destroyed. There were
574 people working at Monsanto that day. Of these, 234 were killed
immediately or died of their injuries, and another 200 were injured.
Half of Texas City’s firefighters, including its chief, and all of its
firefighting equipment had been sent to fight the shipboard fire.
These personnel and their equipment were wiped out by the explo-
sion, seriously hampering efforts to extinguish the fires ashore.
Another Liberty ship, High Flyer, was tied up near Grandcamp. This
ship was also loading ammonium nitrate fertilizer. When Grandcamp
exploded, High Flyer was torn loose from its moorings and driven
across the harbor, where it lodged against the Wilson B. Keene. The
explosion killed one member of High Flyer’s crew. The others tied up
their ship to the Wilson B. Keene and climbed over that ship to a
dock. High Flyer’s hatch covers were blown off by the force of the ex-
plosion, which meant flying debris could fall into its holds and start
fires.
Because the entire area was blanketed by heavy black smoke, offi-
cials were not aware that High Flyer was on fire. During the evening of
April 16, a Coast Guard vessel discovered the burning ship, but the
captain decided it was too dangerous to try to tow it out to sea. At
about 1 a.m. on April 17, High Flyer exploded with a force at least as
great as the earlier explosion of Grandcamp. It appears that 2 deaths

622
 1947: The Texas City Disaster

and 24 injuries resulted from this second explosion. Casualties were

relatively light because most people had left the port area.
Rescue Efforts. Texas City’s police chief, William Ladish, was in
his office when the first explosion occurred. He was knocked to the
floor by its force even though he was more than a mile from the ship.
The police radio was knocked out by the blast, so Chief Ladish ran to
the telephone exchange and called Captain Simpson of the Houston
Police Department. Telephone-company officials called the National
Guard and hospitals in Galveston and Goose Creek. Chief Ladish dis-
patched some of his men to set up roadblocks and some to assist the
rescue efforts on the docks.
Mayor Curtis Trahan issued a disaster declaration and ordered the
city’s health officer, Dr. Clarence Quinn, to set up first-aid stations.

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

The explosion of the freighter Grandcamp in Texas City, Texas. (AP/Wide World
Photos)

623
1947: The Texas City Disaster

Fred Dowdy, the assistant fire chief, was out of town when the explo-
sion occurred. When he returned, he took charge of what was left of
the fire department. George Gill and a group of volunteers from the
Carbide and Carbon Chemical Company, located at the edge of
town, rushed to the scene with firefighting equipment from their
plant. About two hours after the blast, officers and enlisted men from
the Galveston office of the Army Corps of Engineers arrived on the
scene with trucks and heavy equipment.
Texas City’s three medical clinics were immediately overwhelmed
with injured people in urgent need of medical care. The nearby city
of Galveston activated the part of its hurricane relief plan having to
do with emergency medical care. Galveston’s three large hospitals
and its Red Cross chapter were put on alert. Ambulances and city
buses assembled at the hospitals; doctors and nurses carrying medi-
cal supplies boarded these vehicles and were transported to Texas
City. An unused army hospital at Fort Crockett in Galveston was re-
opened and used to treat the wounded. More than 500 seriously in-
jured people were transported from Texas City to Galveston by ambu-
lance, bus, truck, taxi, and private car. About 250 were taken to
hospitals in Houston.
It was impossible to keep accurate records of the names of the in-
jured and where they were sent. As a result it was hours or days before
families knew whether loved ones who had been in the port area were
dead or alive. Both the Red Cross and Galveston radio station KGBC
tried to collect this information, but they met with little early success.
A variety of law enforcement personnel converged on Texas City to
help maintain order. The Texas Highway Patrol set up roadblocks.
Texas Rangers kept order within the city, and a Houston police captain
was responsible for order in the port area. Local police departments,
sheriff’s departments, and the state police also sent personnel.
Efforts to control the situation after the explosion were poorly co-
ordinated because there was no emergency plan for the port. Port of-
ficials, city officials, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Army, Red Cross, and
other organizations dispatched teams of people to help. Unfortu-
nately, these groups were unable to communicate with each other.
Telephones were knocked out by the explosions, and portable radio
communications were not compatible between groups. Although the
mayor of Texas City and the chief of police tried to establish a com-

624
 1947: The Texas City Disaster

mand center, they were unable to get a clear picture of the situation.
Each individual group of rescuers did what seemed best at the time,
and many heroic acts were performed, but no overall system of prior-
ities was established.
Cause and Effects. Certainly the immediate cause of the disas-
ter was careless handling of a very dangerous material, ammonium
nitrate. During World War II this chemical was produced and trans-
ported under the supervision of the U.S. Army, and it was used as an
explosive. The army insisted on very careful handling of the material.
When the war ended factories continued to produce ammonium ni-
trate and sell it as fertilizer. Army supervision ended, and the people
who handled the transportation of the fertilizer seem to have been
unaware of its danger. The U.S. Coast Guard, which is responsible for
the safety of ships, did not assume an active role. It appears that port
officials and ship’s officers did not know the potential for danger.
In the aftermath of the disaster some 273 lawsuits on behalf of
8,484 persons were filed against the United States government under
the Federal Tort Claims Act. These suits were consolidated into a sin-
gle case referred to as Dalehite v. United States. Early in 1950 Judge
T. M. Kennerly of the U.S. District Court, Southern Division of Texas,
found in favor of the people who sued. The judge’s opinion stated,

All of Said Fertilizer stored on the Grandcamp and High Flyer was man-
ufactured or caused to be manufactured by Defendant [the U.S. gov-
ernment], shipped by Defendant to Texas City, and caused or permit-
ted by Defendant to be loaded into such Steamships for shipment
abroad. . . . All was done with full knowledge of Defendant that such
fertilizer was an inherently dangerous explosive and fire hazard, and
all without any warning to the public in Texas City or to persons han-
dling same.

This decision was, however, overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court. In

1953 the Supreme Court voted four to three to uphold the action of
the Fifth Circuit Court. Clark Thompson, U.S. Representative for
Galveston, introduced a bill in Congress to compensate the victims.
Enacted in 1955 this bill resulted in payments of almost $17 million
to 1,394 individuals.
Perhaps some good came of this terrible event. It caused officials

625
1947: The Texas City Disaster

at many levels to reevaluate safety regulations and disaster plans. A

hospital was finally built in Texas City in 1949. The National Red
Cross, not satisfied with its ability to provide assistance to Texas City,
revised its entire disaster relief program. Refineries and chemical
plants upgraded their firefighting capabilities, and they entered into
mutual assistance agreements. In 1950 the Coast Guard established a
new port safety program, and in 1951 it reestablished the security
provisions for handling dangerous cargoes, which had been in effect
during World War II. These rules prohibited the handling of danger-
ous cargo near populated areas, required the stationing of trained
guards, and restricted welding, smoking, and the movement of mo-
tor vehicles when such cargo was being handled.
Texas City recovered quickly from the disaster. Most of the people
who fled were back in their homes within a few months. Retail busi-
nesses resumed normal operation, and many new homes were built.
Refineries and chemical plants were rebuilt, and the city’s popu-
lation grew steadily. Port operations resumed, but cargo loading
was limited to petroleum products. Ammonium nitrate was never
shipped through Texas City again.
Edwin G. Wiggins

For Further Information:

Barnaby, K. C. Some Ship Disasters and Their Causes. New York: A. S.
Barnes, 1968.
Chiles, James R. Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology—
an Inside Look at Catastrophes and Why They Happen. New York:
HarperBusiness, 2001.
Cross, Farrell, and Wilbur Cross. “When the World Blew up at Texas
City.” Texas Parade, September, 1972, 70-74.
Mabry, Meriworth, et al., eds. We Were There: A Collection of the Personal
Stories of Survivors of the 1947 Ship Explosions in Texas City, Commonly
Referred to as the Texas City Disaster. Texas City, Tex.: Mainland Mu-
seum of Texas City, 1997.
Minutaglio, Bill. City on Fire: The Forgotten Disaster That Devastated a
Town and Ignited a Landmark Legal Battle. New York: HarperCollins,
2003.
Stephens, Hugh W. The Texas City Disaster, 1947. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1997.

626
■ 1952: The Great London Smog
Smog
Date: December 5-9, 1952
Place: London, England
Result: More than 4,000 dead

T he city of London is situated along the valley created

by the Thames River. On the afternoon of Thursday,
December 4, 1952, a high-pressure air mass encompassed the
Thames Valley in which the city is located. Cold air moving westward
from the European continent displaced a warm air mass that had set-
tled over much of London, creating an inversion in the atmosphere
and trapping the gases created both by industry and by coal-burning
heaters in homes.
That evening the chill resulted in many Londoners piling extra
soft coal in their furnaces. The result was an increased buildup of
smoke, soot, and sulfur dioxide in the air. By the morning of the 5th,
a dense pall had settled over most of the city. As the day progressed,
the smog became so thick that public transportation was suspended,
even in the suburbs. Traffic backed up, and motorists began to aban-
don their cars. All river traffic came to a halt.
Because of the cold temperatures, most people continued to burn
coal fires in their homes, creating even more smoke and pollutants
in the now completely still air. By Sunday the 7th, the cover had be-
come so dense that sunlight could not even penetrate most areas.
The smog was situated over an area covering hundreds of square
miles; all traffic remained at a halt as visibility was reported to be less
than 5 yards on most roads. In addition to the difficulties in breath-
ing for many individuals, the heavy smog contributed to numerous
accidents. A commuter train ran over a gang of workmen, killing 2.
On Monday, December 8, two commuter trains collided near Lon-
don Bridge.
The first evidence for the deadliness of the smog came on Friday,
December 5. At the London livestock exhibition, it became necessary
to slaughter a prize heifer that began to suffocate from the soot-laden

627
1952: The Great London Smog

air. Other cattle were saved only when their owners placed over their
faces improvised gas masks made from whiskey-soaked grain sacks. By
that evening, physicians began to observe a sharp rise in patients suf-
fering respiratory distress, usually presenting as an irritating cough,
but sometimes including vomiting and black phlegm expelled while
coughing.
Hospital admissions rose to four times the normal level by the
third day of the smog. Coroners began to report a significant increase
in the number of deaths they were called to investigate; an unusual
number involved persons who were either sleeping or sitting quietly
while reading or sewing. On both Sunday and Monday, the reported
number of deaths in the city was triple the normal average.
By Tuesday the 9th, the smog began to lift as fresher air entered
the city. Nevertheless, delayed effects from the smog continued to re-
sult in an increase in the number of deaths. A conservative estimate
as to the total number of deaths directly attributable to the smog was
approximately 4,000. However, excess deaths continued for some
twelve weeks after the Great London Smog, and the total number of
dead may have reached as high as 8,000.
In response to the tragedy, London began to set in place a smog-
control program. The Clean Air Act, passed in 1956, allowed local
governments to take emergency measures to quickly deal with poten-
tial disasters. Coal as a source of heat was gradually replaced. Al-
though heavy buildup of smog would continue to occur at intervals,
the number of deaths that occurred in the 1952 disaster was never ap-
proached again.
Richard Adler

For Further Information:

Davis, Devra L., Michelle L. Bell, and Tony Fletcher. “A Look Back at
the London Smog of 1952 and the Half Century Since.” Environ-
mental Health Perspectives 110, no. 12 (December, 2002).
Dooley, Erin E. “Fifty Years Later: Clearing the Air over the London
Smog.” Environmental Health Perspectives 110, no. 12 (December,
2002).
Lewis, Howard. With Every Breath You Take: The Poisons of Air Pollution,
How They Are Injuring Our Health, and What We Must Do About Them.
New York: Crown, 1965.

628
 1952: The Great London Smog

Nagourney, Eric. “Why the Great Smog of London Was Anything but
Great.” The New York Times, August 12, 2003.
Wise, William. Killer Smog: The World’s Worst Air Pollution Disaster. New
York: Ballantine, 1970.

629
■ 1953: The North Sea Flood
Flood
Date: February 1, 1953
Place: The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Belgium
Result: 1,853 dead

A lthough the greater portion of the devastation wrought

by the North Sea storms and flooding of late January
to early February of 1953 occurred in the southwestern provinces of
the Netherlands, considerable damage and loss of life also took place
in the low-lying coastal regions of eastern Great Britain and coastal
Belgium.
The people of the Netherlands, though seasoned through a cen-
turies-old history of progress and setback in their struggle with the
North Sea and prepared for ordinary emergency situations, were
confronted in February, 1953, with an unprecedented set of circum-
stances that unleashed overwhelming natural forces on their coastal
defenses.
The Flood in Great Britain. By the early hours of January 30,
1953, an exceptionally severe atmospheric depression had developed
in the North Atlantic Ocean roughly 250 miles northwest of the Isle
of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. It gave rise to formidable gale
winds, which had moved into the North Sea by the morning of Janu-
ary 31 and had assumed a south-southeasterly course.
After having caused gale-force winds and high tides in Scotland
and along the Irish coast, the storm shifted to the northern sector of
the North Sea, pushing large masses of water southward. Such de-
pressions, with severe storms, are not an unusual occurrence in the
North Sea region. The difference in this instance was that, whereas
most depressions pass across the North Sea itself quite rapidly, the
1953 depression moved very slowly. This allowed the buildup of an
exceptionally massive amount of water that, driven southward by the
gale winds and coinciding with the high, seasonal spring tides, led to
an unforeseen calamity.
Along the coast of east England, gales were recorded at the high-

630
 1953: The North Sea Flood

est velocity up to that date for Great Britain—113 miles per hour. The
evening of January 31 and the morning of February 1, 1953, is when
most of the destruction and resultant deaths occurred.
In Great Britain the areas most devastated were the coastal regions
and the lowlands of the main river estuaries, stretching roughly from
the Humber in Yorkshire to the Thames, a distance of approximately
180 to 200 miles. Particularly vulnerable low-lying areas were totally
submerged, including the tourist resort towns of Mablethorpe and
Sutton-on-Sea, and nearly the entire Lincolnshire coast. Sea walls
were breached at Heacham, Snettisham, and Hunstanton, while
those at Salthouse, Cley, Great Yarmouth, and Sea Palling were
heavily damaged.
Massive evacuation was undertaken, with at least 32,000 individu-
als being removed, including virtually the entire population (13,000)
of Canvey Island in the Thames estuary and all the inhabitants of
Mablethorpe and Sutton-on-Sea along the coast. In Norfolk, east En-
gland, the Ouse River overflowed its banks, covering the historic
town of King’s Lynn with over 7 feet of water. Farther south, where
the Orwell River overflowed, Felixstowe was also inundated. In Suf-
folk, property damage was most extensive at the ferry port of Har-
wich, as well as at Tilbury, Great Wackering, and Jaywick Sands. Foul-
ness Island in Essex was completely submerged.
In the Thames region, severe pollution problems occurred when
the three major oil refineries at Coryton, Isle of Grain, and Shell-
haven suffered substantial damage. Spreading south down the Kent-
ish coast, the gales and tides submerged parts of Gravesend, Herne
Bay, Dartford, Margate (where the harbor lighthouse was destroyed),
and Birchington. Sheerness’s naval dockyard and facilities were also
rendered useless.
Aftereffects. On February 2, 1953, Prime Minister Winston
Churchill declared the storm to have created a state of “national re-
sponsibility.” Attempts at collecting relief funds and supplies for the
afflicted coastal and river areas were spearheaded by the London
Lord Mayor’s appeal fund, which raised some £5 million.
The death toll in Britain reached 307, 156,000 acres were flooded
(one-third of the total acreage went under salt water), and the total
for lost livestock—mainly cattle and sheep—was estimated in the
hundreds of thousands. About 500 residences were completely de-

631
1953: The North Sea Flood

molished and another 25,000 damaged. Monetary loss through dam-

age was estimated at between £40 and 50 million.
On March 5, 1953, a special committee under the chairmanship
of Lord Waverly was appointed to investigate the causes for the catas-
trophe and issue recommendations. The Waverly Committee re-
leased its findings and recommendations in August of 1953. The de-
cision was made to implement an early gale warning system along the
east coast to be in effect from September 15 to April 30 each year.
The tragedy led to the passage of the Coastal Flooding (Emer-
gency Provisions) Act on May 20, 1953. Special river boards through-
out the east coast were appointed and then granted extraordinary
powers in case of emergency. The minister of agriculture was further
granted the authority to compensate and otherwise provide relief to
farmers and farm families whose property had sustained damage as
the result of flooding.
The Flood in Belgium. In Belgium between January 30 and 31,
1953, the same tidal storm caused 22 deaths and wreaked devastation
in the low coastal plain between the ferry port of Ostend and the
Dutch border. The Schelde River overflowed its banks, breaking the
dike at Antwerp and flooding a part of the metropolitan area. Massive
damage was inflicted upon the town and harbor of Ostend as well as
Zeebrugge, where the lock of the sea canal was battered. Although
the dikes at Malines were breached, damage to the town itself was not
as extensive as elsewhere. The greater proportion of the domiciles in
the towns of Knokke, Blankenberge, and La Zoute were heavily dam-
aged.
The disaster in Belgium had serious political repercussions as
King Baudouin had made a trip to the French Riviera in order to re-
cuperate from a bout with influenza. His absence during a time of na-
tional emergency was much resented and vehemently criticized in
the Belgian press. The royal family, and the monarchy itself, were in
considerable jeopardy in the wake of the 1951 abdication crisis cen-
tering around former king Leopold III. The political atmosphere was
so charged that King Baudouin felt compelled to return for a three-
day tour of the devastated area before going back to the Riviera on
February 12.
The Netherlands. By far the most massive blows dealt by this ca-
tastrophe fell on the Netherlands, which had been waging a contin-

632
 1953: The North Sea Flood

ual, centuries-old battle to reclaim its low-lying agricultural land (pol-

ders) from the North Sea and was particularly vulnerable to the
inroads of storm tides because of the large amount of land lying be-
low sea level. Of these, the spring tides had usually been the highest
and the most dangerous. Storm tide depredation had been a recur-
ring peril along the lower islands of Zeeland Province and the estuar-
ies of the Meuse, Rhine, Schelde, and Ijssel Rivers. The most destruc-
tive of these storm tides had occurred in 1421-1424, 1570, 1682, 1715-
1717, 1808, 1825, 1863, and 1916. The 1953 storm tide would surpass
all others since 1570 in the sheer scope and dimensions of its devasta-
tion.
The potential for future danger had been acknowledged in the
1930’s, when plans were formulated for the construction of a more
modernized series of protective dikes, dams, and bridges along the
estuaries of both the Schelde and the Meuse. These plans had been
interrupted by the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in June, 1940,
and the subsequent German occupation from 1940 to 1945. By 1953,
the construction schemes were virtually forgotten.
The combination of the delayed, northeasterly gale winds causing
the North Sea to rise to unprecedented levels and the spring tides led
to most of the inundation. Estimates of the dead and missing vary
slightly, but the figure of 1,524 is conventionally accepted (for a total
of 1,853 when tallied with the tolls for Britain and Belgium). An esti-
mated 988,400 acres of land were saturated, some 50,000 buildings
were destroyed or damaged, 89,000 to 100,000 individuals were evac-
uated, and 300,000 were left homeless. In monetary terms the dam-
age was estimated to have totaled 1.5 billion guilders. Nearly 6 per-
cent of the farmland in the Netherlands, mainly in the provinces of
Zeeland, Brabant, and South Holland, was left under water. The loss
of enormous numbers of cattle, chickens, and sheep brought forth
major concerns over the danger of epidemics caused by rotting car-
casses and wastes.
Almost entirely inundated were the islands Schouwen and Duive-
land, Overflakkee, Walcheren, Tholen, North Beveland, and South
Beveland. Flushing Town suffered flooding of up to 9 feet in its cen-
ter, after the sea wall had fractured in five separate places. The largest
urban centers effected were Rotterdam and Dordrecht, which had
extensive flooding in the outlying districts, though not in the center.

633
1953: The North Sea Flood

At Rotterdam, the Hook of Holland Canal was destroyed, as was the

Moerdijk Bridge.
North Holland Province sustained far less damage and loss of life
but nevertheless experienced substantial coastal flooding in resort
areas. The Netherlands’ largest and most popular seashore resort,
Scheveningen, was flooded, and much of its beach was temporarily
washed away.
As a general rule most of the fatalities occurred in situations
where either there was no warning or the reports of danger were
taken too lightly. Many remembered wartime flooding in 1944-1945,
which was not as severe as had been feared, and therefore down-
played the magnitude of the 1953 storm and underestimated the per-
ilous nature of their situation. The village of Goedereede (popula-
tion 2,000) proved to be a model of vigilance and cooperation. The
majority of the villagers fled to the upper rooms of their houses, re-
acted calmly, and assisted one another in the survival and evacua-
tion processes. Goedereede sustained no casualties as a result of the
tragedy.
Relief Efforts in the Netherlands. Relief efforts were di-
rected from the Zeeland center of Middelburg, which had escaped
the flooding, by the Dutch Red Cross through communications with
the local burgomasters (mayors) and other available authorities. The
speed and effectiveness of the assistance varied according to the de-
gree of damage and isolation of a given village or community. Heli-
copter units of the British Royal Air Force, the U.S. Air Force, and the
Swiss air force were sent in to assist the Dutch military in its rescue ef-
forts. Some 2,000 stranded individuals, many trapped on the roofs of
their houses, were rescued.
Ironically, the Dutch government, only days prior to the flooding
disaster—on January 27, 1953—had informed the United States gov-
ernment that the Netherlands had sufficiently recovered from the
ravages of World War II and had no further need for U.S. financial as-
sistance, thus terminating the Marshall Plan in that country. On Feb-
ruary 6, 1953, the Dutch requested a temporary resumption of U.S.
aid under the Marshall Plan to recoup from the storm-tide catastro-
phe. February 8 was proclaimed by Queen Juliana a day of official
mourning, and on February 16 the state of emergency was lifted.
In the wake of the disaster the schemes of the 1930’s were revived

634
 1953: The North Sea Flood

in the form of the Delta Plan. The Delta Commission, appointed to

recommend and accelerate improvements, rendered its report on
July 10, 1953. By the end of the year, setbacks in April and November
due to high tides notwithstanding, there had been remarkable prog-
ress made in the region’s recovery. The last of the breaches in the
dikes were closed in September, the Schouwensee Dike had been
raised 16 feet, and a mobile storm defense was set up at the mouth of
the Ijssel estuary, just east of Rotterdam. Reclamation of polderland,
augmented by the efforts of a motley collection of international stu-
dent volunteers and the use of concrete caissons of World War II vin-
tage, was completed by early December.
Raymond Pierre Hylton

For Further Information:

Lamb, Hubert. Historic Storms of the North Sea, British Isles, and North-
west Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
McRobie, A., T. Spencer, and H. Gerritsen, eds. “The Big Flood:
North Sea Storm Surge.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Soci-
ety of London A363 (2005): 1261-1491.
Pollard, Michael. North Sea Surge: The Story of the East Coast Floods of
1953. Suffolk, England: Terence Dalton, 1978.
“SEMP Biot #317: The Catastrophic 1953 North Sea Flood of the
Netherlands, January 11, 2006.” SEMP (Suburban Emergency Man-
agement Project). http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_317.html.
Studies in Holland Flood Disaster 1953. 4 vols. Washington, D.C.: Na-
tional Research Council, 1955.

635
■ 1957: Hurricane Audrey
Hurricane
Date: June 27-30, 1957
Place: Louisiana and Texas
Classification: Category 4
Speed: Maximum wind unofficially 144 miles per hour, officially 105
miles per hour
Result: More than 500 dead, about $150 million in damage

O n June 17, 1957, the U.S. Weather Bureau predicted

the hurricane season that year would begin early.
Only a week later, on Monday, June 24, the prediction came true, as a
tropical depression developed west of the Yucatán Peninsula in the
southernmost part of the Gulf of Mexico. At 10:30 that night, the
Weather Bureau issued its first advisory about the storm; at noon on
Tuesday, June 25, the wind having already reached hurricane speed,
the Weather Bureau declared a hurricane watch for the coasts of Lou-
isiana and Texas. By 4 p.m., Hurricane Audrey was moving north, its
rotating wind increasing in speed.
On Wednesday, June 26, at 10 a.m., the Weather Bureau issued a
hurricane warning, which said in part: “Tides are rising and will
reach 5 to 8 feet along the Louisiana coast and over Mississippi Sound
by late Thursday. All persons in low exposed places should move to
higher ground.” Although a revised warning, issued twelve hours
later, mentioned tides of 9 feet, many people of Cameron Parish, in
the marsh country of the southwest corner of Louisiana, thought
they could safely spend Wednesday night in their homes. Further-
more, adults from Acadia and other families that had long lived in
that part of Louisiana tended to think that their houses, built on
sandy ridges called chênières, stood on the “higher ground” to which
the Weather Bureau referred, because previous storms had not
flooded the houses; newcomers to the parish, however, generally
evacuated. When the families that had remained in or near the towns
of Cameron, Creole, and Grand Chenier tried to leave at dawn on
Thursday, June 27, rapidly rising water, combined with unexpectedly

636
 1957: Hurricane Audrey

early hurricane wind and rain, made driving away virtually impossi-
ble, and the disaster began for them before 8 a.m., the hour when the
eye of the hurricane reached the coast about halfway between the
town of Cameron and the Texas state line.
Height of Water. Before Audrey arrived in Cameron Parish, its
wind and the resultant waves of 45 or 50 feet in the Gulf of Mexico
had already sunk a fishing boat and capsized an oil rig. On shore, or
on what ordinarily would have been shore, it was not the wind di-
rectly, not even the several tornadoes generated by the hurricane,
but the storm surge—the high tide with huge waves—that caused the
most harm. For a shoreline at which normal tidal variation is small,
the tides produced by Audrey were enormous, reaching 10.6 feet
above mean sea level in Cameron itself, 12.1 feet on the beach due
south of that town, 12.2 feet at Grand Chenier, 12.9 feet near Creole,
and 13.9 feet midway between Creole and Grand Chenier. The on-
shore waves rose at times from 10 to 15 feet above the high-tide mark
and smashed almost every building in their path.
Although no other area suffered as much as Cameron Parish did
during Audrey, the hurricane brought flooding in Louisiana from
the Texas border in the west to the Delta of the Mississippi River in
the east. In western Louisiana, floodwaters reached as far north as
Lake Charles. Even in east Texas, located west of where Audrey’s eye
met land and generally less damaged by Audrey than southwest Loui-
siana, significant water damage occurred.
Property Damage. In Port Arthur, Texas, storm rain accumulat-
ing on the roof of a nine-story building led to massive structural col-
lapse. In Louisiana, a huge supply barge rammed into a storage tank
on land. The fishing schooner Three Brothers washed ashore, as did
many other vessels, including the shrimp boat Audry. At Grand
Chenier, the hurricane totally destroyed about one-tenth of the
houses; at Creole, it left only one building on its foundation; and in
Cameron, where about 3,000 people had lived before June 27, only
two buildings remained mostly intact—the parish courthouse, which
served as a shelter during the storm, and an icehouse, which served
briefly as a morgue in the storm’s aftermath.
Death, Survival, and Heroism. Because Cameron Parish was
rural, property damage was small in proportion to what it would have
been had Audrey struck a low-lying urban area like metropolitan New

637
1957: Hurricane Audrey

Orleans. What made Audrey especially horrible was the toll in hu-
man lives. Not since the hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas,
in 1900, had so many people in the western half of the U.S. Gulf
Coast died because of a tropical storm. Some people apparently died
alone, like thirty-five-year-old Harry Melancon of Broussard, Louisi-
ana, who happened to be driving an oil tanker truck in Cameron Par-
ish when Audrey arrived and whose body was not found for five
months. Others died after having taken what shelter they could with
members of their family; eight-year-old Thelma Jo Gibbs, whose body
was found in 1958, was one of those.
Some families lost only one member; others lost many. Eighteen
members of one family died after they had taken shelter in the home
of Robert Moore on the Front Ridge, southeast of Cameron. Ironic-
ally, some members of the family would have lived had they remained
in the house of Susan Rose Moore, Robert Moore’s mother, because
it remained intact. Robert Moore’s house, though newer, was swept
off its foundation and broken apart by the storm surge.
Among the men in Robert Moore’s house was Albert January,
whose story suggests the struggle and terror common as hurricane
victims fought for their own lives and those of their loved ones. When
the house broke apart, January, his wife, their three children (ages
eight, seven, and two years), and many other people held onto the
roof while it floated away. Three times waves shoved Mrs. January and
the children off, and three times Mr. January rescued them. A fourth
wave, however, proved deadly for Lucy LaSalle January and her chil-
dren, Arthur Lee, Annie Lee, and John Randall, when Mr. January’s
rescue effort failed.
The story of Dr. Cecil Clark presents a similar sorrow but another
kind of heroism. Thirty-three years old, Clark was the only physician
in Cameron, where he had charge of the Cameron Medical Center.
He and his wife, Sybil Baccigalopi Clark, a nurse-anesthetist, had five
children: John (eight years), Joe (seven years), Elizabeth Dianne
(three years), Celia Marie (eighteen months), and Jack Benjamin
(three months). John and Joe had spent Wednesday night at the
home of Dr. Clark’s mother in Creole; they survived Audrey the next
day by being tied to tree tops.
Meanwhile, early Thursday morning, to try to evacuate patients
from the twelve-bed hospital at the medical center, Dr. and Mrs. Clark

638
 1957: Hurricane Audrey

had left their three younger children at their presumably safe home in
the care of Zulmae Dubois, their housekeeper. Their trip thwarted by
rising water on the road, they returned, but Dr. Clark tried to go back
again, this time without his wife but with a neighbor. Still unable to get
through, Dr. Clark eventually had to ride out the storm in the con-
crete-block house of Mr. and Mrs. Philbert Richard, from which, after
the storm had abated, he waded amid debris to the courthouse and be-
gan long hours of treating hundreds of sick or injured persons, among
whom were the patients from the little hospital, whom nurses and dep-
uty sheriffs with boats had evacuated in Dr. Clark’s absence.

A common grave in Lake Charles, Louisiana, for un-

identified dead from Hurricane Audrey. (Library of
Congress)

639
1957: Hurricane Audrey

Not until Friday evening did Dr. Clark learn that his wife and their
two older children had lived through the disaster. Although knocked
unconscious momentarily, Mrs. Clark had swum and then drifted on
wreckage until people in a little boat had rescued her from driftwood
miles from where her house had stood. Late that night, during a
short respite at a friend’s home in Lake Charles, Dr. Clark learned of
the deaths of his three younger children and Mrs. Dubois, who had
all drowned when the waves destroyed the Clarks’ house. Despite his
own grief, he soon returned to Cameron to treat survivors. By late
1957, Dr. and Mrs. Clark had had the Cameron Medical Center re-
built, and in December the American Medical Association awarded
Dr. Clark a gold medal as “General Practitioner of the Year.”
Not all of Audrey’s more than 500 fatalities drowned. Some proba-
bly died of heart attacks under the stress of the storm, although the
exact number of heart-attack deaths will never be known because the
great number of dead bodies made performing routine autopsies vir-
tually impossible. Similarly, some people probably died from snake-
bites, although only one such case was confirmed. Seven-year-old
Steve Broussard, Jr., of Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish, immediately
east of Cameron Parish, survived the floodwaters that took the lives of
his sisters Larissa, Veronica, and Estelle when their house floated into
White Lake and then broke apart. In the dark of the morning of Fri-
day, June 28, however, while he was floating on a part of the roof of his
family’s home, one of the thousands of water moccasins dislodged
and infuriated by the hurricane crawled onto the wreckage and bit
him on the ear. Hours later, after his father had braved hundreds of
other snakes and fought off a maddened cow in an attempt to get
help, the child died on his way to a hospital in Abbeville.
Aftermath. Lessening in intensity as it moved inland, Audrey
nevertheless brought strong wind and much rain from the Gulf Coast
all the way up through the Ohio Valley states, New York, and New En-
gland and Canada. The storm damaged more property and caused
more deaths, including four in Canada, before it ended.
In the United States, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared
the severely affected communities disaster areas. In southwest Louisi-
ana, where the death toll was the worst, thousands of people joined in
an effort to rescue and comfort survivors; to find, identify, and bury
the dead; to retrieve sealed concrete tombs washed out of low-lying

640
 1957: Hurricane Audrey

cemeteries; to clear away the big, innumerable piles of debris; to

round up hungry and often hostile cattle and return them to their
owners; to restore telephone service, electricity, gas, and safe drink-
ing water; to rebuild homes and businesses; and to help victims re-
sume something resembling ordinary life.
Amid heat, mosquitoes, and water moccasins, rescuers searched on
foot and by boat for the living and the dead. Helicopters crisscrossed
the sky. Military personnel, including members of the Coast Guard
and the National Guard, were among the relief workers, as were men
and women from the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. Re-
sponding to reports that Audrey had impoverished some survivors,
Governor Earl Long pressured insurance companies into paying great
claims to Louisiana citizens for wind damage, despite the companies’
contention that the insured had no flood coverage and that it was
water that had caused most of the damage to homes and businesses.
Of the approximately 40,000 persons whom Audrey drove from
their homes, about 22,000 went to Lake Charles, where many stayed
at McNeese State College. In Lake Charles was the big, makeshift
morgue that replaced the original one at the icehouse in Cameron
and another one at a Lake Charles hospital. In shed 5 at the dock-
yard, hundreds of survivors walked calmly past the dead bodies
cooled with blocks of ice and tried to identify those whom they had
lost. The unidentified dead were eventually buried in special plots in
several cemeteries.
Only slowly did some grieving people accept their loss. For a time
after Audrey, one Cameron Parish resident reported, mothers would
go to the border of the marsh, listen to the calls of the nutria
(semiaquatic rodents), and hear in those mammalian sounds the
cries of their missing babies, victims of the storm.
Victor Lindsey

For Further Information:

“Disasters: Audrey’s Day of Horror.” Time, July 8, 1957, 12.
Harris, D. Lee. Hurricane Audrey Storm Tide. Washington, D.C: U.S.
Department of Commerce, Weather Bureau, 1958.
“In the Wake of Disaster.” Newsweek, July 8, 1957, 22-24.
Menard, Donald. Hurricanes of the Past: The Untold Story of Hurricane
Audrey. 2d ed Rayne, La.: Author, 1999.

641
1957: Hurricane Audrey

Post, Cathy C. Hurricane Audrey: The Deadly Storm of 1957. Gretna, La.:
Pelican, 2007.
Ross, Nola Mae Wittler, and Susan McFillen Goodson. Hurricane Aud-
rey. Sulphur, La.: Wise, 1997.
“Story of Hurricane Audrey—and the Warnings That Many Ig-
nored.” U.S. News & World Report, July 12, 1957, 62-63.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Descriptions of Hurricanes.” In His-
tory of Hurricane Occurrences Along Coastal Louisiana. Rev. ed. New
Orleans: U.S. Army Engineer District, 1972.

642
■ 1959: The Great Leap Forward
famine
Famine

Date: 1959-1962
Place: The People’s Republic of China
Result: Casualties so vast they can only be estimated at between 15
million and 50 million dead

T he greatest famine—and perhaps the greatest natural

disaster—in the twentieth century occurred virtually
unnoticed in the outside world. So tight was the control of informa-
tion coming out of the People’s Republic of China in the late 1950’s
that the Great Leap Forward famine was unpublicized. The starving
millions in China knew that something was wrong in their area, but
the national press was reporting on the spectacular success of the
government’s programs and acknowledging only food shortages due
to bad weather in some localities.
It is hard to say how much knowledge even the Chinese leaders had
of this tragedy. Surely the government knew that many of its citizens
were hungry, but the lack of a free press meant each leader had to rely
on limited personal experience or on government reports from village
to county to province to the capital that were inflated every step of the
way. In many cases, these reported on bountiful harvests, when the vil-
lagers had in fact already eaten the seed needed to plant the next
year’s crop before the onset of the harsh unproductive winter season.
One year the government reported total grain production of 375 mil-
lion tons when only about 200 million tons had been produced.
In the Great Leap Forward famine, the losses were so great not
even the numbers of victims—let alone their names—are known. So
far is the world from knowing the exact number of casualties that
they can be estimated only by a demographic analysis of the number
of “excess deaths.” Scholarly estimates of the number of deaths range
from a low of 15 million to a high of 50 million, a measure so impre-
cise as to give a range of deaths that could be off by a factor of 3 or as

643
1959: The Great Leap Forward famine

RUSSIA

M
KAZAKHSTAN an
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MONGOLIA lia
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on
KYRGYZSTAN M
Yining r

e
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In
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NORTH
Beijing
AFG. KOREA

Tianjin

Y e l l o w
SOUTH
PAK. r KOREA
e
CHINA i v Qingdao
R
Ye l l o w
Xi’an
Nanjing Sea
T
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i Salween e
Br b e Ri e
R i v e
ko

am t ve r
aput r Chengdu t z
ng

ra Riv g
er Lhasa n Wenzhon East
NE a
PA Y
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L Nanchang China
er

BHUTAN
Sea
INDIA BANGLADESH TAIWAN
Canton
Nanning
Hong Kong
Macao
MYANMAR VIETNAM
Haikou
Bay of LAOS
South
Bengal
China Sea
THAILAND PHILIPPINES

much as 300 percent. Thirty-five million people could have died with-
out any record of it.
Geography—both physical and human—contributed to this catas-
trophe. Since ancient times, China has been home to the world’s
largest population and today has well over 1.3 billion people, or
about a quarter of the world’s total population. China also has the
world’s third-largest land area—trailing only Russia and Canada.
This might seem to be adequate, but well over two-thirds of Chinese
land is virtually uninhabitable desert and mountains, so China must
feed 25 percent of the world’s people with only about 7 percent of the
world’s arable (farmable) land.
Even in good times, avoiding hunger in China is difficult. With so
large a land area, China has too much water (flooding) in some re-
gions and not enough water (drought) in others in any given year.

644
 1959: The Great Leap Forward famine

The key to a good national harvest is to have relatively fewer floods

and droughts than normal. In 1959-1961, the odds turned against the
Chinese in that a higher number than usual of both floods and
droughts occurred. The 1960 weather conditions are considered the
worst in twentieth century China.
Yet weather is only part of this story, and perhaps not even the
most important part. Some scholars attribute only 30 percent of the
catastrophe to the weather, reserving the brunt of the blame for
failed government policies. To the outside world, the late 1950’s anti-
Western Chinese Communist system seemed monolithic, and China

Food for starving Chinese is unloaded from a ship during the Great Leap
Forward famine. (National Archives)

645
1959: The Great Leap Forward famine

was thought to have only minor differences with its ally the Soviet
Union. In truth, there was a massive split between the two countries,
with corresponding differences among the Chinese leaders. They
were torn between a highly bureaucratized central planning system
recommended by the Russians and a chaotic, voluntaristic path rec-
ommended by China’s Communist Party leader, Mao Zedong.
While Mao’s plan seemed to prevail, conflicts marred its execu-
tion in many areas. Mao’s Great Leap Forward plan was supposed to
stimulate Chinese production so dramatically that China would over-
take the British in fifteen years by fostering an ongoing revolutionary
fervor among the Chinese. Many Chinese did respond enthusiasti-
cally, even accepting Mao’s idea that steel production could be stimu-
lated by having villages build backyard iron furnaces. This idea led
many to melt down perfectly good iron skillets and dismantle high-
quality steel train rails, throw them into backyard furnaces, and turn
out third-rate pig iron. While peasants were busy with this unproduc-
tive activity, they often failed to plant crops or to harvest ripe yields at
the right time, further compounding the catastrophe.
In reality, neither of the paths was suitable for the crisis China
faced. While industrial production slipped, grain production plunged
disastrously, to about 75 percent of the level before the Great Leap
Forward. Worse, much of this grain was siphoned off to pay for “aid”
the Chinese were receiving from the Soviets. This meant that the
grain available to feed the Chinese people became even less, expos-
ing those most at risk—the sick, elderly, and children—to the horrors
of this massive famine. The government’s policies clearly aggravated
this unprecedented natural disaster.
Richard L. Wilson

For Further Information:

Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine. New York: Henry
Holt, 1998.
Blecher, Marc. China Against the Tides. London: Pinter, 1997.
Christiansen, Fleming, and Shirin Rai. Chinese Politics and Society: An
Introduction. London: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996.
MacFarquhar, Roderick. The Coming of the Cataclysm, 1961-1966. Vol. 3
in The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1997.

646
 1959: The Great Leap Forward famine

_______. The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1960. Vol. 2 in The Origins of the
Cultural Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
Yang, Dali L. Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and In-
stitutional Change Since the Great Leap Famine. Stanford, Calif.: Stan-
ford University Press, 1996.
Zhao, Kate Xiao. How the Farmers Changed China: Power of the People.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.

647
■ 1963: The Vaiont Dam Disaster
Landslide
Date: October 9, 1963
Place: Belluno, Italy
Result: Almost 3,000 dead

D uring the early 1960’s a magnificent concrete dam

(Diga del Vajont) was constructed about 10 miles (16.2
kilometers) northeast of Belluno, an Italian town along the Piave
River. The dam spans the Vaiont gorge, an old glacial trough in the
heart of the spectacular Italian Alps. The area is within the southern
part of the majestic Dolomites of the northern Italian region. This re-
gion is characterized by near-vertical cliffs composed mostly of mas-
sive carbonate rocks. The dam, which cost approximately $100 mil-
lion to build, is 11 feet (3.4 meters) wide at the top and 74 feet (22.7
meters) wide at the base and stands 875 feet (265 meters) high at the
highest point. It was designed to create a large lake for the genera-
tion of hydroelectric power. The dam impounded a reservoir of
316,000 cubic feet (8,943 cubic meters) of water. The curved, thin-
arch dam still stands as an engineering marvel and a testament to hu-
manity’s ingenuity.
Downstream from the dam, the gorge intersects the Piave River
Valley near the mountain villages of Pirago and Longarone. Casso, a
small highland village, is along the northern edge of the valley on
Mount Pul. This farming community overlooks the Vaiont dam and
reservoir. Upstream from the dam, the village of Erto is situated
along the highland area of the Vaiont Valley.
Local Geology. The stratigraphic sequence in the area consists
mostly of Mesozoic rocks. The Jurassic Dogger epoch formation cre-
ates steep cliffs along the valley. These rugged rock walls consist
mostly of dolostone, a rock composed of the mineral dolomite, cal-
cium magnesium carbonate. The Dogger stratus is underlain by Tri-
assic rocks; the subjacent Cretaceous and Tertiary strata are com-
posed mostly of limestone but contain some argillaceous units. These
clay-bearing layers represent potential zones of weakness in the rock

648
 1963: The Vaiont Dam Disaster

SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
IA
EN
Belluno OV
SL
SER
CROATIA

BI
Milan

A
Turin Venice

Genoa
F RA

BOSNIA-
Bologna Ravenna HERZEGOVINA
CE
N

SAN
Pisa MARINO
Leghorn Florence
MONTE-
an Sea
uri NEGRO
L ig ITALY Adriatic
Corsica Sea
(FRANCE) Rome

VATICAN
CITY Naples Bari
Sa
rd

Ty r r h e n i a n
i ni
a

Sea

Palermo Ionian
Stra
it Sea
of Sicily
Si
ci
A ly
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AL

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MALTA

column. Limestone near the dam site has been weakened by solution
features, such as joint fissures, sinkholes, and underground caverns.
Structurally, the dam is situated along an east-west-trending asym-
metrical syncline designated the “Erto Syncline.” This fold plunges to
the east, or upstream. The limbs of the syncline dip from 25 degrees
to 45 degrees toward the Vaiont Valley. The steep dips and fractured
strata, as well as the weak layers within the stratal packet, render the
area landslide-prone. There is evidence of earlier slope failure at

649
1963: The Vaiont Dam Disaster

some places, and in 1960 a large slide block composed of 916,000 cu-
bic yards (700,000 cubic meters) of debris moved downslope from
Mount Toc into the reservoir. Although the slide did no significant
damage because of the low water level, it did alert local citizens and
scientists associated with the project to a potential problem. Geolo-
gists investigated the slide area and determined that it was part of a
much larger landslide block. The slide block was about 1.1 miles (1.8
kilometers) long and 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide. The total volume
of the block was estimated to be more than 787 million cubic feet
(240 million cubic meters), much larger than originally suspected by
engineers.
A landslide results from the movement of a mass of rock and soil
downslope in response to gravity. This movement can be either slow
or rapid. If infinitesimally slow, the movement may not be evident to
the casual observer but can be recorded by sensitive instruments
placed within the unstable mass. During 1960 and 1961 monitoring
stations within the slide at times recorded 10 to 12 inches (up to 25 to
30 centimeters) of creep per week; the rate of creep slowed to 0.5
inch (about 1 centimeter) per week during 1962 and 1963. This re-
duced level of creep led most scientists to the conclusion that the im-
minent danger of mass movement was probably over.
However, heavy rains occurred at times during the late summer
and early fall of 1963. This precipitation soaked into the slide area,
adding weight to the mass and hydrating some of the clay layers. Data
recorded at Erto indicated that more than 90 inches of rain fell in the
area from February to early October in 1962 and 1963. This excessive
rainfall was probably the trigger that led to the major disaster in the
area.
The Vaiont Disaster. On October 9, 1963, instruments within
the slide mass recorded as much as 32 inches (80 centimeters) of
movement per day. The creep rate had become dangerously high,
and people in local villages were warned of possible flooding. Ani-
mals grazing south of the reservoir probably sensed the movement
and abandoned the area a few days before the disaster. Late on the
evening of October 9, at 10:41 p.m., disaster struck. During a heavy
downpour, about 350 million cubic yards (270 million cubic meters)
of rock and soil slid off the flank of Mount Toc and moved at a rate of
68 miles per hour (30 meters per second) into the reservoir.

650
 1963: The Vaiont Dam Disaster

Initially, there was a loud noise and rush of air that caused damage
to some homes in Casso; water from the reservoir was lifted 792 feet
(240 meters) up the north slope of the gorge and more than 325 feet
(100 meters) vertically above the top of the dam. The displaced water
rushed down the valley and entered the Piave River, where it moved
both upstream and downstream. The wave that flowed upstream en-
gulfed most of the town of Longarone. A photograph taken after the
flood shows almost total destruction of the southeast part of the vil-
lage. The strip along the river was swept clean of buildings and trees.
In less than five minutes the raging waters destroyed most of the vil-
lage and left more than 2,000 people dead. Some water was diverted
downstream along the Piave more than 1.4 miles (2 kilometers). In
the uppermost part of the reservoir the wave bypassed the town of
Erto but hit with full force the village of San Martino at the northeast
end. In all, nearly 3,000 lives were lost, including engineers, techni-
cians, and workers living in barracks along the crest of the dam.
Aftermath. According to author Patrick L. Abbott, the event has
been called the world’s worst dam disaster. The final tragedy was
played out when the chief engineer of the dam project, Mario
Pancini, packed his bags for a trip to court at L’Aquila in southern It-
aly and “taped the cracks around the doors of his Venetian room and
turned on the jets of his gas range.” The dam stands today not only as
a stark monument to humankind’s engineering expertise but also as
a grim reminder of its ineptness in selecting a geologically safe site
for construction.
Donald F. Reaser

For Further Information:

Abbott, Patrick L. Natural Hazards. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown,
1996.
Coch, Nickolas K. Geohazards. New York: Prentice Hall, 1995.
Kiersch, G. A. “The Vaiont Reservoir Disaster.” In Civil Engineering,
Vol. 34. New York: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1964.
McCully, Patrick. “When Things Fall Apart: The Technical Failures of
Large Dams.” In Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large
Dams. New York: Zed Books, 2001.
Montgomery, Carla W. Environmental Geology. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C.
Brown, 1989.

651
■ 1964: The Great Alaska
Earthquake
Earthquake

Also known as: The Good Friday Earthquake, Black Friday

Date: March 27, 1964
Place: Alaska
Magnitude: 8.3-8.6, possibly as high as 9.2
Result: 131 dead, $500 million in damage

T he 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake was one of the high-

est in magnitude ever recorded, between 8.3 and 8.6
on the Richter scale. This magnitude has since been revised to 9.2,
making it the strongest earthquake ever recorded in North America.
It released as much as eighty times the energy of the 1906 earthquake
of San Francisco. The quake took place 125 miles below the earth’s
surface but near the shore, so that most of the damage was caused by
waves heaving up onto the land and sweeping away whatever was in
their path.
Reasons for the Earthquake. Normally the Pacific Plate moves
in a northwesterly direction at a rate of about 5 to 7 centimeters per
year. The continents, the ocean basins, and everything else on the
surface of the earth move along on these plates that float on the un-
derlying convecting material. However, where the plates come to-
gether, as is the case in southern Alaska, the movement causes the
earth’s crust to be compressed and warped, with some areas being de-
pressed and others uplifted.
As far as scientists can understand, in 1964 the Pacific Plate
subducted, or slid under, the North American Plate at the head of
Prince William Sound, 56 miles (90 kilometers) west of Valdez and 75
miles (120 kilometers) east of Anchorage. It caused the earth under
the water in the harbor to split open and crack. A tsunami, or harbor
wave, resulted. Water rushed in at great force to fill the open areas
and was pushed up by the section of the seafloor that was uplifted. In
the Alaska earthquake, 100,000 square miles of earth uplifted or

652
 1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake

Arctic Ocean

Barrow
Beaufort Sea

Chukchi Sea

Northwest
Territories
Russia ALASKA
Fairbanks
Nome

Yukon
Anchorage Valdez
Whitehorse
Seward

Bering Sea British

Juneau
Kodiak Columbia
Gulf of Sitka Petersburg

Alaska

Pacific Ocean

dropped. Areas north and northwest of the epicenter subsided as

much as 7.5 feet. Areas south and southeast rose, over wide areas, as
much as 6 feet. Locally, the uplift was much greater: 38 feet on
Montague Island and more than 50 feet on the seafloor southwest of
the island. The Homer Spit and all the coastline of the Kenai Penin-
sula sank 8 feet. Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay protected Seward, but
the Seward area dropped 3.5 feet. Tsunamis devastated every town
and village along the outer coast and the Aleutian Islands. Also, hori-
zontal movements of tens of feet took place in which the landmass
moved southeastward relative to the ocean floor, moving more earth
farther than any other earthquake ever recorded, both horizontally
and vertically. The area of crustal deformation stretched from Cor-
dova to Kodiak Island. Beginning in Prince William Sound, it moved
toward Kodiak at 10,000 feet or about 2 miles per second. The shock
was felt over a range of 50,000 miles.
The strong ground motion caused many snowslides, rockfalls, and
landslides both on land and on the ocean floor. It smashed port and
harbor facilities, covered plants and salmon beds with silt, disturbed
and killed salmon fry, leveled forests, and caused ocean saltwater to
invade many coastal freshwater lakes. In areas where the land sank,
spawning beds, trees, and other vegetation were destroyed. In areas

653
1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake

where the seafloor rose, marine animals and plants that need water
for survival were forced above ground.
It is thought that the duration of the quake was three to four min-
utes; however, no seismic instruments capable of recording strong
ground motion were in Alaska at the time. The quake served as a test
of manufactured structures under extreme conditions and as a guide
to improvements in location and design.
An earthquake sends out waves known as aftershocks. There were
52 large aftershocks in Alaska, which continued for a year after the
quake. The first 11 of these occurred on the day of the quake, and
9 more happened in the next three weeks. The aftershock zone
spanned a width of 155 miles (250 kilometers), from 9 miles (15 kilo-
meters) north of Valdez, for 497 miles (800 kilometers) to the south-
west end of Kodiak Island, to about 34 miles (55 kilometers) south of
the Trinity Islands.
Geography. South central Alaska and the Aleutian Islands com-
pose one of the most active seismic regions in the world. One thou-
sand earthquakes are detected every year in Alaska, thirty-seven of
which measure 7.25 or more on the Richter scale. Anchorage itself
rests on a shelf of clay, sometimes called “Bootlegger Clay,” named

A boat beached by the tsunami that followed the Great Alaska Earthquake. (National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

654
 1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake

for Bootlegger Cove, once a rendezvous for rumrunners. This clay as-
sumes the consistency of jelly when soaked with water. In 1959 the
U.S. Geological Survey cited a number of places along the bluffs of
Anchorage where the clay had absorbed water. However, people did
not attend to the report, and the geologists were referred to as “ca-
tastrophists” because they predicted a catastrophe where seemingly
there was none. When the quake hit, many homes and businesses, es-
pecially on the west side of city, sank out of sight.
Thanks to the Good Friday holiday, there were very few fishing
boats on the water at the time of the quake. However, one boat, the
Selief, had been sailing toward the harbor with $3,000 worth of Alas-
kan king crab in its hold. The captain of the ship heard warnings on
the radio, but, unable to avoid the tsunami, he found himself uplifted
by the waters and deposited about six blocks inland from the shore.
Another boat, a freighter, was docked in the harbor and unloading its
cargo in Valdez. When the quake hit, 31 men, women, and children,
who were standing by and watching, were swept away and killed by
the wave. The boat rose about 30 feet and then dropped, rose again,
and dropped. The third time it was able to get free from its mooring
and move out to sea. Two men died of falling cargo, and another died
of a heart attack.
Effects of the Earthquake. The Alaska earthquake has been
called the best-documented and most thoroughly investigated earth-
quake in history. Within a month, President Lyndon B. Johnson ap-
pointed a Federal Reconstruction and Development Commission for
Alaska, a commission that thoroughly researched every aspect of the
disaster. The committee divided itself into panels, each representing
the major disciplines involved in the data gathering: engineering, ge-
ography (human ecology), geology, hydrology, oceanography, biol-
ogy, and seismology. Each of these panels gathered scientific and
technical information.
Other prevention measures for the future included the establish-
ment of the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center (ATWC) in 1967, lo-
cated in Palmer. Strong-motion seismographs and accelerographs
were installed in Anchorage shortly after the quake. Risk maps for
Anchorage, Homer, Seward, and Valdez, based on extensive geologi-
cal studies, were prepared by the Scientific and Engineering Task
Force of the Reconstruction Commission and were used as a basis for

655
1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake

The Great Alaska Earthquake caused this bridge over the Cooper River to fall. (Na-
tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

federal aid to reconstruction and as guides to future builders.

The earthquake provided seismologists with a rich field of study,
but it also turned the nation’s attention again, and sharply, to the
problems of improving the elements of a national natural-disaster
policy: zoning and construction codes, prediction and warning sys-
tems, rescue and relief organizations, disaster data collection and
analysis, and disaster insurance and reconstruction aids.
There were 131 lives lost in the earthquake, a very small number
for so great a catastrophe. There are several reasons for this. First, the
earthquake happened on a holiday, when the schools were empty
and most offices were deserted. Second, it was an off-season for fish-
ing, so there were very few boats in the harbors. Third, there were no
fires in residential or business areas, and fourth, there was a low tide
at the time, which left some room for water to flow. Most people who
died were swept away by tsunamis, 16 of whom were in Oregon and
California. The extensive military establishment provided resources
that reduced the loss of life, eased some of the immediate suffering,
and restored needed services promptly.
The office of Emergency Planning, under the provisions of the
Federal Disaster Act, provided additional aid. This included transi-
tional grants to maintain essential public services, an increase in

656
 1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake

the federal share of highway reconstruction costs, a decrease in the

local share of urban renewal projects, debt adjustments on existing
federal loans, federal purchase of state bonds, and grants for a
state mortgage-forgiveness program. In all, the earthquake gener-
ated $330 million of government and private funds for rescue, relief,
and reconstruction.
Because Anchorage is the most populated and most developed
area in Alaska, most of the financial losses occurred there. A J. C.
Penney building was destroyed, and a Four Seasons apartment build-
ing, which was under construction and not yet occupied, totally col-
lapsed. Many other buildings were damaged beyond repair. The
Denali Theater on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage was showing a late
afternoon matinee when the entire building sank 15 feet. All the chil-
dren in attendance were able to crawl out, once the building stopped
shaking. Almost all the schools in Anchorage were demolished.
Railroads twisted, and a diesel locomotive was thrown 100 yards
from the track. Oil storage tanks at Valdez, Seward, and Wittier
ruptured and burned. Many bridges, ports, and harbor facilities were
destroyed. An incredible 75 percent of Alaska’s commerce was ru-
ined—$750 million worth. A landslide at Turnagain Heights de-
stroyed about 130 acres of residential property, including 75 houses.
Another landslide at Government Hill caused severe destruction.
A wide area outside the state of Alaska also felt the effects of the
quake. Buildings in Seattle, 1,000 miles away, swayed. The tsunami hit
Vancouver Island, California, Hawaii, and even Japan. Water levels
jumped abruptly as far away as South Africa; shock-induced waves
were generated in the Gulf of Mexico. An atmospheric pressure wave
was recorded in La Jolla, California. The day became referred to as
Black Friday, because of the death and destruction.
Winifred Whelan

For Further Information:

Cohen, Stan. 8.6: The Great Alaska Earthquake March 27, 1964. Mis-
soula, Mont.: Pictorial Histories, 1995.
Herb, Angela M. Alaska A to Z: The Most Comprehensive Book of Facts and
Figures Ever Compiled About Alaska. Bellevue, Wash.: Vernon, 1993.
Hulley, Clarence C. Alaska: Past and Present. Portland, Oreg.: Bins-
fords & Mort, 1970.

657
1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake

Lane, Frank. The Violent Earth. Topsfield, Mass.: Salem House, 1986.
Murck, Barbara W., Brian Skinner, and Stephen C. Porter. Dangerous
Earth: An Introduction to Geologic Hazards. New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1997.
National Research Council Committee on the Alaska Earthquake.
The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964. Vols. 1 and 2. Washington,
D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1969-1970.
Paananen, Eloise. Earthquake! The Story of Alaska’s Good Friday Disaster.
New York: John Day, 1966.
Ward, Kaari, ed. Great Disasters: Dramatic True Stories of Nature’s Awe-
some Powers. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader’s Digest Association, 1989.

658
■ 1965: The Palm Sunday Outbreak
Tornadoes
Date: April 11, 1965
Place: Parts of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wiscon-
sin across a path 350 miles long and 150 miles wide
Classification: 2 tornadoes—in Elkhart, Indiana, and Strongsville,
Ohio—estimated as definitely F5; 17 of the other 49 tornadoes es-
timated as F4 or F5
Result: 271 dead, 3,148 injured, more than $200 million in damage

T he Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of April 11, 1965,

was the most devastating, until that time, in the United
States. As of 2006, it was second in size and destruction to the 1974
Jumbo Outbreak. The Palm Sunday disaster resulted when a mass of
cold dry air rapidly moving down from western Canada collided with
a mass of warm moist air moving up from the Gulf of Mexico. The col-
liding air masses produced large storms in Texas and Oklahoma,
which grew in intensity as they rapidly moved northeast. These
storms followed an unusually intense jet stream that took them to the
upper Midwest.
A Pleasant Sunday. In the six states that were struck in the Mid-
west, it was a warm and balmy Palm Sunday. It seemed like a good day
for puttering in the garden or preparing for Easter celebrations.
However, it was obvious to some weather experts that conditions were
also ideal for the formation of tornadoes, a fact that troubled the U.S.
Weather Bureau early that morning. Consequently, tornado warn-
ings were issued throughout the morning. Yet many radio and televi-
sion stations were closed for Palm Sunday or had a skeletal staff. The
forecasts were not widely or adequately communicated.
Investigations after the tornado revealed that most areas had be-
tween thirty-five minutes and five hours of warning time, a situation
that revealed an additional problem. The public was slow to react and
dulled by the numerous tornado watches in “Tornado Alley.” Also,
many were outside enjoying the warm spring temperatures on a
balmy Palm Sunday and were away from their radios. Lack of ade-

659
1965: The Palm Sunday Outbreak

quate communication and lack of response was underscored by gov-

ernment investigators as a major cause of the high fatality rate.
Devastation. The first small tornado struck at 1:20 p.m. south of
Dubuque, Iowa. An hour later six other tornadoes were reported in
Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois. By 3:15 weather forecasters in Chicago
were able to see a 100-mile-long line of thunderstorms stretching
from De Kalb, Illinois, to Madison, Wisconsin, with tornadoes, and
even colonies of tornadoes, spewing forth. One tornado near Crystal
Lake, Illinois, leveled the Crystal Lake Shopping Center and Colby
Estates housing subdivision, wreaking havoc on a path 1 mile wide
and 10 miles long.
The scene was repeated throughout the day. Fifty-one tornadoes
over a twelve-hour period occurred along a path 300 miles long and
150 miles wide, leaving 266 dead. More than half of the dead were in
Indiana. In Russiaville, Indiana (population 1,200), every building
was damaged, while in Goshen over 100 trailers were crushed into
masses of torn metal. Lower Michigan also was hit hard. Two power-
ful tornadoes tore through Branch, Hilsdale, Lenawee, and Monroe
Counties, killing 44 and causing more than $32 million in damage.
Half an hour apart, the tornadoes followed a similar course. Ohio
was the third state to bear the brunt of the tornadoes. Devastation
was particularly severe south of Cleveland in Strongsville, Ohio. Near
Toledo, 370 homes were destroyed along a 10-mile path. Every home
in Toledo’s Creekside neighborhood was destroyed.
Most tornadoes result in stories of miraculous escapes and pitiful
tragedies. In the Palm Sunday tornado there were a number of fortu-
itous escapes. In Crystal Lake, insurance man Charles Swanson was
sucked out of his shower and into the street as his house crashed in
around him. Seventeen-year-old Dan Avins was asleep at home near
Cleveland when the tornado hit; he awoke to find himself still in bed,
35 feet from his house. James Petro, Jr., an eight-month-old baby liv-
ing in Strongsville, was hurled 175 feet from his demolished house,
suffering only a black eye. Unfortunately another baby in Strongsville
was ripped from his mother’s hands, along with her wedding ring,
and sucked out of the house. Only the mother survived.
The Aftermath. In the aftermath of the destruction, President
Lyndon B. Johnson toured the devastation and walked among the
twisted steel and rubble of Dunlap, Indiana, which had been torn

660
 1965: The Palm Sunday Outbreak

apart by twin tornadoes. Federal disaster relief was issued rapidly, and
insurance agents swarmed into the wreckage. In general, insurance
companies received praise for the rapidity at which claims were paid.
Among the productive activities was the work of one weather expert
who traveled 7,500 miles in four days to make an aerial survey of the
tornadoes’ destruction. Professor Theodore Fujita of the University
of Chicago noticed from the air that tornado tracks paralleled each
other and seemed to move in clusters. Where one tornado destruc-
tion path would end, another would begin nearby. He also noticed cy-
cloidal marks in open fields, providing indications of a parent tor-
nado with rotating funnels attached to and revolving about the child
tornado. These observations helped piece together the Fujita scale of
tornado intensity, which has been in use since 1971 as a standard
means of classifying tornadoes.
The failure of the public to respond to what seemed to be ample
tornado warning was an issue seriously studied by National Weather
Service investigators. In succeeding years, recommendations for im-
proved telecommunications and siren warning systems were enacted
in many localities vulnerable to one of nature’s great cataclysms.
Irwin Halfond

For Further Information:

Bluestein, Howard. Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
“Disasters: Up the Alley.” Time, April 23, 1965, 29.
“First the Wind, then the Waters.” Newsweek, April 26, 1965, 25-26.
Grazulis, Thomas P. The Tornado: Nature’s Ultimate Windstorm. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Rosenfeld, Jeffrey. Eye of the Storm: Inside the World’s Deadliest Hurri-
canes, Tornadoes, and Blizzards. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
“When 35 Tornadoes Hit 6 States ‘Like Bombs.’” U.S. News & World
Report, April 26, 1965, 50-52.

661
■ 1966: The Aberfan Disaster
Landslide
Date: October 21, 1966
Place: Aberfan, Wales, United Kingdom
Result: 147 dead (116 children, 31 adults), 32 injured, a school and
8 houses destroyed

T he tightly knit mining village of Aberfan lies in the val-

ley of the Taff River, one of many steep-sided valleys
that cut through the mountains of Wales. The area had been the site
of coal mining for two hundred years. During that time, huge tips
(dumps or stockpiles) of mining waste, debris, and ashes piled up on
the mountain slopes. The coal mine that was served by the miners of
Aberfan had produced such tips, one of which was 700 feet high by
1966, after thirty years of continuous use, and which was being added
to by some 36 tons each day.
The coal mine in question, the Merthyr Vale Colliery, had been in
private hands until 1947, when, with the nationalization of the British
coal industry, it passed into the hands of the National Coal Board,
which then assumed responsibility for its working safety. The miners
came largely from the village of Aberfan and surrounding villages.
The younger children of the village attended Pant Glas Primary (Ele-
mentary) school, which was sited on Moy Road and lay directly under
the 700-foot tip. On the other side of Moy Road were houses. Be-
tween the foot of the tip and the back of the school lay a small farm
and the schoolyard.
Heavy rain had fallen in October of 1966, with almost continuous
rain on October 19 and 20. Tip workers had noticed some cracks at
the top of the tip, caused, it was believed, by the crane or derrick that
upended the waste trucks as they were hauled up from the colliery on
the valley floor. The crane was ordered moved back, which it was.
The Slide. The morning of Friday, October 21, was a dark, foggy,
damp morning. It was the last day for Pant Glas school before the
usual midterm break. The 7:30 a.m. shift at the colliery began as nor-
mal, with the tip workers setting out for the top. By the time they had

662
 1966: The Aberfan Disaster

Belfast U. K.

Dublin Liverpool Manchester

IRELAND
Birmingham
WALES
Waterford

Aberfan
London

English Channel

Atlantic
Ocean

reached it, around 9 a.m., and peered through the fog, they saw only
a crater in front of them. The whole side of the tip had slipped down
onto the school, the farm, and the houses opposite on Moy Road.
In fact, a solid wall of mud and sludge, made up of water, ash, and
coal waste, had crashed down on the school and other buildings and,
like an avalanche, engulfed and filled them, as well as demolished
parts of their structures. The resulting deaths were therefore as likely
to have been caused by suffocation as by the impact of falling debris
and collapsing buildings. At the same time, a black dust engulfed the
village.
The school itself was a solid Victorian brick edifice, two classrooms
in depth, consisting of an assembly hall, some six juniors’ classrooms,
and two infants’ classrooms. The landslide hit those juniors’ class-
rooms facing toward the tip, largely demolishing them. Those facing
Moy Road were less severely affected. The two infants’ classrooms, be-
ing at one end of the school, were largely undamaged. Opposite the
school, several houses had also been demolished. At one point, it was
estimated that the sludge lay 45 feet deep in the schoolyard.
The Children’s Experience. For the children attending the
school, at 9:15 a.m. assembly had just finished and classes had just be-

663
1966: The Aberfan Disaster

gun. One of the surviving children in one of the worst-affected class-

rooms described her experiences: They first heard a tremendous
rumbling sound; the whole school seemed to go dead, and everyone
was terrified. The sound grew louder and louder until they could see
the blackness descending outside the window. After that she was
knocked unconscious, waking to find her leg trapped and broken un-
der a huge radiator that had been ripped from the wall but which had
saved her from suffocation. Most of her classmates were not so fortu-
nate.
Another student described the landslide like water pouring down
the hillside. She saw two boys run right into it and be sucked away. It
hit the school like a huge wave, splattering everywhere, crushing the
buildings. Another child, the last one to be brought out alive, had
been completely buried but had managed to stick her fingers through
a gap and to call out.
Some surviving children suffered horrific injuries. One boy lost
three fingers and suffered a fractured pelvis and an injured leg. He
would have bled to death because of his internal injuries, but the
mud caked around him. As it was, his ear was ripped off and had to be
sewn back on. A few children were more fortunate. One fourteen-
year-old boy was late for school. He arrived just as the head teacher
was letting all the unscathed children go home.
The first rescuers, who included many of the mothers, climbed
through the windows and began to pass children back out. Hearing so
many cries, they worked frantically, deep in mud, which was up to 5
feet deep in some classrooms, trying to find those buried. Some of the
children managed to escape on their own. The rescuers did not dare
move anything, however, in case there was further collapse. Some of
the rescuers were themselves injured and needed hospital treatment.
As soon as the colliery was informed, the shift was halted and the
miners rushed to the scene, to be joined by other miners from a
nearby colliery. The slide was still moving, the fog on the valley floor
still persisted, and the road was narrow and a dead-end, so rescue
conditions were very difficult, though, in a community used to min-
ing disasters, never chaotic. The dead and injured had to be evacu-
ated, and the sludge had to be dug through and cleared to allow ac-
cess and to find bodies. Some 25 houses were evacuated by the police.
Engineers with heavy bulldozers were brought in to try to halt the

664
 1966: The Aberfan Disaster

flow of the slag, a move made more urgent by the fear of further rain.
However, by the time they arrived the chances of finding anyone else
alive were slim. In fact, the last person to be found alive was rescued at
11 a.m., less than two hours after the initial impact. Nevertheless, it
took a further six days to recover all the bodies. Many of the truck
drivers worked up to six hours at a time clearing the debris; some
miners worked for ten hours at a time. The police also joined in the
initial digging.
Of 254 children on the school roll, 74 had been declared dead by
the end of the first day. Another 2 children had been killed in the
farm, together with their grandmother. Eight other adults had been
identified as dead, including 3 teachers. About 36 people were in the
hospital, and some 80 people were still missing. The deputy head
teacher, Mr. D. Beynon, was found clutching 5 children in his arms,
dying as he tried to protect them. All of the 38 children in his class ap-
peared to have died. As badly affected was the senior class, those
studying for the examinations to gain entrance into high school,
where Mrs. M. Bates and 37 children had been killed. In the other se-
nior class, the teacher had been brought out safely, but some 27 chil-
dren were unaccounted for.
Immediate Aftermath. The engineers had been unable to halt
the flow of sludge on the first day. On the next day, Saturday, military
rescue units arrived. By the end of the day, the torrential flow of water
finally ceased its ferocity. At its height, the tip had been discharging
100,000 gallons of water per hour.
By the end of the day 137 bodies had been recovered—106 chil-
dren and 16 adults being identified, and a further 15 still unidenti-
fied. At least 32 people were still in the hospital. Most of the school
had been cleared, but it was feared that up to 60 people could be bur-
ied in the surrounding rubble. In fact, there were 8 bodies recovered
the next day, Sunday, and 1 body a week later, bringing the final toll
to 147, plus 1 of the injured, who died in hospital. Twenty-six rescuers
were injured. Almost the entire age range of nine- to eleven-year-old
children of the village had been wiped out.
The whole nation was deeply shocked by the disaster. The same
day as the accident, the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, prom-
ised a high-level independent inquiry, and he himself traveled to
Merthyr Tydfil, the nearest town, to meet with local officials. The

665
1966: The Aberfan Disaster

next day, Saturday, the duke of Edinburgh, the queen’s husband, vis-
ited the disaster. An appeal fund was immediately set up that day,
which grew later to tremendous proportions. Princess Margaret, the
queen’s sister, appealed for toys for the injured and bereaved chil-
dren. Also on that day, the public inquiry, which was to become one
of the biggest ever held in the United Kingdom, was set up under the
Tribunals of Enquiry Act of 1921, to be conducted by Lord Justice
Edmund Davies, a respected lord justice of appeal, who had been
born only 2 miles from Aberfan and who had known the area all of
his life. The speed of such moves was unparalleled. The necessary
legislation for the tribunal was put before Parliament and cleared by
October 25.
One unfortunate repercussion of this was that all comment on the
tragedy was banned by the attorney general, as the affair was now in
the hands of the law. Many felt uneasy about this, believing that fair
comment was being censored. However, legal aid was granted to all
who had been affected, so that they could be legally represented at
the inquiry.
An inquest was opened on Monday, October 24, in a small chapel
vestry. Over 60 relatives crowded in, and feelings ran high. “Our chil-
dren have been murdered,” was a common cry. The coroner gave the
causes of death as asphyxia and multiple injuries but had to explain
that it was not his job to apportion blame; that was for the tribunal of
inquiry.
The first funerals were held on Thursday, October 27. At the Bap-
tist Church, the minister performing the service had lost his own son.
A mass burial was arranged for the Friday, to which an estimated
10,000 people came. Two 8-foot trenches were dug for the coffins,
and a 100-foot-tall cross was made from the wreaths sent. It was said
that there was little weeping. Some years later, the appeal fund con-
structed a memorial garden and cemetery for the victims on the site
of the demolished school. On Saturday, October 29, the queen and
the duke of Edinburgh visited the village, and flags were flown at half-
staff throughout the nation.
Long-Term Aftermath. The psychological scars on the surviv-
ing children and their parents remained for a generation; many
needed medical and psychological rehabilitation. The survivors had
to be moved to other schools; finally, a new school was built nearby.

666
 1966: The Aberfan Disaster

The village remained in deep shock for many years but never lost its
cohesiveness. The nation as a whole was also deeply affected for
months, even years. For some, it became a crisis of faith.
The inquiry lasted five months and took statements from 136 wit-
nesses. The National Coal Board was held legally liable for not main-
taining their property, the disaster being the result of waste materials
being allowed to block an original watercourse. The water, instead of
escaping out at the bottom of the tip, as was normal, soaked into the
tip and built up enormous pressure within it. The rains of the preced-
ing few days finally rendered the whole tip unstable, and it had there-
fore collapsed with considerable force.
As a result of the tribunal report, the Mines and Quarries Act of
1989 was passed by the British Parliament, giving the government
wide-ranging powers to supervise the safety of mines, quarries, and
tips. An earlier act, the Industrial Development Act of 1966, which
was designed to help reclaim derelict land but whose implementa-
tion had been hampered by lack of funds, was reenergized, especially
in Wales. By 1967, the secretary of state for Wales had published a
policy document that in future years led to large-scale reclamation of
mining sites in South Wales.
In July, 1968, it was decided to remove all the tips of the Merthyr
Vale Colliery, though the colliery itself did not cease working until
1989, as part of the overall decline of the Welsh coal-mining industry.
The forestry commission replanted much of the wasteland, and the
area became a recreation site, which attracts visitors from around the
world. The appeal fund was used not only to relieve the suffering of
the families affected but also to build new facilities for the village, as
well as fund educational research.
David Barratt

For Further Information:

Austin, Tony. Aberfan: The Story of a Disaster. London: Hutchinson,
1967.
McLean, Iain, and Martin Johnes. Aberfan: Government and Disasters.
Cardiff, Wales: Welsh Academic Press, 2000.
Madgwick, Gaynor. Aberfan: Struggling out of the Darkness—A Survivor’s
Story. Blaengarw, Wales: Valleys and Vales Autobiography Project,
1996.

667
1966: The Aberfan Disaster

Miller, Joan. Aberfan: A Disaster and Its Aftermath. London: Constable,

1974.
Morgan, Louise, and Jane Scourfield, et al. “The Aberfan Disaster:
33-Year Follow-up of Survivors.” The British Journal of Psychiatry 182
(2003): 532-536.
Rapoport, I. C. Aberfan: The Days After—a Journey in Pictures. Cardigan,
Wales: Parthian, 2005.

668
■ 1969: Hurricane Camille
Hurricane
Date: August 15-18, 1969
Place: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Virginia, and West Virginia
Classification: Category 5
Result: 258 dead, $1.5 billion in damage

P acking winds of nearly 200 miles per hour and a baro-

metric pressure of 26.84 inches, Hurricane Camille was
a storm of immense intensity and at the time only the second on rec-
ord to strike the U.S. mainland with Category 5 force. From the time
it was first designated a hurricane on August 15, 1969, as it moved
from south of Cuba to its point of dissipation over the North Atlantic,
Camille left a staggering amount of devastation, including 258 storm-
related deaths and an estimated $1.5 billion in damage, much of it
concentrated in the Gulf Coast regions of Louisiana and Mississippi.
The Beginnings. For several days in its early stages, Camille
moved at a leisurely pace across the Atlantic as a relatively disorga-
nized tropical system. The storm was spawned on August 5 by a tropi-
cal wave moving off the coast of Africa. By August 9 it had reached
tropical disturbance level, approaching the northern Leeward Is-
lands, before passing through them on the following day. The same
day a satellite photograph indicated it was no more than a weak cloud
mass. On August 11 satellite imagery revealed the system had be-
come an isolated block of clouds located between Puerto Rico and
the Lesser Antilles and that it had broken into two circular air masses.
For a brief time officials at the U.S. Weather Service believed the
tropical disturbance was unlikely to reach the status of a major storm.
A hurricane hunter who flew into the tropical wave reported little or-
ganization in the cloud formation. However, after reaching the warm
waters of the Caribbean, the disturbance rapidly intensified and was
designated a tropical storm as it moved within 350 miles of Cuba.
Camille’s central pressure had dropped dramatically to 29.50 inches,
and its sustained winds topped 65 miles per hour.
Coursing through the Caribbean, the storm continued its rapid

669
1969: Hurricane Camille

intensification, with winds climbing to over 80 miles per hour and its
barometric pressure falling to 28.67 inches. On August 15, the storm
was upgraded to hurricane status, as it moved through the Yucatán
Straits on its way northwest. Maximum winds were recorded at 115
miles per hour, with gales extending out 125 to 150 miles to the north
of the storm’s center and 50 miles to its south. Its forward movement
was measured at 7 miles per hour.
Camille swept over the western tip of Cuba with 115-mile-per-hour
winds, driving hundreds of residents to higher ground with its torren-
tial rains. The weather station at Guane, center of a rich tobacco area,
reported winds of 92 miles per hour. As the storm meandered toward
the eastern Gulf of Mexico, it dumped nearly 10 inches of precipita-
tion on the Isle of Pines, immediately south of the Cuban mainland.
At the time, the U.S. Weather Bureau placed the storm’s center about
250 miles south-southwest of Key West.
The region of Cuba struck by the storm is an area highly vulnera-
ble to flooding owing to the runoff of rain that rushes down the
mountainsides to the sea. The sugar crop and tobacco crop, both
mainstays of the Cuban economy, suffered extensive damage during
the storm’s passage. In the central town of Puerto Cortes, 50 houses
were destroyed. In many communities along the coast, power and
telephone communications were cut off and large ranches and farms
were isolated by the flash floods.
Camille Continues to Intensify. Camille continued on a track
that took it through the Yucatán Channel, and on August 16 its eye
moved into the Gulf of Mexico. The storm’s forward movement was
measured at 12 miles per hour. It was located 400 miles south of the
Florida panhandle and moving in a north-northwest direction. Ca-
mille’s winds covered 80-mile-wide circles and buffeted across 200
miles of Gulf waters. Its barometric pressure tumbled to 27.13 inches.
Hurricane Camille not only continued to intensify but also sur-
prised storm watchers by changing its course to a more northwesterly
direction toward the Louisiana-Mississippi-Alabama coastlines. On
August 16 a hurricane watch was put into effect, stretching from
Biloxi, Mississippi, to St. Marks, Florida. As the storm moved to within
250 miles of Mobile, Alabama, Camille’s winds were estimated at 160
miles per hour and its speed at 12 miles per hour. The storm contin-
ued its on its track toward the mouth of the Mississippi River, prompt-

670
 1969: Hurricane Camille

ing officials to extend the hurricane warning as far west as New Or-
leans.
Late in the evening on August 16, Camille’s eye crossed into the
Pass Christian, Mississippi, area with winds up to 200 miles per hour,
accompanied by a monster tide 24 feet above normal. The hurricane
skirted the mouth of the Mississippi River some 90 miles southeast of
New Orleans in an area lined with small islands, bays, and harbors.
On August 17, a final Air Force reconnaissance flight recorded a bar-
ometric pressure of 26.61 inches with maximum surface winds at
more than 200 miles per hour. The barometric reading was second
only to the 26.35 reading for the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, the
lowest ever recorded at the time. Later in the day, at 9 p.m., the Na-
tional Hurricane Center issued a warning that Camille was “ex-
tremely dangerous” and was bringing 15- to 20-foot tides with it along
the Mississippi-Alabama coast. Areas along the coast were advised to
evacuate immediately.
Evacuation and Landfall. The main damage inflicted by the
storm throughout the low coastal region was from the floods pro-
duced by the high tides and heavy rainfall. In Gulfport, Mississippi,
all evacuation centers had run short of food and water even before
Camille’s arrival. The storm’s track along the coastline was marked by
a series of local communication and power failures. In a clear sign of
the severity of the storm, the Mississippi River Bridge at New Orleans
was closed to traffic, and the world’s longest bridge, the causeway that
crosses Lake Pontchartrain, was shut down. Camille’s winds lashed
the causeway at more than 60 miles per hour and churned the lake’s
water into a caldron of violent waves.
Evacuations were ordered all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana,
to the Florida Panhandle. Over 100,000 people spent the night of
August 17 in Red Cross shelters, in the area extending from New
Orleans to Pensacola. Residents of the fishing villages of Louisiana’s
marshlands evacuated by the thousands. Nearly 90 percent of the
population left their homes to take refuge. The Red Cross an-
nounced it had set up 394 evacuation centers in the Mississippi Delta
area, with over 40,000 people reported in shelters as far away as Alex-
andria, Louisiana, 200 miles to the north, and Lafayette, located in
the southwestern corner of the state. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters
had to risk the storm’s winds to rescue 30 men stranded on an oil rig

671
1969: Hurricane Camille

in the Gulf of Mexico. Waves of 12 to 14 feet were reported at a rig lo-

cated offshore from Timbalier Island, which is situated about 40
miles west of the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Following its swipe at southern Louisiana, Camille washed ashore
near Gulfport just before midnight on August 17. Its barometric pres-
sure stood at 26.84 inches, and its winds continued to whirl at 180
miles per hour. When ranked by size, Camille was a relatively small
hurricane, with an eye less than 5 miles in diameter. Its hurricane-
force winds reached out 45 miles in all directions, with gales extend-
ing out 150 miles. Mobile, located nearly 95 miles east of the storm’s
center, registered 44-mile-per-hour winds, while New Orleans, situ-
ated nearly 45 miles closer to the storm’s core, received sustained
winds of 52 miles per hour.
The Damage. Camille’s lethal combination of high winds and
high tides brought almost total destruction to the coastal areas from
southeastern Louisiana to Biloxi. Because of the many shapes and
sizes of the bays and inlets, surge heights varied at different locations.
In several places in Louisiana, from the Empire Canal south to Buras,
Boothville, and Venice, the surge poured over the levees on both the
east and west banks of the Mississippi River, only to be trapped by the
back levees, leaving the built-up areas between the embankments
flooded with up to 16 feet of water. The east-bank levees were nearly
destroyed as the wave action of the water severely eroded the land-
side slope before reaching the back levees. The regions within the
levees were almost totally destroyed. Few structures survived intact,
and those that did ended up floating about until dumped between or
on the levees.
The waves nearly wiped the small community of Buras off the map
when the town was inundated with 15 feet of water in a matter of min-
utes. In one bizarre incident, a 200-foot barge loaded with combusti-
ble solvents was dumped by the waters in the middle of a highway
running through the center of the town. As the storm surge swept
over the river’s east-bank levee, a swift influx of tidal waters disrupted
the normal flow of the river, elevating its water level for a consider-
able distance upstream. Close to 66 percent of the total land area in
Plaquemines Parish, representing about 414,000 acres of land, was
flooded.
Along the coast, fires raged out of control, as firefighters were

672
 1969: Hurricane Camille

unable to reach them in the wake of the inundating tides. Buildings

in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, a scenic coastal town located 15 miles
west of Gulfport near the Mississippi line, burned furiously. Its busi-
ness district, comprising mainly a lumber mill and seafood packing
center, was concentrated on a single street, half of which caved into
the bay. An estimated 95 percent of the homes in the city were dam-
aged.
Thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were
left homeless as the storm made its way across the coastline. The de-
struction wrought by Camille stretched along 50 miles of beach from
Waveland, Mississippi, to Pascagoula, near the Alabama state line,
and three or four blocks inland. The storm raised the Gulf of Mexico
nearly 3 feet higher than normal as far as 125 miles east of Pass Chris-
tian, Mississippi, and 31 miles to the west. The U.S. Army Corps of En-
gineers later estimated that 100,000 tons of debris had to be cleared
away in order to make passable nearly 530 miles of road. U.S. High-
way 90, the main coastal road, was covered with sand in many sec-

Hurricane Camille was one of few storms to achieve Category 5 status at landfall.
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

673
1969: Hurricane Camille

tions; piled high with lumber, furniture, refrigerators, mattresses,

and other debris in some stretches; and completely washed away in
others. Nearly one-third of the Bay St. Louis Bridge and one-half of
the Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge were damaged when the high tides
shoved the spans off their supports. An estimated 50 percent of the
resort properties in the Biloxi area were damaged and the other half
destroyed. Fourteen counties in Mississippi suffered electrical power
failures, some lasting for several days. Telephone service also was af-
fected, as nearly 15 percent of telephones were put out of service,
with the number jumping to 67 percent along the Gulf Coast. Pasca-
goula faced a problem of another kind when it was invaded by hun-
dreds of poisonous cottonmouth snakes seeking higher ground. One
woman reported hundreds of black water moccasins and cotton-
mouths in her mother’s backyard.
Homes and buildings that had withstood previous hurricane-level
storms proved no match for Camille. Water stood 10-feet deep in the
lobby of the plush Broadwater Beach Hotel. A wave of 22 feet inun-
dated Pass Christian Isles, including the Richelieu apartment com-
plex, where a decision by a group of people to ignore the warnings
and ride out the storm with a “hurricane party” ended in tragedy
when 23 of them died in the onslaught. Along with the storm surge,
heavy precipitation, between 5 and 10 inches, moved inland with Ca-
mille. Rainfalls from 2 to 6 inches extended to portions of southeast
Louisiana, central and northern Mississippi, and northwest Florida.
Stately oak trees that had also survived previous hurricane-force
winds fell victim to Camille. Pine trees were blown down in forests
nearly 70 miles inland. Roofs were torn from barracks at Camp
Shelby, an Army base located more than 65 miles from the coastline.
Wind Speeds and Tides. Based on wind speeds measured at re-
connaissance flight levels and measured surface pressure, maximum
surface winds reached 201.5 miles per hour near the center of
Camille on August 17. As the storm moved inland, many of the re-
cording instruments were damaged or destroyed. The highest actual
wind reading was taken on a drilling rig recorder, located about 15
miles from the storm’s center, which registered a gust of 172 miles
per hour. An Air National Guard Weather Flight unit located at
Gulfport Municipal Airport estimated sustained winds at over 100
miles per hour with gusts ranging between 150 to 200 miles per hour.

674
 1969: Hurricane Camille

Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi measured winds at 81 miles per hour
with gusts up to 129 miles per hour.
In Pascagoula, sustained winds of 81 miles per hour were recorded
at a shipyard, while a local radio station reported winds at 104 miles
per hour before it was knocked off the air. Wind speeds west of
Camille’s center were lower than those extending east. Although Lake-
front Airport reported sustained winds of 87 miles per hour with gusts
of 109 miles per hour, winds at New Orleans generally ranged from 40
to 60 miles per hour with gusts up to 85 miles per hour. On the other
hand, eastern portions of St. Tammany and Washington Parishes were
raked by winds estimated at well over 100 miles per hour. As Camille
moved ashore, sustained hurricane-force winds were generally con-
fined to the storm’s center, extending east of New Orleans to Pasca-
goula, with gusts reaching from New Orleans to Mobile Bay.
Enormous tidal surges marked Camille’s arrival. The small towns
of Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, and Waveland were all but destroyed
by a giant wave generated by the storm’s backlash. Record-breaking
tide levels were recorded from Waveland to Biloxi. Tides in some ar-
eas were measured up to 24 feet. Generally, they ran from about 15 to
22 feet above normal. The storm generated tides as high as 3 to 5 feet
above normal as far away as Apalachicola, Florida. West of the storm’s
center, tides ranged from about 10 to 15 feet above normal but then
dropped off substantially, running only 3 to 4 feet above normal west
of the Mississippi. Grand Isle, located only 60 miles west of the hurri-
cane, reported a tide of 3.6 feet.
The Death Toll and Aftereffects. Many of those who per-
ished in the surge were found lashed together, usually family mem-
bers or husbands and wives who were attempting to survive the rising
waters. Every home in Pass Christian, a town of 4,000 people, was
damaged. Nearly 100 bodies were discovered in the debris, including
all 13 members of one family. At a local high school where residents
had gathered, rescuers found a cluster of parents holding their chil-
dren overhead to protect them from the raging floodwaters below.
Generally, buildings located on hills of about 20 feet survived the
high winds and storm surge, while structures situated around the 10-
foot level were overwhelmed. As the winds diminished, National
Guard troops in amphibious vehicles rushed in to rescue survivors
clinging to trees and remnants of houses.

675
1969: Hurricane Camille

All together, 143 people were killed along the coast from Louisi-
ana to Alabama. The storm also took a toll on fish and wildlife, espe-
cially in the estuary region lying east of the Mississippi River. Many
deer and muskrats were killed. Only 40 to 50 of a deer herd of 500
roaming the area were believed to have survived. Millions of fish were
killed, as were some shrimp, and oyster seedbeds located in the bays
and inlets received considerable damage from debris deposited on
them during the storm.
The storm caused little intrusion of saltwater into the lower reaches
of the Mississippi River. Samples taken at the water supply intakes at
New Orleans and Port Sulphur did not reveal any significant in-
creases in salinity, though some locations along the eastern Louisiana
coast did experience brief periods of additional salinity during Ca-
mille’s passage.
Camille dealt a severe blow to the region’s commercial shipping
industry. A surveyor noted that 24 vessels, ranging from tugs to
freighters, were found aground. Among the boats was the container
ship Mormacsun, which only recently had been launched and was be-
ing outfitted at a shipyard when its mooring lines snapped, driving it
aground. The storm caused the collision of two vessels set adrift in
the waters, the 4,459-ton Greek freighter Lion of Chaeronea and the
10,648-ton U.S.-flagged Windsor Victory. Both ships suffered only mi-
nor damage. Three cargo ships in Gulfport harbor, the Alamo Victory,
the Hulda, and the Silver Hawk, were severely damaged and washed
ashore. A tug, the Charleston, in the process of towing the barge City of
Pensacola, was in danger of sinking and had to be beached. Another
victim, the 10,250-ton U.S.-flagged freighter Venetia V, docked in Mo-
bile, was ripped from its moorings and set adrift.
The storm also inflicted severe damage on the area’s petroleum
industry, particularly in the offshore areas east of the Louisiana delta.
Installations at South Pass, Main Pass, and Breton Sound were bat-
tered by the storm, as were facilities situated in the marshes and shal-
low bays, including Quarantine Bay, Cox Bay, and Black Bay. Two
large oil slicks formed south of New Orleans, one a result of a leaking
offshore well in Breton Sound, the other from a ruptured storage
tank near the town of Venice in Plaquemines Parish. Because Venice
was still under water from the high tides, the oil riding the top of the
water lapped at the inundated houses and other buildings.

676
 1969: Hurricane Camille

Facilities located west of the Mississippi River fared better, receiv-

ing only light damage. At least 4,000 oil wells, stretching from the
Mississippi Delta to the St. Bernard Parish line, representing close to
10 percent of Louisiana’s wells, were shut down and 3,000 employees
evacuated prior to the storm’s arrival. As a result of the precautionary
measures, there were no reported injuries to petroleum industry per-
sonnel, despite direct hits on the facilities. All together, Camille de-
stroyed 4 platforms, 3 drilling rigs, and 7 wells. In addition, 2 plat-
forms, 7 drilling rigs, and a well suffered heavy damage.
An aerial survey by the U.S. Forest Service of 14 counties in south-
ern Mississippi indicated that nearly 1.9 million acres of commercial
forestland sustained damage. The storm completely defoliated some
of the area’s hardwood forests, with the pine forests suffering some-
what less damage. Agricultural and timber losses in Louisiana in-
cluded 8,000 cattle and 150,000 orange trees in Plaquemines Parish,
oyster beds in Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes, and over $40
million in damages to tung oil trees and timber in St. Tammany and
Washington Parishes.
Camille Moves Inland. As Camille moved inland across Missis-
sippi, its strength diminished, and on August 18 it was downgraded to
a tropical storm. By the time it reached the northern Mississippi bor-
der, it had been downgraded to a depression, though its rainy core re-
mained surprisingly intact and its eye clearly visible on satellite pho-
tographs after more than a day over land. Its remnants finally merged
with a moisture-filled air mass to produce record amounts of rainfall,
in some cases more than 25 inches, throughout Tennessee, Kentucky,
and Virginia. As it moved through West Virginia, the storm deposited
nearly 5 inches of rain in the southern portions of the state.
The combination of weather factors produced rainfall amounts
that rank with other record rainfalls throughout the world. Some
amounts exceeded 25 inches, and totals in excess of 4 inches fell in
an eight-hour period over a region 30 to 40 miles wide and 120 miles
long. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ study later underscored the
improbability of the rainfall amounts in Nelson County, Virginia,
which totaled 27 inches within eight hours. The study concluded the
probable maximum rainfall that was possible for the area was 28
inches in six hours and 31 inches in twelve hours. An unofficial 31-
inch total that was recorded is believed by meteorologists to repre-

677
1969: Hurricane Camille

sent the probable maximum rainfall to be theoretically possible for

Virginia during this period of the year.
As a measure of the storm’s uniqueness, it is estimated that rain-
falls of this magnitude occur only once every thousand years. Ironic-
ally, a severe drought had plagued Mississippi, Tennessee, and Ken-
tucky for much of the summer before Camille’s arrival, reducing soil
moisture content far below normal levels. As a result, pasture condi-
tions and crops were in poor shape, and though the rains alleviated
some of the conditions, they were too late to overcome much of the
drought damage.
Virginia experienced what many authorities considered was one
of the worst natural disasters in the state’s history. Thousands of fami-
lies in the mountainous sections of west-central Virginia were left
homeless by rains of 10 inches or more, as walls of water washed down
mountain slopes and through countless homes, businesses, and in-
dustries located in valley communities. Many of the residents of the
tiny mountain towns and hamlets were asleep when the floodwaters
struck. The swollen streams and landslides precipitated by the tor-
rential rains uprooted trees and hurled them down the mountain-
sides with enough force to smash houses and overturn automobiles.
Entire families were swept away by the waters, while others climbed
onto trees and roofs and waited until rescue helicopters could reach
them.
In some areas whole sections of mountainside tumbled down like
mudslides, dumping tons of silt on houses and their occupants. The
entire downtown area of Glasgow, Virginia, was inundated by over 14
feet of water, which flooded nearly 75 percent of its homes. Among
the hardest hit regions was Buena Vista, Virginia, located at the foot
of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where some buildings stood 30 feet un-
derwater. In Louisa County, an earthen dam broke, collapsing a 500-
acre human-made lake.
Camille’s remnants washed out close to 200 miles of primary and
secondary roads and damaged or destroyed 133 bridges in Virginia,
92 of which were located in Nelson County. Route 29 between
Amherst and Charlottesville suffered severe damage, with 5 major
washouts and 30 landslides. At one point during the storm, only one
highway crossing the state remained open for its entire length. The
James River, a placid stream that normally runs 100 feet to a few hun-

678
 1969: Hurricane Camille

dred yards wide above Richmond, turned into a sprawling wet plain a
mile wide in places. More than 80 bridges spanning major highways
and secondary roads were washed away by the rampaging waters.
Railroad routes throughout the state fared little better, as several rail-
road bridges were destroyed and long stretches of track put out of op-
eration.
Camille regained tropical storm status when it crossed back into
the North Atlantic but dissipated when it was absorbed by a cold front
as it moved about 175 miles southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland.
Based on its path of destruction, Hurricane Camille ranks as one of
the most devastating storms to strike the U.S. mainland in the twenti-
eth century.
William Hoffman

For Further Information:

Dikkers, R. D., and H. C. S. Thom. Hurricane Camille—August 1969.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, National Bu-
reau of Standards, 1971.
Hearn, Philip D. Hurricane Camille: Monster Storm of the Gulf Coast.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.
“Hurricane Camille.” Weatherwise, July/August, 1999, 28-31.
Longshore, David. Encyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones.
New York: Checkmark Books, 2000.
Wilkinson, Kenneth P., and Peggy J. Ross. Citizens’ Responses to Warn-
ings of Hurricane Camille. State College: Mississippi State University,
Social Science Research Center, 1970.
Zebrowski, Ernest, and Judith A. Howard. Category 5: The Story of
Camille, Lessons Unlearned from America’s Most Violent Hurricane. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

679
■ 1970: The Ancash earthquake
Earthquake
Date: May 31, 1970
Place: Northern Peru
Magnitude: 7.7
Result: Approximately 70,000 dead, 140,000 injured, 500,000 home-
less, 160,000 buildings destroyed or damaged

T he scene of this disaster is known for its rugged beauty.

Towering, snow-capped mountains with steep, rocky
slopes overlook the valley of the Santa River, which flows to the north
through the Department of Ancash and then turns west until it emp-
ties into the Pacific Ocean. This narrow valley—about 5 miles at its
widest point—runs for 125 miles parallel to Peru’s Pacific shore and
is dotted by a series of towns and small cities. For example, Yungay, an
old town with roots in the colonial era, was by the 1960’s a forward-
looking community with an interest in tourism.
One of the region’s greatest assets is its physical environment.
Looming 14,000 feet above the valley floor are the twin peaks of
Mount Huascarán, which measure 22,190 and 21,860 feet above sea
level. The peaks are prominent in a section of the Andes Mountains
that also includes glaciers and, at lower altitudes, cold lakes drained
by streams that feed the Santa River. The monumental Huascarán at-
tracts mountain climbers from around the world because of the ex-
traordinarily steep slopes that rise at angles of 45 to 90 degrees. At the
base of these mountains are large boulders, evidence of the area’s
geological instability.
The Santa River Valley, also known as the Callejón de Huaylas, has
a long record of human settlement. Archaeologists have found re-
mains of the Chavin culture that date back as far as 800 b.c.e. The
Inca Empire reached into the area in the 1460’s, only to be super-
seded by the Spanish conquistadors in the 1530’s. The Spanish con-
trolled most of the agriculture in the valley during the colonial pe-
riod (1530’s-1820’s), but the population became heavily mestizo—a
mixture of Native Americans and Europeans.

680
 1970: The Ancash earthquake

COLOMBIA
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ra
Talara Marañón
lle
Sullana
di

or
Piura C
BRAZIL
Chiclayo Orellana

Uc
H
ua

aya
Trujillo
llag

Huascarán
li
Yungay
a

Huaraz
Pacific Huanuco Cocama
Ocean Cerro de Pasco

Callao Huancayo
Lima

Ayacucho Cuzco
Ica

Puno La
Paz
Arequipa

BOLIVIA
Tacna

CHILE

The independence of Peru from Spain brought few changes in

the society and the economy, with much of the best land in the valley
in the hands of a few landowners well into the twentieth century.
Yungay, an important political center, was also a leading market for
the peasant farmers who bought and sold foodstuffs and textiles. By
the 1960’s, however, a new dynamism took hold in Yungay. A paved
highway provided easy access to people and goods outside the re-
gion. Yungay had a dependable source of electricity, and plans were

681
1970: The Ancash earthquake

in place for the construction of a large hotel for visiting mountain

climbers and tourists.
In spite of its location in the Andes, a mountain chain well known
for earthquakes, the Callejón de Huaylas had experienced relatively
few cataclysmic events before 1970. The three most serious events,
however, did furnish forebodings of geological conditions that har-
bored the potential for a major disaster. The large avalanche of 1725
that destroyed the colonial city of Ancash was caused by the breaking
of a high mountain glacier that sent tons of ice hurtling downward,
picking up rocks and debris as it crashed into the unsuspecting city in
the valley below. Another city, Huaraz, was inundated by the bitterly
cold waters of a mountain lake that spilled into the valley in 1941. In
1962 another large avalanche overran the community of Ranrahirca.
These events all involved loss of life, injuries, and property damage,
but, in comparison with the earthquake of 1970, they also served as
warnings of a disaster of much greater magnitude.
Earthquake and Avalanche. The Sunday afternoon of May
31, 1970, was a time of relaxation for the people of the valley, with ex-
tended family visits, casual strolls through town plazas, and leisurely
meals at local restaurants. This pleasant scene ended abruptly at 3:23
p.m. with the first rumblings in the ground. The Callejón de Huaylas
and, indeed, all of Peru rests on or near the place in the earth’s crust
where two major tectonic plates come together. The Nazca Plate,
gradually moving beneath the Pacific Ocean, tends to push under
the South American Plate, causing the latter to rise. On May 31, the
Nazca Plate’s movement become sudden and intense, pushing the
edge of the South American Plate upward. This extraordinary tec-
tonic shift broke off a large section of Huascarán overlooking the
Callejón de Huaylas—probably 0.5 mile wide and 0.75 mile long. The
huge mass crashed down upon a glacier, adding large chunks of ice to
the avalanche that, because of the steep slope, accelerated as it
moved downward, reaching a speed of approximately 200 miles per
hour. The rock and ice collided and shattered into smaller segments
that, in spite of the fragmentation, weighed tons when they reached
the valley floor.
Yungay was in the path of the avalanche. Within four minutes a
great mass of rock, ice, soil, and water covered the 10 miles from
Huascarán to the town. Eyewitnesses described the mass as being as

682
 1970: The Ancash earthquake

high as a ten-story building as it roared across the valley floor to bury

Yungay and nearby villages beneath a sea of mud and rock that, after
settling for several days, was over 15 feet deep. Approximately 3,500
of Yungay’s population perished beneath the huge avalanche. Only
an estimated 200 survived.
A portion of the avalanche veered to the north along the Santa
River, crushing virtually everything in its path. Included in the debris
of this mass were bodies and houses from Yungay. Another section, or
lobe, of the avalanche crossed the river bed and rolled about 200 feet
up the mountain slope on the western side of the valley. As these
lobes of the avalanche moved to the north and west, they carried
boulders the size of automobiles and deposited them considerable
distances from Huascarán, some reportedly as far north as the Canón
de Pato, approximately 25 miles from Yungay.
The earthquake that caused the avalanche also produced devas-
tating results in areas not reached by the mass of rock, ice, and debris.
For example, the city of Huaraz, about 35 miles south of Yungay, ex-
perienced the collapse of many of its structures, including portions
of the cathedral on the main plaza and the homes of both rich and
poor. All through the valley, walls made of adobe crumbled and roofs
caved in. In Huaraz and other communities, some cemeteries were so
severely shaken that monuments collapsed and tombs broke open.
Recently built highways and bridges that linked towns and cities in
the Santa River Valley were destroyed. The violent shaking of the
earth also destroyed the region’s electric-power grid, as well as water
and sewer lines. Within a few minutes most of the human-made struc-
tures in the Callejón de Huaylas were in ruins or covered by thick lay-
ers of rock and mud. Surveys after the earthquake indicate that more
than 160,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged—approximately
80 percent of the structures in the area. Although the impact of the
earthquake was most intense in the Callejón de Huaylas, buildings
collapsed throughout the Department of Ancash, including those in
cities and villages along the Pacific coast.
Aftermath. Seismographic records made clear to the outside
world that a powerful earthquake had struck the Callejón de Huay-
las, but the survivors in the devastated valley had to struggle without
external aid for four days. Airplanes and helicopters dispatched by
the Peruvian government encountered billowing clouds of dust that

683
1970: The Ancash earthquake

extended as high as 18,000 feet, blocking visual observation of most

of the valley. The destruction of telephone lines and highways pre-
vented communication and the movement of people. Meanwhile,
the survivors attempted to care for themselves. The only hospital in
the valley was in the city of Huaraz, and it quickly became the gather-
ing place for the injured. The hospital structure was damaged but re-
mained standing as five doctors attended to a steady stream of hun-
dreds of patients over the four-day period between the earthquake
and the arrival of outside aid.
Finally, on June 5, the atmosphere cleared enough for pilots to
find relatively clear drop zones and landing strips. The Peruvian air
force dropped 70 tons of food and other supplies by parachute and
transported over 400 injured residents to outside medical facilities by
helicopter. Later on the same day, a landing field near Huaraz was
sufficiently repaired to accommodate small transport planes. By June
9, Peruvian engineers had repaired highways into the valley, opening
the way for emergency vehicles. On the same day, Peruvian president
Juan Velasco Alvarado established the Committee for the Recon-
struction and Rehabilitation of the Affected Zone (CRYRZA), a gov-
ernment agency that was responsible for supervision of efforts to sup-
ply material aid and the implementation of long-term plans for the
rebuilding of communities. Soon military and other emergency air-
craft from Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Canada, France, and
the Soviet Union arrived not only with much-needed supplies but
also with experienced crews who soon joined with the Peruvian air
force to provide a continuous flow of relief and evacuation missions.
Medical personnel, engineers, government officials, and volunteers
worked with the survivors on the necessary tasks: the burial of the
dead, the erection of shelters for the living, and the distribution of
food and medicine throughout the valley.
Recovery. The reconstruction of communities began within
weeks after the earthquake, but the complicated processes of reestab-
lishing the physical infrastructure, such as roads, public buildings,
private homes, and commercial establishments, as well as the institu-
tions of local government and private businesses, required many
months and, in some cases, years. For example, Yungay had virtually
disappeared, buried beneath the avalanche, but, within a year, ap-
proximately 1,800 people had moved into its vicinity to build a new

684
 1970: The Ancash earthquake

community with the same name. By the middle of 1971, Yungay had a
functioning local government, primary and secondary schools, and a
revived commercial sector. Huaraz also rebuilt quickly, highlighted
by the construction of a modern airport with the capacity to handle
small jet aircraft. By 1980, all the valley’s cities were linked to a mod-
ern electric power grid and the new highway system that ran down
the Santa River Valley to the Pacific coast.
This recovery, although impressive in many ways, was not free of
acrimony and accusations. The distribution of aid was more prompt
in some areas than in others, causing angry complaints from those
who felt neglected. Some of the materials to be used in home con-
struction were not suitable for the mountain environment. Finally,
frustrated locals accused government officials of incompetence and
corruption as some reconstruction projects dragged on for months
and, in a few cases, years.
Much uncertainty remained about the future safety of the inhabit-
ants of the valley. The geological conditions that had caused the di-
saster remained: an unstable land prone to earthquakes surrounded
by steep-sided mountains with high-altitude glaciers and lakes. A key
to the safety of the region was the Santa Corporation, a government
agency charged with the responsibility of monitoring the buildup of
ice and snow on the mountain summits and changes in the condi-
tions of glaciers and lakes. The Santa Corporation was primarily re-
sponsible for avoiding another disaster soon after the events of May
31, 1970. The earthquake had thrust a large boulder into the stream
that customarily drained Lake Orkococha, located on the flank on
Mount Huascarán. As a result, the level of that lake was much higher
than normal and threatened to spill over its banks, causing a flood on
the valley floor. Working furiously, an international team of moun-
tain climbers cut a new drainage channel for the lake by June 7,
thereby averting a second disaster for the people of the valley. The
Santa Corporation’s duties were taken over by a new government
agency called Ingeomin in 1977.
John A. Britton

For Further Information:

Bode, Barbara. No Bells to Toll: Destruction and Creation in the Andes.
New York: Scribner, 1989.

685
1970: The Ancash earthquake

“Death by Glacier.” Scientific American 223, no. 2 (August, 1970): 46.

Dorbath, L., A. Cisternas, and C. Dorbath. “Assessment of the Size of
Large and Great Historical Earthquakes in Peru.” Bulletin of the
Seismological Society of America 80, no. 3 (June 1, 1990): 551-576.
Levy, Matthys, and Mario Salvador. Why the Earth Quakes: The Story of
Earthquakes and Volcanoes. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Lomnitz, C. “The Peru Earthquake of May 31, 1970: Some Prelimi-
nary Seismological Results.” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of
America 61, no. 3 (June, 1971): 535-542.
Machado, Jesús Ángel Chávez. “Remembering the Worst Earthquake
in Latin America: The Day the Apus Turned Their Backs on
Peru.” ISDR Informs—Latin America and the Caribbean, no. 1 (2000).
Oliver-Smith, Anthony. The Martyred City: Death and Rebirth in the An-
des. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986.

686
Notable Natural
Disasters
Notable Natural
Disasters
 MAGILL’S C H O I C E

Notable Natural
Disasters

Volume 3

Events 1970 to 2006

Edited by
Marlene Bradford, Ph.D.
Texas A&M University

Robert S. Carmichael, Ph.D.

University of Iowa

SALEM PRESS, INC.

Pasadena, California Hackensack, New Jersey
 Copyright © 2007, by Salem Press, Inc.

All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or re-
produced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any in-
formation storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the
copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews or in the copying of images deemed to be freely licensed
or in the public domain. For information address the publisher, Salem Press,
Inc., P.O. Box 50062, Pasadena, California 91115.

∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National

Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-
1992 (R1997).

These essays originally appeared in Natural Disasters (2001). New essays

and other material have been added.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Notable natural disasters / edited by Marlene Bradford, Robert S.

Carmichael.
p. cm. — (Magill’s choice)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58765-368-1 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-369-8
(vol. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-370-4 (vol. 2 : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-58765-371-1 (vol. 3 : alk. paper) 1. Natural disasters. I. Bradford,
Marlene. II. Carmichael, Robert S.

GB5014.N373 2007
904’.5—dc22
2007001926

printed in canada
Contents
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xliii

■ Events
1970: The Bhola cyclone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687
1974: The Jumbo Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 694
1976: Ebola outbreaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
1976: Legionnaires’ disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
1976: The Tangshan earthquake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711
1980’s: AIDS pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729
1982: El Chichón eruption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741
1982: Pacific Ocean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 747
1984: African famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 750
1985: The Mexico City earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 756
1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
1988: Yellowstone National Park fires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
1988: The Leninakan earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780
1989: Hurricane Hugo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
1991: Pinatubo eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803
1991: The Oakland Hills Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 810
1992: Hurricane Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816
1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993 . . . . . . . . . 828
1994: The Northridge earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 835
1995: The Kobe earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 847
1995: Ebola outbreak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 854
1995: Chicago heat wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 861
1996: The Mount Everest Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 866
1997: The Jarrell tornado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 873
1997: Soufrière Hills eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 880
1998: Papua New Guinea tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 885
1998: Hurricane Mitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 888
1999: The Galtür avalanche . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 897
1999: The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . 903
1999: The Ezmit earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 909

xli
 Notable Natural Disasters

2002: SARS epidemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 921

2003: European heat wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 928
2003: The Fire Siege of 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 934
2003: The Bam earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 940
2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 946
2005: Hurricane Katrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954
2005: The Kashmir earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963
2006: The Leyte mudslide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 970

■ Appendixes
Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 976
Time Line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 995
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1019
Organizations and Agencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1039

■ Indexes
Category List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXXIX
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XLV
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LV

xlii
Complete List of Contents
Volume 1
Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

■ Overviews
Avalanches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Droughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Dust Storms and Sandstorms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Earthquakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
El Niño . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Epidemics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Explosions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Famines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Fires. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Floods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Fog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Heat Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Icebergs and Glaciers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Landslides, Mudslides, and Rockslides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Lightning Strikes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Meteorites and Comets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Smog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Tornadoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Tsunamis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Volcanic Eruptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Wind Gusts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

■ Indexes
Category List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

xliii
 Notable Natural Disasters

Volume 2
Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii
Complete List of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix

■ Events
c. 65,000,000 b.c.e.: Yucatán crater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
c. 1470 b.c.e.: Thera eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
430 b.c.e.: The Plague of Athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
64 c.e.: The Great Fire of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
79 c.e.: Vesuvius eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
526: The Antioch earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
1200: Egyptian famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
1320: The Black Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
1520: Aztec Empire smallpox epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
1657: The Meireki Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
1665: The Great Plague of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
1666: The Great Fire of London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
1669: Etna eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
1692: The Port Royal earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
1755: The Lisbon earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
1783: Laki eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
1811: New Madrid earthquakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
1815: Tambora eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
1845: The Great Irish Famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
1871: The Great Chicago Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
1872: The Great Boston Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
1880: The Seaham Colliery Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
1883: Krakatau eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
1889: The Johnstown Flood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
1892: Cholera pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
1900: The Galveston hurricane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
1900: Typhoid Mary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
1902: Pelée eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505

xliv
 Complete List of Contents

1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . 512

1908: The Tunguska event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
1908: The Messina earthquake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
1909: The Cherry Mine Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
1914: The Eccles Mine Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
1914: Empress of Ireland sinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
1916: The Great Polio Epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
1918: The Great Flu Pandemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
1923: The Great Kwanto Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
1926: The Great Miami Hurricane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
1928: St. Francis Dam collapse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
1928: The San Felipe hurricane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
1932: The Dust Bowl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
1937: The Hindenburg Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 . . . . . . . . 609
1946: The Aleutian tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615
1947: The Texas City Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620
1952: The Great London Smog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627
1953: The North Sea Flood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
1957: Hurricane Audrey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 636
1959: The Great Leap Forward famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
1963: The Vaiont Dam Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648
1964: The Great Alaska Earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
1965: The Palm Sunday Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
1966: The Aberfan Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 662
1969: Hurricane Camille . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
1970: The Ancash earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680

■ Indexes
Category List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXI
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXVII

xlv
 Notable Natural Disasters

Volume 3
Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xli
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xliii

■ Events
1970: The Bhola cyclone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687
1974: The Jumbo Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 694
1976: Ebola outbreaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
1976: Legionnaires’ disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
1976: The Tangshan earthquake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711
1980’s: AIDS pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729
1982: El Chichón eruption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741
1982: Pacific Ocean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 747
1984: African famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 750
1985: The Mexico City earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 756
1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
1988: Yellowstone National Park fires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
1988: The Leninakan earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780
1989: Hurricane Hugo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
1991: Pinatubo eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803
1991: The Oakland Hills Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 810
1992: Hurricane Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816
1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993 . . . . . . . . . 828
1994: The Northridge earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 835
1995: The Kobe earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 847
1995: Ebola outbreak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 854
1995: Chicago heat wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 861
1996: The Mount Everest Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 866
1997: The Jarrell tornado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 873
1997: Soufrière Hills eruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 880
1998: Papua New Guinea tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 885
1998: Hurricane Mitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 888
1999: The Galtür avalanche . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 897
1999: The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . 903
1999: The Ezmit earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 909

xlvi
 Complete List of Contents

2002: SARS epidemic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 921

2003: European heat wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 928
2003: The Fire Siege of 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 934
2003: The Bam earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 940
2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 946
2005: Hurricane Katrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954
2005: The Kashmir earthquake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963
2006: The Leyte mudslide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 970

■ Appendixes
Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 976
Time Line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 995
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1019
Organizations and Agencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1039

■ Indexes
Category List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXXIX
Geographical List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XLV
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LV

xlvii
Notable Natural
Disasters
■ 1970: The Bhola cyclone
Cyclone
Date: November 12-13, 1970
Place: Ganges Delta and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)
Speed: More than 100 miles per hour
Result: 300,000-500,000 dead, 600,000 homeless

O n November 13, 1970, only minutes after midnight,

after being tracked by satellite and radar from its
birth a thousand miles to the south some two and a half days earlier, a
massive cyclone struck the coastal region of East Pakistan (now Ban-
gladesh). Laying waste to the delta formed by the Ganges and Brah-
maputra Rivers, this cyclone wiped away entire villages, drowned an
incalculable number of Bengalis, and compromised the agricultural
production of the region. The response of the government of Paki-
stan, from its capital some 2,000 miles away, was perceived by the Ben-
galis of East Pakistan to be inadequate in substance and spirit. In ad-
dition to causing enormous physical damage, the cyclone and its
aftermath contributed to the growing rift between the people of East
Pakistan and the government that ruled them, thereby acting as a cat-
alyst in the formation of the nation of Bangladesh the following year.
The Geography. The particular geography of this delta, where
the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers meet and pour out into the Bay
of Bengal after their long journeys from the Himalayas in the north,
is both a blessing and a curse. The geography both makes the delta
extremely productive and leaves it susceptible to destructive and all-
too-frequent cyclones. This is the largest delta in the world, com-
posed of a broad, low-lying, alluvial plain—interlaced with a network
of smaller rivers, canals, swamps, and marshes—and, further down-
river, a jumble of alluvial islands lying barely above sea level. The soils
of this region are renewed every year during monsoon season, when
the rivers, swollen with meltwater from the Himalayas and excess
rainwater, overflow their banks and spread their nutrient-rich sedi-
ment over the plains and islands. This process makes the delta soils
rich enough to support three harvests per year, providing a large per-

687
1970: The Bhola cyclone

centage of the foodstuffs necessary to feed the country, one of the

most densely populated on earth. As an area of low-lying islands and
plains it is entirely defenseless, however, against flooding, especially
that brought from the south by cyclone-driven storm surges.
The Ganges Delta is frequently visited by some of the most de-
structive cyclones on earth. In 1737, for example, a cyclone took the
lives of at least 300,000 people. In 1991 another killed 200,000 peo-
ple in Bangladesh. In numerous other years (there were eight cy-
clones in the 1960’s) lesser cyclones have caused tens of thousands
of fatalities. These cyclones are spawned every late spring and au-
tumn north of the equator in the warm tropical waters of the Indian
Ocean. The cyclones produced there are inherently no more pow-

CHINA

Kathmandu BHUTAN
Thimphu ive r
NEPAL put ra R
Bra hma
Gange
s Rive INDIA
r

BANGLADESH
J
Dhaka
am
um
a

Khulna
River

Calcutta
INDIA

Bay of Bengal MYANMAR

688
 1970: The Bhola cyclone

erful or intense than those produced in other regions of the world,

but the geography of the Bay of Bengal in general, and of the Gan-
ges Delta in particular, makes the cyclones especially destructive.
The Bay of Bengal, shaped like a funnel, forces the cyclones, as they
move north toward the Ganges Delta—which lies exactly at the
northernmost point of the bay—into an increasingly narrower area,
thereby concentrating the energy of the cyclone and the storm
surge produced underneath.
The Cyclone. The cyclone that caused such havoc in East Paki-
stan in the autumn of 1970 was first identified by satellite at 9 a.m. on
November 10 as a low-pressure area over the Indian Ocean, southeast
of Madras, India, a coastal city on the western shores of the Bay of
Bengal, and therefore some 1,000 miles to the south of East Pakistan.
Moving northward, the low-pressure area evolved into a cyclonic
storm with wind velocities of 55 miles per hour. The following morn-
ing the storm had reached a point some 650 miles south of Chitta-
gong, East Pakistan’s second-largest city and most important port, lo-
cated just east of the Ganges Delta.
The storm progressed northward into the increasingly narrow,
funnel-like Bay of Bengal, its winds now at hurricane force of 75 miles
per hour. The accelerating winds and low-pressure area surrounding
the eye of every cyclone tend to raise the water level of the ocean un-
derneath by 1 or 2 feet, providing the basis of the storm surge as-
sociated with these storms. The approach of a cyclone to a coast
forces the storm surge underneath into increasingly shallower water,
thereby bringing it to ever-greater heights above normal sea level.
This phenomenon is made worse at the top of the Bay of Bengal,
where the coast nearly encircles the oncoming cyclone, concentrat-
ing, and hence raising, the storm surge even higher. Finally, as the cy-
clone strikes the very northern tip of the bay, its winds literally drive
the storm surge into the extremely shallow water of the Ganges Delta
and up and over its low-lying islands and plains.
As this particular hurricane made landfall just after midnight on
November 13, 1970, it brought to the delta winds over 100 miles per
hour and a storm surge with waves that measured up to 30 feet high.
It did so at the worst possible moment: high tide, ensuring swift and
sure destruction. The wind-driven storm surge literally flowed over
the islands, removing everything in its path. Many islands were de-

689
1970: The Bhola cyclone

nuded of houses, crops, animals, and people. The storm surge, com-
bined with the high tide and the quickly overflowing rivers—swollen
with the torrents of rain delivered upriver by the cyclone—brought
floodwaters up to 30 feet high in some places.
Fully half of the 242 square miles of Hatia Island remained under
20 feet of water for eight hours. In the trees, above the maximum
floodwater line, clung many of the survivors, those delta residents
fast enough and strong enough to latch onto trees and climb higher
and higher as the waters continued to rise. Below them, at floodwater
level, caught in the same trees, floated the corpses of drowned ani-
mals and individuals who did not reach safety.
The death toll of Bengalis was set officially at 300,000. Unofficially,
it was thought to be much higher—500,000 or even 1 million. Ob-
servers attributed the higher death toll to three factors. Once the re-
lief operations were underway, an untold number of corpses were
cremated at the place and time they were found in order to lessen the
possibility of epidemics. The cyclone struck at harvest time, when the
population of this rich agricultural region swells with an influx of mi-
grant workers helping to bring in the harvest. Uncounted and un-
known, a large number of these people were assumed to be drowned.
Finally, many of those who survived the immediate devastation died
soon after of hunger, diseases, or injuries.
While the geographical characteristics and tidal circumstances
made for an especially devastating cyclone, the particular socio-
economic characteristics of East Pakistan made it even worse. East Pa-
kistan had one of the highest population densities in the world. At
the time of the cyclone, it measured more than 1,300 people per
square mile. Under the best of circumstances, evacuating such a
large concentration of people under threat of imminent natural di-
saster would be enormously difficult. East Pakistan possessed, more-
over, neither a transportation network nor, even more basic, a warn-
ing and evacuation system adequate to the task.
Soon after the disaster it was noted that while Calcutta Radio had
reported from India about the cyclone and issued repeated emer-
gency bulletins for hours before its arrival, Dhaka Radio—the only
source of information for those living on the distant offshore islands
of the Ganges Delta—had made only general reference to an arriving
storm, failing to stress to its listeners the danger on the horizon. Hav-

690
 1970: The Bhola cyclone

ing no radio at all, many other islands and villages received no news
or warning whatsoever and were thus caught completely by surprise.
The Aftermath. For those who did survive the cyclone and its af-
termath, daily life and long-term reconstruction alike would be enor-
mously difficult. It was estimated that the cyclone and its storm surge
destroyed the houses of 85 percent of the families in the affected re-
gion, leaving some 600,000 survivors homeless. The storm also seri-
ously damaged the agricultural sector of the region, depleting food
supplies throughout the country. Hundreds of fishing and transport
vessels, including one freighter weighing over 150 tons, were washed
inland or otherwise destroyed. Over 1 million head of livestock were
drowned. At least 1.1 million acres of rice paddies, holding an esti-
mated 800,000 tons of grain, were destroyed. The storm also incapac-
itated some 65 percent of East Pakistan’s coastal fisheries, thereby
seriously compromising the country’s most important source of pro-
tein for years to come.
A disaster of this magnitude visited upon a poor region such as
East Pakistan required enormous immediate and long-term relief,
necessitating both international aid and the concerted efforts of the
Pakistani government. Within less than a month some $50 million of
relief supplies had been delivered to East Pakistan, contributed by
foreign governments, international organizations, and private volun-
teer agencies. The League of Red Cross Societies expected, however,
that East Pakistan would need direct foreign assistance at least until
April of 1971.
The World Bank had also devised a long-term reconstruction plan
to the amount of $185 million, to be administered by governmental
authorities with the advice of World Bank specialists. The delivery
and distribution of such aid, especially emergency relief, was not
without problems. The floodwaters, teeming with decaying corpses
and excrement, made perfect breeding grounds for typhoid and
cholera, thereby hindering the establishment and staffing of distribu-
tion stations.
The real relief problems were human-made and contributed to
problems between East Pakistan and the central Pakistani govern-
ment in Karachi. Before the end of the month of November, East
Pakistani political and social leaders began to accuse the governing
authorities of “gross neglect, callous inattention, and utter indif-

691
1970: The Bhola cyclone

ference” to the suffering of the survivors of the cyclone; this criti-

cism was not unwarranted. Two days before that announcement the
League of Red Cross Societies had decided to postpone further deliv-
ery of aid because of the increasingly large stockpiles of relief sup-
plies that remained in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan, awaiting fi-
nal distribution. A team of Norwegian doctors and nurses reported
that it had been idle for two days, still waiting for instructions from
the governmental authorities.
The relief effort of the government of Pakistan itself, from its capi-
tal in Karachi, over 2,000 miles away on the other side of India, was
perceived to be slow and insufficient. Only after the embarrassment
of international pressure and publicity did the government of Paki-
stan respond to the plight of the East Pakistanis. Meanwhile, people
continued to die of starvation and disease by the tens of thousands,
and refugees continued to stream across the border into the already
overcrowded Indian city of Calcutta.
Two days after the disaster, General Agha Mohammad Yahya
Khan, the commander in chief of the armed forces and effective
ruler of Pakistan, which at the time was under martial law, visited
Dhaka briefly after a visit to Beijing. He left the next day: The people
of East Pakistan and their political leaders perceived this as evidence
of official indifference to their suffering. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,
the father of modern Bangladesh, commented from jail, “West Paki-
stan has a bumper wheat crop, but the first shipment of food grain to
reach us is from abroad. . . . We have a large army, but it is left to the
British Marines to bury our dead.”
On December 7, 1970, less than a month after the cyclone struck
the Ganges Delta, elections for the Pakistani National Assembly were
held; for the first time East and West Pakistanis would elect their rep-
resentatives directly. The results were telling; the Awami League, the
political party calling for the independence of East Pakistan, won 160
out of 162 seats allotted to East Pakistan. In April of 1971, East Paki-
stan would rename itself Bangladesh and declare independence. By
December, after civil war and the defeat of the Pakistani army in Ban-
gladesh by the army of India, Bangladesh became recognized as an
independent nation.
Rosa Alvarez Ulloa

692
 1970: The Bhola cyclone

For Further Information:

Cornell, James. “Cyclones: Hurricanes and Typhoons.” The Great In-
ternational Disaster Book. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976.
Frazier, Kendrick. “Hurricanes.” In The Violent Face of Nature: Severe
Phenomena and Natural Disasters. New York: William Morrow, 1979.
Heitzman, James, and Robert Worden. Bangladesh: A Country Study.
2d ed. Area Handbook Series DA Pam 550-175. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1989.
Whittow, John. “High Winds.” Disasters: The Anatomy of Environmental
Hazards. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1979.

693
■ 1974: The Jumbo Outbreak
Tornadoes
Also known as: The Super Outbreak
Date: April 3-4, 1974
Place: 11 states in the U.S. South and Midwest, as well as Ontario,
Canada
Classification: 6 tornadoes rated F5
Result: 316 dead, nearly 5,500 injured, $1 billion in damage

T he largest tornado outbreak (several tornadoes in one

day) to date in the United States resulted from the un-
usual collision of cold, dry air from the west upon warm, moist air ex-
tending east through the Ohio River Valley. The storm cell created
was carried by strong, fast-moving winds common for systems in the
early spring—a front moved from Colorado to Detroit in only a few
hours, reaching the speed of 60 miles per hour near St. Louis. How-
ever, when the storm cell met the jet stream, events ceased to be com-
mon. Three parallel lines of squalls began to form shortly after noon
on Wednesday, April 3, 1974. These squalls were more than 11 miles
high and eventually a total of 2,598 miles long. They moved at an av-
erage rate of 50 miles per hour.
At 2:08 p.m. in Lincoln, Illinois, the squall line from St. Louis to
Lake Michigan spawned the first of what would be 148 tornadoes in
all before the activity ended at 5:20 a.m. on April 4. Meanwhile, a tor-
nado in the second and more violent line from central Tennessee to
southern Michigan touched down in Cleveland, Tennessee, at 2:10
p.m., with additional tornadoes in Jonesville and Depauw, Indiana,
ten minutes later. The third line, along the Tennessee-North Caro-
lina border, did not fully form until the early evening of April 3 but
ultimately birthed just over one-third of the tornadoes in the out-
break and left 100 people dead.
The Jumbo Outbreak—or Super Outbreak, as a number of survi-
vors have also termed it—was not only more extensive than all other
known instances to date but also unusually intense, with tornado
path lengths and widths one order of magnitude greater than those

694
 1974: The Jumbo Outbreak

associated with average tornadoes. Natural barriers were thus no im-

pediment to the powerful funnels. One of the worst storms moved
continuously over 51 miles in Alabama, including across a lake.
Among other damage, this tornado destroyed a mobile home park
with its winds of 260 miles per hour. Another tornado climbed the
3,300-foot peak of Rich Knob in Georgia to ravage the valley below,
while another of the Alabama funnels continued on after jumping a
200-foot cliff.
Yet the tornadoes did not form in any major population centers,
while many people in the tornadoes’ paths survived remarkably. For
example, in Branchville, Indiana, a school bus rolled 400 feet off the
road, killing the driver and his wife. Another bus driver nearby,
though, evacuated the children on board and had them lie in a ditch.
The bus blew over them, but no one else was seriously hurt. In an-
other tornado, the winds caused the car of a man driving home from
work to somersault twice and land in his neighbor’s yard. Although
he was badly cut by glass, the man found his family huddled safely in
the basement beneath the rubble of his home. There were also the
freakish stories typically created by tornadoes, such as that of the pet
rabbit in a hutch behind a home in Dawson County, Georgia, that
ended up safe in the kitchen while 3 of the 5 human members of the
family perished.
Overall, 11 states—Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky,
Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Vir-
ginia—and over 50,000 people experienced the outbreak in the
United States. Eight people also died and more than 10 were hurt in
Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The National Guard was called out in
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. All three states, as well as Indiana,
Georgia, and Alabama, were later named federal disaster areas. Eight
hundred Red Cross workers served the stricken communities. The
power system of the Tennessee Valley Authority suffered the worst
damage of its forty-year history, while 90 percent of Huntsville, Ala-
bama, was left without electricity and nine towns in Indiana and
Cincinnati, Ohio, were among municipalities that lost phone service.
At the height of activity, 15 tornadoes were on the ground simulta-
neously. Thirteen tornadoes were rated at an intensity of F1, 22 at F2,
30 at F3, 22 at F4, and 6 at F5 through a combination of decisions by
local weather offices and aerial pictures. The strongest tornadoes oc-

695
1974: The Jumbo Outbreak

curred at Xenia, Ohio; Depauw, Indiana; Sayler Park, Ohio; Bran-

denburg, Kentucky; First Tanner, Alabama; and Guin, Alabama.
Etowa, Tennessee; Cleveland, Tennessee; Tanner, Alabama; Harvest,
Alabama; Huntsville, Alabama; and Livingston, Tennessee were all
struck twice by funnels. In Huntsville, one injured man went to a
church to wait for an ambulance, only to be killed by the second tor-
nado ten minutes later. There were two cases of family tornadoes, or
several tornadoes spawned from one funnel: near Monticello, Indi-
ana, where 150 homes and 100 businesses valued at $100 million
were destroyed, and along the Indiana-Kentucky border near Cincin-
nati, Ohio. During the outbreak, a moderate earthquake centered in
Springfield, Illinois, occurred coincidentally. There were no injuries
or damage caused by the tremor, though. The two communities hit
hardest during the Jumbo Outbreak were Xenia, Ohio, and Branden-
burg, Kentucky.
Xenia, Ohio. In Xenia, near Dayton, the storm began around
4:30 p.m. Eastern time on April 3 as two small funnels twisting around
each other. These funnels intensified as they approached Xenia, cre-
ating suction vortices that spun over the city of 25,000 for the next
forty-five minutes. One vortex moved from west to east at speeds
nearing 200 miles per hour. As a whole, the Xenia tornado was com-
posed of a dust column between 30 and 40 feet wide, probably spin-
ning at 100 miles per hour.
There were no weather sirens in Xenia at the time, so many people
had no idea the weather was deteriorating until the tornado was on
top of them. By the time the tornado moved through Xenia, 35 peo-
ple had died and 1 of every 25 residents (or 1,150 total) was injured.
The dead included 2 National Guardsmen fighting a fire in the after-
math of the tornado and 5 people found at the A&W drive-in restau-
rant.
Fortunately, the elementary and secondary schools had all fin-
ished classes for the day, and students from Wilberforce College and
Central State College were out of town on spring break, since there
was almost no warning when the tornado first hit. Three schools were
completely ruined, and three more were seriously damaged. At the
high school, the drama troupe took refuge in a classroom outside the
auditorium shortly before the roof collapsed and three school buses
were tossed onto the stage. One family with 5 children miraculously

696
 1974: The Jumbo Outbreak

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

One of the tornadoes of the Jumbo Outbreak, this funnel cloud struck Xenia, Ohio,
which suffered major damage. (AP/Wide World Photos)

survived despite having to take refuge in a glass shop, which ex-

ploded around them.
Half of the city’s homes were damaged or destroyed. Typically, all
the houses on one side of a street collapsed while the other side suf-
fered less damage. This was because the wind blew in the garage
doors on one side of the street, and the homes collapsed once the
wind blew inside. All 3 power lines into Xenia were blown down, and
5 of the 7 supermarkets were demolished. Besides the National
Guard, personnel from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base lent support
to tornado cleanup efforts and supplied fresh water to Xenia. Dam-
ages in Xenia were estimated to be three-fourths of the $100 million
total repair costs for Ohio. It took three months of 200 trucks per day
to haul away the rubble.
Brandenburg, Kentucky. At 3:40 p.m., a tornado touched down
near Hardinsburg, Kentucky. Half an hour later, it had grown to 500
yards across and struck Brandenburg in the most serious of the
26 tornado touchdowns in Kentucky during the Jumbo Outbreak.

697
1974: The Jumbo Outbreak

Thirty-one of Brandenburg’s 1,700 residents were killed when a tor-

nado struck there, and 250 were hurt. This was a substantial percent-
age of the 71 dead and 280 injured reported in all of Kentucky as of
April 4. Many tornado victims were apparently children playing out-
side after school. Soldiers from Fort Knox provided assistance with
rescue and recovery, bringing searchlights the night of April 3 to
search for the dead. Brandenburg’s five-block downtown area was
completely demolished. Total damages were estimated at $22 mil-
lion.
Learning from the Jumbo Outbreak. The spring of 1974 had
already shown some penchant for storms. For example, 20 tornadoes
were recorded on April 1, killing 2 and injuring 51 in ten states, while
damaging or destroying 72 aircraft worth $1 million at North Metro-
politan Airport in Nashville (now Nashville International Airport).
Meteorologists knew that the weather patterns remained volatile, yet
none of them could have predicted that within three days the United
States would be on its way to suffering the most tornado deaths in one
year since 1953. No one guessed that the previous record for torna-
does over a twenty-four-hour period would be smashed, either. That
mark was the more than 60 funnels recorded on February 19, 1884,
in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Tennessee. That tornado outbreak destroyed 10,000
buildings, killed 800, and injured 2,500.
However, tornado researcher Theodore Fujita was determined to
use the events of April 3-4, 1974, to better understand tornadoes and
to improve preparedness and safety. He flew over 10,000 miles after
the outbreak in a joint survey with the University of Oklahoma and
the National Severe Storms Laboratory, gathering a vast amount of
useful data. In fact, nearly half of the tornadoes studied by Fujita and
his assistants at the University of Chicago during his career were the
ones from this outbreak.
Fujita accumulated evidence from the Jumbo Outbreak—a phrase
he coined based on the 747 “jumbo jet” (“74” for 1974 and “7” from
the sum of April 3 and 4)—to support two of his theories. First, in one
forest, Fujita photographed a peculiar starburst pattern, where the
fallen trees pointed out from one spot. This helped him argue for the
existence of microbursts, phenomena that can push a tornado off its
path. Second, Fujita was able to demonstrate the presence of suction

698
 1974: The Jumbo Outbreak

vortices, small vortices within a tornado that seem to suck the debris
together. Three motions coincide in the suction vortex—the motion
of the tornado, the rotation of the suction spot around the tornado,
and the spin of the vortex—and can result in a circular area of dam-
age with a diameter of up to 20 feet. Because the Xenia tornado was
transparent and its funnel did not extend all the way from the ground
to the cloud, Fujita could show the motion of suction vortices by the
movement of dust and debris in home movies from Xenia.
Fujita’s research into the Jumbo Outbreak helped scientists distin-
guish between damage caused by tornadoes and by strong winds.
They thus learned more about the conditions under which torna-
does occur so that the public can be warned earlier. In addition, the
outbreak encouraged meteorologists to continue trying to improve
their radar systems. By the late 1990’s, tornadoes that were merely
“green blobs” in 1974 could be seen clearly on Doppler screens. Me-
teorologists also urged towns to invest in weather sirens. For exam-
ple, Xenia installed a system of ten alarms. Finally, many of the com-
munities devastated by the outbreak took pride in rebuilding their
homes and making them better than before.
Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

For Further Information:

Ball, Jacqueline A. Tornado! The 1974 Super Outbreak. New York: Bear-
port, 2005.
Burt, Christopher C. Extreme Weather: A Guide and Record Book. New
York: W. W. Norton, 2004.
Butler, William S., ed. Tornado: A Look Back at Louisville’s Dark Day,
April 3, 1974. Louisville, Ky.: Butler Books, 2004.
Fujita, T. Theodore. “Jumbo Tornado Outbreak of 3 April 1974.”
Weatherwise 27 (1974): 116-126.
Rosenfield, Jeffrey. Eye of the Storm: Inside the World’s Deadliest Hurri-
canes, Tornadoes, and Blizzards. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
U.S. Department of Commerce. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. The Widespread Tornado Outbreak of April 3-4, 1974:
A Report to the Administrator. Rockville, Md.: Author, 1974.
Weems, John Edward. The Tornado. College Station: Texas A&M Uni-
versity Press, 1991.

699
■ 1976: Ebola outbreaks
Epidemics
Date: Late June-November 20, 1976, in Sudan and September 1-
October 24, 1976, in Zaire
Place: Southern Sudan and northern Zaire (now Democratic Re-
public of Congo)
Result: 151 dead out of 284 cases (53 percent mortality), 280 dead
out of 318 cases (88 percent mortality)

I n 1967, 23 commercial laboratory workers were hospital-

ized in Marburg, Germany, for a hemorrhagic fever that
was traced to the handling of vervets (African green monkeys) im-
ported from Uganda. Six more medical workers in Frankfurt, Ger-
many, who were involved in the treatment of these patients, also be-
came sick. At the same time, a veterinarian who handled monkeys
and his wife were infected in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Electron micros-
copy work determined that the disease agent was an unusual-looking
ribonucleic acid virus. It had a unique, slender filamentous comma
shape or branched shape and caused 23 percent mortality. Relatively
few detected recurrences of this disease have occurred since its dis-
covery. However, a serologically distinct but related virus with similar
effects, now known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), was identified
during two almost simultaneous epidemics during 1976.
The diseases begin four to sixteen days after infection as an in-
creasingly severe influenza-like illness, with high fever, headaches,
chest pains, and weakness for about two days. This is followed in the
majority of cases by severe diarrhea, vomiting, dry throat, cough, and
rash. Bleeding from body openings is very common, and patients can
become aggressive and difficult to manage. The virus reaches high
levels in the blood and other body fluids, and the resulting tissue in-
fections are so extensive that organ damage can be widespread.
Within seven to ten days the patient is severely exhausted and dehy-
drated and often dies of shock. The natural animal reservoir for this
virus is not known, and human-to-human transmission mostly results
from close, intimate contact. There is presently no known treatment.

700
 1976: Ebola outbreaks

LIBYA EGYPT
Arabian
Peninsula

Nil
Port Sudan

Re
e R i ve
NIGER

d
Se
Atbarah

a
r
Khartoum
CHAD ERITREA
SUDAN

Blu
Al Fashir

eN
ile

ile
f Aden

ite N
G u lf o
NIGERIA

Wh
SOMALIA
Wau
ETHIOPIA
CENTRAL AFRICAN
REPUBLIC Juba
CAMEROON
Bangassou
Bumba

ngo River
Kisangani UGANDA KENYA
GABON Co Lake
Mbandaka RWANDA Victoria

CONGO ZAIRE
(Brazzaville) (CONGO)
Kinshasa BURUNDI
Kananga Kalemi
Cabinda Matadi TANZANIA Indian
(Angola) Kamina Ocean

Atlantic Likasi
Ocean
ANGOLA
ZAMBIA

Sudan. The epidemic started in Nzara township, where most resi-

dents live in mud-walled, thatched-roof houses in the thick wood-
lands adjacent to the African rain forest zone. The first persons
infected with Ebola hemorrhagic fever are believed to be three em-
ployees of a cotton factory, part of an agricultural cooperative, in
Nzara; local raw cotton is converted to cloth by the 455 employees of
this factory. A factory storekeeper became ill on June 27, 1976, with a
high fever, headache, and chest pains. He bled from the nose and
mouth and had bloody diarrhea by the fifth day, was hospitalized in
Nzara on June 30, and died on July 6. His brother nursed him and
also became sick but recovered after two weeks.
Another storekeeper who worked with the deceased storekeeper
entered the hospital on July 12 and died July 14. His wife took ill and
died on July 19. Another factory worker employed in the cloth room
next to the store where the two deceased employees worked became
sick on July 18, entered the hospital on July 24, and died on July 27.
None of the men lived near each other nor socialized together, and

701
1976: Ebola outbreaks

their lives were very different. Eventually associates of the third em-
ployee became ill, and one individual who managed the jazz club, a
social center in Nzara, journeyed to the Maridi hospital, where he
died. Forty-eight cases and 27 deaths in Nzara could be traced to the
third employee. By July, September, and October, additional factory
employees were getting sick but could not be tied directly to previ-
ously infected individuals. Most were cared for by family members in
isolated homesteads. This helped limit the spread of the disease.
The individual who died in Maridi was cared for by close friends
and several hospital employees, all of whom came down with the fe-
ver. They were cared for by others, who managed to spread the dis-
ease to various regions around the Maridi township. An additional
source of infection arrived when a nurse from Nzara came in for
treatment. Many of the hospital staff were also infected.
By the time the World Health Organization (WHO) team arrived
in Maridi on October 29, the situation was dire there but improving
in Nzara. The Maridi hospital was virtually emptied of patients; 33 of
the 61 on the nursing staff had died, and 1 doctor had developed the
disease. Eight additional people associated with hospital mainte-
nance also died. Thus, the local community viewed the hospital as
the source of their woes. Isolation measures were quickly adopted,
and protective clothing was distributed within the hospital.
Five teams of 7 individuals each, including schoolteachers and
older school boys led by a public health official, were to visit every
homestead and identify infected individuals in the community, who
were then requested to come to the hospital. If they preferred to stay
at home, relatives were warned to restrict contact with the patient. Fu-
neral rituals also hastened the spread of the disease because ritual
called for the body being prepared for burial by removing all food
and excreta by hand. Local leaders were apprised of the situation,
and they encouraged people to bring their dead to Maridi, where
medical personnel would cleanse the bodies. Their support acceler-
ated the work of the surveillance teams, which expanded their efforts
to include a 30-mile radius around Maridi by November 17.
The final count of 284 cases was distributed as 67 in Nzara, 213 in
Maridi, 3 in Tembura, and 1 in Juba. Epidemiological analysis indi-
cated that Nzara was the source of the epidemic, and the cotton fac-
tory was studied most intensively. Infections developed in the cloth

702
 1976: Ebola outbreaks

room and nearby store, the weaving areas, and the drawing-in areas
only. There were no infections in the spinning area, where most of
the employees worked.
Zaire. The focus of the epidemic in Zaire was in a region where
more than three-quarters of the 275,000 people of the Bumba zone
live in villages with fewer than 5,000 people. This region is part of the
middle Congo River basin and is largely a tropical rain forest. The
Yambuku Catholic Mission was founded by Belgian missionaries in
1935 and provided medicines to a region of about 60,000 people in
the Yandongi collectivity (county). In 1976 there were 120 beds su-
pervised by a medical staff of seventeen, including a Zairean medical
assistant and three Belgian nuns who worked as nurses and midwives.
Around 6,000 to 12,000 people were treated monthly. Five syringes
and needles were distributed to the nursing staff every morning for
use at the outpatient, prenatal, and inpatient clinics. Unfortunately,
they were only rinsed in warm water between uses, unlike in the surgi-
cal ward, which had its own equipment that was sterilized after every
use.
The first person to exhibit definitive signs of the Ebola virus was a
forty-four-year-old male teacher at the Mission School who had re-
cently toured the most northern areas of Zaire, the Mobayi-Mbongo
zone, by automobile with other Mission employees from August 10 to
August 22. His fever was suggestive of malaria, so he was injected with
chloroquine on August 26 at the outpatient clinic. His fever disap-
peared and then reappeared on September 1, along with other symp-
toms. He was admitted with gastrointestinal bleeding to the Yambuku
Mission Hospital (YMH) on September 5. The medical staff gave him
antibiotics, chloroquine, vitamins, and intravenous fluids but noth-
ing worked. He died on September 8.
Records for the outpatient clinic were too incomplete to trace eas-
ily possible earlier cases, but there may have been one individual with
EHF treated on August 28, who was described as having an odd com-
bination of symptoms: nosebleeds and diarrhea. He may have been
the source of the infection, but he left the clinic and was never found.
Nine additional conclusive cases occurred in people who had re-
ceived treatment for other diseases at the outpatient clinic at YMH. A
sixteen-year-old female was given transfusions for her anemia. An
adult woman was given vitamin injections so that she could care for

703
1976: Ebola outbreaks

her husband recovering from hernia surgery. Another adult woman

was recovering from malaria, tended by her husband. All later suc-
cumbed and died of EHF, and soon those who had nursed these indi-
viduals or prepared their bodies for burial also came down with the
disease. The disease struck 21 family members and friends of the first
patient, and 18 died.
This new, mysterious disease that caused people to bleed to death
and to go crazy was soon causing a panic in the local villages. On Sep-
tember 12 a nun became sick, and other nuns radioed for help. The
provincial physician arrived on September 15 and, equally baffled,
gathered as much information as he could and then returned to
Bumba, where he requested help from administrators in Kinshasa.
On September 19, the nun died; by then, the bleeding illness was re-
sponsible for deaths in more than 40 villages.
Two professors of epidemiology and microbiology from the Na-
tional University of Zaire were sent to Yambuku. They arrived on Sep-
tember 23, expecting to study the situation for six days, but left after a
day of collecting blood and tissue samples from cadavers and pa-
tients. The professors also took two nuns and a father back with them
to Kinshasa for treatment. Thirteen of the 17 staff members at YMH
had become infected and 11 had died, so the hospital was closed on
October 3. At least 85 out of 288 cases, where transmission could be
traced, had received injections at YMH. Another 149 patients had
had close contact with infected patients, and 49 had been subject to
injections and patient contact.
The former physician of Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko, Dr.
William Close, was contacted by the Minister of Health in order to
gain assistance from the United States. He contacted the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, which provided labora-
tory support. By mid-October medical authorities had imposed a
quarantine on the Bumba zone. Village elders requested their com-
munity members to stay in their homes, and all activities stopped. By
now officials were aware that there was a similar epidemic in south-
ern Sudan, and blood samples from both locales were shipped to the
virus unit of the WHO in Geneva, which then forwarded them to the
CDC. On October 15, the WHO reported the presence of a new virus,
later named Ebola for a local river.
What followed was an internationally coordinated investigation of

704
 1976: Ebola outbreaks

both Zaire and Sudan by at least eight nations, several international

organizations, and Zaire’s entire medical community. The most up-
to-date isolation strategies were used, and patients were attended by
personnel in protective suits. A complete epidemiological investiga-
tion was conducted, studying 550 villages and interviewing 34,000
families. Scientists took blood samples from 442 people in the com-
munities where the infection was most prevalent. They also collected
local insects and animals, with no success at finding the animal reser-
voir.
Although geographically and chronologically close, the two epi-
demics appear to have been independent events. There were rela-
tively few travelers and no Ebola cases between the two locales. Mo-
lecular analyses also indicated the two strains of Ebola were different.
The Nzara virus is relatively more infectious, and the Yambuku virus
is more lethal. Both Ebola virus strains were placed in the new
filovirus family.
It was not until 1995 that another major Ebola epidemic occurred,
this time in Kikwit, Zaire. EHF outbreaks before 1995 were sporadic
and small, including 1 death in Tandala, Zaire, in 1977; 34 cases and
22 dead in Nzara and Yambio, Zaire, in 1979; and 1 case in Tai, Ivory
Coast. There may have been a near miss when macaque monkeys
from the Philippines residing in a facility in Reston, Virginia, died
from an Ebola-like filovirus in 1989. The virus did not affect humans.
Scientists continued to search for a cure, knowing that the preven-
tion of future epidemics hinges on identification of the animal reser-
voir and the presence of adequate health care facilities in some of the
poorest regions of the world.
Joan C. Stevenson

For Further Information:

Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World
out of Balance. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.
Klenk, Hans-Dieter, ed. Marburg and Ebola Viruses. New York: Springer,
1999.
Murphy, Frederick A., and Clarence J. Peters. “Ebola Virus: Where
Does It Come from and Where Is It Going?” In Emerging Infections,
edited by Richard M. Krause. San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press,
1998.

705
1976: Ebola outbreaks

Preston, Richard. The Hot Zone. New York: Random House, 1994.
Simpson, D. I. H. Marburg and Ebola Virus Infections: A Guide for Their
Diagnosis, Management, and Control. Geneva, Switzerland: World
Health Organization, 1977.
Smith, Tara C. Ebola. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2006.
WHO/International Study Team. “Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever in Su-
dan, 1976. Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever in Zaire, 1976.” Bulletin of
the World Health Organization 56, no. 2 (1978): 247-293.

706
■ 1976: Legionnaires’ disease
Epidemic
Date: July 21-August 4, 1976
Place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Result: 29 dead, 221 infected

Y earlong U.S. bicentennial celebrations reached a peak

on July 4, 1976, in the city of Philadelphia. Philadel-
phians proudly displayed American flags on the porches of their row
houses, welcoming the thousands of visitors who came to witness the
United States celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the
signing of the Declaration of Independence. President Gerald Ford
gave a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia to record the oc-
casion for posterity. Later that afternoon, the historic Liberty Bell
monument, which had been silent for many decades, was struck.
Bells in towns across the country simultaneously echoed the toll of
the Liberty Bell. By nightfall the excitement escalated. The light from
red, white, and blue fireworks lit up skies from coast to coast.
Less than three weeks later, after so many jubilant festivities, Penn-
sylvanians were stunned and helpless when the city witnessed a major
event in medical history and found it was again the focus of media
attention. The stifling July heat and drizzling rain that fell during
the legionnaires’ parade added to the sticky humidity but did not of-
fer much relief to spectators and legionnaire families lining the cen-
ter city streets in Philadelphia. The veterans with the American Le-
gion held parades to kick off their annual gatherings. The Bellvue-
Stratford Hotel, a national and historic Philadelphia landmark built
in the early 1900’s, hosted the fifty-eighth Pennsylvania State Ameri-
can Legion Convention, where an outbreak of a pneumonia-like ill-
ness mysteriously occurred among a group of attendees. More than
4,000 delegates attended the four-day convention at the hotel, which
lasted from July 21 to 24, 1976. One week after the convention, Amer-
ican Legion officials in Pennsylvania began receiving calls from mem-
bers statewide: They reported several legionnaires had died and doz-
ens of others were hospitalized with severe pneumonia. Leaders from

707
1976: Legionnaires’ disease

the American Legion quickly alerted city and state health depart-
ment personnel and media to the rapidly increasing number of le-
gionnaires stricken by the mysterious illness.
The epidemic pneumonia that emerged following the American
Legion convention was subsequently described as “one of the most
publicized epidemics” in which the elite Centers for Disease Con-
trol (CDC) medical investigators had participated. State and na-
tional newspapers covering the story reported the link of the illness
to legionnaire members, calling the mysterious pneumonia “Legion-
naires’ disease,” and they constantly pressed researchers for informa-
tion on the official death tolls and progress reports on the investiga-
tion of the outbreak. Ten days after the convention concluded,
publishing a brief account in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
of August 6, 1976, researchers from the CDC in Atlanta stated 22 peo-
ple had died from pneumonia caused by Philadelphia Respiratory
Disease. State and city physicians and epidemiologists investigating
the cause of the illness that was later officially named Legionnaires’
disease were not initially able to identify the agent responsible be-
cause it mimicked other illnesses and could not be cultured using
standard laboratory techniques.
Four months passed before investigators were able to find the an-
swers and to unlock the mystery that accompanied the sometimes-
fatal infection. Then, on January 14, 1976, Joseph McDade, a CDC re-
search microbiologist, isolated a bacterium that caused the epi-
demic. The bacteria responsible for the disease was named Legionella
pneumophila (lung-loving). It was difficult to isolate and culture, and
the patterns seen in chest X rays of the victims resembled patterns
that had previously been associated with viral infections. Eventually,
in this outbreak legionellosis caused 29 deaths (various sources list
29-34 deaths) and sickened 221 people, some of whom were not di-
rectly associated with the convention.
Classification and Definition. In 1999, scientists character-
ized Legionella pneumophila as a naturally occurring aquatic micro-
organism. Legionella species are now recognized as a leading cause
of community-acquired pneumonia. The CDC has estimated that
17,000 to 23,000 cases of Legionnaires’ disease occur annually in
America, with less than 1,000 of these cases being confirmed and re-
ported. The resulting mortality rate, which ranges up to 25 percent in

708
 1976: Legionnaires’ disease

untreated immunity-compromised patients, can be lowered if the dis-

ease is diagnosed rapidly and appropriate antimicrobial therapy insti-
tuted early. Legionella pneumophila is estimated to be responsible for
80 to 85 percent of reported cases of Legionella infections, with the
majority of cases being caused specifically by Legionella pneumophilia.
Risk Factors, Symptoms, and Treatment. Those at risk for Le-
gionnaires’ disease include people fifty years of age and older, smok-
ers, and those with pulmonary disease. People with weakened im-
mune systems, such as organ transplant patients, kidney dialysis
patients, and those suffering from cancer and AIDS, are also at risk,
as are those who are exposed to water vapor containing L. pneu-
mophila. Males are 2.5 times more likely to contract the disease than
females.
People with legionellosis usually first display a mild cough and low
fever and, if untreated, can quickly advance through progressive
pneumonia and coma. The incubation period for L. pneumophila
is two to ten days. Other early symptoms of this disease include
malaise, muscle aches, and a slight headache. In later stages, victims
have displayed high fevers (105 degrees Fahrenheit); dry, unproduc-
tive coughs; and shortness of breath. Gastrointestinal symptoms ob-
served include vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, and abdominal pain.
Since identification of L. pneumophila, clinicians have reported it is
effectively treated with either erythromycin or a combination of
erythromycin and rifampin.
Reservoirs and Amplifiers. Scientists sampling lakes, ponds,
streams, marine and fresh waters, and soils have isolated the L. pneu-
mophila bacterium in nature. Amplifiers are defined by scientists as
any natural or human-made system that provides suitable conditions
for the growth of the bacterium. Controversy still surrounds the exact
location of the bacterial agent responsible for the Philadelphia out-
break; however, most articles list the hotel air conditioner water cool-
ing tower as the source.
Scientific publications after 1978 reported the isolation of L.
pneumophila from human-made plumbing systems, including showers,
faucets, hot-water tanks, cooling towers, evaporative condensers, hu-
midifiers, whirlpools, spas, decorative fountains, dental water units,
grocery produce misters, and respiratory-therapy equipment. The
plumbing systems of hotels, dental offices, hospitals, grocery stores,

709
1976: Legionnaires’ disease

gymnasiums, and homes have also been documented as sources for

the bacterium. Environmental factors associated with survival of this
bacterium are water temperatures between 68 and 122 degrees Fahr-
enheit (20 and 50 degrees Celsius), stagnant water, pH ranges of 2.0-
8.5, microbiotically nutrient sediments, and host microorganisms (al-
gae, protozoa, flavobacteria, and Pseudomonas bacteria).
Transmission. In 1980, CDC investigators published six key events
required for the transmission of Legionella. The first three events—
survival in nature, amplification, and aerosolization—are influenced
by environmental parameters (reservoir temperature and pH, micro-
organism populations, climate, humidity, and biocides). In contrast,
the last three events—susceptible exposure, intracellular multiplica-
tion in human phagocytes, and diagnosis of Legionnaires’ disease—
are clinical parameters (patient risk factors, virulence, symptoms, labo-
ratory testing, and diagnosis).
Anthony Newsome and Mary Etta Boulden

For Further Information:

Fraser, David W., et al. “Legionnaires’ Disease: Description of an Epi-
demic of Pneumonia.” New England Journal of Medicine 297 (1977):
1189-1197.
Katz, Sheila Moriber, ed. Legionellosis. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press,
1985.
McCoy, William F. Preventing Legionellosis. Seattle: IWA, 2005.
Shader, Laurel. Legionnaire’s Disease. Philadelphia: Chelsea House,
2006.
Stout, Jane E., and Victor L. Yu. “Legionellosis.” The New England Jour-
nal of Medicine 337 (1997): 682-687.
Thomas, Gordon, and Max Morgan-Witts. Anatomy of an Epidemic.
New York: Doubleday, 1982.
Yu, Victor L. “Resolving the Controversy on Environmental Cultures
for Legionella: A Modest Proposal.” Infection Control and Hospital
Epidemiology 19, no. 12 (1998): 893-897.

710
■ 1976: The Tangshan earthquake
Earthquake
Date: July 28, 1976
Place: Tangshan, northeastern China
Magnitude: 8.0
Result: About 250,000 dead (the highest death toll for a natural di-
saster in the twentieth century), 160,000 seriously injured, almost
the entire city of 1.1 million people destroyed

C hina has a long recorded history of earthquakes. Geo-

logically, it is a region of complex tectonic relation-
ships. The Indian Plate is pushing northward in the southwest, form-
ing the Himalayas and elevated Tibetan Plateau, and oceanic plates
are approaching and colliding in the southeast and east.
Historically, China is a vast region that has had a large popula-
tion for millennia, as well as a relatively advanced culture, with re-
corded history extending back well over two thousand years. When
the Communist Party took power in 1949 and the People’s Republic
of China began, a search was initiated by 130 historians to document
the history of seismic activity. They found that there had been more
than ten thousand earthquakes recorded in China in the previous
three thousand years—over five hundred of them of disaster propor-
tions.
Setting. Tangshan is a large, thriving industrial city at 39.4 de-
grees north latitude and 118.1 degrees east longitude in Hebei Prov-
ince of northeast China, 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of the
capital of Beijing. It is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Gulf
of Chihli, on the Yellow Sea. Its name derives from the T’ang dynasty
(618-907 c.e.) and the word for mountains, “shan.” In the early
1970’s it had a population of 1.1 million, much industrial produc-
tion, and China’s largest coal mine, at nearby Kailuan. There was lit-
tle expectation that Tangshan was to become the site, in terms of
death and destruction, of the worst natural disaster of the twentieth
century, with the second highest death toll in the recorded history of
earthquakes—exceeded only by a great earthquake in January, 1556,

711
1976: The Tangshan earthquake

in Shaanxi (or Shensi), central China, in which 830,000 died when

buildings and caves collapsed at night.
The important Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region of northeast China
was being intensely studied for potential seismic risk. By the early
1970’s the Chinese government had begun a major effort to investi-
gate earthquake prediction, using the State Bureau of Seismology,
other agencies, and an extensive network of field stations to monitor
various geophysical and geological properties of the local earth,
which were thought to be possible precursors that might herald an
impending earthquake. This effort resulted in a spectacular success
in 1975, when seismologists detected an increasing frequency of mi-
nor earthquakes in the region of Haicheng, northeast of Tangshan,
along with some regional ground deformation. They thought this
could indicate an upcoming, larger earthquake.
On February 4, 1975, their warning resulted in the evacuation of
well over 1 million people from their homes, factories, and other
workplaces—into the cold, without civil resistance. A few hours later,
at 7:36 p.m., the Haicheng area was hit by a magnitude 7.3 earth-
quake, which destroyed 90 percent of the buildings of Haicheng as
well as nearby towns and villages. There were only 1,328 deaths, how-
ever, compared to the doubtless tens of thousands who would have
died without the advance warning and evacuation. A later report
noted that the seismologists who had predicted the quake were “wor-
shipped as saviours.”
Unfortunately, nature would not easily yield its secrets and inten-
tions. Despite much work in earthquake prediction in seismically ac-
tive areas in the United States, Japan, Russia, and China, Haicheng
remained the only major earthquake that had been predicted cor-
rectly—or with a short-term notice—by the year 2000. After the
Haicheng event, various seismic stations in China issued their own
predictions for local earthquakes, but none occurred.
The Tangshan area had likewise been monitored since 1974 for
changes in such conditions as microseismicity (number and location
of very small earthquakes), ground elevation, local sea level, gravity
and magnetic fields, radon gas in groundwater, and even drought
conditions. There was sufficient concern that on July 15, 1976, there
was a meeting of technical experts in Tangshan. However, it was felt
that there was no indication of potential seismic activity exceeding

712
 1976: The Tangshan earthquake

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magnitude 5, which was the threshold at which it would be reported

to the civil authorities. Some thought an earthquake might be possi-
ble in the next few years, but there were no minor precursory fore-
shocks warning that a quake was imminent. There were also meetings
in Beijing of the State Bureau of Seismology on July 24 and 26, re-
garding the possibility of a future earthquake in the Beijing-Tianjin-
Tangshan area. While there was no technical reason for immediate
concern, it was also true that an alert leading to evacuation would be
very disruptive to life, production, and other economic activity in the
large cities in the region.
Since the area is of intraplate nature, which is far away from the
seismically and tectonically active margins of the crustal plates, earth-
quakes there are expected to be infrequent and of only moderate
size. Human knowledge of crustal fracturing, stress, and potential for

713
1976: The Tangshan earthquake

faulting (slippage, which causes earthquakes) is imperfect. There

had been major earthquakes in the general region of Tangshan in
September, 1679, and in September, 1290 (with 100,000 deaths).
The Quake. Without warning, at 3:42 a.m. on July 28, 1976, a
massive earthquake struck the Tangshan area. There was a loud
rumbling and roaring sound, followed by violent jerking back and
forth. The earthquake (including subsequent aftershocks) leveled 20
square miles (50 square kilometers) of the densely populated indus-
trial center of the city, flattened or severely damaged 97 percent of
the buildings and three-quarters of Tangshan’s 916 multistory struc-
tures (only 4 remained essentially intact), and left a ruin of crumbled
buildings, fallen smokestacks, and rubble. Falling buildings, cement
floor slabs, and beams immediately crushed thousands of people.
Most of the disaster’s victims survived the initial shock only to suffo-
cate or succumb to injuries after hours and days trapped in the dusty
wreckage.
There was no electrical power, no water, no telecommunication
systems, no functioning hospital, no transport routes, and no imme-

The aftermath of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. (National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration)

714
 1976: The Tangshan earthquake

diate search and rescue help. With 300 miles of railroad track ruined,
231 highway bridges damaged, and rivers without crossings, relief
could not arrive quickly. It was over a day before the first of an even-
tual 100,000 army troops and 50,000 others could arrive. For ten days
the workers did not have the necessary heavy equipment and cranes
to clear the rubble and retrieve many people.
The city was initially shrouded in total darkness (it being night-
time) and a dense gray fog of soil, coal dust, and smoke. According to
the local Chinese authorities, 242,769 people died and 164,851 were
seriously injured. Other reports and international databases listed
the official death toll as 250,000 to 255,000, and early estimates by vis-
itors placed it even higher.
The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.8 as determined by Chinese
seismologists, and 8.0 in the international database maintained by
the U.S. Geological Survey/National Earthquake Information Cen-
ter. Its focus, where rupture began, was at a relatively shallow depth of
14 miles (23 kilometers), and its epicenter was calculated at 39.5 de-
grees north and 117.9 east—virtually right under Tangshan. Later
that same day, at 6:45 p.m. on July 28, there was a major aftershock,
with magnitude 7.4 at the same focal region. It finished off most of
the buildings that had survived the first shock. Within forty-eight
hours of the initial earthquake, there were more than nine hundred
aftershocks having magnitude of at least 3.0, including sixteen with
magnitude at least 5.0.
Aftereffects. A second disaster was averted at the large Douhe
River reservoir 9 miles (15 kilometers) northeast of Tangshan. The
embankment dam was cracked and weakened, and if it collapsed it
would have flooded the city. Furthermore, after the earthquake a
heavy rain started, and the water level was rising. The floodgate could
not be opened quickly to let out the reservoir water gradually and
unstress the dam, because its electrical power was disabled. Fortu-
nately, troops working manually for eight hours managed to get the
floodgate open.
At the large coal mine complex, about 10,000 people were in the
underground workings when the earthquake struck. The surface
buildings were destroyed, but the large-amplitude surface wave vibra-
tions—usually the most damaging of the seismic waves—became less
intense with depth, and the deep workings were somewhat less

715
1976: The Tangshan earthquake

affected. However, there was no electricity, no hoist cages for work-

ers, and no water pumps to keep the workings from flooding with
groundwater. Remarkably, only 17 mine workers died; the others
managed to dig through the rubble and climb to safety or be rescued.
Five men were brought up alive after fifteen days, having no food and
only filthy water to drink.
Relief and Reconstruction. The search and recovery of bod-
ies was a slow and difficult task, with the stench of decaying bodies of
people and animals, lack of clean water and sanitation, and increas-
ing danger of an epidemic. Relief aid (clothing, tents, heavy equip-
ment, and medical supplies) was offered by the United Nations, the
United States, Great Britain, Japan, and others, but the Chinese gov-
ernment declined it. In retrospect, this denied timely and useful as-
sistance. However, at the time, China was in its Cultural Revolution—
a decade-long era which would last until September, 1976, when
Chairman Mao Zedong died—and the Chinese wanted to display
their self-reliance and not engender a dependent mentality and
considered any outsiders and their assistance to be “interference by
others.”
It was also not an easy time for the State Bureau of Seismology and
those engaged in earthquake monitoring and prediction. When the
earthquake occurred, the recording seismographs in Beijing were
driven off the scale by the large vibrations, and others around the
country could not pinpoint the epicenter other than being some-
where around Beijing. So, with much of the telecommunication sys-
tems in the area disabled, scientists set out in vehicles in all directions
to try to find the epicenter and greatest damage. After being credited
with the success of predicting the Haicheng earthquake the previous
year, the seismologists became ridiculed, and the failure to predict
the devastating Tangshan event became blame for negligence. Anger
and abuse were directed at those identified locally as earthquake ex-
perts, as if the inability to reliably predict one of nature’s great uncer-
tainties was somehow willful and deserving of punishment.
Within two years, a massive reconstruction effort had restored the
city’s industrial production to what it had been. By 1986, ten years
after the earthquake, restoration was mostly complete, although
some citizens were still in temporary shelters, and the population of
Tangshan had increased to 1.4 million. Because it was now recog-

716
 1976: The Tangshan earthquake

nized that the city was on a major crustal fault, reconstruction was
carried out to make structures more earthquake-resistant. Water
pipes were made with flexible joints so they could withstand vibra-
tion, embankments were reinforced around nearby reservoirs, and
hazardous industries were moved outside of town. One factory that
had been destroyed in the great earthquake has been left as a memo-
rial to the thousands lost.
Robert S. Carmichael

For Further Information:

Chen, Yong, et al., eds. The Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976: An
Anatomy of Disaster. New York: Pergamon Press, 1988.
De Blij, H. J. Nature on the Rampage. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution, 1994.
Housner, George W., and He Duxin, eds. The Great Tangshan Earth-
quake of 1976. Pasadena: California Institute of Technology, 2004.
Qian Gang. The Great China Earthquake. Translated by Nicola Ellis and
Cathy Silber. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1989.
Reese, Lori. “Tangshan: Earthquake, July 28, 1976—An Ominous
Rumbling.” Time Asia 154, no. 12 (September 27, 1999).
Sun, Youli. Wrath of Heaven and Earth: Chinese Politics and the Tangshan
Earthquake of 1976. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006.

717
■ 1980’s: AIDS pandemic
Epidemic
Date: Originating perhaps in the 1940’s or 1950’s, at pandemic lev-
els by the 1980’s
Place: Worldwide, especially Africa
Result: Millions dead and infected

A t the beginning of the twenty-first century, human im-

munodeficiency virus (HIV) was infecting 6 million
new individuals and killing about 2 million each year. Most of the 40
million infected during the 1990’s were expected to die in the first
decade of the new century. Prospects for a vaccine were poor, and
chemotherapeutic drugs were too expensive for most.
Science. HIV causes the almost total destruction of CD4 helper T
lymphocytes (CD4 lymphocytes). These cells are necessary for the
development and maintenance of the immune response against myr-
iad viruses and microorganisms. A person infected with HIV who has
a very low CD4 lymphocyte count and one or more severe infectious
diseases has acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
HIV, like all viruses, is unable to proliferate on its own. The only
way it can reproduce is to get its hereditary information into an ap-
propriate host cell. The hereditary information subsequently directs
the synthesis of viral proteins and new hereditary information. New
viruses “self-assemble” as they bud from the cell.
One of the proteins in the viral envelope, a glycoprotein called
GP120, attaches the virus to an appropriate host cell. The viral attach-
ment protein is designated GP120 because it has sugars attached to it
and a molecular weight of 120 daltons. GP120 attaches the virus to
the primary cellular receptor, CD4, embedded in the membranes of
macrophages and CD4 lymphocytes. Cells are distinguished by clus-
ter differentiation (CD) molecules in their membranes. After attach-
ing the virus to CD4, the viral attachment protein binds a coreceptor,
usually CCR5 on macrophages but CXCR4 on CD4 lymphocytes. Vi-
ral attachment to a coreceptor results in the subsequent fusion of the
viral membrane with the host’s membrane. Upon membrane fusion,

718
 1980’s: AIDS pandemic

the viral core diffuses into the host’s cytoplasm, and a viral enzyme
trapped inside the core converts the viral ribonucleic acid (RNA)
into double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The conversion
of RNA into DNA is called reverse transcription and is carried out by
the viral enzyme reverse transcriptase. The newly synthesized viral
DNA is transported into the nucleus, where another viral enzyme
called integrase modifies the DNA and promotes its integration into
one of the host’s chromosomes.
The integrated viral DNA, called the provirus, functions as a tem-
plate for the synthesis of new viral RNA. Some of this viral RNA serves
as messenger RNA (mRNA), which directs the synthesis of viral pro-
teins. Full-length RNAs also serve as new hereditary information.
HIV is transmitted from one person to another in body fluids:
blood, mothers’ milk, semen, and vaginal secretions. Although the
virus can be found in saliva and tears, it is present in such low con-
centrations that it is almost never transmitted through these fluids.
Generally, in adults, HIV is transmitted during sexual intercourse. Vi-
ruses containing vaginal fluid deposit viruses on the mucous mem-
branes of the mouth and genitals. Similarly, virus-laden semen may
introduce viruses on the mucous membranes of the mouth, vagina,
uterus, and colon. All these tissues are protected by macrophages
that engulf the viruses and degrade them. If there are too many vi-
ruses, however, some of the macrophages become infected and the
virus reproduces in them. Usually, CD4 lymphocytes are not infected
until GP120 mutates to a form that binds the coreceptor on CD4 lym-
phocytes.
A fetus sometimes becomes infected when the virus passes through
the placenta from infected mother to fetus; however, most infections
in babies occur at birth because of exposure to contaminated blood or
soon after birth because of drinking mother’s milk. Viruses in the
blood and milk are deposited on the mucous membranes of the
mouth and throat, where they infect macrophages.
About one-quarter of the blood used for medical purposes (mostly
transfusions) in nonindustrialized countries is contaminated with
HIV. In Africa and Southeast Asia, medical quacks and unprofes-
sional doctors may infect their patients with HIV by reusing contami-
nated needles. Transfused or contaminated blood releases viruses in
the circulatory and lymphatic systems. Circulatory and lymphatic

719
1980’s: AIDS pandemic

macrophages destroy most of the introduced viruses, but a few of

the macrophages become infected. In some countries, as many as 50
percent of those who become infected with HIV have shared con-
taminated hypodermic needles when abusing cocaine, heroine, or
opium.
Once HIV infects skin or circulatory and lymphatic system macro-
phages, it spreads rapidly to other macrophages in the lymph and
blood. Four to six weeks after the initial infection, there may be as
many as 1 million viruses per milliliter of blood produced each day. A
person infected with this many viruses usually develops a headache,
fever, enlarged lymph nodes, muscle aches, pharyngitis (sore throat),
and a rash that may last a week or so. Some individuals experience an
outbreak of oral candidiasis, caused by the yeast Candida albicans.
CD4 lymphocytes sustain heavy casualties because of the high viral
concentration. Typically, CD4 lymphocytes drop from about 1,000
cubic millimeters of blood to 500 cubic millimeters of blood, but in
some cases the numbers may go as low as 250 cubic millimeters of
blood.
The destruction of 50 to 75 percent of blood CD4 lymphocytes is
caused by the massive binding of viruses or viral attachment proteins
(GP120) to the lymphocyte receptors (CD4). This extensive binding
of proteins to CD4 induces CD4 lymphocytes to commit suicide. Pro-
grammed suicide is used to eliminate cells that might be dangerous
or that are no longer needed. This early in the infection, almost no
CD4 lymphocytes are infected. Thus, their destruction is not caused
by viruses infecting the cells or an immune system attack by CD8-
cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CD8 lymphocytes). Macrophages are not
significantly killed by viral or GP120 binding because they have very
few CD4 molecules on their surface in comparison to CD4 lympho-
cytes.
About six weeks after the initial infection, the immune system be-
gins to reduce the number of circulating viruses and the number of
infected macrophages. Antibodies secreted by plasma cells into the
lymph and blood link viruses together. Antibody-linked viruses are
readily engulfed by macrophages and destroyed. CD8 lymphocytes,
on the other hand, destroy infected macrophages. The number of
circulating viruses goes from a high of about 1 million to as few as
1,000 per millileter of blood. This decline in viruses results in a par-

720
 1980’s: AIDS pandemic

tial recovery of CD4 lymphocytes. The number of CD4 lymphocytes

may go from about 500 to 700 cubic millimeters of blood. The im-
mune system is unable to eliminate all the viruses and infected
macrophages. Proviruses are able to hide in Langerhans cells in the
skin, glial cells and astrocytes in the brain, and dendrites in the testes
and lymph nodes. Often, infected macrophages in these tissues fail to
attract the attention of CD8 lymphocytes.
A balance between the immune system and the proliferating virus
may exist anywhere from three years to fifteen years. During this pe-
riod, the infected person may show little or no signs of disease and is
said to be asymptomatic. Although a person may appear to be well,
they are infective because viruses are produced by some infected
Langerhans cells. During the asymptomatic phase of the disease, ge-
netically diverse populations of the virus evolve. Some populations
gain the ability to infect CD4 lymphocytes. As viral clones become in-
creasingly more efficient at infecting CD4 lymphocytes, the viral pop-
ulations gradually increase in number. The more viruses there are,
the more binding of viruses (and/or GP120) to CD4 lymphocytes oc-
curs. CD4 lymphocytes once again commit suicide at an increasing
rate. Generally, the new clones of HIV able to infect CD4 lymphocytes
cause these cells to fuse together and form giant multinucleated cells
called syncytia. The efficiency of the immune system decreases drasti-
cally as syncytia-inducing HIV appear.
Although CD8 lymphocytes attack and destroy infected CD4 lym-
phocytes, this only accounts for about 1 percent of the CD4 cell loss
each day. Most of the CD4 lymphocytes lost to viral (and/or GP120)
binding and subsequent formation of syncytia are not infected. The
destruction of uninfected CD4 lymphocytes increasingly weakens the
immune system. The weakened immune system is no longer able to
check HIV or fight off opportunistic pathogens. Thus, individuals in-
fected with the new HIV clones begin to develop severe forms of com-
mon and less common diseases. HIV infected individuals that suffer
from these various diseases are said to have AIDS. Without vigorous
chemotherapy, death usually occurs within a year of an AIDS diag-
nosis.
The diseases most frequently seen in adults with AIDS are tuber-
culosis induced by Mycobacterium avium or M. intracellulare (10-68 per-
cent); Pneumocytis carinii pneumonia (14-62 percent); Candida albi-

721
1980’s: AIDS pandemic

cans (yeast) infections of the mouth, pharynx, lungs, and vagina (10-
50 percent); bacterial and viral diarrheas (45 percent); Kaposi’s sar-
coma, induced by human herpesvirus-8 (5-36 percent); cold sores, in-
duced by human herpesvirus-1 and -2 (30 percent); HIV-associated
central nervous system disease (15-30 percent), which includes HIV-
associated dementia (15-20 percent) and cognitive/motor disorder
(30 percent); Toxoplasma gondii infections of the central nervous sys-
tem (3-27 percent); cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections of the intes-
tines and eyes induced by human herpesvirus-5 (10-25 percent) and
CMV pneumonia (6 percent); bacterial pneumonias (20 percent);
shingles or varicella-zoster virus, induced by human herpesvirus-3
(15 percent); Cryptosporidium-caused diarrhea (10 percent); and Cryp-
tococcus neoformans-induced meningitis (5 percent) and pneumonia
(1 percent). The percent infected varies significantly when different
populations are considered. For example, about 5 percent of persons
who acquire HIV through intravenous drug abuse also become in-
fected by human herpesvirus-8, whereas more than 30 percent of
those who acquire HIV through sexual intercourse become infected
with human herpesvirus-8. This accounts for the higher incidence of
Kaposi’s sarcoma in male homosexuals with AIDS as compared to in-
travenous drug abusers with the disease.
Origins. A growing body of evidence suggests that the virus re-
sponsible for the AIDS pandemic appeared in the 1940’s or 1950’s in
one of the African countries dominated by rain forests and chimpan-
zees: Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, or Zaire (now Democratic Republic
of Congo). HIV-1 arose when a chimpanzee retrovirus, simian immu-
nodeficiency virus (SIVcpz), infected a human. As HIV-1 spread, it
evolved into ten distinct subtypes, designated MA through MJ. The vi-
ruses responsible for the AIDS pandemic belong to the “major”
group of HIV-1, designated HIV-1:M. One of twelve hundred frozen
blood samples taken in 1959 from a native of Zaire was positive for
antibodies against HIV-1 and contained a portion of the viral heredi-
tary information. Analysis of this information suggests that the virus
existed just after HIV-1 began to diverge into distinct subtypes. The
1959 virus is most closely related to HIV-1:MD subtype but is also very
closely related to HIV-1:MB and HIV-1:MF.
During the early 1970’s, some of the evolving subtypes became es-
tablished in prostitutes along the highways that link Zaire to East Afri-

722
 1980’s: AIDS pandemic

can countries. Truckers and military personnel spread HIV-1:MA,

HIV-1:MB, HIV-1:MC, and other subtypes from Zaire into Uganda,
Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and Kenya. The HIV-1:MC subtype
spread north from Kenya into Ethiopia and south from Tanzania into
Zambia. In the 1990’s, HIV-1:MC was most frequently detected in het-
erosexuals of South Africa. At about the same time, subtype HIV-
1:MD spread from Zaire as far west as Senegal.
In the early 1970’s, subtype HIV-1:MB spread from central Africa
to Europe and to the United States, where it became the predomi-
nant subtype in homosexual and bisexual men. Thousands of men
from America and Europe visited Kinshasa, Zaire, in late 1974 to view
the heavyweight boxing championship bout between Muhammad Ali
and George Foreman. Because of this event, HIV-1:MA and HIV-
1:MB had many chances to spread to America and Europe. The first
two deaths from AIDS in homosexual men were reported in the
United States in 1978; a four-year incubation period is not unusual.
In North America and in Europe, HIV-1:MB became associated with
homosexual and bisexual males and their sex partners. On the other
hand, in South America and in the Caribbean, HIV-1:MB became
dominant in heterosexuals.
In the 1980’s, various subtypes of HIV-1:M spread throughout the
world. HIV-1:MA from East Africa, HIV-1:MB from North America
and Europe, HIV-1:MC from South Africa, and HIV-2 from West Af-
rica entered India to begin at least four separate AIDS epidemics.
From India, HIV-1:MC spread north into China and south into Ma-
laysia. From America and Europe, HIV-1:MB and HIV-1:MBs spread
to Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia. HIV-
1:MB became the subtype associated with homosexual and bisexual
men, whereas the HIV-1:Bs became the subtype associated with intra-
venous drug abuse. A number of epidemics raged in Southeast Asia
during the 1990’s. In this region of the world, HIV-1:MC and HIV-
1:ME were dominant in heterosexuals, whereas HIV-1:MB and HIV-
1:MBs were dominant in homosexual men and intravenous drug
abusers.
Two strains of HIV-1 were discovered in central Africa during the
1990’s which were so different from pandemic HIV-1:M that they
could not be detected by the standard antibody tests. HIV-1:O circu-
lated in Zaire, Congo, Gabon, and Cameroon but infected only a few

723
1980’s: AIDS pandemic

thousand individuals. This virus originated from another chimpan-

zee virus very similar to the one that gave rise to pandemic HIV-1:M.
The small number of individuals infected with HIV-1:O suggested
that it might have appeared in the 1980’s, but its great evolutionary
distance from SIVcpz indicated that it has been around much longer
than pandemic HIV-1:M (the “major” group). Possibly, HIV-1:O (the
“old” group) first infected humans at the beginning of the twentieth
century. HIV-1:N (the “new” group), designated YBF30, was found in
Congo and Gabon. The small number of infections by HIV-1:N and
the short evolutionary distance from SIVcpz suggested that this virus
may first have infected humans just a little bit later than pandemic
HIV-1:M.
HIV-2 is closely related to monkey retroviruses that infect ma-
caque monkeys (SIVmac) and sooty mangabey monkeys (SIVsm). It
is distantly related to the retroviruses that infect African green mon-
keys (SIVagm) and those that infect mandrill baboons of West Africa
(SIVmnd). In the 1990’s, HIV-2 was found predominantly in West Af-
rica, from Ghana to Senegal. The variability of HIV-2 subtypes is
nearly as great as that seen for HIV-1:M subtypes. This indicates that
HIV-2 jumped from monkeys to humans in the late 1940’s or 1950’s.
By the 1980’s HIV-2 had spread to Western Europe; it was responsible
for about 10 percent of the AIDS cases in Portugal. HIV-2 also man-
aged to reach India a few years later.
Although AIDS induced by HIV-2 usually does not develop for ten
to twenty years after the initial infection, it eventually kills. HIV-2 does
not spread as efficiently as HIV-1:M through heterosexual intercourse
or through mother’s milk. Clearly, the infectivity of HIV-2 is much less
than pandemic HIV-1:M. Nevertheless, approximately 200,000 West
Africans were infected with HIV-2 during the 1990’s. In fact, HIV-2 in-
fections out numbered HIV-1 infections in Guinea Bissau, Senegal,
and Gambia. In 1992, more people were infected with HIV-2 in Guinea
Bissau than in any other country. Up to 13 percent of young men be-
tween fifteen and thirty-five years of age were infected. Many people in
West Africa were infected with both HIV-1 and HIV-2.
AIDS came into prominence quietly in the United States. In 1978,
AIDS was reported in two homosexual men who were suffering from
multiple infections, extreme loss of weight, swollen lymph nodes,
and malaise. It is estimated that these individuals were infected some-

724
 1980’s: AIDS pandemic

time in the early 1970’s. This was the beginning of the AIDS epidemic
in the United States. By 1985, 72 percent of the AIDS cases were in
homosexual or bisexual men, and 17 percent were heterosexual in-
travenous drug abusers. These two risk groups accounted for 89 per-
cent of the AIDS cases. In addition, about 4 percent were transfusion
recipients and hemophilia patients. Approximately 4 percent of the
cases were in heterosexual men and women, and 2 percent were in
heterosexuals of African descent, mostly from Haiti.
The AIDS epidemic continued to expand in the United States. By
1995, AIDS cases totaled more than 400,000, whereas deaths added to
more than 200,000. The numbers were getting so high that new AIDS
cases and deaths per year were being reported instead of totals. In
1995, there were approximately 60,000 new cases and 50,000 deaths.
The risk groups for contracting AIDS were changing. Many more het-
erosexuals were developing AIDS. In 1995, homosexual and bisexual
men accounted for 50 percent of the AIDS cases, whereas heterosex-
ual intravenous drug abusers accounted for 30 percent. Heterosexuals
having sexual intercourse with HIV-infected persons became a major
risk group, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the AIDS cases.
Although education, medical treatments, and new chemothera-
pies reduced the number of new cases of AIDS and the number of
deaths by the late 1990’s, most of this reduction occurred in Cauca-
sians. The percent of white AIDS patients in 1986, 1996, and 2005 de-
creased—61 percent to 38 percent to 29 percent, respectively. How-
ever, the percent of black or Hispanic AIDS patients went up or
stayed the same in 1986, 1996, and 2005—for blacks, 24 percent to 42
percent to 50 percent, respectively, and for Hispanics, 14 percent to
19 percent to 19 percent, respectively. The uninformed and poor
were disproportionally developing AIDS and dying.
Treatment. By 1985, researchers in France and the United States
developed a test for antibodies against HIV-1. All persons diagnosed
with AIDS had antibodies against HIV-1 and were presumably in-
fected with the virus. Persons not in high-risk categories were free of
the antibodies and the virus. The antibody test for HIV-1 is important
because it can be used to determine if asymptomatic people are in-
fected many years before they develop AIDS. Early treatment pre-
vents significant damage to the immune system, inhibits the spread
of HIV-1, and delays the onset of AIDS. Nearly 100 percent of those

725
1980’s: AIDS pandemic

infected with HIV-1 without aggressive chemotherapy die of AIDS.

A drug called azidothymidine (AZT), also called zidovudine, a
nucleoside analog that blocks viral DNA synthesis, was introduced in
the mid-1980’s. In most cases, AZT was found to be useful for less
than six months because of its toxicity and because of the rapid rate
at which the viral reverse transcriptase becomes resistant to the drug.
Beginning in 1996, AZT was used in conjunction with certain other
nucleoside analogs (such as 3’sulfhydryl-2’deoxycytidine, abbrevi-
ated 3TC) that blocked viral reverse transcriptase. Resistance to the
two-drug-combination therapy did not occur for a year or two. By
1997, there was a significant drop in the number of new AIDS cases
and deaths in the United States. In 1998, the use of three-drug com-
binations (usually AZT, 3TC, and a protease inhibitor) effectively re-
duced HIV to undetectable levels in most people. The protease in-
hibitors blocked the viral protease needed for viral protein synthesis.
The number of AIDS cases and deaths in the United States dropped
more because of the three-drug therapy.
The first three-drug combinations had serious side effects. Some
patients developed disfiguring fat deposits on their bodies (stom-
achs, chests, and neck) and lost excessive fat from their faces and
limbs. The first protease inhibitors were also linked to an increase in
diabetes. In some cases, patients with diabetes became sick, and their
lives were threatened by continued use of the protease inhibitors.
Impact. Approximately 30 percent of babies born to HIV-infected
mothers become infected. During the early 1990’s, the number of ba-
bies infected per year in the United States amounted to more than
2,000. Treating infected mothers with AZT for a month before birth
reduced the number of infected babies by 67 percent. In 1999, a
study demonstrated that AZT treatment of the mother combined
with cesarean delivery of the baby would reduce the number of ba-
bies born to HIV-infected mothers to less than 2 percent.
Worldwide at the beginning of the twenty-first century, more than
500,000 babies were infected each year. About 300,000 of these infec-
tions could have been prevented by treating the infected mothers with
AZT for a month before birth and supplying the babies with a virus-
free milk substitute. Almost all nonindustrialized countries failed to
provide their poor with therapeutic drugs or milk substitutes.
A massive educational effort during the late 1980’s and early

726
 1980’s: AIDS pandemic

1990’s alleviated the AIDS epidemics in the industrialized countries

of North America and Western Europe, yet 100,000 new persons were
infected during each of the last few years of the twentieth century.
Male homosexual practices accounted for more than 25,000 of the
new cases, whereas intravenous drug abuse was the cause of nearly
50,000. Although most older male homosexuals became monoga-
mous and used condoms conscientiously, up to 50 percent of youn-
ger homosexuals had numerous sex partners and failed to use con-
doms regularly. More education might have convinced some of these
young men to protect themselves by entering monogamous relation-
ships with HIV-free partners and by using condoms conscientiously.
A number of studies demonstrated that education, drug rehabili-
tation programs, and the distribution of clean needles and bleach for
sterilizing used needles reduced the number of persons infected by
intravenous drug abuse. Education and services brought the death
rates down in affluent communities in the United States; however,
education, medical services, and chemotherapeutic drugs did not
reach the poor blacks, Hispanics, whites, and Asians. Because these
poor could not afford the $15,000-per-year treatment, their rates of
infection, progression to AIDS, and death continued to increase as
the twenty-first century began.
In the year 2000, four regions of the world accounted for more
than 35 million (93 percent) HIV-infected persons: 25 million in sub-
Saharan Africa, 8 million in Southeast Asia, 2 million in Latin Amer-
ica and the Caribbean, and 1 million in Asia). Each year, these four
regions accounted for more than 5.5 million new infections and
more than 2 million deaths.
The large number of persons infected and dying of AIDS at the be-
ginning of the twenty-first century required massive worldwide inter-
vention by the United Nations and the World Health Organization
(WHO). However, these organizations were not up to the task of sav-
ing millions because they had myriad other agendas and lacked the
tremendous amounts of money needed for education, medical ser-
vices, and drugs to inhibit HIV.
The Future of the AIDS Pandemic. Greed and the struggle for
power played an important role in the developing AIDS pandemic.
Western governments, international corporations, politicians, drug
lords, and rich profiteers backed dictators, civil wars, and attacks on

727
1980’s: AIDS pandemic

indigenous peoples to gain control of cheap labor, markets, and nat-

ural resources (land, wood, water, and precious metals). Western gov-
ernments and corporations are particularly interested in markets.
For example, in the late 1990’s, 41 international pharmaceutical
companies blocked attempts by African countries to make or obtain
inexpensive chemotherapeutic drugs to treat the growing number of
HIV-infected persons. These companies were protecting their drug
patents and royalties worth billions of dollars. The U.S. government,
in support of these companies, gave South Africa a sample of what
would happen if they violated U.S. intellectual property rights; the
U.S. government denied preferential tariff treatment for a number
of South African imports and restricted foreign aid to the country.
Nearly all the 40 million persons infected by HIV during the
1990’s were expected to experience severe illnesses and painful
deaths during the first ten years of the twenty-first century because
they lacked the money for treatment. Secondary diseases from those
dying of AIDS may spread and cause numerous localized epidemics
that will further stress medical services. If anything substantial is to be
done to save the uneducated and poor of the world from AIDS, every-
one must realize how those in positions of power in the world are in-
volved in the AIDS pandemic.
Jaime S. Colome

For Further Information:

Barnett, Tony, and Alan Whiteside. AIDS in the Twenty-first Century:
Disease and Globalization. 2d ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2006.
Goudsmit, Jaap. Viral Sex: The Nature of AIDS. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1997.
Mann, Jonathan M., and Daniel J. M. Tarantola, eds. AIDS in the World
II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Mayer, Kenneth H., and H. F. Pizer, eds. The AIDS Pandemic: Impact on
Science and Society. San Diego, Calif.: Elsevier/Academic, 2005.
Piel, Jonathan, ed. The Science of AIDS: Readings from “Scientific Ameri-
can.” New York: W. H. Freeman, 1989.
World Health Organization. Joint United Nations Programme on
HIV/AIDS. AIDS Epidemic Update: December, 2005. Geneva, Switzer-
land: UNAIDS, 2005.

728
■ 1980: Mount St. Helens eruption
Volcano
Date: May 18, 1980
Place: Washington State
Result: 57 dead, estimated 7,000 big-game animals killed, nearly
200 homes and more than 185 miles of road damaged or de-
stroyed, 4 billion board feet of timber blown down, detectable
ashfall on 22,000 square miles

A lthough increased volcanic activity indicated an im-

pending explosion, and in spite of intense efforts to
anticipate its magnitude, scientists and government officials were un-
able to predict the catastrophic force of the 1980 eruption of Mount
St. Helens. Before the eruption, the cone of the mountain had been
so symmetrical that it had often been compared to Mount Fuji in Ja-
pan, but when the ash cloud cleared, only a hollowed-out, lopsided
crater remained. The mountain had shrunk from the fifth highest in
Washington State at 9,677 feet to the thirtieth highest at 8,364 feet,
losing about 1,300 feet of its summit.
In the first seconds of the explosion, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake
on the Richter scale caused by pressure from a magma intrusion trig-
gered the collapse of one side of the mountain. This set off an enor-
mous “debris avalanche” of large rocks and smaller particles, all mov-
ing at speeds of 70 to 150 miles per hour—the largest avalanche in
recorded history. As the weight of the north face of the mountain
slipped downward, the hardened rock cap over the “cryptodome,”
the hot magma intrusion, was pushed aside, releasing a huge lateral
explosion. Within one minute a vertical eruption column developed,
and within ten minutes the ash in the column had risen more than 12
miles into a mushroom cloud 45 miles across. The successive explo-
sions equaled the force of 27,000 atomic bombs detonated in rapid
sequence, at a rate of one per second for nine hours. Lava, rock frag-
ments, and gases stripped off nearby layers of topsoil and leveled
most vegetation within a 12-mile arc to the south, west, and north of
the volcano.

729
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

Fire in the Cascades. Mount St. Helens is the youngest and

most active volcano in the Cascade range, the only volcanic moun-
tains to have erupted in the contiguous United States in recorded his-
tory. These mountains form the eastern side of the Pacific “Ring of
Fire” series of volcanoes. Volcanologist Stephen Harris reports 14 ash
or lava eruptions from eight different Cascade peaks in the two-
hundred-year span between 1780 and 1980. Only Mount Baker and
Mount Rainier showed as much activity as Mount St. Helens during
these years.
Legends among the indigenous cultures of the Northwest often
featured Mount St. Helens, which was known as Loo-wit (“keeper of
the fire”), Lawelatla (“one from whom smoke comes”), or Tah-one-
lat-clah (“fire mountain”). These names were descriptive of the vol-
cano’s continuing activity. George Vancouver became the first Euro-
pean to document an observation of the mountain in 1792, when he
charted inlets of Puget Sound near what is now Seattle. He named
the peak St. Helens after the title given a recently appointed ambassa-
dor to Spain. A major eruption occurred in 1800, between Vancou-
ver’s sighting and the Meriwether Lewis and William Clark expedi-
tion sighting in 1805. An 1847 painting by the artist Paul Kane known
as Mount St. Helens Erupting conveys the active nature of the volcano
during the middle of the nineteenth century.
Mount St. Helens has built up a symmetrical cone and then trans-
formed it to rubble at least three times, the cone of 1980 being less
than 2,000 years old. Geologists believe that the rounded summit
dome formed about 330 years ago. Mount St. Helens is a strato-
volcano, a volcano that repeatedly grows a composite cone made up
of layers of lava, ash, and other materials. Through tree-ring dating,
geologists are certain that Mount St. Helens has been dormant for
only two long periods since 1480, several decades between the late
1700’s and the 1800 eruption and a 123-year period between 1857
and 1980. During the dormant periods the growing silica content of
the magma increased its viscosity, making it resistant to flowing and
more active in dome building and fragmenting. Both activities con-
tribute to eruptions of pyroclastic materials—combinations of incan-
descent rock fragments and hot gases.
Using modern techniques to map old mudflows and ash deposits,
geologists established the active history of Mount St. Helens in 1960,

730
 1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

Cutaway View of Mount St. Helens Scenario

Ash Clouds

Summit

Ruptured Side Vent

Internal bulge
(Old Magma)
Fractured Rock
New Magma
Section Landslides
Magma
Tunnel (Vent) Blasted Away

long after exploration and exploitation had begun. The first ascent
of Mount St. Helens was led by Thomas J. Dryer in 1853. Timber cut-
ting began in the Toutle River Valley in the 1880’s, and mining claims
were staked north of the volcano near Spirit Lake as early as 1892. Al-
though most mining companies had ceased operations by 1929 be-
cause of declining profits, logging continued to increase and pros-
per. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest was established to augment
logging and manage the forest.
Meanwhile, mountain-climbing enthusiasts and campers had dis-
covered the beautiful recreation area. A Portland, Oregon, mountain-
climbing group began regular ascents of Mount St. Helens shortly af-
ter 1900, and in 1909 the Portland YMCA built a summer camp on
Spirit Lake, which lies at the base of the mountain on the north side.
Use of the area continued to increase, so that by the 1970’s as many as
five hundred people might climb the summit of the volcano on a typi-
cal weekend. Spirit Lake itself offered fishing, swimming, canoeing,
and other popular activities.
The mountain lies about 45 miles northeast of Vancouver, Wash-
ington, between Seattle and Portland, the two largest cities in the
Northwest. Thus its symmetrical dome had been an inspiring feature

731
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

of the landscape visible from many locales and observation points—

including skyscrapers. After a March 20, 1980, magnitude 4.2 earth-
quake suggested that the sleeping volcano had awakened, officials
were unable to discourage crowds of enthusiasts. Not only people
who loved the mountain but also scientists, reporters, photogra-
phers, and others from all over the world wanted to witness the ac-
tion. On May 18, 1980, 57 of them died.
Potential for Disaster. Native American legend discouraged
travel to Mount St. Helens and the other fire mountains. Tribes be-
lieved that the belching smoke, steam, and ashfalls were warning sig-
nals either of the Great Spirit’s displeasure with human activities or
evidence of wars between the gods. Male youths aspiring to become
braves would climb to the tree line or slightly above and spend a tense
night alone, subjecting themselves to the power of the Great Spirit.
On their return to the tribe they would be accepted as men and
braves. Few, if any, members of the public who visited or worked on or
near the mountain, or in the surrounding area, regarded the peak as
threatening to their lives or lifestyles.
After scientific confirmation of the dangerous patterns of volcanic
activity in the Cascade Mountain Range in 1960, continued volcanic
study focused on the volatility of Mount St. Helens. In a United States
Geological Survey (USGS) pamphlet entitled Potential Hazards from
Future Eruption of Mount St. Helens (1978), by Dwight R. Crandell and
Donald R. Mullineaux, the authors warned of future volcanic erup-
tions. The work mapped out regions likely to be affected by pyro-
clastic flows, mudflows, floods, and ashfalls. Warning signs of erup-
tions were described in detail. The report was carefully evaluated
before potential hazard warnings were issued, then a letter was sent
to Washington State informing its government of the study’s find-
ings. Awareness of the USGS report spread among officials during
1979, but their planning efforts later proved to be inadequate to the
size of the event to come.
Initial Volcanic Activity. Small earthquakes began in the
Mount St. Helens area on March 16, 1980. On March 20 a magnitude
4.2 earthquake signaled that the mountain’s 123-year dormancy had
ended. Seismic activity slowly increased, then rose dramatically on
March 25. There followed a two-day series of shocks, 174 with magni-
tudes greater than 2.6. On March 27 came a booming explosion of

732
 1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

steam and ash. This, the first volcanic eruption since 1857, carried
pulverized ash from old rock inside the volcano and opened a small
oval vent about 250 feet across. Earthquake swarms continued as a se-
ries of steam explosions shot ash 10,000 to 11,000 feet above the sum-
mit. Many of the early eruptions were single, burstlike events, some of
which carried ash as far south as Bend, Oregon, 150 miles away, and
as far east as Spokane, 285 miles away.
In recognition of the danger signaled by the March 20 earth-
quake, officials initiated a hazard watch that took effect the same day
as the first steam eruption, March 27. Two hundred copies of the
1978 USGS report were distributed to key personnel. In Vancouver,
Washington, the United States Forest Service (USFS) headquarters
for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest quickly became the Emer-
gency Coordination Center (ECC). Arrangements were made to
monitor the volcano, prepare for a possible eruption, and dispense
information to the public.
The Mount St. Helens Contingency Plan, based on forest fire
models, was developed by the USFS and others, including local of-
ficials. The Washington State Department of Emergency Services
(DES), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the Washing-
ton National Guard were also involved in formulating plans for their
roles in the action in the case of a major eruption. Throughout the
preparations, officials believed that damage would probably be con-
fined to the area within a 50-mile radius of the mountain.
Activity at the volcano continued, with some eruptions lasting for
several hours. A graben, a depression in the ground, indicated that a
large fault was opening below, nearly cutting in half the remaining
snow and ice within the crater. A second crater had begun to appear
by March 29, and a blue flame had been observed flickering and
arching from one crater to the other. Ashes rolling down the sides of
the mountain generated static electricity that flashed in lightning
bolts, some of which were nearly 2 miles long. On March 30 ninety-
three eruptions were recorded. On April 1 the first harmonic tremor
further excited and alarmed scientists and other officials. Harmonic
tremors, usually lasting from ten to thirty minutes, indicate that
magma is moving or erupting underground.
These dynamic events electrified the public, and, as a result, mem-
bers of the watch group in Vancouver found themselves involved in

733
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

public relations efforts as well as in monitoring the volcano activity

and evaluating the current hazard. The scientists most able to predict
volcanic behavior were harried and tired, often working around the
clock. The first hazard map of the danger zones around the moun-
tain was drawn up between 1 and 5 a.m. because it was the only time
the ECC office was quiet enough. Public Information Officers from
the USFS held numerous press conferences, but phones continued
to ring constantly. Everyone wanted what proved to be impossible—
stating when a major eruption would occur, who would be affected by
it, and how extensive the damage would be. Meanwhile, the ashfalls
blackening the snow of the mountain provided constant reminders
of the activity inside.
Public interest did not deter the essential work of monitoring the
activity in the mountain. Instruments set up by University of Washing-
ton seismologist Steve Malone, USFS geologist Don Swanson, and
other scientists contributed to making the Mount St. Helens event
the best-recorded volcanic eruption in history. In addition to seis-
mometers, tiltmeters and gravity meters tracked changes in size and
shifts in position of portions of the mountain. Samples of gas from
the summit were collected for sulfur-dioxide testing, while surveil-
lance planes and satellites gauged temperatures with infrared pho-
tography. In addition to geologists and photographers, volunteer
ham radio operators joined in the effort to track volcanic activity and
were allowed into newly restricted areas.
The USFS exercised legal control over public access to federal
lands, but its jurisdiction was shared with Burlington Northern, a
company that owned most of the mountain itself, and Weyerhauser,
owner of a large logging operation, on the nearby Toutle River.
Agreements were reached, and public access to a “red zone”—all ar-
eas above timberline—was closed on March 25. A more extensive
“blue zone” restricted access to an even larger area surrounding the
red zone, beginning March 28. Neither zone was completely evacu-
ated, and many individuals completely underestimated the dangers
from floods, mudslides, and ash. Official warnings were discounted,
and avoiding National Guard roadblocks became a game for curious
or concerned spectators, especially after local residents began selling
maps of the old logging roads that crisscrossed the area.
Under Siege. Mount St. Helens’s normal runoff fills the tributar-

734
 1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

ies of three river systems: the Kalama to the west, the Lewis to the
south and east, and the Toutle with two forks on the north and north-
west. The forks of the Toutle River join and flow into the Cowlitz
River before it in turn enters the Columbia. Spirit Lake, north of the
mountain, drains west into the North Fork of the Toutle. The road to
Spirit Lake had been paved in 1946, and there were summer homes
along the Toutle River road approaching the lake. Building had also
taken place around the lake. After the public-access closure and evac-
uation, angry and persistent landowners demanded to be allowed
into the area to bring out personal property. On the South Fork of
the Toutle, Weyerhauser Company’s 12-Road logging camp contin-
ued its operations, choosing to equip employees with ash-measuring
devices as warning systems. Had the major eruption not occurred on
a Sunday, 330 more workers would have been endangered.
Throughout April, monitors of the activity at the volcano ob-
served a growing bulge caused by intrusions of magma on the north
flank of the mountain. The deformation grew at a rate of about 5 feet
per day. Scientists believed that it indicated a possible slope failure
that could trigger a major eruption, but they had no way of knowing
exactly when or even if the bulge would drop off or explode.
Geologists, worried that these observations might be in error and
that instead the whole mountain could be tipping sideways, resorted
to nailing yardsticks to tree stumps to verify their calculations. A
bulge incident was clearly possible, perhaps likely, but without guar-
antees that were scientifically impossible, geologists were unable to
persuade officials to enforce a complete evacuation. Debris ava-
lanches, mudslides, and flooding increasingly threatened the Spirit
Lake and Toutle River areas.
One resident who refused to leave the lake, eighty-four-year-old
Harry Truman, drew national attention via the news media. He had
lived at Spirit Lake for over fifty years and had buried his wife near
the guest lodge he had built there. He claimed to communicate with
the mountain and believed it would never hurt him, although he had
stowed provisions in a nearby abandoned mine shaft, where he
planned to wait out any unforeseen danger. Truman received thou-
sands of letters expressing admiration or concern. A batch of letters
from children at Clear Lake Elementary School near Salem, Oregon,
did persuade him to take a helicopter trip to the school to explain

735
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens blew off the top of the mountain. (Na-
tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

that his place at Spirit Lake was as meaningful to him as life itself.
Other local citizens, owners of vacation homes, had more pragmatic
goals and continued to demand access to the restricted area.
On May 17, having persuaded then-governor and scientist Dixie
Lee Ray to give them permission, twenty homeowners returned to

736
 1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

their vacation homes near Spirit Lake to bring out their belongings.
Reporters and photographers, with a Washington State Patrol air-
plane in the lead, accompanied them. Aware of the risks involved, the
National Guard placed fifteen helicopters nearby in case rapid evacu-
ation became necessary. A second trip was planned for the next
morning.
Catastrophic Eruption. On May 18, eleven seconds after 8:32
in the morning, the eruption began. No one had been able to predict
either the incredible force or the actual timing of the history-making
event.
Flying just east of the summit, geologists Keith and Dorothy Stoffel
observed the earliest movement within the crater of the volcano from
their Cessna. In the first ten to fifteen seconds of what would turn out
to be a magnitude 5.1 earthquake, the entire north side of the moun-
tain began to ripple and churn in eerie lateral movement. Then it be-
gan sliding further north. Ash clouds plumed above and burst from
the fractures in the slide itself. Starting at nearly 220 miles per hour,
the ash cloud accelerated to speeds near 670 miles per hour.
The Stoffels snapped photographs until they realized how the
eruption had sent a huge cloud of ash blossoming above them. Only
by using a full-throttle, steep dive did they manage to outrun the
mushrooming cloud of gas, rock, ash, and hunks of glacial ice. A de-
bris avalanche, with an area of 23 square miles, went crashing down
the mountainside. The material spread out and split into several
lobes, one raising waves up to 600 feet above Spirit Lake, another
reaching the 4.5 miles to Coldwater Creek, and a third burying 14
miles of the North Fork of the Toutle River to an average depth of
150 feet.
Within fourteen seconds of the earthquake and avalanche, a lat-
eral blast traveling at least 300 miles per hour blew out the north side
of the mountain. The blast released 24 megatons of thermal energy,
leveling everything in its path and creating a 230-square-mile fan-
shaped area of complete devastation. At Coldwater II, the closest ob-
servation station set by the USGS, geologist Dave Johnson had just
enough time to radio in, “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!” before he
was pushed over a ridge, along with his Jeep and travel-trailer moni-
toring station.
Most of the erupting blast material, known as a pyroclastic surge,

737
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

consisted of gas and ash. As the surge turned into pyroclastic flow, old
rock exploding from the summit and north area of the cone came to
predominate. Between one-third and one-half of the cubic mile of
material was fresh magma. The flows covered 6 square miles adjoin-
ing the crater and extended as far as 5 miles north of the crater.
The composites of debris from the smashed dome and gases from
the blast were incredibly hot—at least 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
Superheated air at the leading edge of the blast traveled more than
17 miles and killed millions of trees in a “scorch zone” beyond the
flattened forest of the “blow-down zone.” Pyroclastic flows ranged as
high as 660 degrees Fahrenheit.
The heat on the mountain melted 70 percent of its snow and gla-
ciers. Loowit and Leschi Glaciers were completely destroyed, along
with parts of 7 others. When the melted snow, melted glaciers, and
groundwater combined with debris from the eruption, the mixture
that resulted had the consistency of wet cement, yet it was traveling at
speeds from 10 to 25 miles per hour. These mudflows or lahars con-
tinued down the Toutle River to the Cowlitz, destroying homes and
bridges and reducing the carrying capacity of the river at Castle Rock
from 76,000 cubic feet per second to less than 15,000, a reduction of
about 80 percent. Reaching farther, the flow entered the Columbia
River, about 70 miles away, reducing the shipping channel depth
from 40 to 14 feet. Thirty-one ships in ports above the mouth of the
Cowlitz River were stranded, and another 50 were unable to travel up
the river until dredging operations were completed.
Up in the Air. As if the devastation to the north and west of the
volcano were not enough, the vertical eruption cloud and its con-
tents created further havoc to the east. The volcano continued gener-
ating a plume of ash for over nine hours. Prevailing winds carried
significant ashfall north and east across central and eastern Washing-
ton, northern Idaho, and western Montana. The ash reached Yak-
ima, Washington, by 9:30 a.m., an hour after the eruption began. Res-
idents, who had not been informed of the eruption, prepared for a
thunderstorm. The magnitude of the eruption had caused so much
confusion in the staff at ECC that a public announcement of the
event did not come until 10:30 a.m.
When the ash began to fall in Yakima, townspeople did not know
what it was, and many feared it would be harmful to their health.

738
 1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

Rapidly, the sky turned to a midnight gloom, earning May 18 the last-
ing nickname “Black Sunday.” Yakima was reported to have received
over 600,000 tons of ash before it stopped settling. (USGS figures
were much lower, estimating the total ashfall for the entire eruption
at 490 tons.)
Without doubt, the ash caused technological systems great prob-
lems. The ash was abrasive and electrically charged, affecting ma-
chinery. Air filters clogged, and carburetors failed. Across Washing-
ton, over 5,000 motorists were stranded; planes could not fly. One
town, Ritzville, was inundated with talc-like ash that kept the highway
closed for three days. The 1,800 residents of the town had no choice
but to look after the 2,000 motorists stranded there when the high-
way closed. By 2:00 on the afternoon of the eruption, the ash plume
hung 300 miles east over Spokane, Washington, and visibility de-
creased to 10 feet, closing the airport there. By 10:15 p.m. the ashfall
reached West Yellowstone, Montana. On May 19 it fell visibly as far
away as Denver and later in Minnesota and Oklahoma.
Aftermath. Following the catastrophic eruption on May 18,
Mount St. Helens experienced five more explosive incidents, but the
major damage had been done. After two years of searching and study,
the official death count was fixed at 57. About 200 endangered individ-
uals escaped the volcano’s impact, including 25 tree planters who were
on the east face of the volcano when it erupted. Autopsies of 25 of the
dead revealed that most had suffocated, dying within minutes. Some
burn victims walked several miles before dying. Other victims were
found still clutching cameras, and, when developed, the film from one
recorded the approaching blast that killed its owner. Searchers were
unable to find 27 of the presumed dead, and some people believe that
there were many more casualties than the official count. Visitors may
view a memorial for Harry Truman near the site of the former guest
lodge; Spirit Lake Memorial Highway also commemorates the victims.
The Mount St. Helens Visitor Center near Silver Lake has made infor-
mation on the eruption and its effects available.
Mount St. Helens continues to be an active volcano, and the risks
of damage from another major eruption increase as human activities
nearby also increase. Economic recovery from the May 18, 1980,
eruption was successful due to rebuilding through disaster relief
funds, insurance settlements, and renewed tourist trade. Weyer-

739
1980: Mount St. Helens eruption

hauser harvested over 850 million board feet of lumber from downed
trees. However, the volcano has produced ashfalls four times greater
than the 1980 eruption several times in the past and may again.
Winds blowing to the west would carry ash clouds to centers of popu-
lation along the coast. Mudflows may once again rush downriver, de-
stroying rebuilt dams and roads, filling river channels, and washing
out seedling trees. Nearly $1 billion has been spent on efforts to re-
duce flood hazards. Scientists monitoring volcanic activity can mea-
sure and warn of new activity, but they must continue working to de-
velop methods that will predict the time and magnitude of the next
eruption.
Margaret A. Dodson

For Further Information:

Carson, Rob. Mount St. Helens: The Eruption and Recovery of a Volcano.
Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2000.
Findley, Rowe. “Mount St. Helens: Mountain With a Death Wish.” Na-
tional Geographic 159, no. 1 (January, 1981): 3-33.
Harnly, Caroline D., and David A. Tyckoson. Mount St. Helens: An An-
notated Bibliography. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984.
Harris, Stephen L. “Mt. St. Helens: A Living ‘Fire Mountain.’” In Fire
Mountains of the West: The Cascade and Mono Lake Volcanoes. Mis-
soula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 1988.
Parchman, Frank. Echoes of Fury: The 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens
and the Lives It Changed Forever. Kenmore, Wash.: Epicenter Press,
2005.
Pringle, Patrick T. Roadside Geology of Mount St. Helens National Volcanic
Monument and Vicinity. Rev. ed. Olympia: Washington State De-
partment of Natural Resources, 2002.
Scarth, Alwyn. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Tilling, Robert I., Lyn Topinka, and Donald A. Swanson. Eruptions of
Mount St. Helens: Past, Present, and Future. Reston, Va.: U.S. Depart-
ment of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, 1990.

740
■ 1982: El Chichón eruption
Volcano
Date: March 28-April 4, 1982
Place: Mexico
Volcanic Explosivity Index: 5
Result: About 2,000 dead, hundreds injured, hundreds left home-
less, thousands evacuated, 9 villages destroyed, over 116 square
miles of farmland ruined

A n obscure and forgotten volcano erupted in 1982, be-

coming one of the most lethal eruptions to date. El
Chichón (also known as Chinhónal) is located in the state of Chiapas
in southern Mexico, about 416 miles east southeast of Mexico City.
Prior to the eruptions in 1982, El Chichón was a heavily vegetated hill
with an elevation of 4,429 feet and a height of about 1,640 feet. It had
a shallow crater partly filled with water and a dome 1,312 feet high.
After the eruption the elevation of the volcano was 3,478 feet with a
height of 689 feet, making it now lower than the surrounding non-
volcanic hills.
Although aware of the hot springs and steaming fumaroles (open-
ings from which volcanic gases escape), the people living in villages at
the base of the volcano did not consider it a hazard; the volcano had
been quiet for at least 130 years. The fertile volcanic soil provided the
farm families their only livelihood. They would not leave their land,
especially when there was no indication of danger.
History. The volcano was “discovered” in 1928 during a geologi-
cal survey by Fred Mullerried. The lush vegetation cover of the vol-
cano indicated that there had been no eruptions for years, and the
memories of the local inhabitants indicated that the most recent ac-
tivity was a minor air deposition of volcanic debris around 1852. In
his 1932 publication, Mullerried reported on solfataras (fumaroles
that emit sulfurous gases) and seismic activity in the vicinity of the vol-
cano in 1930. Considering these observations, he concluded that the
volcano was capable of renewed activity. There was increased earth-
quake activity in 1964 and again in 1982 prior to the eruptions.

741
1982: El Chichón eruption

Two geologists of the Comisión Federal de Electricidad felt earth-

quakes while investigating the geothermal potential of the area and
correctly concluded that the volcano might be near eruption. Un-
fortunately, the Comisión was not responsible for safety, and their
report, released only a few months prior to the explosion of El
Chichón, did not allow time for appropriate agencies to be made
aware of the potential danger.
Radiocarbon age dates determined since 1982 indicate that El
Chichón erupts about every six hundred years. Despite scientific ter-
minology, one of the world’s “extinct” volcanoes erupts about every
five years, and these volcanoes, with repose intervals of hundreds of
years, produce the most violent volcanic eruptions.
Destruction. It is estimated that 2,000 to 3,000 persons were
killed and hundreds injured during the eruption of El Chichón. In
terms of death, the 1982 eruption of El Chichón was the most de-
structive volcanic explosion to take place in Mexico to date. In fact,
this eruption was one of the thirteen most destructive eruptions
worldwide to date and one of the two most destructive volcanic erup-
tions in the twentieth century.
Early reports indicated that 153 people were killed by the collapse
of house roofs and fires ignited by incandescent volcanic debris and
that only 34 were killed by pyroclastic flows (flows of hot volcanic par-
ticles and gases). Ultimately, probably 90 percent of the 2,000 to
3,000 fatalities were the result directly or indirectly of pyroclastic
flows. Over 116 square miles of arable land was covered by volcanic
debris, leaving it useless. As a result, the survivors lost not only their
homes but also the means to sustain themselves. The land could not
be farmed for years.
Eruption Size. There are several ways to describe the size of a vol-
canic eruption: the amount of erupted material, the energy involved
in the eruption, and the volcanic hazard. The 1982 eruptions of El
Chichón produced enough pyroclastic material to cover nearly 6,000
American football fields to a depth of 328 feet (about 88,286 cubic
feet). The energy released by the 1982 eruptions of El Chichón was
about 8,000 times that liberated by a 1-kiloton atomic bomb.
The amount of energy released by a volcano is not necessarily di-
rectly correlated with the degree of volcanic hazard. For example,
enormous volumes of lava have flowed quietly from Hawaiian volca-

742
 1982: El Chichón eruption

Tijuana UNITED STATES

Hermosillo
Chihuahua

MEXICO
Gulf
Culiacán Monterrey
La Paz Durango of

Zacatecas Mexico
San Luis Potosí Yucatan
León Peninsula
Mérida
Querétaro
Guadalajara Campeche
San Cristóbal
Pacific Mexico City Puebla de las Casas

El Chichón
Ocean Oaxaca
Tuxtla BELIZE
Gutiérrez Chiapas
GUATEMALA
HONDURAS

EL SALVADOR

noes and have not been a major hazard despite releasing about one
thousand times more energy than the eruption of El Chichón. A sim-
ple descriptive measure for volcanic hazard is provided by the Volca-
nic Explosivity Index (VEI). This index combines total volume of ma-
terials erupted, height of the eruption column, duration of the main
eruptive phase, and several descriptive terms into a simple 0-8 scale
of increasing explosivity. Most volcanoes have a VEI of 3 or greater,
none has been assigned an 8, and only one has been assigned a 7 to
date. In the light of these observations, El Chichón’s VEI of 5 is a
rather high value.
Stage 1 Eruptions. In the autumn of 1981, dogs became restless,
earthquakes rattled dishes in the kitchens of the local inhabitants,
and breezes occasionally wafted the rotten-egg odor of hydrogen sul-
fide gas. Although these were items for discussion in the village pla-
zas, the villagers continued with life as usual, not knowing that the
tremors and hydrogen sulfide were precursors to an eruption. After
the eruption, study of seismograph records indicated that earth-
quake activity had increased in early 1982 and the centers of the
earthquakes had risen from a depth of 3 miles to 1 mile.
The eruptions began near midnight on March 28, 1982, but on

743
1982: El Chichón eruption

March 29, at 5:15 a.m. local time, the morning quiet was shattered by
an enormous roar and nearly continuous earthquakes. Massive ex-
plosions caused by hot gases ejected a huge ash cloud about 10,499
feet thick to a height of 59,054 to 68,241 feet, where the ash cloud was
then driven northeastward by high-altitude winds. Volcanic particles
deposited near the mouth of the crater were as large as 4 inches in di-
ameter. This Plinian eruption continued for six hours, with lightning
dancing in the ash cloud, accompanied by a deafening roar. (The
term “Plinian” describes an explosive eruption caused by a tremen-
dous uprushing of gas that results in a large eruption cloud.) The
March 29 eruption of El Chichón removed much of the center of the
volcano, converting the domed hill into a barren 0.6-mile-wide crater
984 feet deep. Rooftops were punctured by falling rocks and col-
lapsed by layers of ash. The morning of March 31, 1982, automobiles
in Austin, Texas, 994 miles away, were covered with a light coating of
volcanic ash from El Chichón.
Stage 2 Eruptions. After minor explosions on March 30 and 31
and April 2, 1982, two additional major eruptions occurred on April
3 and 4 from the newly created crater. Volcanic dust from this erup-
tion reached the height of 82,020 feet; however, the eruption column
could not be maintained, and the column collapsed onto the volcano
summit, dropping tons of volcanic debris from ash to block size (less
than .0025 to greater than 2.5 inches in diameter, respectively). This
material had great momentum and flowed downhill with hurricane
speed toward the villages. Trees and buildings were ripped apart by
the pyroclastic flows. What little of the villages remained was covered
by ash. The flows followed the courses of stream valleys radiating
from the volcano. One flow covered 38.6 square miles. The volcanic
debris not only covered the land but also temporarily dammed
streams. When these dams burst, the hot volcanic mud (lahars)
moved down the streams, causing additional damage.
All the eruptions of El Chichón produced as much pyroclastic ma-
terial (about 7 billion tons) as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens
in Washington State. The surge activity of April 4 resulted in the
death of more than 2,000 people, and at least 9 villages within a 5-
mile radius were destroyed. The villagers who had remained in their
homes found some cover from the ashfall, but the homes were use-
less protection from the strong pyroclastic currents. Pyroclastic de-

744
 1982: El Chichón eruption

bris typically has a temperature between 392 and 1,472 degrees Fahr-
enheit (200 and 800 degrees Celsius). Two months after the eruption
the pyroclastic flow deposits were still too hot to touch. Minor erup-
tions occurred on April 5, 6, 8, and 9.
Effect on Climate. Some especially cold years, for example
1783 and 1816, have been linked to major volcanic eruptions. Volca-
nic dust reflects solar radiation, resulting in cooler temperatures, but
has a relatively short-lived impact on the earth’s weather because
these particles settle out of the atmosphere in less than two years. The
dust cloud from the El Chichón eruptions circled the earth from
south of the equator to as far north as Japan, producing brilliant red
sunsets for months after the eruptions.
The greatest impact that volcanoes have on our weather results
from the sulfur-dioxide gas they produce. In the lower atmosphere,
solar energy converts the gas to sulfuric-acid aerosols, which can re-
main in the atmosphere for years. Sulfuric-acid aerosols reaching the
stratosphere absorb infrared radiation, which cools the troposphere
and scatters the solar radiation back into space, warming the strato-
sphere. These impacts were confirmed, in part, by data, which showed
high concentrations of sulfur, collected after the eruption of El
Chichón.
Compared to the Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption, the El Chichón
eruptions were more gas-rich—especially regarding sulfurous com-
pounds—resulting in more spectacular pyroclastic eruptions and
producing more sulfuric-acid aerosols. Any cooling caused by the El
Chichón eruptions was apparently more than compensated for by
the warming from a following El Niño. Some scientists think that El
Niños may be triggered by explosive volcanic eruptions such as El
Chichón.
1996-1998 Observations. In 1998 fumaroles surrounded the
yellow, sulfur beaches of El Chichón’s shallow crater lake. Investiga-
tion of the site from 1996 to 1998 reported changes in hydrothermal
activity. The surface temperature of the lake (average depth 4.3 feet)
is very uniform, and even above submerged fumaroles it did not ex-
ceed 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius). This uniformity of
temperature suggests that the lake water is not significantly influ-
enced by underlying magma and is highly affected by seasonal varia-
tions in precipitation and ambient air temperature. Temperatures of

745
1982: El Chichón eruption

water from springs on the slope of the volcano ranged from 124 to
160 degrees Fahrenheit (51 to 71 degrees Celsius), whereas water dis-
charging from a boiling spring called Soap Pool inside the crater had
a temperature of 208 degrees Fahrenheit (98 degrees Celsius). From
1997 to 1998 the flow of very saline water from Soap Pool decreased
from about 44 to 13 pounds per second.
Future. Although El Chichón appears to be entering a six-
hundred-year cycle of repose, this may not be the situation because of
poor accuracy in the determination of the eruption cycle. Also, there
is an indication that at least a minor eruption occurred as recently as
1852. Monitoring of the volcano’s seismic records, changes in fu-
maroles for release of hydrogen sulfide, and hydrothermal activity
should provide a means of predicting future eruptions, regardless of
the repose cycle. It is tragic that the scientific reports by Mullerried
and the Comisión Federal de Electricidad were not available to the
appropriate government agencies so that evacuations could have
been made before the eruptions. It is difficult to say how many of the
people would have responded to encouragement to evacuate since
no one would have expected such a violent explosive eruption. None-
theless, even with incomplete data and understanding, a warning
could have saved hundreds of lives.
Kenneth F. Steele, Jr.

For Further Information:

Bullard, Fred M. Volcanoes of the Earth. 2d rev. ed. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1984.
Chester, David. Volcanoes and Society. New York: Routledge, Chapman
and Hall, 1993.
Duffield, W. D., R. I. Tilling, and R. Canul. “Geology of El Chichón
Volcano, Chiapas, Mexico.” Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Re-
search 20 (1984).
Fisher, Richard V., Grant Heiken, and Jeffrey B. Hulen. Volcanoes:
Crucibles of Change. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1997.
Sigurdsson, Haraldur, ed. Encyclopedia of Volcanoes. San Diego, Calif.:
Academic Press, 2000.
Tilling, R. I. “The 1982 Eruption of El Chichón, Southeastern Mex-
ico.” Earthquake Information Bulletin 14 (1982).

746
■ 1982: Pacific Ocean
El Niño
Date: June, 1982-August, 1983
Place: Equatorial Pacific Ocean and bordering continents
Result: More than 2,000 dead, $13 billion in damage

B efore 1982, “El Niño” was a term known almost exclu-

sively to scientists studying the ocean, atmosphere, and
weather. After 1983, so widespread and serious were El Niño’s de-
structive consequences that the phenomenon became known world-
wide as the largest force disrupting world weather patterns.
The El Niño of 1982 developed anomalously. Previous El Niños
had begun in April with waters warming off the Peruvian coast and
spreading westward. In this case the temperature rise started in the
central Pacific and flowed eastward in June and August, and the baro-
metric pressure increased in the western Pacific. Moreover, while the
warm water moved slowly eastward toward South America, the west-
erly trade winds continued blowing unabated; normally they weaken.
Volcanic dust lofted into the atmosphere from the eruption of El
Chichón in Mexico masked some of these developments from satel-
lites, and partly because of this, the beginning of a full-blown El Niño
in November took observers by surprise. Before it ended in August,
1983, five continents had suffered its devastating effects.
Its intensity was unheralded. The Southern Oscillation—indicated
by the difference in air pressure between Darwin, Australia, and Ta-
hiti—was never before so great. Sea surface temperatures off the
South American coast soared to almost 8 degrees Celsius above nor-
mal, another record. The mass of warm water increased evaporation,
which fueled storms that lashed the coasts and Pacific islands near
the equator.
Six hurricanes swept over Tahiti and nearby Tuamotu archipelago
in the central Pacific; the area had not seen a hurricane for seventy-
five years. More than 7,500 houses were flattened or lost their roofs,
and 15 people died. The destruction ended tourism for the season, a
main source of income. A hurricane also hit the Hawaiian Islands,

747
1982: Pacific Ocean

which otherwise had a drought. Elsewhere in the Pacific scientists no-

ticed that millions of seabirds deserted their nests and the warm
water damaged reefs.
Ecuador and Peru were first hurt economically, then physically.
The planktonic nutrients that normally rise from the seafloor with
upwelling cold currents dwindled when El Niño’s warm water ar-
rived. Schools of commercial fish vanished. Fishermen were idled, as
were industries dependent upon fishing, such as fishmeal produc-
tion. Because the coast of both countries is very arid, when El Niño-
spawned storms arrived, their torrential rains turned into floods that
swelled rivers and raged through canyons. As a result, thousands of
houses, mostly in rural towns or urban slums, were washed away,
along with sections of roads and more than a dozen major bridges. At
least 600 people were killed in the process. Important export crops—
particularly rice, cacao, and bananas—also were heavily damaged,
further crippling the national economies.
The west coasts of Central and North America soon experienced
similar conditions. California was especially hard hit. Salmon and
other cold-water fish departed north, hurting the local fishing indus-
try, while seabirds died and tropical fish, such as barracuda, invaded
the coastal waters. High sea levels, as much as 8 inches above normal,
combined with storm-propelled waves, battered the coast. Wind gusts
damaged houses, and a tornado even tore the roof off the Los An-
geles Convention Center before ravaging the Watts district. Rain fell
until rivers overflowed and hillsides were so soaked that mudslides
occurred at record rates. In the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains,
snowpacks reached record depths. Altogether, more than 10,000
buildings were damaged or destroyed, and the economic toll on the
West Coast, which included extensive damage to roads and agricul-
ture, was estimated at $1.8 billion. Meanwhile, in the American
South, heavy rains fell, nearly pushing the Mississippi River over its
levees. The Atlantic hurricane season, however, was short and mild.
Across the Pacific, under the abnormally high pressure over the In-
donesia-Australia region, conditions were dry. The drought in Austra-
lia starved thousands of livestock and wild animals and turned brush-
land parched and dusty. Immense dust storms dumped tons of dirt on
cities, Melbourne most spectacularly, and brush fires raced out of con-
trol. At least 8,000 people were made homeless in the fires, and there

748
 1982: Pacific Ocean

were 75 fatalities. Late in the El Niño, downpours in eastern Australia

led to flooding that drowned yet more livestock. Indonesia saw crops
fail in the drought. In one area 340 people starved because of it. On
the island of Borneo, forest fires, spread from land burned off by farm-
ers, expanded unchecked. The smoke fouled cities, endangered air
traffic, and caused one port to close temporarily. The fires were called
one of the worst environmental disasters of the century.
Record drought also came to Africa, hurting the southern and
Sahelian regions most. In some areas of South Africa 90 percent of
cattle died as the grassland turned to barren hardpan. Tens of thou-
sands of wild animals, from rodents to elephants, perished. To escape
famine, the poor countries of the region had to rely on food ship-
ments from North America. Many other effects, such as delayed mon-
soons in southern India and droughts in Brazil and Mexico, were
teleconnections to El Niño. Scientists suspect that a cold snap in Eu-
rope and droughts in the Midwest, northern China, and central Rus-
sia might also have occurred because of El Niño, at least in part.
In addition to bringing the El Niño phenomenon forcefully to
public awareness, the 1982-1983 event had three consequences. It
spurred much scientific research aimed at making predictions of
future El Niños reliable. It encouraged farmers in affected areas to
reconsider how they manage their crops and livestock. Finally, it dem-
onstrated dramatically that coastal cities, which are growing increas-
ingly crowded, are vulnerable to El Niño-related natural disasters.
Roger Smith

For Further Information:

Babkina, A. M., ed. El Niño: Overview and Bibliography. Hauppauge,
N.Y.: Nova Science, 2003.
Canby, Thomas Y. “El Niño’s Ill Wind.” National Geographic, February,
1984, 144.
D’Aleo, Joseph S. The Oryx Resource Guide to El Niño and La Niña. West-
port, Conn.: Oryx Press, 2002.
Fagan, Brian. “El Niños That Shook the World.” In Floods, Famines,
and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilization. New York: Basic
Books, 1999.
Nash, J. Madeleine. El Niño: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-
Maker. New York: Warner Books, 2002.

749
■ 1984: Africa
Famine
Date: 1984-1985
Place: Ethiopia, Chad, Mozambique, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and
the Sudan
Result: 2 million dead, millions more displaced

W hen four-year-old Mamush Mekitew reached the

American aid camp at Gehowa, Ethiopia, he weighed
only 15 pounds. He suffered from acute diarrhea and vomiting and
was so weak that he had to be given liquid through a nasal drip. His
blind, widowed mother and an elderly uncle crooned to him day and
night until he died. “He should not have been alive at all,” said a
nurse. “It was a miracle he held out for so long.”
In many areas, the famine reduced the birthrate, as hungry adult
women simply stopped ovulating. A United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) relief expedition mounted on camels toured the Sudan’s
remote Red Sea province and found that childbearing was almost a
thing of the past. In a settlement called Bet Utr, not one of the
women in thirteen families had given birth during the past year.
Three women had died in childbirth, and one had miscarried. In a
society where most women give birth every year, Bet Utr should have
been teeming with children. In this time of troubles, however, only
eight youngsters were left.
At a relief station in the southern town of Doba, Chad, a proces-
sion of mothers, their breasts dry and withered, their bodies caked
with trail dust, pleaded for food and medicine for the children slung
around their shoulders and backs. Doba was in the middle of a war
zone, however, and there were few supplies. Two hundred children
died from malnutrition in only two weeks. In the harsh semidesert
wastes of eastern Chad, hardy desert nomads were reduced to eating
the leaves of savonnier trees. Some died because they could not di-
gest the leaves properly.
Like outcasts from the Bible, they trudged out of Tigre, Ethiopia
(now a province of Eritria), escaping a parched, rebel-controlled

750
 1984: Africa

province that was starved of food supplies by the Ethiopian govern-

ment. Nearly 200,000 Tigreans fled to camps in neighboring Sudan.
There were women too weak to finish the journey on foot, children
who listened for water on makeshift hose lines, and children who ar-
rived only to die.
Impact. The famine had two “belts” across sub-Saharan Africa. One
belt ran from Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in
the east. The other belt ran from Somalia on the horn of Africa to An-
gola, Botswana, and Zambia in southern Africa. As of November, 1984,
50,000 people were dead from famine in Senegal, and 50,000 more
were at risk. More than 150,000 cattle had been lost in the previous two
years. In Mali, more than 1 million children were suffering from mal-
nutrition, cholera, and measles. A total of 2.5 million people were at
risk from famine. In Chad, at least 4,000 people, mostly women and
children, had died from famine during the three months preceding
December, 1984. Half a million more had been displaced by drought,
and relief efforts were hampered by a civil war. In the Sudan, more
than 1 million people were threatened by the famine. There had been
a great influx of refugees from Chad and Ethiopia, which added to the
civil strife already existing in the southern Sudan.
Like much of Africa, Ethiopia has always been subject to ecologi-
cal disaster. Droughts and famines were reported as early as 253 b.c.e.
In the great drought of 1888, a third of the population was said to
have died from malnourishment and disease. This calamity in 1984-
1985 was part of a thirty-year pattern. The rains have repeatedly
failed along the Sahel, the wide swath of land that lies just below the
Sahara Desert. As a result, this time there had already been at least
300,000 famine deaths in Ethiopia. A million more people may have
been at risk and as many as 6 million people were facing food short-
ages. In Mozambique, perhaps 200,000 people may have already died
from famine. Four million more were in danger largely due to a se-
vere drought and a civil war.
Root Causes. Aside from the lack of rain, these peoples’ greatest
enemies have been deforestation, booming population, primitive ag-
ricultural methods, war, and governmental mismanagement. Black
Africa is the world’s poorest area, and it is the only region in which
the population is growing faster than the food supply. Agriculture
never fully recovered from the devastating drought of the early and

751
1984: Africa

mid-1970’s. In 1982, Ethiopia’s per capita food production was only

81 percent of what it was in 1969-1971. In Mozambique, the figure
was at 68 percent. Chad’s food harvest in 1983 was a disaster. Cereal
production plummeted to 315,000 tons, well short of the 654,000
tons needed for minimum living needs. On average, African govern-
ments spend four times as much on armaments as they do on agricul-
ture. Primitive farming, in turn, has devastated the environment.
Under increasing pressure for production, traditional fallow pe-
riods have been shortened, wearing out the soil. Most farmers have no
chemical fertilizers, and the animal dung that they once used to enrich
the soil is being burned for fuel, because so many trees have been cut
down. In the mid-1960’s, 16 percent of Ethiopia’s land area was cov-
ered by forest. In the mid-1980’s, the figure was just 3 percent. “With
deforestation, the soil loses much of its capacity to retain moisture and
consequently its productivity and resistance to drought,” said a U.N.
environmentalist. In the twenty years leading up to the mid-1980’s,
Mauritania lost more than three-quarters of its grazing land to the en-
croaching sands of the Sahara. Rainfall became another forgotten lux-
ury. The rainfall in 1983 was the lowest in seventy years, and most of
the grain crop failed. In some areas, 90 percent of the livestock died.
Ethiopia’s leader at the time, Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile
Mariam, was warned of impending famine in 1982, in a report from a
group of experts headed by Keith Griffin, an Oxford University econ-
omist. The Griffin team recommended immediate food rationing
and heavy emphasis on rural development. Mengistu ignored the ad-
vice. Instead, Mengistu poured 46 percent of Ethiopia’s gross na-
tional product into military spending, buying at least $2.5 billion
worth of arms from the Soviet Union. What investment he did make
in agriculture was concentrated on building Soviet-style state farms.
Meanwhile, as hundreds of thousands starved in 1984 and 1985, Ethi-
opian officials spent more than $100 million sprucing up their capi-
tal, Addis Ababa, and erecting triumphal arches. This expenditure
and construction were for the September, 1985, tenth anniversary of
the military coup that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie I.
In Chad before and during the famine, Libya occupied the entire
northern half of the country. Meanwhile, a guerrilla conflict in the
south rendered that area impervious to relief efforts. At that time,
the country had only 60 miles of paved road. The rest of the roads

752
 1984: Africa

were mostly impassable dirt tracks. The 1984 cotton harvest was the
largest in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the cotton was planted, how-
ever, at the expense of food crops. Since no one anticipated the sever-
ity of the drought, little of the profit from the abundant cotton crop
was saved for emergency food aid. So the cotton money was gone,
providing no relief from the killer famine.
The Long-Term Effects. The long-range damage of the famine
was the potential effects upon the children who survived. An Ameri-
can child of four to six years old typically consumes 1,600 to 1,800 cal-
ories in a daily diet. In the African famine belts, a child the same age
took in less than 800 calories per day, a starvation diet. At refugee
camps, the basic ration consisted of gruel made from wheat, plus
beans, other grains, and vegetable oil. That was not a balanced diet
but was far better than anything outside the camps. After months or
even years of malnutrition, African children were prey to a host of ail-
ments. Iron-deficiency anemia was prevalent, and in some places a
shortage of iodine in the diet caused a mini-epidemic of goiter, an en-
largement of the thyroid gland.
For children born and raised at the peak of the famine, blindness
was one of the more severe consequences. A lack of vitamin A—
which comes from butterfat, eggs, liver, carrots, and leafy vegeta-
bles—leads to a condition called xerophthalmia (literally, “dry eye”).
Night blindness is an early symptom. Later, sunlight becomes pain-
ful. The eyes stop lubricating themselves with tears, and their protec-
tive mucous cells dry out. The corneas are scarred and pitted until
the victim becomes blind.
Physicians working in famine areas predicted that countless thou-
sands of African children would emerge from the famine with some
kind of damage to their mental capacities. Malnutrition can stop the
growth of brain tissue, a loss that cannot be made up later in life. The
belief was expressed that the thousands of orphans created by the
famine would pour into towns and cities to scratch out a living as beg-
gars or thieves. Whatever their work would be, many believed that
these children would be so handicapped by the famine’s effects that
they would not be able to compete or make a living for their families.
Relief. Although the rains did eventually arrive in the spring of
1985, the more pressing matter was to get food and medical supplies
to relief areas and refugee camps. Getting food into Ethiopia was

753
1984: Africa

only half the problem. A moonscape scarred with treacherous can-

yons and inhospitable mountains, the country is a logistical difficulty.
Half its people normally lived a two-day walk from the nearest road.
In 1985 there were only about 6,000 trucks in the entire country. At
that time only a few hundred of the trucks had been used for relief.
Relief supplies did finally begin to show up in quantity. The first food
trucks reached the northern town of Korem in a military convoy, for
protection against rebels. More than 50,000 people were waiting at
the camp for food, and there was not enough to go around. Before
the convoy came in, about 100 people were dying every day. After-
ward the average dropped to somewhere between 30 and 50 a day.
Doctors were forced to perform a gruesome act of triage, selecting
only the hardiest refugees to receive food and clothing. The physi-
cians would work their way through crowds. They used pencils to
place marks on the foreheads of those who seemed most likely to sur-
vive. Aid was not to be wasted on the weak.
A Cooperative for American Relief to Everywhere (CARE) official
once described Chad as having nightmarish logistical problems, even
worse than Ethiopia’s. Chad is a landlocked nation in which the near-
est ports are 1,200 miles away, in Cameroon and Nigeria. At that time,
food trains took at least three weeks to travel from the seacoast to
Chad, and the transport depended on the cooperation of foreign
governments. Also, the civil war and the Libyan occupation of Chad
continued.
The rains themselves brought a new flood of trouble. Thousands
of people in Ethiopia may have died of cold and disease in the rain
and hail. Roads and bridges were destroyed, delaying food shipments
to many of the country’s 8 million famine victims. The rains ruined
about 5,500 tons of precious grain at the port of Aseb in Ethiopia.
Twenty thousand famine victims in Ethiopia lost their homes to the
flooding Shebelle River. Storms also destroyed flimsy shelters in
many feeding centers, increasing the threat of epidemics; thousands
of people had already died of cholera in Ethiopia. The rains in Mo-
zambique in southeastern Africa destroyed vital food crops, aggravat-
ing an already grim situation. By the beginning of May, 1985, more
than 200,000 people had died in Mozambique, and 2.5 million peo-
ple were still in urgent need of food.
Dana P. McDermott

754
 1984: Africa

For Further Information:

Curtis, Donald, Michael Hubbard, and Andrew Shepherd. Preventing
Famine: Policies and Prospects for Africa. London: Routledge, 1988.
Scott, Michael, and Mutombo Mpanya. We Are the World: An Evalua-
tion of Pop Aid for Africa. Washington, D.C.: InterAction, 1994.
Tekolla, Y. The Puzzling Paradox of the African Food Crisis: Searching for
the Truth and Facing the Challenge. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: UNECA,
1997.
Varnis, Stephen. Reluctant Aid or Aiding the Reluctant: U.S. Food Aid Pol-
icy and Ethiopian Famine Relief. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction,
1990.
Von Braun, Joachim, Tesfaye Teklu, and Patrick Webb. Famine in Af-
rica: Causes, Responses, and Prevention. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1999.
Webb, Patrick, and Joachim von Braun. Famine and Food Security in
Ethiopia: Lessons for Africa. New York: John Wiley, 1994.

755
■ 1985: The Mexico City
earthquake
Earthquake

Date: September 19, 1985

Place: Mexico City, Mexico
Magnitude: 8.1
Result: 10,000 estimated dead, 30,000 injured, 2,850 buildings de-
stroyed, 100,000 units damaged

M exico City, the nation’s capital, is located in the Val-

ley of Mexico, situated between two towering moun-
tain ranges, the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Sierra Madre Ori-
ental, in the south central part of the country. The city itself is
situated on a plateau surrounded by a series of mountains that in-
clude a string of volcanoes. The valley proper has an altitude ranging
from 6,800 to 7,900 feet above sea level. Its floor, on which the mod-
ern city has been built gradually over the past five hundred years, is
not geologically stable. Beneath the massive concentration of high-
rise buildings, extensive freeways, and the marginal dwellings of the
poor lies a weak foundation of watery shale rather than a firm base of
bedrock, for the city was extended over areas that in precolonial
times were lakes.
Contributing to the lack of stability has been the continuous
pumping of water from the city’s subterranean underpinnings, re-
sulting in a constant shifting and weakening of its buildings’ founda-
tions. Structural engineers have developed techniques utilizing per-
manent hydraulic jacks to keep new high-rises level, but much of the
older construction must be subjected to constant adjustment and re-
alignment of its foundations in order to keep buildings from sustain-
ing serious damage. The same is true for transportation and commu-
nication facilities—the freeways and the power and water lines.
Hundreds of earthquakes have been recorded in the past five cen-
turies, since the Spaniards first entered Mexico. However, many of
the low-lying edifices, built during the colonial era, have managed to

756
 1985: The Mexico City earthquake

survive the recurrent quakes better than the multistory buildings

constructed in later times. In the case of relatively new construction,
only the high-rises built in accordance with the latest scientific knowl-
edge on quake resistance have weathered the tremors to which the
city is constantly exposed.
The People. Archaeologists state that primitive tribes lived in the
Valley of Mexico as early as fifteen thousand years ago. The area’s ap-
peal can be traced to the availability of fresh water, attracting humans
and animals alike. The surrounding mountains also acted as a natu-
ral trap for game, making their capture less difficult to the prehis-
toric hunter. As the number of humans increased, the availability of
this wild game dwindled. The shortage led ultimately to the evolution
of an agricultural society, one that grew its sustenance from planned
crops rather than depending entirely on the vagaries of the hunt.
The area’s rich soil, combined with regular rainfall, led to the de-
velopment of a substantial society, capable of building impressive
stone structures for use as palaces, temples, and granaries. Civiliza-
tions such as the Teotihuacán and Toltec empires flourished for cen-
turies, followed by that of the Aztecs, who held sway throughout cen-
tral Mexico until the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores. The
precolonial city constructed by the indigenous peoples dazzled the
Spaniards on their arrival in the Valley of Mexico. The Aztecs had or-
ganized the city’s functions in a manner superior to that which the
Europeans had experienced at home. The treatment of sewage, for
example, far exceeded in sophistication that found in European cit-
ies at the time.
In the process of their conquest of the Aztecs, the Spaniards laid
waste to much of what was precolonial Mexico City, but they retained
the location as the capital of what they called New Spain. A Euro-
pean-styled city rose from the ashes of the Aztec empire. Despite fre-
quent fires and earthquakes—more than 340 quakes had been regis-
tered in the capital since the beginning of the colonial era—many
examples of the initial Spanish colonial architecture can still be
found throughout the city.
The Spaniards intermingled with the indigenous population from
the beginning of their occupation. The conquistadores married into
the noble families of the native peoples or made the Indian women
their concubines. Today Mexico City’s population is an amalgam-

757
1985: The Mexico City earthquake

ation of European and Amerindian strains, giving the society a heter-

ogeneous character.
More than 20 million people lived in greater Mexico City as early
as 1986. This area includes the city itself and also the surrounding
federal district. More than a quarter of the country’s total population
is crammed into the Valley of Mexico and its environs. Because the
capital contains Mexico’s economic and political seats of power, a
constant influx of citizens seeking political advantage and employ-
ment opportunities pours into Mexico City in a continuous stream,
many condemned to eke out a precarious existence.
During the second half of the twentieth century, Mexico’s society
became more urban than rural. Living in the cities became the goal
of the country’s rural poor. As a result, virtually any open space
within greater Mexico City became home to economic refugees.
These poverty-stricken families from the countryside seized small
plots of land wherever they could, built shacks from any material they
could find, and fought the local authorities to retain custody of them.
The new arrivals sought work of any type in order to sustain them-
selves; thus, factories throughout the crowded city and its surround-
ing area often employ workers under illegal and unsafe conditions.
These poorly paid workers are crowded into poorly constructed com-
mercial buildings that constantly threaten their health and well-
being. Congestive traffic conditions and the accompanying pollution
have made the capital a poor-quality residential area for many, if not
most, of its inhabitants. Moreover, only roughly one-third of its citi-
zens can afford to rent or own homes in its formal real-estate market.
The Quake. At 7:18 on the morning of September 19, 1985, Mex-
ico City experienced a devastating earthquake. Technical experts de-
scribed the event as a clash between two opposing seismic forces, the
Cocos and the North American tectonic plates. The epicenter was de-
termined to be deep in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 250 miles
west of the Mexican coastline. Mexico City sits on what has been
termed the “Ring of Fire” surrounding the Pacific Ocean and extend-
ing to Australia, Japan, Alaska, the western United States, Central
America, and the western coasts of the countries of South America.
While some general damage occurred throughout Mexico’s
smaller southern cities and its rural areas, the capital itself experi-
enced the greatest destruction. The quake measured 8.1 on the Rich-

758
 1985: The Mexico City earthquake

ter scale. The tremor itself lasted over three minutes, shaking the city
to its core. The damage was concentrated in the north, central, and
eastern parts of the city.
The very nature of the ground beneath the city, with its lack of a
solid rock base, resulted in extensive damage throughout its many
districts, but especially in its very center. Dozens of the older hotels
that lacked earthquake protection in the city’s center collapsed, kill-
ing and injuring thousands of visitors. The Regis, the Diplomático,
the Versailles, the Romano (all of its occupants were killed), and the
De Carlo were among those most seriously affected. While the up-
scale Del Prado survived the quake itself, it was rendered uninhabit-
able.
The Regis, formerly a luxury hotel but over time one that had de-
teriorated to second-class status, was 90 percent occupied when the
quake struck. A few guests managed to jump to safety from the sec-
ond floor. The stairway between the first and second floor as well as
the front of the building had collapsed in the initial tremor. A few
minutes later the rest of the edifice blew up as a result of accumulated
gas within its ruins.
Both the Navy ministry nearby, as well as a secondary school, the
National College of Professional Education, suffered major damage.
Navy personnel dug with their hands to try to free their fellow sailors.
Several hundred students at the school were entombed in the ruins
of their classrooms. They had been in class for only twenty minutes.
The poorly constructed, overcrowded factories in the city suffered
major damage as well. Four hundred production centers were de-
stroyed, over 800 garment workers were killed, and thousands were
left without work once the tremors had ceased. The factories proved
to be particularly vulnerable to quakes for two reasons: the poor con-
struction of the buildings in which they were housed, and the fact
that the floors of the buildings themselves were stressed by the heavy
loads of machinery and rolls of material that they bore.
Several major high-rises in the Tlatelolco complex failed to sur-
vive the first tremors. In 1968 Tlatelolco had been the scene of the
massacre of an estimated 300 students by the army at the instigation
of the government. This 103-building housing development, con-
taining the living quarters of many government workers, suffered
major damage, leaving the hundreds that survived the initial quake

759
1985: The Mexico City earthquake

without shelter. Forty-three of the 103 buildings were rendered im-

mediately uninhabitable.
The development’s thirteen-story Nuevo León Building ended up
in ruins, with more than half of its 3,000 residents trapped in the
wreckage. The remaining rubble alone stood four stories high. Prior
to the quake, many of its occupants had complained to authorities
about the poor condition of the building. Some of the accusers
claimed that the builders had paid bribes to government inspectors
to overlook the inferior quality of the materials used in its construc-
tion. Survivors from the surrounding buildings dug with their hands
in an effort to free the Nuevo León’s victims.
Famous tenor Placido Domingo had relatives trapped on the sixth
floor in one of Tlatelolco’s high-rises. He led a brigade of volunteers
that banded together to pull people from the rubble and provide
food and water for survivors and volunteers.
When aid workers using public and private vehicles took the vic-
tims of the Tlatelolco disaster to the National Medical Center they
were turned back. All of its major buildings had been devastated. Sev-
enty of the center’s physicians, nurses, and other employees had
been killed. Several hundred patients had been crushed at the site as
well. Some experts maintained that the medical buildings themselves
were of substandard construction and that building regulations had
been ignored during their erection. Five major hospitals within the
city were destroyed, and an additional 22 were heavily damaged. The
loss of hospital beds alone numbered 4,200, about 30 percent of the
city’s existing capacity. Following the quake, a number of complaints
arose about the marginal construction of many of the recently built
government structures. The material used proved to be inferior to
what had been specified in the contracts between the government
and the builders.
The headquarters of the television station Televisa suffered im-
mense damage. More than 77 of its employees perished in the build-
ing’s collapse. Nevertheless, the station managed to get back on the
air after five hours of broadcast suspension. The station could not
send filming units into the streets since many were blocked by debris,
but the station did manage to report on the quake utilizing helicop-
ters flying over the city.
A second—less severe, but still powerful—earthquake occurred

760
 1985: The Mexico City earthquake

The Mexico City earthquake reduced many buildings to rubble. (National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration)

less than thirty-six hours after the initial temblor. Technicians rated
this subsequent quake 5.6 on the Richter scale. The tremor resulted
in the postponement of rescue efforts. Further loss of life occurred
among injured and trapped victims from the first disaster. The Pino
Suárez high-rise building at Tlatelolco, damaged in the earlier
quake, collapsed in the second, killing many rescue workers.
The statistics at the end of the first day showed the following: The
quake had contaminated the city’s water supply, and it had severed
both electrical and telephone service. The telephone center on Vic-
tory Street was destroyed, effectively closing down telephone com-
munications from and to Mexico City. Initially, news concerning the
quake could be transmitted only by some of the city’s 1,800 licensed
ham-radio operators. More than 250,000 citizens found themselves
temporarily without shelter. Adequate food supplies still existed, but
getting them to the needed areas presented serious logistical prob-
lems. However, groups of citizen volunteers set up kitchens and tents
in the streets next to excavation sites and began preparing food and
drink for both victims and volunteers.
Five days after the initial quake, officials at Mexico’s national uni-
versity began to assemble a list of the missing, because the computers

761
1985: The Mexico City earthquake

there were more sophisticated than those available to the govern-

ment. Nevertheless, the delay in initiating a program seeking to iden-
tify the missing, dead, and injured led to a great deal of confusion for
friends and relatives trying to locate those whose whereabouts were
unknown. No program had been prepared for the government’s
computer facilities to be utilized in such an emergency.
The Government. After 1929 Mexico’s federal, state, and re-
gional governments were controlled by a single political entity, the
Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). The party has been ac-
cused of maintaining continuous control of the government by engi-
neering elections, not only at the federal level but also in state and re-
gional political contests. At the time of the 1985 earthquake, it was
left to the country’s president to personally appoint Mexico City’s
mayor, who was also named to the presidential cabinet. The responsi-
bility for governing the city and providing for the welfare of its citi-
zens lay with the office of the president.
Despite its claim to have a disaster plan for Mexico City to be im-
plemented in the event of an emergency, when the earthquake
struck, the Mexican government officials, initially at least, seemed to
be helpless in the face of the tragedy. The extensive nature of the
damage rendered previous planning inoperable. The city had an in-
sufficient number of firefighters to meet the emergency. It also
lacked the heavy construction equipment needed to begin removal
of the thousands of tons of masonry rubble. The police and the army
did little more than cordon off the damaged areas; they did not re-
spond to the plight of the injured or aid in the removal of the dead.
Some police were accused by onlookers of looting the damaged
structures or taking bribes to allow businessmen to recover their rec-
ords without addressing the need for first aid for injured employees.
The police expelled a reporter on the scene who had observed the
pilferage and who planned to expose the corruption.
More scandals involving the police surfaced with the unscheduled
release of some prisoners held in local jails damaged by the quakes.
They testified to the use of torture by their captors during interroga-
tions. Corpses of prisoners killed by the quake also bore evidence of
systematic brutalization after the rescuers exhumed the bodies from
a building occupied by the office of the attorney general.
When the manual laborers assigned by the government to aid in

762
 1985: The Mexico City earthquake

rescue efforts arrived on the scene, their equipment proved to be to-

tally inadequate to meet the formidable task of removing the huge
piles of debris resulting from the demolished buildings. Only when
private contractors moved their own bulldozers and tractors to the
sites could any meaningful shifting of the debris be accomplished.
Immediately following the quake, Mexican president Miguel de la
Madrid announced publicly that Mexico had adequate resources to
meet the emergency and that foreign aid would not be needed. In
one instance, a team of French rescue workers with trained dogs was
prevented by Mexican officials from beginning search operations at a
devastated building. The president reversed his decision two days
later; the delay cost the lives of many of the trapped and injured who
could have been rescued by the many teams of foreign workers who
then entered the country. President de la Madrid, essentially a bu-
reaucrat, lacked the necessary leadership characteristics needed in
the president of a stricken country facing this type of catastrophe.
Ultimately, 60 foreign countries aided in the rescue effort. Thir-
teen specialty brigades from outside the country, with tools and
bloodhounds, worked tirelessly at the sites of devastation to find both
the injured and the dead. The Israelis sent a team of 25 along with 17
tons of equipment. Because of the constant threat of quakes in their
own country, they had developed special equipment for locating and
recovering those who had been trapped. In total, some 250 foreign
governments, international relief agencies, and nongovernmental
organizations of various types offered their services to Mexico. To
complement these high-profile efforts, a group of young students
from El Salvador drove several hundred miles from their Central
American country in a battered passenger car, seeking to help in
whatever capacity they could. Airplanes from the United States, the
Soviet Union, France, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Algeria,
Switzerland, Colombia, Canada, Peru, Italy, Cuba, Spain, and Pan-
ama brought in tons of relief supplies for distribution to the injured
and homeless.
Rescue. The citizens of Mexico City themselves became the major
participants in the rescue effort. Forming brigades of volunteers sim-
ilar to the one led by Placido Domingo, working with a modicum of
tools acquired from local hardware stores, and sometimes with only
their bare hands, the teams sought to save the lives of their trapped

763
1985: The Mexico City earthquake

and injured fellow citizens. They formed human chains and passed
debris and broken concrete from hand to hand. In most cases the bri-
gades consisted of friends or coworkers. Some slightly built rescuers,
nicknamed moles, crawled through tiny openings in the ruins, risk-
ing their own lives, in an effort to aid the living and to recover the
bodies of the dead. One of these heroes, Marcos Efrén Zariñana,
slightly over 5 feet in height, became known as “the Flea.” Observers
credited him with personally saving a number of lives. The diminu-
tive rescuer edged his way through tunnels too small for other work-
ers to enter in order to pull out victims.
Citizens formed their own committees to distribute food, cloth-
ing, and blankets directly to the survivors. They did not trust govern-
ment officials to carry out even these tasks. They continued to up-
braid the police and the soldiers for failing to take a positive role in
the rescue efforts. The army defended itself vociferously, maintain-
ing that it had been given orders only to secure the afflicted areas and
to prevent looting.
Consequences. There were many economic and political conse-
quences of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. The government im-
mediately began a rapid updating of building codes. It established
for the first time a centralized national civil defense system. Nongov-
ernmental organizations such as the Mexican Red Cross and the
Catholic Church began to coordinate with one another their plans
for addressing major emergencies such as the Mexico City earth-
quake.
The quake dealt Mexico a serious economic blow. The final esti-
mate of the country’s financial loss amounted to the equivalent of at
least 4 billion U.S. dollars, possibly as much as $10 billion. The city
lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in its normally lucrative tourist
revenue. Moreover, hundreds of millions of dollars in wages literally
disappeared when local businesses ceased to function. Reconstruc-
tion and rehabilitation costs were equivalent to 6 percent of the
whole country’s annual gross national product. The World Bank
alone provided over half a billion dollars in reconstruction loans.
The paid insurance losses exceeded any previous earthquake catas-
trophe except for those occurring in San Francisco in 1906 and To-
kyo in 1923. The heavy concentration of industry in the capital
further demonstrated that the nation’s economic structure was ill

764
 1985: The Mexico City earthquake

served by allowing the bulk of its industry to locate in such narrow

confines.
Some events developed after the catastrophe that the government
had not foreseen. The PRI, although still the foremost political orga-
nization throughout Mexico, lost the support of many citizens of
Mexico City. The general public saw the party as closely aligned with
the government itself. Initially at least, the two together were seen as
to have failed to contribute effectively to the rescue effort.
Eventually a citywide organization of ordinary citizens was formed
to protest the manner in which the country’s political leadership re-
sponded to the quake. Named the United Victim Network, its leaders
pressured the office of the president to meet the needs of the home-
less. The government, in an effort to regain support, and faced with a
series of street demonstrations by this disaffected group of citizens,
sometimes numbering in the thousands, took over some 600 acres of
downtown real estate and, with the financial help of the World Bank,
constructed dwellings for some 70,000 local citizens who were with-
out housing. It added some small parks and playgrounds as well. De-
spite this highly publicized program, the government failed to win
back the allegiance of most of the city’s population.
The PRI’s presidential candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, barely
won the national election held in 1988, three years following the
quake. The opposition accused the government of fraud in tallying
the votes. No questions of closeness arose in the case of the Mexico
City vote, however—75 percent of the capital’s voters backed his two
opponents, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the leftist Partido Democratico
Revolucionario (PDR) and Manuel Clouthier of the Partido Acción
Nacional (PAN).
In the years immediately following the quake, Mexico City’s citi-
zens continued to demonstrate their opposition to the existing politi-
cal system. They had come to resent the country’s president unilater-
ally selecting their mayor, a resentment kindled by the ineffectual
handling of quake relief by the mayor’s office. Finally, under pressure
from an aroused and increasingly vociferous citizenry, the federal
government capitulated and acquiesced to legislation enfranchising
the city’s residents.
Over a decade later, a further example of the rejection of the gov-
ernment’s direct control of the reins of city government occurred

765
1985: The Mexico City earthquake

when, in 1997, its citizens elected Cárdenas of the PDR its first popu-
larly elected mayor over Alfredo del Mazo, the candidate chosen by
the government and the PRI. The 1985 earthquake had changed for-
ever the way that Mexico City was to be governed.
Carl Henry Marcoux

For Further Information:

Centeno, Miguel Angel. Democracy Within Reason: Technical Revolution
in Mexico. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1994.
Díaz Cervantes, Emilio. The Placido Domingo Brigade: A Manual Against
Disaster. Mexico City: Ediciones Castillo, 1995.
Foweraker, Joe, and Ann L. Craig. Popular Movements and Political
Change in Mexico. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990.
Gil, Carlos B., ed. Hope and Frustration: Interviews with Leaders of Mex-
ico’s Political Opposition. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources,
1992.
Kandell, Jonathan. La Capital: The Biography of Mexico City. New York:
Random House, 1988.
Morris, Stephen D. Political Reformism in Mexico: An Overview of Con-
temporary Mexican Politics. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995.
Poniatowska, Elena. Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Mexico City Earth-
quake. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.
Quarantelli, E. L. Organizational Response to the Mexico City Earthquake
of 1985: Characteristics and Implications. Newark: University of Dela-
ware Disaster Research Center, 1992.

766
■ 1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster
Volcano
Date: August 21, 1986
Place: Cameroon
Result: 1,734 dead, 3,000 cattle dead, 4,000-5,000 people evacu-
ated, 4 villages destroyed

T he eruption of Lake Nyos in 1986 was the second time

lethal gas released from a lake has claimed human
lives. The first was on August 15, 1984, at Lake Monoun, another lake
in Cameroon, when 37 people died. As the government had just put
down an attempted coup at the time and was worried about the politi-
cal overtones of the incident, the Monoun eruption received little
public attention, but the eruption of Lake Nyos was so catastrophic
that immediate international aid was needed.
History of Lake Nyos. Both lakes lie in the northwestern part
of Cameroon, a tropical, West African country about the size of Cali-
fornia. The lakes are located on the so-called Cameroon volcanic
line, a zone of crustal weakness extending 1,000 miles northeast from
Annobón Island in the south Atlantic through northwestern Camer-
oon and into northeastern Nigeria. Young cinder cones and basaltic
lava flows appear along this line, as well as flat-floored explosion cra-
ters known as maars. The maars formed when rising, gas-charged
magma came into explosive contact with near-surface groundwater.
More than thirty of the Cameroon maars, filled by deep crater lakes,
are strung out like jewels along the volcanic trend as it stretches
across the nation.
The crater in which Lake Nyos lies is rimmed by vertical, bedrock
fault scarps on the west, a partially collapsed volcanic cone on the
east, a delta plain to the south, and an outlet spillway across the flank
of an ash cone to the north. Because the ash deposits around the lake
are unweathered and little eroded, geologists believe the crater in
which Lake Nyos lies is only a few hundred years old. The lake itself is
shaped like a lemon, with a maximum length of 1.2 miles and a maxi-
mum width of 0.7 miles. It is shallow at the south end, near the delta

767
1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster

plain, but drops off steeply to a flat bottom about 680 feet deep. Prior
to the eruption, the inhabitants called Lake Nyos “the good lake.” It
shimmered like a fallen piece of blue sky amidst the jutting rock cliffs
and lush, green vegetation.
The part of Cameroon in which Lake Nyos lies is a remote, moun-
tainous region reached only by crude dirt roads. Before the eruption,
some 5,000 people lived in the 4-square-mile area surrounding the
lake. They were drawn here by the deeply weathered volcanic rocks
that provided rich soils for their crops of cassava, maize, and yams, as
well as prime grazing land for their herds of cattle. In the villages,
which were little more than a row of houses strung out along the
roads, people lived in thatched huts or two-room, mud-brick homes
with corrugated tin roofs. Family groups lived in clusters up in the
hills. None of the inhabitants had telephones or electricity.
The Eruption. The fatal eruption came without warning about
9:30 on the evening of Thursday, August 21, 1986. Although this was
the rainy season, the eruption came during a lull between thunder-
storms. As a result, people looked out in surprise when they heard a
loud, rumbling noise, which lasted perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds,
coming from the direction of the lake. One observer reported hear-
ing a bubbling sound, and from his vantage point he saw a ghostly
column of vapor rising from the lake’s surface. The vapor then
poured down the valley to the north, like a smoking river. He also saw
a surge of water in the lake and felt a blast of air that had the odor of
rotten eggs.
The people who lived in the valley north of the lake bore the brunt
of the tragedy. The cloud of smoking vapor, which may have been as
high as 150 feet, first struck the village of Lower Nyos, which lies
about 0.3 mile beyond the lake. Thursday had been market day, and
many people were still eating dinner when the cloud arrived, chok-
ing them in their homes. Those who tried to flee the cloud collapsed
on the muddy roads leading out of town. Others died peacefully in
their sleep. In all, some 1,200 people died in Lower Nyos that eve-
ning, with only one woman and a child known to have survived.
An additional 500 people perished in the villages of Cha, Subum,
and Fang, which lay farther down valley as the toxic cloud rolled on
for 5 more miles. A survivor from Subum said he had feelings of
warmth and drunkenness before he lost consciousness, and he re-

768
 1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster

NIGER Lake
Zinder
Chad

Katsina
N’Djamena
Maiduguri

Zaria CHAD
Kaduna

Abuja

NIGERIA

Lake Nyos
CAMEROON
Lake Monoun CENTRAL
AFRICAN
R iver REPUBLIC
aga
San
Malabo Yaounde
Douala

Ebolowa
EQUATORIAL
GUINEA

SAO TOME
& PRINCIPE
Libreville GABON
Sao Tome
CONGO

membered an odor like that of cooking gas. Family members acted

drunk and were coughing and crying as they fell to the floor, where
some lay screaming or spitting up blood. Another Subum resident
awoke gasping for air but managed to drag himself into a windowless
shed behind the house, where he survived.
A few victims revived six to thirty-six hours later. They described
feelings of dizziness, warmth, and confusion before losing conscious-

769
1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster

ness, as well as shortness of breath. Only the people living in localities

more than 2 miles from the lake reported an odor of rotten eggs or of
gunpowder. When morning came, survivors of the eruption found
the bodies of their cattle strewn about in the fields, and the bodies of
their friends and relatives where they had fallen in their homes or
along the roads.
It seemed as though a neutron bomb had struck. Everyone was
dead, but the buildings remained untouched. Some of the victims
had even stripped off their clothes, as if in a desperate attempt to es-
cape the feelings of heat. Others lay amid scattered pots and furni-
ture, where they writhed as the vapors strangled them. Oil lamps
were snuffed out too, although they still contained oil. The animals
were dead—goats, pigs, birds, small mammals, and insects down to
the smallest ant. Later that day, when the bodies of the cattle began to
bloat in the hot sun, they remained untouched by flies or vultures be-
cause the scavengers were dead too. Strangely enough, plant life
seemed to have been unaffected.
The survivors hurriedly began burying the dead, with attention to
their relatives first, and no one made any attempt to inform the out-
side world of what had happened, because of the lack of telephones
and the poor roads. Thus the first word people had of the tragedy was
from a government worker who headed into the area from the city of
Wum on his motorcycle the afternoon of Friday, August 22. As he ap-
proached Lower Nyos, he first saw a dead antelope lying beside the
road. Congratulating himself upon his good luck, he stopped to strap
the animal to his motorcycle before continuing. Soon he encoun-
tered dead cattle and then the bodies of people. Now, beginning to
feel ill himself, he turned his motorcycle around and hurried back to
Wum, where he alerted the authorities. Full-scale relief efforts began
on Sunday, August 24, when the president of Cameroon arrived by
helicopter to inspect the scene, bringing with him doctors from Is-
rael and a disaster team from France.
Scientific Analysis. Scientists came too, and, after the injured
had been taken care of, they turned their attention to the lake. Just
one glance revealed that the appearance of Lake Nyos had changed
radically. Although the waters remained calm, the lake no longer
looked like a fallen piece of clear blue sky, but rather an angry red eye
festering in its crater socket. The water was stained a muddy, reddish

770
 1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster

brown by iron compounds that rose with the escaping gas, and mats
of floating vegetation littered the lake’s surface. The lake level had
dropped by nearly 4 feet as well, and water had sloshed up on the
south shore to a height of 80 feet and splashed over a 250-foot-high
rock promontory on the southwest. The 20-foot high outlet spillway
on the north had been overtopped as well, and downstream from the
spillway, brush was flattened and several large fig trees lay uprooted,
presumably by the blast of vapor coming from the lake.
The earliest newspaper accounts of the eruption reported that the
gas expelled by the lake was hydrogen sulfide, an identification based
on reports of the odor of rotten eggs. Scientists pointed out that car-
bon dioxide, not hydrogen sulfide, had been the culprit at Lake
Monoun, and when water samples from Lake Nyos were analyzed, 98
to 99 percent of the gas still dissolved in the lake proved to be carbon
dioxide. The amount of gas released by the lake during the eruption
was estimated to have totaled about 1.3 billion cubic yards, based on a
drop in lake level of nearly 4 feet. Because carbon dioxide weighs one
and a half times as much as air, it would have hugged the ground as it
moved down valley, asphyxiating its victims by forcing the breathable
air aside.
Scientists considered three possible sources for this gas: volcanic,
magmatic, or biogenic. If the origin were volcanic, the gas would
have come from a near-surface eruption and should have had a high
temperature. However, if the gas had a magmatic origin, it would
have come from molten rock deep within the earth and consequently
been cool by the time it reached the surface; it would also have lost its
reactive constituents, such as sulfur and chlorine compounds and
carbon monoxide. Temperature measurements made after the erup-
tion indicated that the lake was still cool, so a magmatic origin was fa-
vored. Biogenic gas would have been cool too, having originated
from the decomposition of organic matter on the lake’s bottom, but
carbon-14 tests dated the lake’s gas as more than thirty-five thousand
years old. This meant that the gas expelled by the lake was magmatic,
for organic decomposition on the bottom of a lake only a few hun-
dred years old could hardly account for such gas.
Springs around Lake Nyos contain high concentrations of carbon
dioxide, so scientists believe the magmatic gas came into Lake Nyos
with the groundwater. Once in the lake, the gas would have remained

771
1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster

dissolved due to the weight of the overlying water. Because the lake
was stratified, the gas would have concentrated in the cold, lower-
most layers, gradually turning the lake into a time bomb waiting to go
off. Any event that made the gas-rich water start to rise would have re-
duced the pressure on it and allowed carbon dioxide to bubble to the
surface, just as a soda bottle fizzes when the cap is removed. Scientists
could not be certain what made the water rise and initiate the erup-
tion. Possibilities that were suggested include a rockfall into the lake,
an earth tremor, a volcanic eruption, storm winds, or even seasonal
cooling of the lake’s upper surface, which would have caused the
lake’s water to overturn.
Carbon dioxide gas continued to leak into the lake after the erup-
tion was over, and scientists predicted that in another twenty or thirty
years the lake could be ready to erupt again. As a result they alerted
Cameroon authorities that their crater lakes were potential hazards
that would have to be monitored carefully. They also pointed out that
the weak, natural dam forming the outlet spillway of Lake Nyos rep-
resented a hazard as well. Failure of this dam could cause a sudden
lowering of the lake’s level, triggering another explosive release of
gas.
As a remedy for Cameroon’s crater lakes scientists recommended
reducing the gas content by controlled pumping. For an example of
this, they cited an experimental project that began at Lake Monoun
in 1992. Gas-rich deep water was pumped to the lake’s surface, where
the carbon dioxide was harmlessly released into the atmosphere, and
then the degassed water was permitted to return to the lake.
Donald W. Lovejoy

For Further Information:

Decker, Robert, and Barbara Decker. Volcanoes. 4th ed. New York:
W. H. Freeman, 2006.
Eno Belinga, Samuel-M., and Isaac Konfor Njilah. From Mount Camer-
oon to Lake Nyos. Yaoundé, Cameroon: Classiques Camerounais,
2001.
Kling, George W., et al. “The 1986 Lake Nyos Gas Disaster in Camer-
oon, West Africa.” Science 236 (April 10, 1987): 169-175.
Scarth, Alwyn. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.

772
 1986: The Lake Nyos Disaster

Stager, Curt. “Silent Death from Cameroon’s Killer Lake.” National

Geographic 172, no. 3 (September, 1987): 404-420.
Tuttle, Michele, et al. The 21 August 1986 Lake Nyos Gas Disaster, Camer-
oon: Final Report of the United States Scientific Team to the Office of U.S.
Foreign Disaster Assistance. Reston, Va.: U.S. Department of the Inte-
rior, U.S. Geological Survey, 1987.

773
■ 1988: Yellowstone National Park
fires
Fire

Date: Summer, 1988

Place: Mainly Yellowstone National Park, located predominantly in
northwestern Wyoming and partly in southern Montana and east-
ern Idaho; also, surrounding national forests in the northern
Rocky Mountains
Result: 2 dead; approximately 1.2 million acres burned, 793,000 in
Yellowstone National Park itself; more than $3 million estimated
in damage

T he summer of 1988 saw the largest forest fire complex

ever recorded for the Greater Yellowstone area, the
largest in the northern Rocky Mountains for decades, and one of the
most severe in U.S. history. The fires, which burned 36 percent of the
more than 2.2-million-acre Yellowstone National Park and a total of
11 percent of the Greater Yellowstone Area, triggered the nation’s
most expensive fire-suppression effort and a heated debate about na-
tional park fire management policy.
Over the millennia, many conflagrations as large as the 1988 fires
have swept across the vast volcanic plateaus of Yellowstone National
Park. The fires have affected mostly the large stands of lodgepole
pine, which dominate the high-elevation areas. These stands consti-
tute 80 percent of the park’s forests and cover nearly 60 percent of
the park. The recurring, major fires are responsible for the mosaic
landscape of different-aged pines. Tree-ring research shows that fires
of this magnitude last struck in the early 1700’s.
Crescendo of Fires. The 1988 fire season in the Greater Yellow-
stone Area began on May 24, when lightning ignited a blaze that rain
quickly extinguished. Over the next six months, lightning and care-
less people triggered 247 more fires in the area. Early in the season,
officials in Yellowstone National Park stuck to their policy, begun in
1972, of allowing lightning-ignited fires to burn in the backcountry,

774
 1988: Yellowstone National Park fires

under certain guidelines. From 1972 through 1987, such fires had
burned only 33,759 acres, and all these blazes had died naturally.
Park staff did not foresee the extreme weather conditions that would
develop in the summer of 1988.
The previous six summers had all been wetter than average, and
rainfall in April and May of 1988 had been above average. However,
the winters since 1982 had been consistently dry, and it is mainly
the snowpacks in the mountains that moisten the park’s plateaus.
Weather experts were saying that the period leading up to 1988 was
becoming the driest since the 1930’s Dust Bowl. The summer of 1988
proved to be the driest in the park’s history. Precipitation in June,
July, and August was 20 percent, 79 percent, and 10 percent, respec-
tively, of normal.
The failure of the usual June and July rains amplified the early
fires. By July 15, 8,600 acres had burned; by July 21, more than 17,000
acres were ruined. The fires drew the attention of park visitors and
the national media. On July 21, in a departure from policy, park offi-
cials decided to suppress all fires, whether caused by lightning or by
humans. Nevertheless, within a week, fires in the park covered nearly
99,000 acres. By the end of July, dry fuels and high winds made the
larger fires nearly uncontrollable.
In August, with almost no rain, temperatures remaining high, and
a series of dry, cold fronts bringing strong, persistent winds, there was
a marked decrease in moisture in forest debris. This dry fuel engen-
dered near-firestorm conditions. By August 15, a total of 260,000
acres had burned. On August 20, the single worst day—dubbed
“Black Saturday”—winds as high as 70 miles per hour pushed fire
across more than 150,000 acres in and around the park. Walls of
flame reached 100 to 300 feet high. More acreage burned in a single
twenty-four-hour period than had burned during any previous de-
cade in the park’s history.
Firefighters and soldiers poured into Yellowstone National Park.
Aircraft, both for transporting firefighters and supplies and for drop-
ping water and fire retardant on the flames, arrived from around the
nation, and dozens of trucks were brought in. Firefighters cleared
firebreaks and set backfires. National news reporters also arrived in
force. Local businesses became alarmed at the prospect of lost tourist
income. The park’s fire-management policy came under heated de-

775
1988: Yellowstone National Park fires

bate, from park border towns to the U.S. Congress, as the conflagra-
tions raged on despite the firefighting effort.
Spot fires, caused by burning embers carried up in the smoke,
were breaking out up to a mile and a half ahead of the fires, mocking
firebreaks. Even marshes and swamps burned, as well as young, green
forests, which park ecologists had not expected to ignite. Some days,
the seven major fire complexes, which in the end were responsible
for more than 95 percent of the burned acreage, advanced as much
as 10 or 12 miles. Of these seven, three had been started by human
beings, and park staff had attempted to suppress them from the out-
set. These three were ultimately responsible for more than half the
area burned.
By August 31, 550,000 acres had burned. At that point, park offi-
cials abandoned traditional, direct attacks on the fires and with-
drew firefighters to developed areas, to try to protect only life and
property. On September 7, 100,000 acres burned. On September 10,
park authorities evacuated several towns, including Mammoth Hot
Springs, the park’s headquarters. That night the wind turned north,
and by morning it was snowing. The fires lost their strength, although
they did not die out completely until the onset of winter, in Novem-
ber. After September 11, firefighters were gradually sent home.
A total of more than 25,000 firefighters, as many as 9,000 at one
time, fought the fires in the Greater Yellowstone Area, at a total cost
of about $120 million. They hand-cut a total of 665 miles of fireline
and cut 137 miles of bulldozer lines, including 32 miles in Yellow-
stone National Park itself. Two of the firefighters were killed outside
the park, one by a falling tree and the other while piloting a plane
transporting other personnel.
Effects and the Recovery Process. After the fires, Congress
funded the restoration of fire-damaged facilities, which included 67
destroyed structures, and studies of the long-term impact of the fires.
Although the 1988 tourist season was cut short by the blazes, visitors
returned in 1989.
Scientists, eager to study the ecological effects of severe fire in a
natural laboratory, set to work examining the impact on wildlife and
plants. From the start it was clear that the 1988 Yellowstone fires
burned in a heterogeneous pattern, owing to variations in fuels,
winds, and terrain. Substantial areas were untouched by fire or only

776
 1988: Yellowstone National Park fires

lightly burned by fast-moving ground fires that left most of the trees
alive. Other areas were completely blackened by fierce fires that
reached into the canopy and burned the treetops.
Most of the severely burned land, however, defied theories that fires
of this magnitude would “sterilize” the soil by killing root systems and
seeds, opening the way for invading weeds. Although flames
consumed the aboveground parts of grasses and other herbaceous
plants, even the hottest fires rarely burned more than the top inch of
soil, leaving viable seeds, bulbs, roots, and rhizomes below that depth.
By the spring of 1989, grasses and flowers were growing abundantly.
The heaviest fires were in the huge stands of aging, diseased, highly
combustible lodgepole pine. These fires promoted new growth by re-
leasing nutrients long locked up in the old trees, by opening the for-
est canopy and permitting sunlight to reach the young plants, and by
clearing deadfall. Unlike many of the park’s herbaceous plants, most
trees do not regenerate by sprouting from their roots. Rather, they
depend on seeds, and lodgepole pine is a master at this method in
fire-affected landscapes. The cones of many, though not all, lodge-
pole pines are sealed by resin until the intense heat of fire melts the
resin and releases seeds that have been stored in the cones for many
years. This produces a large crop of young pines to take advantage of
the abundant water, nutrients, and space that become available after
a fire. This cone adaptation, called “serotiny,” resulted in the devel-
opment of the even-aged pine stands covering much of the Rocky
Mountains, where fires are frequent. By the spring of 1989, lodgepole
pine seedlings were establishing themselves abundantly. Ten years af-
ter the fires, many of them were knee- to shoulder-high.
Fire also affected the park’s lower elevation areas, characterized
by sagebrush grasslands interspersed with forests of Douglas fir and
aspen. The Douglas firs, which dominate only a small percentage of
the landscape, came back more slowly than the lodgepole pines but,
a decade after the fires, were emerging above the shrubs. The park’s
scattered groves of aspen, the only deciduous tree common in the
park and declining there for decades, sprouted profusely from the
roots, but the new shoots were grazed by elk. Regeneration of willows,
which typically line the streambanks, and sagebrush also may have
been fire-stimulated. Ten years after the fires, grasslands had recov-
ered to prefire conditions.

777
1988: Yellowstone National Park fires

As new plants of many kinds became established, the populations

and kinds of insects and larger animals feeding on the abundant new
food supplies increased. The rapid rebound of plants and animals
throughout the park surprised many ecologists.
The fires’ toll on large animals was relatively small. Many animals
survived by moving away from the flames. Postfire searchers found,
both within and outside the park, carcasses of 335 elk (of a herd esti-
mated at more than 30,000), 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears, and 9
bison, mainly in areas where fast-moving flames prevented escape.
Fires in the sagebrush grasslands on the park’s northern range,
which supplies critical winter forage for the park’s largest herds of elk
and buffalo, diminished these animals’ food supply for the winter of
1988-1989. Many of the animals starved, but their deaths were attrib-
uted more to the severe winter and to the 1988 summer drought’s ef-
fects on forage than to fire.
Some birds and many small mammals were killed by the fires. A
few small fish kills occurred as a result of heated water or fire retar-
dant dropped on the streams. The fires caused physical and food-web
changes in the streams, but these did not seem to affect fish adversely.
Causes and Fire Policy. After much debate, many scientists
concluded that the most significant factor causing the 1988 Yellow-
stone fires was the combination of drought and sustained, strong
winds. Their position was bolstered by the dating of charcoal in park
lakebeds, which indicated that, over the past fourteen thousand
years, the recurrence interval of major fires is fifty to five hundred
years and is related mainly to drought. According to this view, abun-
dant fuel, in the form of accumulated deadwood and old, diseased
pines, would exacerbate, but not cause, the fires.
In contrast, a more traditional hypothesis holds that fuel buildup
is a major factor leading to severe fires. Some scientists argued that
Yellowstone National Park’s fire-suppression policy, in force from
1872 until 1972, augmented the forest fuel buildup and thus made a
severe conflagration more likely. However, most think that suppres-
sion, which was effectively carried out for only some thirty years, had
little effect, especially at the higher elevations.
Many scientists concluded that the origin of the fires—natural or
human-made—was less important than weather and fuel in deter-
mining overall fire severity. Fire experts also concluded that the mas-

778
 1988: Yellowstone National Park fires

sive firefighting effort probably did not significantly reduce the acre-
age burned, although it saved many buildings.
As a result of the controversy over federal fire policy touched off
by the 1988 Yellowstone fires, national parks and forests suspended
and updated their fire-management plans. In 1992, Yellowstone Na-
tional Park again had a wildland fire-management plan, but with
stricter guidelines for allowing naturally occurring fires to burn.
Jane F. Hill

For Further Information:

Baskin, Yvonne. “Yellowstone Fires: A Decade Later—Ecological Les-
sons Learned in the Wake of the Conflagration.” BioScience, Febru-
ary, 1999, 93-97.
Carrier, Jim. Summer of Fire: The Great Yellowstone Fires of 1988. Salt Lake
City: Gibbs-Smith, 1989.
Despain, Don G. F. “The Yellowstone Fires: Ecological History of the
Region Helps Explain the Damage Caused by the Fires of the Sum-
mer of 1988.” Scientific American, November, 1989, 36-45.
Franke, Mary Ann. Yellowstone in the Afterglow: Lessons from the Fires.
Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo.: Yellowstone Center for Resources,
Yellowstone National Park, 2000.
Lauber, Patricia. Summer of Fire: Yellowstone 1988. New York: Orchard
Books, 1991.
Sholly, Dan R., with Steven M. Newman. Guardians of Yellowstone: An
Intimate Look at the Challenges of Protecting America’s Foremost Wilder-
ness Park. New York: William Morrow, 1991.
Vogt, Gregory. Forests on Fire: The Fight to Save Our Trees. New York:
Franklin Watts, 1990.
Wallace, Linda L. After the Fires: The Ecology of Change in Yellowstone Na-
tional Park. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004.

779
■ 1988: The Leninakan earthquake
Earthquake
Also known as: The Spitak earthquake
Date: December 7, 1988
Place: Armenia, then part of the Soviet Union
Magnitude: 6.9 and 5.8
Result: More than 60,000 dead, 15,000 injured, 500,000 homeless,
at least 450,000 buildings destroyed, including 7,600 historical
monuments, estimated $30 billion in damage

O n December 7, 1988, devastation struck Soviet Arme-

nia. Between 11:41 and 11:45 a.m. two tremors mea-
suring 6.9 and 5.8 on the Richter scale destroyed or severely damaged
the cities of Spitak, Leninakan (now Gyumri), Kirovakan (now Vana-
dzor), and Stepanakert and more than 100 villages. Erivan (now
Yerevan), the capital, suffered damage, and the shock waves spread
out some 150 miles into neighboring Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey,
and Iran. The quakes were shallow, the most destructive kind. The
point on the fault between two massive subterranean tectonic plates
where enough pressure was exerted to create the focus of the earth-
quake was approximately 13 miles below the surface. The corre-
sponding mark of the focus on the surface of the earth, the epicenter,
was about 20 miles northwest of Kirovakan, 26 miles northeast of
Leninakan, and 3.25 miles from Spitak, a city of 30,000 that was virtu-
ally erased from the face of the earth. Approximately 99 percent of its
population vanished, buried under the rubble. About 80 percent
of Leninakan, Armenia’s second largest city, with a population of
290,000, was destroyed; 80 percent of Stepanakert, a city of 16,000,
was destroyed.
The quakes occurred at the worst possible time, just before noon
on a working weekday. In addition, the damaged or destroyed areas
had more than 150,000 unregistered refugees from neighboring
Nagorno-Karabakh, a small, predominantly Armenian province in
Azerbaijan that was forcibly attempting to oust the Armenians. The
quakes caused a rupture 8 miles long and 2 feet wide; the force of the

780
 1988: The Leninakan earthquake

subterranean shock could be compared to the explosion of 100 nu-

clear bombs.
Devastating as the quakes were, in intensity they were relatively
mild. In comparison, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake registered 8.1
on the Richter scale, the 1964 Alaskan earthquake was 9.2, and the
1939 Chile quake was 8.3. On the Richter scale, a magnitude 7.0
quake is ten times more powerful than a magnitude 6.0 quake and
one hundred times more powerful than a magnitude 5.0 quake. Al-
though all of these earthquakes were of greater intensity than that of
Armenia, none were as costly in terms of human life. What set the Ar-
menian earthquakes apart is the large number of buildings the
quakes either damaged or destroyed.
Reasons for the Scope of the Destruction. The first reason
was the nature of the quakes. Usually, major earthquakes are pre-

Caspian
Sea

RUSSIA

GEORGIA Tiflis
Gyumri Vanadzor
(Leninakan) Spitak (Kirovakan)
Nagorno- AZERBAIJAN
ARMENIA Karabakh
Baku
Yerevan
(Erivan) Stepanakert
Shushi
TURKEY

Lachin
Nakhichevan corridor
(Azerbaijan)
IRAN

781
1988: The Leninakan earthquake

ceded by a series of foreshocks, mild tremors that give authorities

time to prepare and potential victims time to seek safety. The Arme-
nian quakes came without warning, although some people had noted
beforehand peculiar animal and bird behavior. The two tremors were
of about equal intensity. This meant that whereas the first tremor
badly damaged buildings, the second, or aftershock, four minutes
later, caused them to collapse, often on their occupants.
Soviet seismologists defended their lack of preparedness, main-
taining that there had been no major earthquake in the area since
1046, when the ancient Armenian capital of Arni was destroyed by a
quake. However, the area had experienced a series of quakes over the
years. In 1667, a quake had taken 80,000 lives. The fault at the heart
of the 1988 earthquake appears on a geological map dated 1971. The
Caucasus Mountain range, in which Armenia is located, is a seismic
area crisscrossed by fault lines and filled with extinct volcanoes. So-
viet scientists were known to have acknowledged that a major quake
in the area was long overdue.
A second reason was poor urban planning. In earthquake-prone
areas provisions should be made for “areas of survival,” or free space
to which people can escape from the danger of collapsing buildings.
There was no such provision in the Armenian cities. Buildings were
placed close together so that the areas between them, including the
streets, were filled with debris from the earthquakes. This not only
failed to afford escape but also did not provide the firm, cleared
ground the Caterpillar carriages of the moveable cranes needed to
lift the heavy debris.
Inappropriate building design and faulty construction also con-
tributed greatly. Substandard construction was probably the major
reason for the scope of the Armenian catastrophe. Most of the newer
buildings, both offices and apartment houses, eight or nine stories
high, were prefabricated. Slabs of concrete rested on cement-block
walls. When the quakes occurred, the unconnected elements top-
pled. The quality of the concrete was also inferior, unable to with-
stand strain and prone to crumbling. When the supports were de-
stroyed, the slabs collapsed together like gigantic millstones, trapping
many of the occupants of the buildings between them. After the
quakes, lifting these huge slabs was beyond human efforts; the much-
needed cranes and other heavy equipment arrived too late to save

782
 1988: The Leninakan earthquake

many victims. In rural areas, many of the houses were made of mud
brick, with stone roofs that collapsed on the occupants. In rebuilding
the decision was made to limit the height of buildings to three or five
stories and to pour concrete on the site.
Another reason was ineffective assistance. The sheer scope of the
tragedy, involving nearly 19 percent of the country’s population, was
beyond the capability of the Armenian authorities; help was needed
from outside the country. With thousands of badly injured people
trapped beneath the wreckage, every hour of delay meant additional
loss of life. It was only because of glasnost, or the open-discussion pol-
icy of Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, that the outside world be-
came aware of the disaster. (The 1948 earthquake in the Soviet re-
public of Turkmen that killed 110,000 was concealed for forty years.)
Also, Soviet acceptance of outside help was unprecedented.
When the outside world did become aware of the disaster, the ex-
tent of the support, especially from the 6 million Armenians scat-
tered throughout the world, was unparalleled. The total value of aid,
estimated at $500 million, was the largest international response ever
to a national disaster. The day after the quakes a French team of doc-
tors, anesthesiologists, and medical technicians—together with sup-
plies—was ready to leave for Erivan. However, they had to wait two
days before permission was given to land—two days in which thou-
sands died. President Gorbachev was in New York at the time but can-
celed his trip to fly back to the Soviet Union. He visited Armenia on
December 10, ostensibly to take charge of the rescue operation,
which had suffered from lack of leadership. The position of land-
locked Armenia surrounded by alienated states made a desperate sit-
uation even worse because the necessary heavy equipment had to
come by land. The only working rail line was from Erivan to Baku, the
capital of Armenia-hostile Azerbaijan. Supplies came by air in such
quantities that the Erivan and Leninakan airports became bottle-
necks.
Meanwhile, aid workers desperately tried to free the victims whose
cries and groans became ever fainter. In the end only 5,000 of as
many as 80,000 were pulled from the wreckage. Most tragic was the
death of more than 15,000 children, particularly in a country with a
negative growth rate. By December 14, the Red Army wanted to clear
all people from the damaged areas and to level the sites with bulldoz-

783
1988: The Leninakan earthquake

ers and sow them with lime and other disinfectants to halt the possi-
ble spread of disease from the decomposing bodies beneath the ru-
ins. Desperate intervention by survivors still searching for possible
living victims delayed the decision a few more days. As late as Decem-
ber 15, a living person was pulled from the wreckage. By December
17, foreign relief workers were ordered to leave; by December 23, ef-
forts to locate more survivors ceased.
The injured who did survive faced another ordeal: inferior medi-
cal treatment. Relief doctors estimated Soviet medicine lagged a half-
century behind that of the West. Not only were basic medications ei-
ther in short supply or lacking but there was also a lack of sophisti-
cated equipment, such as dialysis machines. One of the more urgent
problems was to deal with “crush syndrome.” When subjected to
great external pressure, the kidneys shut down and toxemia or poi-
soning begins. Only the use of dialysis machines that serve to cleanse
the blood can keep the victim alive. At Erivan’s central hospital, 80
percent of the 600 survivors suffered from crush syndrome. Several
dialysis machines were brought in by air, but not enough to save all
who needed their use.
There were also psychological problems to solve. In a society such
as Armenia’s, where the extended family and clan take precedence
over the individual, the loss of such support is emotionally devastat-
ing. There was scarcely a person in the entire republic that had not
lost a relative; entire families disappeared. Hundreds wandered aim-
lessly with blank eyes through the ruins, clearly in need of counseling
or psychiatric services, which were not readily available.
The poor health of the victims was a factor in the death rate. Relief
workers, especially those trained in nutrition, noted that low resis-
tance caused by poor dietary habits raised the mortality rate among
the earthquake victims. Further undermining their health was fre-
quent evidence of alcohol and tobacco abuse.
Lack of authority was also to blame. Despite its officially being
called a “union” of quasi-independent republics, the Soviet Union
was a dictatorship, with authority tightly controlled by Moscow. De-
spite Gorbachev’s pledge to “take charge” in Armenia, centralized
authority to direct the complicated relief operation, especially in the
distribution of supplies, was sporadic and ineffective. Relief workers
often did not know where to go or what to do, and there was much

784
 1988: The Leninakan earthquake

duplication of effort and plundering and disappearance of supplies.

A number of the bureaucrats who normally would have been avail-
able for administrative duties lay dead beneath the rubble. Units of
the Red Army that had been sent to the disaster area did not partici-
pate in the relief efforts; they merely enforced curfews and blocked
access to the ruined sites.
Assessing the Damage. Given the secretive nature of the Soviet
system it was impossible to arrive at accurate figures for the cost of the
earthquakes. The Soviets estimated that 55,000 people had been
killed. Relief workers estimated far more—possibly as many as three
times that number. Especially devastating to Armenia was the loss of
trained professionals and of children—a loss impossible to evaluate
in monetary terms.
More than 500,000 were left homeless; Soviet authorities indi-
cated a wish to resettle about 70,000 in other parts of the Soviet
Union. Gorbachev pledged $8.5 billion for restoration purposes, the
same amount of money that was allocated to repair the nuclear disas-
ter at Chernobyl two years before. Authorities estimated that at least
triple that amount would be needed to restore the cities, using earth-
quake-resistant and more expensive building techniques. In addition
to the buildings, extensive damage was done to the infrastructure—
to light, sewer, water, and gas lines and to the transportation system.
Help from Moscow never arrived. The Soviet Union was dissolved
December 4, 1991. Armenia had declared its independence on Sep-
tember 21, 1991, to face the formidable task of rebuilding a shattered
land.
Nis Petersen

For Further Information:

Brand, D. “When the Earth Shook.” Time, December 19, 1988, 34-36.
Coleman, Fred. “A Land of the Dead.” Newsweek, December 19, 1988,
19-23.
Kerr, Richard A. “How the Armenian Quake Became a Killer.” Science
243 (January 13, 1989): 170-171.
Novosti Press Agency. The Armenian Earthquake Disaster. Translated by
Elliott B. Urdang. Madison, Conn.: Sphinx Press, 1989.
Verluise, Pierre. Armenia in Crisis: The 1988 Earthquake. Translated by
Levon Chorbajian. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.

785
■ 1989: Hurricane Hugo
Hurricane
Date: September 13-22, 1989
Place: The Caribbean, North Carolina, and South Carolina
Classification: Category 4-5
Speed: 136 miles per hour with gusts over 150 miles per hour
Result: At least 75 dead (41 in the United States), $10 billion in
damage

H urricane Hugo belongs to a class of major hurricanes

called Cape Verde storms. These hurricanes usually
originate from strong African disturbances that intensify as they
move off the West African coast and produce a tropical depression as
they pass close to the Cape Verde Islands. Other hurricanes that were
Cape Verde storms include Hurricane Donna in 1960 and Hurri-
canes David and Frederic in 1979.
Hurricane Hugo began on September 9, 1989, as a cluster of thun-
derstorms off the coast of Africa. On September 10, 1989, it became a
tropical depression when it was located approximately 125 miles
south of the Cape Verde Islands. The depression continued on a due-
west course over the eastern Atlantic Ocean for several days. By Sep-
tember 13 Hugo was located 1,200 miles east of the Leeward Islands
and was moving westward at 20 miles per hour. The storm had gained
sufficient strength and organization by this time to be classified as a
hurricane by the National Hurricane Center, and its wind speeds
were clocked in excess of 74 miles per hour. A day later, Hugo’s winds
had increased to 115 miles per hour.
By September 15, sustained winds of 190 miles per hour were mea-
sured by reconnaissance aircraft at 1,500 feet. This made the hurri-
cane a Category 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, the
most intense category on the scale. Its central pressure was measured
as low as 27.1 inches, which tied for the record minimum pressure in
the Atlantic Ocean.
The Caribbean. Hurricane Hugo first reached land on Septem-
ber 16, when its eye passed over Guadeloupe. At that time its winds

786
 1989: Hurricane Hugo

were estimated at 140 miles per hour. Its surface pressure was mea-
sured at 27.8 inches when its eye passed over the island. Approxi-
mately half of Pointe-Pitre, the capital city of Guadeloupe, was de-
stroyed by the storm. In addition, 11 people were killed and 84 were
injured. The neighboring island of Montserrat was also severely dam-
aged. There, 10 people were killed and damages to property totaled
$100 million.
Hurricane Hugo’s next target was the Virgin Islands. On Septem-
ber 18, the eye of Hugo crossed the southwestern coastline of St.
Croix. With maximum winds of 140 miles per hour the storm de-
stroyed or damaged over 90 percent of the buildings on the island
and left it without power, telephone service, or water. While the eye
of the storm missed St. Thomas, the island still experienced extensive
damage to buildings, utilities, and vegetation. Damage to the U.S.
Virgin Islands totaled $500 million, while damage to the British Vir-
gin Islands was estimated at another $200 million. Three people were
killed by the storm, and another 7 died from storm-related causes.
The damage was so extensive that in some areas of the Virgin Islands
telephone service was not restored until March of 1990.
After hitting the Virgin Islands, Hurricane Hugo shifted slightly
northward. It passed through Vieques Sound between the islands of
Culebra and Vieques. The island of Culebra experienced sustained
winds of 105 miles per hour and wind gusts of 150 miles per hour.
Hurricane Hugo then moved over Puerto Rico on September 18. In
the capital city of San Juan there were sustained winds of 77 miles per
hour and peak gusts of 92 miles per hour. In Puerto Rico tens of thou-
sands of people lost their homes, including 60 percent of the resi-
dents of Culebra. The most severe damage was to the electrical sys-
tem, especially along the northeast coast of the island. All together,
35 municipalities were without power. A week after the storm an esti-
mated 47,500 homes and businesses were still without power; as late
as September 28, 10 days after the storm, electrical service was still
only 40 percent restored.
Water service to the residents was also disrupted. One week after
the storm, 25 percent of the island’s residents were without water. In
the first 10 days following the storm the U.S. Army Corps of Engi-
neers distributed more than 2 million gallons of water from 33 tank
trucks on the island. On Puerto Rico itself damage was estimated at

787
1989: Hurricane Hugo

$1 billion. In addition, there were 2 deaths directly caused by the

storm and 22 hurricane-related deaths.
Other islands in the Carribean affected by Hurricane Hugo were
St. Kitts-Nevis and Antigua and Barbuda. Together these islands re-
ported 2 people killed and $160 million in damages. All together it is
estimated that Hurricane Hugo did a total of $3 billion in damages
before it targeted the southeastern coast of the United States.
The United States. Following its passage through the Carib-
bean, Hurricane Hugo weakened from a Category 4 to a Category 2
storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. On the morning of
September 19, the eye of the storm had become poorly defined, and
its strongest sustained winds were 100 miles per hour. As Hugo
moved toward the South Carolina coast it strengthened once again to
a Category 4 storm. When it came ashore near Charleston, the
Charleston navy shipyard recorded gusts as high as 137 miles per
hour. After hitting land, Hugo’s sustained surface winds were clocked
at 87 miles per hour at the customs house in downtown Charleston.
Farther north, at Bull Bay, sustained winds were estimated to be as
high as 121 miles per hour. When it hit the mainland, Hugo became
the first Category 4 or higher storm to strike the United States coast
since Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969.
In South Carolina thousands of people voluntarily began moving
inland more than twenty-four hours before Hugo made landfall. At
6 a.m. on September 21, South Carolina governor Carroll Campbell
issued a mandatory evacuation order for the barrier islands and the
coast of South Carolina. A subsequent mandatory evacuation of all
one-story buildings in Charleston was issued by Mayor Joseph P. Riley,
Jr., because of the fear of a tremendous storm surge. It was estimated
that more than 186,000 people left their homes, from Myrtle Beach
to Hilton Head, South Carolina. The early warnings and evacuations
were credited with saving thousands of lives.
Hurricane Hugo struck the South Carolina coast on the night of
September 21. The center of the storm passed over Sullivan’s Island,
just north of Charleston. Sullivan’s Island had a storm surge of 13 feet
above mean sea level. At Bull Bay the storm surge was 20 feet, the
highest ever reported on the East Coast of the United States. The
death and destruction caused by Hurricane Hugo along the immedi-
ate coast and inland were extensive. However, because of evacuations

788
 1989: Hurricane Hugo

and because the right side of the eyewall crossed the coast in one of
the least populated reaches of South Carolina’s coast, there were only
13 deaths in the state directly attributed to the storm. Of these, 6
deaths were from drowning and 7 were wind-related. Only 2 of the
drowning deaths occurred in homes. Another 14 people died of
storm-related causes.
The Damage. Property damage caused by Hugo was extensive. In
Charleston an estimated 43 percent of the homes had at least $10,000
in damages. The roofs of Charleston city hall and the Charleston
County courthouse were partially destroyed, causing significant dam-
age to the contents of each. Several historical churches also lost their
steeples. One week after Hugo only 25 percent of Charleston had
electricity. The Charleston airport was closed to commercial traffic
for a week due to damage to facilities and the lack of off-site power;
full commercial service was not restored for eighteen days.
A survey by the Red Cross showed that 9,302 homes in the state
were completely destroyed, over half of which were mobile homes.
Another 26,772 homes suffered major damage, and 75,702 houses
had minor damage. Major structural damage included loss of roofs,
collapse of single-story masonry buildings, and complete destruction
of mobile homes. The majority of inland wind damage was caused by
falling trees, and along the coast major damage was caused by flood-
ing. Approximately 65 percent of the houses on Sullivan’s Island
were structurally unsafe. On the barrier island to the north, the Isle
of Palms, between 55 and 60 percent of the homes were deemed
structurally unsafe. In addition, the Ben Sawyer Bridge, which pro-
vided the only access to the mainland from these islands, was blown
out of position and tilted at a 30-degree angle. During this time the
Red Cross served over 1 million meals to people. Between 1 and 1.5
million customers were without electrical power for two to three
weeks; damage to power supply systems alone totaled more than $400
million.
Hurricane Hugo also caused extensive beach erosion and land-
ward transport of sand from the beach. In some coastal areas Hugo
did restore a more natural profile to beaches on which steep slopes
had been artificially maintained. Beachfronts that lacked natural
dune systems and natural vegetation were the most heavily dam-
aged—residents in those areas suffered significant water damage.

789
1989: Hurricane Hugo

In addition to damages to homes and government property, the

timber, fishing, and tourism industries sustained heavy losses. For ex-
ample, Hurricane Hugo destroyed more than 6 billion board feet of
timber, more than three times the total lost in the Mount St. Helens
volcanic eruption in 1980. The 150,000-acre Francis Marion National
Forest, north of Charleston, had 70 percent of its trees damaged or
destroyed. The value of the lost timber alone was estimated at over
$1 billion. In North Carolina Hugo damaged more than 2.7 million
acres of forest in twenty-six counties. Timber losses were valued at
$250 million.
Hurricane Hugo had a faster forward movement than most storms.
This resulted in higher-than-normal inland wind speeds. Columbia,
South Carolina, which is over 100 miles from the coast, had sustained
winds of 67 miles per hour, while Charlotte, North Carolina, re-
corded sustained winds of 60 miles per hour. As a result, Hugo caused
destruction as far as 180 miles inland. In Charlotte, Hugo caused an
estimated $366 million in damages. In the North Carolina counties
of Mecklenburg, Gastonia, and Union, damage was estimated at $883
million. In North and South Carolina over 1.5 million people lost
power because of the storm; Duke Power estimated that at least
700,000 of its customers lost service. In the weeks following Hugo,
Duke Power had 9,000 workers replacing 8,800 poles, 700 miles of ca-
ble and wire, 6,300 transformers, and 1,700 electric meters. In some
parts of North Carolina power was not restored for two weeks. Prop-
erty losses in North Carolina totaled over $1 billion, while South Car-
olina had an estimated $4 billion loss. In addition, there was 1 death
in North Carolina directly attributed to Hugo and 6 other storm-re-
lated deaths.
Additional death and destruction occurred as the remnants of
Hurricane Hugo moved north. Virginia reported 6 storm-related
deaths and damage estimated at $50 million, while 1 person died in
New York.
At the time Hurricane Hugo struck in 1989, it was the most expen-
sive hurricane in United States history. While figures vary, damages
caused by the storm have been estimated as high as $7 billion in the
United States, $2 billion in Puerto Rico, and $1 billion elsewhere.
The total number of deaths linked to the storm, directly or storm-
related, has been estimated at 75. Hugo remains one of the most de-

790
 1989: Hurricane Hugo

structive hurricanes ever to hit the Caribbean and the East Coast of
the United States.
William V. Moore

For Further Information:

Barnes, Jay. North Carolina’s Hurricane History. Rev. ed. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Committee on Natural Disaster Studies. Hurricane Hugo: Puerto Rico,
the Virgin Islands, and Charleston, South Carolina, September 17-22,
1989. Vol. 6. Washington D.C.: National Academy of Science,
1994.
Federal Insurance Administration. Federal Emergency Management
Agency. Learning from Hurricane Hugo: Implications for Public Policy.
Washington, D.C.: Author, 1992.
Fox, William Price. Lunatic Wind: Surviving the Storm of the Century.
Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1992.
Joseph, Gloria I., and Hortense M. Rowe, with Audre Lorde. Hell Un-
der God’s Orders: Hurricane Hugo in St. Croix—Disaster and Survival.
St. Croix, V.I.: Winds of Change Press, 1990.
U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. Natural Disaster Survey Report: Hurricane Hugo Sep-
tember 10-22, 1989. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Com-
merce, 1990.

791
■ 1989: The Loma Prieta
earthquake
Earthquake

Date: October 17, 1989

Place: Northern California, in an area extending from Watsonville
and Santa Cruz in the south to San Francisco and Oakland in the
north
Magnitude: 7.0 or 7.1 on the Richter scale (U.S. Geological Survey
recorded this earthquake at 7.1, but other geologists recorded it at
7.0)
Result: 67 dead, more than 3,000 injured, more than $5 billion in
damage

T he worst earthquake in American history did not take

place in the West, where there are many fault lines, but
rather in Missouri. Although the February 7, 1812, New Madrid
earthquake (one of a series in the region) took place long before the
development of the Richter scale in 1935, contemporary reports by
witnesses led seismologists to conclude that the New Madrid earth-
quake was in the range of 8.8 to 11 on the Richter scale. The 1812
earthquake caused the earth to shake over an area of 5 million square
miles. Two later destructive American earthquakes were the San
Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, and the Good Friday earth-
quake of March 27, 1964, in Alaska. Although these two earthquakes
resulted in extensive property damage and many deaths, they ex-
tended over smaller areas than the New Madrid quake. The Alaska
earthquake was recorded at 9.2 on the Richter scale and caused shak-
ing of the earth over approximately 500 square miles, whereas the
San Francisco earthquake caused shaking of the earth over an area of
300 square miles and was estimated between 8.2 and 8.3 on the Rich-
ter scale.
The populations of San Francisco and Los Angeles are now much
larger than they were in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Were an earthquake of the magnitude of the New Madrid earth-

792
 1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

quake of 1812 or of the Good Friday earthquake of 1964 to occur

near Los Angeles or San Francisco, it is probable that the number of
deaths would be in the hundreds of thousands. It is not impossible
that similar earthquakes might occur in California, which has the
largest population of any American state.
After the terrible destruction and loss of life caused by the San
Francisco earthquake, governmental officials and architects began to
ask themselves what could be done to make buildings and bridges
more resistant to seismic shocks caused by earthquakes, but few
changes in building practices and codes were implemented until af-
ter the 1971 Sylmar earthquake near Los Angeles.
In 1972, the California legislature created a Seismic Safety Com-
mission and instructed its members to make recommendations to
make California buildings and bridges more earthquake-resistant.
This commission concluded that the major destruction caused by
earthquakes is not generated by the shaking itself but by the afteref-
fects, when improperly constructed buildings, dams, and bridges col-
lapse. The collapse of these structures and fires caused by the burst-
ing of underground gas lines contribute significantly to property
damage and the loss of life right after earthquakes. The commission
demonstrated that buildings built with reinforced bricks were more
quake-resistant than those built with regular bricks.
The commission also demonstrated that wood-frame houses, even
when constructed in conformity with existing building codes, were
much more prone to quake damage than were houses built with rein-
forced brick. This had been known for a long period of time, but it
was not financially feasible to ask people to tear down their wood-
frame houses and to replace them with houses built with reinforced
bricks. Also, the installation of additional steel rods tends to make
dams and bridges more stable. The California Seismic Safety Com-
mission pointed out that bridges and dams built before 1972 were
not sufficiently reinforced, and it recommended that the govern-
ment of California begin retrofitting, or reinforcing, these struc-
tures.
In addition, this commission pointed out that construction
should be discouraged in areas that were highly susceptible to dam-
age from earthquakes. This recommendation was impractical be-
cause far too much construction had already occurred in areas such

793
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

Part of the upper level of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge failed during the
Loma Prieta earthquake. It had been scheduled for reinforcement the following week.
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

as the Marina District in San Francisco, which was created by filling in

the land with sand, mud, and rocks. The foundation on which such
construction was built was very susceptible to earthquakes—the
ground tends to liquefy during severe seismic shocks. In addition,
houses and businesses were built in very hilly areas, such as the Oak-
land Hills, during the first seven decades of the twentieth century. By
1972 it would have been impossible to move people and businesses
from such areas. The government of California decided to create
new building codes designed to make houses and public structures
more quake-resistant and to undertake the retrofitting of existing
dams, bridges, roads, and public buildings.
The reinforcement of existing structures was, however, a very ex-
pensive undertaking, and large tax decreases implemented in Cali-
fornia in the 1970’s and 1980’s left the state government with insuffi-
cient means to complete this work in a timely manner. Ironically, the
Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco and Oakland, was sched-
uled to be reinforced just one week after the Loma Prieta earth-
quake. A portion of the upper level of this bridge collapsed during
the Loma Prieta earthquake.

794
 1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

The Quake. Northern Californians expected October 17, 1989,

to be a joyous day for the region of San Francisco and Oakland. The
Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants, the two major-
league baseball teams from Northern California, had qualified for
the World Series, and a game was scheduled to begin around 5:30
p.m. local time in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. The game was be-
ing broadcast live on American television. As camera operators were
filming pregame activities, the transmission of images to television
screens around the world was interrupted. Television viewers were
not sure what was happening until reporters outside Candlestick
Park began to inform the world that an earthquake had occurred.
The quake occurred on a sunny day during rush hour. The roads
and bridges from Watsonville to San Francisco were filled with cars
and people, and others were in their homes waiting for the World Se-
ries game to begin. The epicenter of the earthquake was located on
the San Andreas fault in the Santa Cruz Mountains, to the east of the
cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville. The nearest landmark to the
epicenter was Loma Prieta Mountain, which is why seismologists re-
fer to this quake as the Loma Prieta earthquake.
Television reporters were already in San Francisco to cover the
World Series game, so news traveled quickly. Initial reports stressed
the damage done to the cities of San Francisco and Oakland, but ex-
tensive damage also occurred on the campus of Stanford University,
in the nearby city of Palo Alto, in Santa Cruz, and especially in the
largely Hispanic town of Watsonville, which was the closest city to the
epicenter itself. Although authorities from the state and federal gov-
ernments and volunteers from the Red Cross thought they were suffi-
ciently prepared for a natural disaster, each earthquake results in un-
expected problems. The situation in Watsonville illustrates this point.
Effects in Watsonville. Since the San Francisco earthquake of
1906, the demographics of California have changed greatly. Califor-
nia is a much more ethnically and linguistically diverse state than it
was during the first decade of the twentieth century. Like many cities
throughout California, Watsonville has a large Latino population,
and it is surrounded by wealthier cities such as those in the Silicon
Valley and in the suburbs of Santa Cruz, where the population is
largely Anglo-American. Watsonville was 60 percent Latino in 1989,
and most houses were of older wood-frame construction, built long

795
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

before the implementation in the 1970’s of stricter building codes.

Since it was located close to the epicenter of this accident, structural
damage in Watsonville was very significant.
The major industries near Watsonville are farming and food pro-
duction. These labor-intense industries pay poorly, but they attract
large numbers of emigrants from Mexico and Central America, who
often receive even lower salaries in their native countries. Between
1984 and 1989, the population of Watsonville had increased by 38
percent, but non-Latinos still dominated the municipal government
of Watsonville, since many of the recently arrived Latinos were not
yet American citizens. This earthquake destroyed almost 10 percent
of all apartments and houses in Watsonville, but the property damage
affected the Latino neighborhoods more than the Anglo neighbor-
hoods, largely because the structures in the Latino communities had
been completed decades before and were of wood-frame construc-
tion and therefore not very resistant to seismic shocks.
When soldiers in the California National Guard and representa-
tives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the
Red Cross, and the state of California arrived in Watsonville, an im-
mediate problem became evident to almost everyone. Those who
wanted to help the survivors did not speak Spanish and could not
communicate with the Latino majority in Watsonville. Since so much
housing in Watsonville had been destroyed, the Red Cross had no
choice but to create makeshift disaster centers and housing enclo-
sures located far from the Latino neighborhoods in Watsonville. The
threat of aftershocks in the communities of Watsonville was simply
too great for people to be allowed to stay near their severely damaged
homes and apartment houses, but many Spanish-speaking residents
did not understand why they were being forced to leave their neigh-
borhoods for distant regions of Watsonville; they believed that this
represented yet another example of Anglo bias against Latinos. Re-
cent antagonism between Anglo and Latino communities in Watson-
ville only exacerbated relationships between these two groups in the
days immediately following the Loma Prieta earthquake.
The various emergency organizations dealt with the problem by
bringing in bilingual workers who could communicate with the La-
tino majority in Watsonville. The presence of bilingual workers who
understood Latino culture helped to diffuse a volatile situation. The

796
 1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

events in Watsonville helped the Red Cross, the California National

Guard, and FEMA to understand that preparation for natural disas-
ters required them to take into account not only problems related to
health and housing but also the changing linguistic and cultural fab-
ric of states such as California. Something positive, however, did re-
sult from the traumatic events in Watsonville. Anglos and Latinos
learned to cooperate with each other in order to create a more uni-
fied city and to reduce political and cultural divisiveness.
In Watsonville, as in other cities affected by this earthquake, peo-
ple discovered that their regular homeowner’s insurance policies did
not cover earthquakes. Earthquake insurance is extremely expensive,
and it often includes very high deductibles and limits on the maxi-
mum liability for insurance companies. Individuals whose homes
were destroyed by this earthquake had no choice but to turn to the
federal government for loans to help them rebuild their residences.
Such loans had to be repaid, and this created major financial crises
for affected Californians. Companies and universities also suffered fi-
nancially as a result of the Loma Prieta earthquake.
Stanford University. The case of Stanford University clearly
indicates the gravity of the problems faced by universities and busi-
nesses. Stanford University was founded in 1885, and its campus is lo-
cated near the San Andreas fault. Many of its older buildings were
constructed with unreinforced bricks and are thus less quake resis-
tant than buildings constructed with reinforced bricks. For many
years Stanford University paid for earthquake insurance, but by 1985
the annual premiums became so prohibitively expensive and the cov-
erage so limited that the trustees of Stanford University concluded
that it would be inadvisable to continue coverage against earth-
quakes.
In his book Magnitude 8, Philip L. Fradkin explains that Stanford
University was offered earthquake coverage for an annual premium
of $3 million, with a deductible of $100 million and coverage for a
mere $125 million worth of damage above the deductible. Although
Stanford University suffered damages that amounted to $160 million
as a result of the Loma Prieta earthquake, the decision not to renew
earthquake insurance coverage in 1985 was perfectly understand-
able. Universities, private businesses, and homeowners often cannot
afford such extremely expensive policies that offer such limited cov-

797
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

erage. A typical homeowner’s policy comes with a deductible of $250

to $500 and frequently includes full-replacement coverage. With
earthquake insurance, the deductible is usually at least $6,000, and
full-replacement coverage is not offered.
Daly City, San Francisco, and Oakland. Located almost 60
miles north of the Loma Prieta epicenter is Daly City, a bedroom
community south of San Francisco. In Daly City, many people chose
to live on the palisades, which offer exquisite views of the Pacific
Ocean. Many houses were built on the cliffs in Daly City and appreci-
ated greatly in value during the 1970’s and 1980’s. People were oblivi-
ous to the dangers involved in building houses on cliffs near the San
Andreas fault. Many houses built on the palisades in Daly City were
forced from their foundations during the Loma Prieta earthquake
and were structurally destroyed. These houses had been built on an
old garbage dump that had been covered with sand. The ground on
which these beautiful and expensive houses had been built in Daly
City was of insufficient strength to resist seismic shocks, and the
ground liquefied during the Loma Prieta earthquake.
Houses on the cliffs in Daly City should never have been built
there because the ground was not strong enough to resist earth-
quakes, contributing significantly to the property damage. Those
who filled in the land in Daly City did not realize that they were creat-
ing a very dangerous situation for future residents. A similar error
was made in San Francisco during the late nineteenth century and es-
pecially right after the 1906 earthquake.
Just north of Daly City are San Francisco and Oakland. They both
suffered extensive damage during the Loma Prieta earthquake, al-
though not because the two cities had failed to enforce new building
codes or to prepare for earthquakes. Office buildings and public
structures constructed with reinforced bricks and additional steel
rods in both cities did not suffer structural damage during the Loma
Prieta earthquake; large buildings did not collapse as they had dur-
ing the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The San Andreas fault runs
through these two cities, and the danger of earthquakes is extremely
high. Athough property damage in both Oakland and San Francisco
was very extensive, especially in the Oakland Hills, the three places
that suffered the greatest damage were the Marina District of San
Francisco, the Nimitz Expressway in Oakland, and the Bay Bridge.

798
 1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

Municipal officials and developers concluded that filling in the la-

goon in San Francisco would be financially advantageous because it
would permit extensive growth in both housing and economic devel-
opment. The area filled in was called the Marina District, which in-
cludes such famous places as Fisherman’s Wharf, Market Street,
Embarcadero Street, and Candlestick Park. At first, the lagoon area
was filled in with sand and rocks, but starting in 1912 municipal offi-
cials used a mixture of 30 percent mud and 70 percent sand to fill in
the area. In 1915, a world’s fair was held in San Francisco’s new Ma-
rina District; afterward, the wooden buildings were taken down and
buried in the mixture of mud and sand. The wood deteriorated and
made the land even less earthquake-resistant.
Unlike the residents of Watsonville, those who lived in San Fran-
cisco’s Marina District were mostly wealthy and Anglo. Many of the
structures in the Marina District were also built well before the strin-
gent building codes of the 1970’s. The combination of a poor ground
foundation and inadequately reinforced buildings created condi-
tions favorable for disaster. On October 17, 1989, wood frame houses

A building in the Marina District is shored up next to rubble from a collapsed apart-
ment. (FEMA)

799
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

in the Marina District collapsed in large numbers, and gas mains and
pipes burst because the ground of mud and sand was too weak to pro-
tect them. When the natural gas was released into the air, it provoked
a series of dangerous fires. Although the gas supply was quickly cut
off to the Marina District by the utility companies, the damage had al-
ready been done. Many houses collapsed as a result of the earth-
quake, but many more houses and commercial structures were de-
stroyed by the numerous fires.
Although San Francisco had a professionally trained fire depart-
ment and established procedures for dealing with emergencies, their
ability to deal with so many fires at the same time was severely limited.
Television cameras transmitted to viewers around the world images
of the fires, which lasted throughout most of the night of October 17-
18. Geologists determined that the way in which the Marina District
ground was filled significantly increased the liquefaction of the land
and made the effect of the sesimic shocks much worse in the Marina
District. Sections of San Francisco that had not been developed on
filled land were much more quake-resistant than the Marina District.
Even after the Loma Prieta earthquake, construction continued in
the Marina District, because the land there is so valuable. Builders
were required to reinforce buildings and to respect stringent build-
ing codes, but there is no guarantee that the Marina District will not
suffer extensive damage when the next earthquake takes place near
San Francisco. Had people known in the late nineteenth century and
the early twentieth century what geologists know today, the Marina
District might never have been developed, and Stanford, near the
San Andreas fault, and houses in hilly regions in Oakland and Daly
City might not have been constructed.
Freeway Collapses. Two other major catastrophes in the San
Francisco region were the collapse of the Nimitz Expressway and a
section on the upper level of the Bay Bridge. The Nimitz Expressway
in Oakland was built between 1954 and 1957. It did meet construc-
tion codes in effect at that time, and its engineers thought that it was
safe, but it was not sufficiently reinforced to cope with an earthquake
of the magnitude of 7.0 or 7.1. A total of 41 people died, either on the
two levels of the freeway or below the freeway. Many people driving
on the lower level were crushed to death when the upper level col-
lapsed on their cars. The death toll would most certainly have been

800
 1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

much higher had the earthquake occurred even a few minutes later.
The earthquake took place at 5:04 p.m., and by that time most com-
muters had not yet reached the Nimitz Expressway for their trip
home from work. Had this freeway collapsed even fifteen minutes
later, hundreds would probably have been killed.
The two major bridges into San Francisco, the Golden Gate
Bridge and the Bay Bridge, were constructed in the 1930’s. Although
the Golden Gate is the more famous of the two bridges, the Bay
Bridge is used more heavily because it connects Oakland and San
Francisco. In 1989, the Bay Bridge was double-deck, and people
thought that it was safe. During the Loma Prieta earthquake, how-
ever, bolts that connected the east and west ends of supports came
apart, causing a portion of the upper level to collapse. Amazingly,
only one driver was killed, when his car fell from the upper level to
the lower level. Luck and effective defensive driving by people on the
upper and lower levels of the Bay Bridge prevented a large loss of life.
It took a full month to restore this bridge to regular service. The
damage to bridges between Watsonville and San Francisco could
have been much worse: Only 18 of the more than 4,000 bridges had
to be closed for repairs after the Loma Prieta earthquake.
Results. The impact of the Loma Prieta earthquake on Northern
California was quite significant. Economists have estimated that be-
tween $5.6 and $5.8 billion had to be spent to repair houses, roads,
public and commercial buildings, and bridges damaged or destroyed
by the Loma Prieta earthquake. At least 67 people were killed as the
direct result of this earthquake, but it is difficult to determine how
many fatal heart attacks were caused by the trauma of the event. Be-
tween 3,000 and 4,000 people were seriously injured, putting a strain
on medical personnel between Watsonville and San Francisco. It is
impossible to describe the psychological damage experienced by
people who survived this temblor. When the Loma Prieta earthquake
occurred, California was already suffering from a national economic
downturn, which affected the Golden State more severely than other
American states. The temporary or permanent closing of businesses
in an economically important region of Northern California exacer-
bated an already bad economic situation.
Edmund J. Campion

801
1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake

For Further Information:

Bolt, Bruce A. Earthquakes. 5th ed. New York: W. H. Freeman, 2006.
Chameau, J. L., et al. “Liquefaction Response of San Francisco Bay-
shore Fills.” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 81, no. 5
(October, 1991): 1998-2018.
Fradkin, Philip L. Magnitude 8. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.
Hanks, Thomas C., and Gerald Brady. “The Loma Prieta Earthquake,
Ground Motion, and Damage in Oakland, Treasure Island, and
San Francisco.” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 81, no. 5
(October, 1991): 2019-2047.
Newsweek, October 30, 1989, 22-48.
Reti, Irene, ed. The Loma Prieta Earthquake of October 17, 1989. Santa
Cruz: University of California, Santa Cruz, 2006.
Schiff, Anshel J., ed. The Loma Prieta, California, Earthquake of October
17, 1989: Lifelines. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Post Of-
fice, 1998.
Time, October 30, 1989, 30-51.
Wells, Ray E., ed. The Loma Prieta, California, Earthquake of October 17,
1989—Geologic Setting and Crustal Structure. Reston, Va.: U.S. Geo-
logical Survey, 2004.

802
■ 1991: Pinatubo eruption
Volcano
Date: June 12-16, 1991
Place: Luzon, Philippines
Result: About 350 dead (mostly from collapsed roofs); extensive
damage to homes, bridges, irrigation-canal dikes, and cropland;
20 million tons of sulfur dioxide spewed into the stratosphere up
to an elevation of 15.5 miles

A s early as April 2, 1991, people from a small village

named Patal Pinto, on the Philippine island of Luzon,
observed steam and gases smelling of rotten eggs (indicating hydro-
gen sulfide) emanating from near the crest of Mount Pinatubo,
along with intermittent minor explosions. Within ten weeks, these
early ominous activities culminated in a volcanic eruption that has
come to be regarded among the largest that occurred in the twenti-
eth century.
Pinatubo, located about 62 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of
Manila, belongs to a chain of composite volcanoes constituting a vol-
canic arc in the Philippines. It is believed to have been the result of a
lava dome that formed about five hundred to six hundred years ago
during the last-known eruption. Its lower slopes and foothills were
composed primarily of pyroclastic and lahar (volcanic mudflow) de-
posits from voluminous eruptions that occurred in prehistoric times.
More than 30,000 people inhabited the foothills of the volcano be-
fore the 1991 eruption. Cities and villages surrounding the base of
the volcano on gently sloping alluvial plains were populated by as
many as 500,000 inhabitants. Located about 15.5 miles (25 kilome-
ters) to the east of the volcano was Clark Air Base, and 25 miles (40 ki-
lometers) to the southwest was Subic Bay Naval Station, both belong-
ing to the United States.
Prior to the 1991 eruption, Pinatubo had the appearance of a
steep, domelike spheroid that rose about 2,297 feet (700 meters)
above a gently sloping apron made of pyroclastic and epiclastic mate-
rials. Such a volcano belongs to the class of stratocones, of which such

803
1991: Pinatubo eruption

well-known exemplars as Fuji and Mayon are considerably larger

than Pinatubo. The extensive pyroclastic apron of Pinatubo, how-
ever, indicated that the volcano was extremely active in prehistoric
times. Until the collapse of the summit in the 1991 eruption, Pin-
atubo rose 5,725 feet (1,745 meters) above sea level, surrounded by
older volcanic centers, including an ancestral Pinatubo due south,
east, and northeast.
The Onset of Eruption. Following the emission of hydrogen
sulfide gas and steam together with a few minor, phreatic (steam-
charged) explosions along a 1-mile-long chain of vents on the north
side of the volcano around April 2, 1991, the Philippine Institute of
Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) installed seismometers
near the mountain, which immediately began recording several hun-

South
China Laoag

Sea Ilocos
Province
Baguio Luzon

Angeles Pinatubo
Manila Philippine
Bataan Sea
Peninsula

Visayas

Palawan

PHILIPPINES Cagayan
de Oro
Mindanao
Zamboanga Davao

BRUNEI
MALAYSIA
Sulu
Archipelago
INDONESIA

804
 1991: Pinatubo eruption

dred earthquakes a day. By April 5, nontelemetered seismographs in-

stalled on the northwest side of Pinatubo about 6 to 9 miles (10 to 15
kilometers) from the summit recorded between 40 and 140 seismic
events (of magnitude less than 1.0 on the Richter scale) each day.
On April 23, a team of volcanologists from the United States Geo-
logical Survey (USGS) arrived at the scene following a request by
PHIVOLCS to assist in the monitoring of the seismic activities near
the mountain. Together, the Philippine and American experts in-
stalled a radio-telemetered seismic network and tiltmeters. These de-
vices could locate the earthquakes and detect any new ground move-
ment, respectively. They also measured fractures that opened during
the early steam and vapor emissions from the chain of vents near the
summit of the mountain.
Between May 13 and May 28, the geologists, with the help of the
U.S. Air Force, measured a tenfold rise in the sulfur dioxide gas con-
tent of the steam plumes emanating from the summit. These and
other measurements indicated that magma was rising within the vol-
cano, and immediate preventive measures were necessary for the
safety of people living in surrounding communities. The geologists
established a set of alert levels ranging from 1 (implying low-level un-
rest) to 5 (indicating that eruption had started). On May 13, the alert
level was set at 2, which meant that the seismic unrest probably in-
volved magma.
Before April 2, 1991, the available geologic information on Pina-
tubo was quite limited. It was known to be a dacite dome complex
about 2 miles (3 kilometers) in diameter, with voluminous fans of
ash-flow deposits that were geologically young (less than ten thou-
sand years old). The volcano was known to be thermally active, how-
ever, and had previously been explored as a potential geothermal en-
ergy source by the Philippine National Oil Company.
Anticipating that an eruption might be imminent, the geologists
went to work designing a hazard map, in preparation for the worst-
case scenario. This was an urgent matter, especially since a large num-
ber of small villages lay scattered on the northwest slope of the vol-
cano and part of Clark Air Base and several urban communities (such
as the city of Angeles, with a population of 300,000) lay within the po-
tential range of pyroclastic and debris flows extending well beyond
the volcano. Based on knowledge of the best-known distribution of

805
1991: Pinatubo eruption

each type of volcanic deposit from past eruptions, a joint USGS-

PHIVOLCS team rapidly compiled a worst-case hazard map showing
areas most susceptible to ash flows, mudflows, and ashfall.
Around May 23, the hazard map was distributed to officials of the
Philippine civil defense organization, the local governments in neigh-
boring communities, and the U.S. military. Based on data obtained
following the actual eruption on June 15, the predictions by the haz-
ard map vis-à-vis areas where the impact would be most severe were
proven to be fairly accurate.
Near the end of May, the number of seismic events per day was
fluctuating in a random fashion, and measurements of key seismic
parameters such as earthquake hypocenter locations proved quite in-
conclusive. The likelihood of an actual eruption, though highly plau-
sible, could not be precisely forecast. From late May until early June,
indicators such as relatively long earthquake periods interspersed
with periods of tremor, as well as the location of hypocenters beneath
the steam vents, were clear precursors of imminent eruption. It was
also observed that the emission rate of sulfur dioxide, which had dra-
matically increased during the preceding two weeks, had suddenly
decreased. This finding was consistent with the escape vents of the
gas being sealed off by magma rising within the volcano.
The Eruption and Its Aftermath. During the second week of
June, the east flank of the mountain became tilted by inflation, and a
small lava dome extruded near the most vigorous steam vent. The
tectonic earthquakes became progressively shallower and weaker,
while the emission of low-level ash became continuous.
PHIVOLCS raised the alert level to 3 on June 5, indicating that
eruption was likely within two weeks. On June 7, the extrusion of a
small dome on the north flank, accompanied by numerous small
earthquakes, triggered a level 4 alert, signifying eruption within
twenty-four hours. Residents of Zambales, Tarlac, and Pampanga
Provinces, within 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) of the volcano, were
evacuated. As the dome continued to grow and ash emissions in-
creased to alarming levels, alert level 5 (signifying eruption had be-
gun) was declared on June 9. On June 10, a total of 14,500 nonessen-
tial personnel and dependents were moved by road from Clark Air
Base to Subic Bay Naval Station. Most of the aircraft had already been
removed from Clark Air Base at this time.

806
 1991: Pinatubo eruption

On June 12, the first of several major explosions occurred at 8:51

a.m., spewing airborne ash to the west of the mountain and sending
pyroclastic flows down its northwest slope. The ash column reached a
height of 62,335 feet (19,000 meters) above sea level, according to
measurements by the weather radar at Clark Air Base. Explosions
continued through the night of June 12 and the morning of June 13.
Part of the dome was destroyed, and a small crater was formed adja-
cent to it. There was intense seismic activity, with buildup periods last-
ing as long as several hours prior to the explosions during June 12
through 14. The long buildup periods permitted short-term notifica-
tion to Philippine civil authorities and U.S. military authorities re-
garding impending eruptions. The city of Angeles was placed on
evacuation alert.
The climactic eruptive phase began around 1:09 p.m. on June 14,
following an eight-hour episode of vigorous seismic activity. Explo-
sive eruptions continued through the night and into the morning of
June 15. Around 5:55 a.m., a massive lateral blast spread north, west,
southwest, and northwest from the volcano, sending a broad column
of ash 39,370 feet (12,000 meters) above sea level. This climactic blast
was followed by six more eruptive pulses, after which the eruption be-
came essentially continuous, lasting between the afternoon of June
15 through the early hours of June 16.
Coincidentally, Typhoon Yunya approached Pinatubo around the
same time. The extreme combination of hazards, including the ex-
plosive eruption, a complete loss of telemetry between the summit
and the observatories, and uncertainty regarding the effect of Yunya
on the flow of volcanic debris, made it necessary to rapidly evacuate
all remaining USGS, Air Force, and PHIVOLCS personnel from
Clark Air Base. This task was accomplished by around 2:30 p.m. on
June 15.
The volcano continued to erupt a column of ash rising 32,808 feet
(10,000 meters) above sea level for several weeks, even though the
overall seismic activity started to decline by late June 15. When the
weather cleared on June 16, it was observed that the top of the vol-
cano had been replaced by a 1-mile-wide caldera, and vast areas sur-
rounding the volcano were covered by around 6,540 or 7,847 cubic
yards (5 or 6 cubic kilometers) of pyroclastic deposits.
The presence of Yunya exacerbated the volcanic mudflows and

807
1991: Pinatubo eruption

the dispersal of water-saturated ash across a large number of cities

and villages. Cyclonic winds spread tephra over at least 7,722 square
miles (20,000 square kilometers) surrounding the volcano. The
weight of the wet, heavy ash led to the collapse of many buildings,
which turned out to be the leading cause of the loss of 350 or so lives
from the eruption. Mudflows triggered by the typhoon and heavy
rainfall destroyed homes, bridges, and irrigation-canal dikes and bur-
ied vast areas of cropland.
The Pinatubo eruption was one of the largest in the twentieth cen-
tury (being about ten times larger than the eruption of Mount St.
Helens in the United States in 1980) and potentially threatened
1 million lives. Overall, it must be concluded that the evacuation and
safety procedures followed jointly by the USGS, PHIVOLCS, and the
various military and civil defense organizations via effective commu-
nication and timely, responsible action, helped avert disaster of a far
higher magnitude. In fact, it is estimated that timely and effective in-
tervention saved many thousands of lives (the actual casualty figure
would be much lower had it not been for the presence of the ty-
phoon), and at least $1 billion in property which might otherwise
have been lost. In terms of accurate eruption prediction and highly
effective response, the 1991 Pinatubo eruption provides an impor-
tant model for future volcanic eruptions and other geological cata-
clysms.
Monish R. Chatterjee

For Further Information:

Fiocco, Giorgio, Daniele Fuá, and Guido Visconti, eds. The Mount
Pinatubo Eruption: Effects on the Atmosphere and Climate. New York:
Springer, 1996.
Newhall, Christopher G., James W. Hendley II, and Peter H. Stauffer.
The Cataclysmic 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines. Van-
couver, Wash.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1997.
Newhall, Christopher G., and Raymundo S. Punongbayan, eds. Fire
and Mud: Eruptions and Lahars of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines. Seat-
tle: University of Washington Press, 1996.
Pinatubo Volcano Observatory Team. “Lessons from a Major Erup-
tion: Mount Pinatubo, Philippines.” EOS/Transactions of the Ameri-
can Geophysical Union 72 (1991): 554-555.

808
 1991: Pinatubo eruption

Scarth, Alwyn. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Shimizu, Hiromu. The Orphans of Pinatubo. Manila, Philippines: Soli-
daridad, 2001.
Wolfe, Edward. “The 1991 Eruptions of Mount Pinatubo, Philip-
pines.” Earthquakes and Volcanoes 23, no. 1 (1992): 5-37.

809
■ 1991: The Oakland Hills Fire
Fire
Also known as: The East Bay Hills fire, the Tunnel fire
Date: October 19-21, 1991
Place: Oakland Hills, California, and vicinity
Result: 25 dead, 150 injured, 2,843 single-family homes destroyed,
433 apartment units destroyed, $1.5 billion in damage, 1,520 acres
burned

T he area of Oakland Hills is extremely susceptible to

fires for many reasons. Oakland Hills is a small com-
munity near San Francisco located between Berkeley and Oakland
and the hills that surround them. The houses located there are shel-
tered by trees, with narrow roads leading up steep hillsides to differ-
ent subdivisions. Most of the houses in the Oakland Hills area in the
1990’s were million-dollar dwellings that people had worked a life-
time to afford.
The Oakland Hills area is known as a wildland-urban interface.
This is where human-made developments and wildland fuels meet at
a boundary that is susceptible to wildfires because of the accumula-
tion of dense fuels. In the late twentieth century, the number of peo-
ple moving to the wildlands increased dramatically. Wildfires are ac-
tually beneficial to the natural cycles of many types of ecosystems,
when they are not close to human settlements. They remove the weak
and dead vegetation that are potential fuels for larger fires if they are
allowed to accumulate and allow for a chance for renewal in the for-
est. The cleansing effects of the fires present dangers when homes
are built in these wild areas, however.
In wildland-urban interface areas, city services such as fire protec-
tion and water supply are not always fully provided. Procedures for
controlling wildfires often include sacrificing some areas in order to
set up a perimeter firebreak. This procedure requires sacrificing
some homes and property to save others.
It is essential for communities to prohibit dangerous building
practices; mandate regular inspections to ensure adequate clearing

810
 1991: The Oakland Hills Fire

of plants, shrubs, and trees away from homes; and seek support to im-
plement these policies to protect people living in the wildland-urban
interface. California has a law that designates hazardous fire areas as
places covered by grass, grain, brush, or forest, whether publicly or
privately owned, and regions that are so inaccessible that a fire would
be difficult to suppress. The area of Oakland Hills was not considered
hazardous because all the residences were accessible by paved roads,
even though they were narrow and winding.
The Oakland Hills area was well known for fires in the past. In Sep-
tember of 1923 a wildfire started northeast of Berkeley and spread
quickly. It burned 130 acres, consuming 584 buildings and causing
$10 million worth of damage. After the fire, the city council passed
legislation requiring fire-resistant wood coverings for roofs but re-
scinded the legislation before it could take effect. Another fire
started in September of 1970 southeast of the University of California
Berkeley campus. It destroyed 38 homes and damaged 7 others. The
total cost of damage was $3.5 million. Yet another fire began in De-
cember of 1980 just north of where the Oakland Hills fire started.
This fire destroyed 6 homes and injured 3 people in only twenty min-
utes.
In 1982, Berkeley designated a section of the city as the Hazardous
Hill Fire Area after an extensive inspection program. Four months
before the fire, in June of 1991, Berkeley passed an ordinance that re-
quired all houses in this area to have Class-A roofs. This ordinance
did not include the area of the Oakland Hills fire.
The Oakland Hills Fire. The story of the Oakland Hills fire ac-
tually begins the day before the fire started. On October 19, 1991, a
fire of suspicious origin started near 7151 Buckingham Boulevard.
The wind was not strong enough that day to push the fire very far.
Firefighters were able to keep the blaze under control and thought
they had extinguished it. The heat from the fire on October 19 that
had been extinguished caused pine needles to drop from the trees,
laying down a fresh layer of kindling. A type of debris called duff fell
around and inside the area of the first burn. Duff is the pine needles,
often up to a foot thick, that have accumulated under the trees; it is
highly flammable. The water used by the firefighters extinguished
the flames that burned on top of the duff, but the duff combined
with ash and dust to form a crust. The fire continued to smolder un-

811
1991: The Oakland Hills Fire

der the crust. Firefighters followed prudent procedures by leaving

their hoses in place overnight and returning periodically to the fire
scene to check for signs of renewed fire.
At approximately 10:45 the next morning, as 25 firefighters were
finishing up after the fire of the previous day, sparks burst out of the
duff. They were carried by winds ranging from 16 to 25 miles per
hour, with some observers estimating winds up to 65 miles per hour.
The wind brought them to a tree that instantly burst into flames. Con-
vective currents and strong winds allowed the fire to move out of the
northeast region and spread to nearby vegetation. By 11:15 in the
morning, the fire was raging out of control. The fire went uphill from
the place of origin. The winds changed suddenly and blew the fire in
many directions at once. A warm, dry wind blowing in the valleys of a
mountain, called a foehn, pushed the fire back downhill just as fast as
the fire was spreading uphill.
Minutes later, the winds changed again. This time the fire started
spreading eastward, toward the Parkwood Apartments and the Calde-
cott Tunnel. Another change in the wind direction sent the fire to
the southwest. Many pine trees and other shrubs burst into flames.
Homes were becoming threatened, and firefighters struggled to con-
tain the fire. The fire spread across Highway 24 and headed toward
Lake Temescal. At the same time, another flame front started moving
northwest, toward the Claremont Hotel and the city of Berkeley. The
fire turned into numerous large fires because of spotting. Firebrands
were carried by the fire to areas remote from the original fire. The
winds caused the fire to descend along the ridge between Marl-
borough Terrace and Hiller Highlands. The winds accelerated the
motion of the fire down the ridge, causing it to consume everything
in its path.
Within one hour the fire had consumed 790 structures. The area
south of Highway 24 and the area near the Caldecott Tunnel caught
fire. An area called Upper Rockridge caught fire because of winds
and spotting. By noon, 40 percent of the total affected area was
burned. As the fire began spreading south and west, it reached flat-
ter, more open ground and started slowing. The fire reached temper-
atures as high as 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Although this tempera-
ture can boil asphalt, this fire was not as fierce or hot as most
wildfires.

812
 1991: The Oakland Hills Fire

Attempts at Extinguishing the Fire. Weather conditions and

the rapid spread of the fire in many directions at once made it ex-
tremely difficult to extinguish the blaze. The fire hoses were mostly
ineffective because the wind was so strong that it bent the water
streams 90 degrees on 500-gallon-per-minute hoses. For the first
three hours, air attacks were also ineffective because of strong winds,
heavy smoke that obscured vision, and the continuous fuel chain
available to the fire.
Fire units ran out of water during the fire owing to five primary
factors. Large quantities of water were used by firefighters suppress-
ing the fire; homeowners were wetting their roofs and vegetation
with large quantities of water as well. Water pipes had burst, and
water was freely flowing in destroyed homes. Tanks and reservoirs
could not be refilled due to electrical power failures caused by the
fire. There was also a problem with matching hoses to the fire hy-
drants. Some of the hoses from out-of-town fire brigades did not fit
on the hydrants. Some had adapters that could be put on the hy-
drants, but many of the adapters were left on the hydrants as the fire
overtook the perimeters.
Many of the homes had roofs covered with wooden shingles or
shakes. Flaming embers were blown by the wind from houses that
were already on fire onto the roofs of nearby homes, which then
caught on fire. According to observers, homes burned to their foun-
dations in ten minutes or less. The steep hillsides presented difficul-
ties to the firefighters. Hoses and other equipment had to be dragged
up the hills. The streets were very narrow. As firefighters were moving
large trucks up the streets toward the fire, homeowners were moving
away from the fire to evacuate the area, causing bottlenecks.
The first tactics the firefighters used were to retreat to the perime-
ter, attack the fire, and summon help. The fire was spreading so fast
that the firefighters could not establish an effective perimeter. The
units coming to assist the initial crew found other areas burning, so
they stopped to fight those fires. However, they were overrun eventu-
ally by the fire. The fire departments had a difficult time communi-
cating with other fire departments around the state because there
were too many units trying to use the same radio channel and too few
channels were available. The hilly terrain also caused interference
with the radio signals, making it difficult to coordinate the attack.

813
1991: The Oakland Hills Fire

The coordination of the firefighters improved as time passed. It

was possible to establish good perimeter areas as the weather condi-
tions became better and the fire reached areas where water was avail-
able. The firefighters were able to suppress the ignition of homes by
breaking the chain of combustibles that was responsible for the ear-
lier destruction of houses, allowing the firefighters to save many
homes.
The Oakland Hills fire developed firestorm conditions within fif-
teen minutes. Firestorms are produced when the gases, heat, and mo-
tion of a fire build up to a point that they begin to create their own
convection currents independent of external conditions. Oxygen is
pulled into the base of the fire in great quantities, producing large
convection columns when the air is heated at the fire. When the in-
tensity of a fire reaches firestorm levels, a fire front can develop that is
able to move away from the direction the wind is blowing.
The Oakland Hills and Berkeley fire departments were not the
only ones to assist in extinguishing the fire. They were joined by 88
engine strike teams, 6 air tankers, 16 heliac units, 8 communications
units, 2 management teams, 2 mechanics, and more than 700 search-
and-rescue personnel from other municipalities. In addition, 767 law
enforcement officers assisted.
Effects of the Fire. As a result of the fire, Assemblyman Tom
Bates introduced a bill, later known as the Bates Bill, requiring the
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, along with lo-
cal fire authorities, to identify places in the Local Responsibility Areas
that were considered to be “very high fire hazard severity zones.” Ter-
rain, foliage, building construction, and lack of adequate access were
among the factors considered in establishing these zones. Once the
hazardous areas were identified, the local authorities either adopted
the state fire marshal’s model ordinance, adding or subtracting areas
from the identified zones; indicated that they already met or ex-
ceeded the Bates minimum; or a combination of these responses.
Most of the ordinances that were adopted required that all the
dwellings in endangered areas must have at least a Class-B roof. A de-
fensible perimeter around the home was also required. This in-
cluded a 100-foot-wide area around the building where grass and
ground cover could not exceed 3 inches in height. Specimen trees
were allowed as long as they were at least 15 feet apart and no closer

814
 1991: The Oakland Hills Fire

than 15 feet from the house. Access roads must be at least 10 feet wide
and have 13 feet, 6 inches vertical clearance to allow passage for
firefighting apparatus. In 1994, more legislation was passed, which
raised the roofing requirement to a Class-A roof. Other directives in-
cluded planting “fire-resistant” vegetation, requiring sprinklers in new
homes where access is limited, providing standard hydrant connec-
tions, and improving communication systems for emergency workers.
Gary W. Siebein

For Further Information:

Darlington, David. “After the Firestorm.” Audubon 95, no. 2 (March/
April, 1993): 2-12.
Morales, Tony, and Maria Morales, eds. Proceedings of the California’s
2001 Wildfire Conference: 10 Years After the 1991 East Bay Hills Fire.
Richmond: University of California, Forest Products Laboratory,
2001.
Oakland Fire Department. The Oakland Tunnel Fire, October 20, 1991:
A Comprehensive Report. Oakland, Calif.: Author, 1992.
Report of the Operation Urban Wildfire Task Force. Washington, D.C.: Fed-
eral Emergency Management Agency, United States Fire Adminis-
tration, FA-115, 1992.
Steckler, Kenneth D., David D. Evans, and Jack E. Snell. Preliminary
Study of the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire and Its Relevance to Wood-Frame,
Multi-family Building Construction. Gaithersburg, Md.: National In-
stitute of Standards and Technology, Building and Fire Research
Laboratory, 1991.
Sullivan, Margaret. Firestorm! The Story of the 1991 East Bay Fire in Berke-
ley. Berkeley, Calif.: City of Berkeley, 1993.

815
■ 1992: Hurricane Andrew
Hurricane
Date: August 22-26, 1992
Place: Florida, Louisiana, and the Bahamas
Classification: Category 4
Result: 50 dead, $26 billion in damage

A lthough relatively small in size, Hurricane Andrew was

a storm of enormous intensity that left a mammoth
trail of destruction along its path across the Bahamas, south Florida,
and Louisiana. Its final toll was an estimated $26 billion in damage in
the United States alone, ranking it at the time as the most expensive
natural disaster in the nation’s history.
Andrew’s Beginnings. Hurricane Andrew began as a tropical
wave off the west coast of Africa and passed south of the Cape Verde Is-
lands on August 15, 1992, at a speed of 18 miles per hour. As it contin-
ued its west-northwest movement, the storm picked up its pace to 23
miles per hour, nearly twice the speed of an average hurricane. Over
the next few days, the storm passed to the south of a high-pressure sys-
tem as steering winds began to move it closer to a strong upper-level,
low-pressure system located near Bermuda. The currents gradually
changed, and Andrew turned slowly to a northwesterly course. On Au-
gust 20, the storm weakened to the point of almost disintegrating. The
lower section of the storm was moving to the northwest, while the up-
per part of it was steered by strong upper-level winds to the northeast.
However, significant changes in the overall weather environment
began to occur the following day. Satellite imagery indicated that the
upper-level, low-pressure system near Bermuda had broken up, which
decreased the wind-shear effect on Andrew. It enabled the storm to
gather its pieces together, regain strength, and resume its movement.
As it migrated further into the Atlantic, the storm increased in inten-
sity and was designated the first tropical storm of the 1992 hurricane
season. Simultaneously, a strong high-pressure system began to build
along the U.S. southeast coast, which helped steer the storm directly
west into warm tropical waters.

816
 1992: Hurricane Andrew

With winds measuring over 75 miles per hour, Andrew reached

hurricane status at a point 800 miles east of Miami on August 22 and
rapidly strengthened to a Category 4 storm. As it approached a point
approximately 330 miles east of the Florida coast, a hurricane watch
was posted from Titusville south to Vero Beach, south through the
Florida Keys and over to the West Coast to Fort Myers.
Andrew maintained a due-west course and crossed Eleuthera Is-
land and the southern Berry Islands in the Bahamas on August 23.
Eleuthera Island suffered extensive damage when a 23-foot storm
surge, one of the largest on record, washed ashore, leaving coastal
areas in ruin. Government Harbour, Hatchet Bay, and Upper and
Lower Bogue were among the communities severely damaged. Nearly
every house on Current Island was destroyed.
Andrew weakened somewhat following its passage over the Baha-
mas but quickly regained its strength as it moved through the Florida
Straits. At this stage weather forecasters noted a decreasing diameter
and corresponding strengthening of the storm’s “eyewall” convec-
tion. Measurements indicated a more vigorous counterclockwise ro-
tation with the radius of maximum wind in the eyewall reaching 12
miles. Meteorologists believed the storm was undergoing a phenom-
enon called “eyewall replacement,” in which the inner wall disinte-
grates and is replaced by the outer wall. During the replacement cy-
cle, the storm would weaken, then immediately regain its strength as
the new outer wall replaced the older inner one.
As the storm churned in the direction of Florida’s east coast, Gov-
ernor Lawton Chiles declared a state of emergency and alerted the
National Guard for duty. Nearly 1 million people were ordered to
evacuate the coastal areas of Broward County, Dade County, and the
northern Florida Keys in Monroe County. Because Andrew had a
smaller diameter than most hurricanes, the stronger winds did not
become apparent to residents until the storm was almost on top of
land. This served to hamper evacuation efforts, as many boaters
waited until the final hours to move their craft inland, creating delays
for land traffic as drawbridges were raised to allow the boats entrance
to safer waters.
The potential for a natural disaster of epic proportions was appar-
ent to officials, given the lay of the land in south Florida. The highest
natural land elevation in the entire state is only 345 feet above sea

817
1992: Hurricane Andrew

level, and elevations in the southern portion of the state are even
lower, with few rising above 20 feet. In addition, the state’s coastal re-
gions are low and flat and marked by numerous small bays, inlets, and
a continuous series of barrier islands.
Throughout southern Florida residents made preparations for An-
drew’s arrival. Merchants and homeowners boarded up their proper-
ties and stocked up on water, groceries, gasoline, batteries, and can-
dles in the event of a blackout or shortage. The rapid intensification
of the storm came unexpectedly to local officials. In an advisory is-
sued on Saturday, August 22, the National Hurricane Center (NHC)
forecast that tropical storm winds would arrive in Miami at about 9
p.m. Monday. In its next advisory, issued six hours later, the NHC
warned residents that the tropical storm winds would arrive around 5
a.m. Monday.
Hurricane Andrew slammed into south Florida around 5:05 a.m.
on August 24, 1992, near Florida City, about 19 miles south of down-
town Miami, and was accompanied by sustained winds estimated at
140 miles per hour with gusts up to 175 miles per hour and a storm
surge of close to 16 feet. The surge pushed the waters of Biscayne Bay
inland for several hundred yards. Due to the eyewall’s contraction,
hurricane-force winds extended out only about 30 miles around the
wall. Officials considered it fortunate that the storm did not carry the
heavy amounts of precipitation normally associated with a hurricane
of Andrew’s size.
The Damage. Immediately after its rapid passage over south
Florida, the extent of damage and casualties could not be readily de-
termined. National media reports initially indicated it was not as se-
vere as expected and that downtown Miami and Miami Beach were
relatively intact. As additional information began to filter in, the
complete magnitude of the storm’s impact became apparent.
The worst damage inflicted by Andrew was in southern Dade
County, from the Miami suburb of Kendall, south through Home-
stead and Florida City, to the Florida Keys. Scores of neighborhoods
lost all of their trees, with many crashing into homes and parked cars.
Few homes were left standing as the gusting winds reached sufficient
strength to strip the paint and roofs off houses and topple telephone
and power lines, leaving nearly all of Dade County without electricity.
The powerful winds were able to hurl concrete beams more than 150

818
 1992: Hurricane Andrew

The category 4 winds of Hurricane Andrew embedded

this plank in the trunk of a royal palm. (National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Administration)

feet, lift large trucks into the air, and disintegrate mobile homes. Air-
conditioning units were torn from roofs, leaving gaping holes for the
torrential rains to pour through, flooding floors below. In some areas
the sustained winds unofficially reached 175 miles per hour, with
some gusts reaching as high as 212 miles per hour. Barometric pres-
sure registered a low at 27.23 inches.
Andrew heavily damaged offshore structures, including the artifi-
cial reef system off the southeast coast. One measure of its strength
was its impact on the Belzona Barge, a 350-ton barge that prior to the
hurricane was sitting in 68 feet of water on the ocean floor. A thou-
sand tons of concrete from an old bridge lay on its deck. Andrew

819
1992: Hurricane Andrew

shoved the barge 700 feet to the west and stripped it of several large
sections of steel-plate siding. Only 50 to 100 tons of concrete re-
mained on the barge’s deck. Another ship, the 210-ton freighter Sea-
ward Explorer, moored off Elliot Key, was separated from its anchor by
the surge and carried over the submerged key and across Biscayne
Bay, where it finally was washed ashore.
Wind Speeds. According to a report issued by the National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Administration, measuring the storm’s sus-
tained wind speeds became problematic once it reached land.
Weather experts noted that the estimates were for those winds occur-
ring primarily within the northern eyewall over an open environ-
ment, such as at an airport and at a standard 33-foot (10-meter)
height. The winds occurring at other locations were subject to their
complex interactions with buildings, trees, and other obstacles in
their path. Such obstructions generate a drag that generally reduces
the wind speeds. However, they are also capable of producing brief
accelerations of winds in areas approximate to the structures. As a re-
sult, the wind gusts experienced at a given location, such as a build-
ing situated in the core region of the hurricane, can vary significantly
and cannot be precisely measured.
The National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables noted the unfor-
tunate circumstance of not having official measurements of surface
winds near the area of landfall where maximum winds were likely to
have occurred. The strongest sustained wind, registered at 141 miles
per hour with a gust up to 169 miles per hour, occurred close to
1 nautical mile east of the shoreline. Many transmissions of wind
speeds were interrupted when instruments presumably were dis-
abled by the storm. A subsequent inspection revealed that one ane-
mometer situated near the eye’s path was bent 90 degrees from its
normal vertical position. Wind measurements taken by aircraft at
about 10,000 feet, when adjusted, support the estimate of sustained
surface winds of 145 miles per hour.
There were no confirmed reports of tornadoes associated with An-
drew as it passed over the Bahamas or Florida. A few unconfirmed fun-
nel sightings were reported over the Florida counties of Glades, Col-
lier, and Highlands. A number of weather observers did note the
similarities in damage patterns between Hurricane Andrew and a tor-
nado. While countless houses deep inland were leveled by Andrew,

820
 1992: Hurricane Andrew

low-lying beachfront condominiums went unscathed. In Naranja

Lakes, a south Dade County suburb, buildings whose tops were blown
off stood across from others that were left undamaged. Scientists be-
lieve the random pattern of damage caused by Andrew was the result
of small thunderstorms packed within the hurricane. The storms cre-
ated vertical columns of air that opened vents in the eye’s wall of
clouds, which allowed the hurricane’s most powerful winds to rush to
the ground nearly 2,000 feet below with the concentrated fury of a tor-
nado. Traveling west at 20 miles per hour the storm cut a swath of de-
struction that was easily discernible and unique to hurricane activity.
Further Damage. Throughout the region power lines and traf-
fic lights dangled to windshield levels. Shredded shrubs and downed
trees made driving through streets a hazardous chore. Numerous
side streets were rendered impassable because of the debris. In addi-
tion, close to 3,000 water mains were damaged, along with 1,900 traf-
fic lights, 100,000 traffic signs, and 2,200 street lights. Damage was
also inflicted on 59 hospitals and health facilities, 7 post offices, 278
schools, Florida International University, Dade Community College,
and the University of Miami.
In the fashionable seaside community of Coconut Grove, dozens
of recreational boats were washed up into the streets and parking
lots. At suburban airports, hangars were ripped apart and small
planes piled atop one another. Homestead Air Force Base, located at
the southern tip of the state between Everglades National Park and
Miami, took a direct hit. Most of the air base’s 200 buildings, includ-
ing hangars, communication equipment, offices, housing, and other
facilities, received damage. Nearly all of Homestead’s 70 aircraft and
5,000 active-duty personnel had been evacuated; however, two F-16
fighters that remained were destroyed when a hangar door swung
onto them. The base was home to two F-16 fighter wings and a U.S.
Customs Service antidrug operation.
One of the hardest hit areas was Coral Gables in south Miami,
where the National Hurricane Center is located and where gusts of
wind up to 164 miles per hour were recorded. The storm blew the ra-
dar off the center’s roof and shattered the building’s windows. On
the other hand, Miami Beach’s Art Deco district escaped the brunt of
the storm, though the plush Fontainebleau Hilton hotel was left with
several feet of water in its lobby.

821
1992: Hurricane Andrew

Nearly 90 percent of Florida City’s 1,900 homes were either de-

stroyed, severely damaged, or marginally damaged, including 1,475
mobile homes, 1,041 single-family homes, and 470 apartment units.
In addition, a majority of its businesses fell victim to the storm, leav-
ing residents both homeless and jobless. The city’s entire infrastruc-
ture was also crippled severely. The city hall, police station, water and
sewer system, and all of the city’s parks were damaged, along with an
elementary school, 9 churches, a museum, a community center, and
a football field.
The story was similar in Homestead, where 85 to 90 percent of the
housing units were destroyed or damaged. Among them were 1,167
manufactured housing units, 9,059 single-family dwelling units, and
7,580 multifamily units. Eight public schools and 22 parks in the city
received severe damage, as did the Homestead branch of Metro Dade
Community College.
The personal testimony of many residents reflects the fury of An-
drew. Many recalled how their ears popped and sinuses ached as the
barometric pressure plunged. Some heard the popping of automo-
biles while other claimed that the water was sucked from their toilets.
Above all, it was the sound of the winds, described as akin to the blast
of jet engines or the roar of a freight train, that many found most ter-
rifying.
All together, nearly 25,000 homes were destroyed and close to
100,000 others were damaged in the region. Also destroyed or dam-
aged were an estimated 8,000 businesses, putting over 80,000 people
out of work. The National Guard provided tent cities for the home-
less, but many chose to stay in what remained of their homes to pro-
tect them from looters. Nearly 43 deaths in Dade County alone were
attributed directly or indirectly to the storm. Law enforcement offi-
cials, using police dogs, conducted searches immediately after the
storm through the remnants of mobile-home parks. With communi-
cation outlets severely crippled, some local jurisdictions took to drop-
ping leaflets from helicopters and sending automobiles mounted
with loudspeakers through the most devastated areas to announce
the latest information. In Miami authorities declared a curfew from
7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and police cordoned off many sections of the town.
As the wind diminished and the water receded, U.S. Army combat
troops joined National Guard forces and police in setting up barri-

822
 1992: Hurricane Andrew

cades around the major commercial centers in downtown Miami and

Coconut Grove to prevent looting.
Andrew also took a heavy toll on animals. Hundreds of horses
were killed and many other injured by flying debris. Thousands of
pets roamed free as their confines collapsed around them. Although
few, if any, animals escaped from local zoos, hundreds of monkeys
and baboons fled from area research facilities, and countless num-
bers of exotic birds were reported missing. Agricultural damage in
Dade County exceeded $1 billion, including an approximate $128
million loss in tropical orchards, a $349 million loss in crop produc-
tion, and a $12.5 million loss in aqua culture and livestock.
An estimated 15,000 pleasure boats were victimized by Andrew’s
winds. The boat damage for the entire region approached $20 mil-
lion. Only a handful of deaths were attributed to boaters who elected
to ride out the storm in their boats, an unusually low death count for
a storm of Andrew’s magnitude.
Though the storm roiled the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay, 8
miles wide and only 12 feet deep, its major sediment deposits and
grass beds were left relatively intact. The shallow waters had the effect
of amplifying the storm surge so that the tide rose an estimated 12 to
16 feet above normal by the time it reached the western shore. The
waters in the western portion of the bay were noticeably brackish fol-
lowing the storm. Freshwater extended out several hundred yards
from the shoreline, and salinity was measured at 11 parts per 1,000
compared with the normal 34 parts per 1,000 up to a mile and a half
out. Much of this effect was attributed to the decision of the state’s
water-management agencies to lower the level of Lake Okeechobee
in anticipation of the storm to prevent excessive overflows.
The highest recorded high-water mark was 16.88 feet, at the Bur-
ger King Corporate Headquarters in south Dade County. High-water
marks diminished from this point north to Broad Causeway, where
they reached to 5.17 feet, and south to Key Largo, where they
reached up to 5.49 feet. On the west coast of Florida, high-water
marks ranged from 4.38 feet at Everglades City to 6.85 feet at West
Goodland. The farthest the tidal surge extended inland was an esti-
mated 3 miles from the eastern coastline. The surge’s north-south
range extended nearly 33 miles along the eastern coast.
Despite the massive devastation, civil defense officials estimated the

823
1992: Hurricane Andrew

damage could have been far worse if the hurricane had crossed the
Florida peninsula a few miles farther north, through more densely
populated regions. The relatively small diameter of the storm had the
effect of reducing its exposure to more vulnerable coastal communi-
ties and thus was a major contributing factor in limiting overall dam-
age and loss of life. According to officials, an additional factor in re-
ducing fatalities was the evacuation and hurricane preparedness
programs that were in force prior to the storm’s arrival.
Florida’s substantial natural resource base felt the full fury of An-
drew. The storm’s eye crossed three National Park Service sites:
Biscayne National Park, Everglades National Park, and Big Cypress
National Preserve. Artificial reefs along the coastline were severely
damaged, as were thousands of acres of mangrove forest. Shorelines
were littered with tons of marine debris as the strong currents tore
away sea fans, sponges, and coral in areas of Biscayne Bay. The fragile
Everglades region was damaged as entire groves of trees were flat-
tened and exotic plants and wildlife habitats were destroyed. Virtu-
ally all large trees located in islands of dense undergrowth were defo-
liated. However, the storm had little effect on the interior freshwater
lands of the Everglades, which are composed mainly of sawgrass.
Samplings by the South Florida Water Management District follow-
ing the storm indicate nearly all poststorm water-quality properties,
including turbidity, color, ammonia, and dissolved phosphate, were
within the range of pre-storm values.
The most prominent inhabitants of the marshlands, the alligators,
appeared to have weathered the storm, though some of their nests
were destroyed. All the radio-tagged Florida panthers, radio-tagged
black bears, and white-tailed deer survived the hurricane. Egrets,
herons, and ibis also came through the storm relatively unscathed.
The largest concentration of dead birds discovered was at a roost in
Biscayne Bay, where the corpses of approximately 200 white ibis were
found.
One of the reasons for the relatively small damage to animals and
plants was the nature of the storm. Unlike previous hurricane storm
surges that inundated large areas of the marshlands with saltwater,
Andrew’s was unable to push deep inland owing to its direct westerly
path that took it over Florida’s relatively high east coast. In retro-
spect, the fact that Hurricane Andrew was a rapidly moving, compact,

824
 1992: Hurricane Andrew

relatively dry storm rather than a larger, slower, or wetter system

spared Florida an even greater natural disaster.
Moving On. Andrew moved quickly in an almost direct line
across the extreme southern section of Florida in about four hours,
entering the Gulf of Mexico south of Marco Island in a somewhat
weakened state but with its eye still intact. As it plowed across the
southern peninsula, it left a swath of destruction 25 miles wide and 60
miles long, though the impact of its storm surge on the southwest
coast of the state was minimal.
Once again over warm waters, the storm began to intensify as it
turned northwest toward the Louisiana coast. As it churned through
the Gulf waters, Andrew continued to wreak damage estimated at a
half billion dollars. Its winds toppled platforms, blew 5 drilling wells
off location, caused 2 fires, and created 7 incidents of pollution.
Fearing a repeat of the scenes of devastation in southern Florida,
officials and residents launched a massive evacuation effort along the
Mississippi Delta region. An estimated 1.25 million people were evac-
uated from parishes in southeastern and south-central Louisiana.
The eye of the storm skirted the Louisiana coast about 85 miles
southwest of New Orleans. It finally made landfall approximately 20
miles west-southwest of Morgan City on the morning of August 26,
leaving Grand Isle, the state’s only inhabited barrier island, com-
pletely underwater. The storm struck with a Category 3 force as sus-
tained winds of 140 miles per hour buffeted the sparsely populated
marshlands.
Louisiana is known for its many bayous and waterways, which con-
stitute much of the state’s topography. Numerous barrier islands dot
the coastline but generally are used as game preserves. A large por-
tion of the southeastern section of the state rests at or below sea level
and is not conducive to rapid runoff, thus making overflows poten-
tially protracted and severe.
As it slid along the Louisiana coast, Andrew dealt a severe blow to
the state’s fishing industry, inflicting nearly $160 million in damage
to freshwater fisheries. The state did fare much better than Florida in
damage to boats, as Andrew missed the major shipping areas north
and east of New Orleans. Many boat owners had enough advance
warning to move their vessels into one of the numerous bayous,
where they had more protection from the storm.

825
1992: Hurricane Andrew

The storm continued to move west across southern Louisiana to-

ward the cities of Lafayette and New Iberia. It spawned numerous tor-
nadoes that caused widespread damage in several Mississippi, Ala-
bama, and Georgia communities. One tornado occurred in the city
of Laplace, Louisiana, killing 2 people and injuring 32 others. Tor-
nadoes also were reported in the parishes of Ascension, Iberville, Ba-
ton Rouge, Pointe Coupe, and Avoyelles, though no casualties were
reported.
Numerous reports of funnel clouds were received by officials in
Mississippi and were believed to have caused damage in several of the
state’s counties. In Alabama, two tornadoes struck the mainland,
while another hit Dauphin Island. Several destructive tornadoes that
roared through Georgia were attributed to Andrew. Although rain-
fall was heavy throughout the region, it resulted in little significant
flooding because of the dry conditions along the coast. Rivers were at
midsummer stages, and soils were parched from lack of rain. An esti-
mated 25 percent or less of the rain generated by Andrew ended up
in the rivers as runoff. The remaining portion either was absorbed by
the soils and plants or evaporated.
On August 26, Andrew was downgraded to a tropical storm as it
moved northeast through Mississippi. The remnants of Andrew con-
tinued to produce heavy downpours that often exceeded 10 inches.
On August 28, Andrew merged with a frontal system over the mid-
Atlantic states, ending its trail of destruction.
William Hoffman

For Further Information:

Barnes, Jay. Florida’s Hurricane History. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1998.
Fyerdam, Rick. When Natural Disaster Strikes: Lessons from Hurricane An-
drew. Miami Beach, Fla.: Hospice Foundation of America, 1994.
Peacock, Walter Gillis, Betty Hearn Morrow, and Hugh Gladwin, eds.
Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity, Gender, and the Sociology of Disasters. New
York: Routledge, 1997.
Pielke, Roger A., Jr., and Roger A. Pielke, Sr. Hurricanes: Their Nature
and Impacts on Society. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
Provenzo, Eugene F., Jr., and Asterie Baker Provenzo. In the Eye of Hur-
ricane Andrew. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.

826
 1992: Hurricane Andrew

U.S. Department of Commerce. Hurricane Andrew: South Florida and

Louisiana, August 23-26, 1992. Silver Springs, Md.: National
Weather Service, 1993.
U.S. Park Service. Hurricane Andrew, 1992. Denver: U.S. Department
of the Interior, 1994.
Williams, John M., and Iver W. Duedall. Florida Hurricanes and Tropical
Storms, 1871-2001. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002.

827
■ 1993: The Great Mississippi River
Flood of 1993
Flood

Date: June-August, 1993

Place: Primarily Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri
Result: 52 dead, 74,000 homeless, $18 billion in damage

U nlike other natural disasters, it is extremely difficult

to pinpoint the actual starting point of the Great Mis-
sissippi River Flood of 1993. The river’s upper basin experienced
above-normal rainfall levels in the spring that resulted in some ear-
lier flooding, and fall weather produced subsequent flooding as well.
Yet since the greatest carnage occurred during the heavy rains from
June through August, 1993, most experts use these parameters as the
official beginning and end of the great flood of 1993.
Causes. The flood of 1993 can be attributed to the record rainfall
that dominated the Midwest’s weather during the summer of 1993.
Other surface meteorological conditions, however, also played a piv-
otal role. Prior to the flood, the ground was already saturated, as soil
moisture levels remained exceptionally high. Heavy winter snowmelt
and spring rains further increased the dangers of flooding as the Mis-
sissippi River’s vast tributary system began emptying its excess into
the river. This water, moreover, substantially increased the chances of
daily precipitation, since evaporation tends to be recirculated in the
form of rainfall. From June through August, the Upper Mississippi
River basin rainfall was 200 percent above normal, and the 20 inches
of rain was the highest recorded total dating back to 1895. Along the
Iowa shores alone it exceeded 36 inches. This problem was further
exacerbated by the unusual number of cloudy days that not only in-
hibited the sun’s ability to dry the land but also increased the likeli-
hood of daily showers.
Human and Property Costs. The flood primarily affected the
Upper Mississippi River basin in the area located north of Cairo, Illi-
nois. While the damage affected commerce, industry, and housing in

828
 1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993

over one-third of the United States, the heaviest flooding occurred in

various river towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Mis-
souri.
This event represented the most costly flood on record in Ameri-
can history. Although the flood of 1927 resulted in the loss of 313
lives, compared to 52 in 1993, the property damage in 1993 was much
more extensive. Floodwaters significantly ruined various portions of
the physical landscape, wreaked havoc on river ecosystems, and de-
stroyed crops. Its impact on the transportation system and agricul-
tural income ravaged the region. Barges were unable to travel on the
river for eight weeks. Major roads and highways were closed, often
forcing people to miss work. Millions of acres of prime farmland re-
mained under water for weeks, significantly weakening the country’s
food production, and soil erosion destroyed some of the best farm-
land in the country. Homes, farms, industries, and entire towns were
obliterated by the river’s rising waters. Communities fought to stave
off the flood by organizing sandbagging activities to reinforce and
raise the capacity of levees, and while some succeeded, over 1,000 lev-
ees eventually ruptured. All this carnage compelled President Bill
Clinton to declare the region a disaster area, but local, state, and na-
tional agencies struggled to meet the demands of unprecedented re-
lief efforts. While some individuals eagerly accepted assistance and
attempted to rebuild their lives, many simply relocated to higher
ground, believing that an idyllic life along the river’s banks was no
longer possible.
Infrastructure Costs. This flood also produced dire conse-
quences for the entire ecosystem along the Mississippi River. Herbi-
cides from flooded farms were washed into the river and eventually
threatened fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. Deforestation occurred,
and trees that survived remained highly vulnerable to disease, insect
attack, and stress. Flooding provided various pest species, such as
mosquitoes, with ample breeding grounds. When a fish farm flooded
on one of the river’s tributaries, the Asian black carp escaped and en-
dangered mussels and clams. Finally, ducks, which traditionally mi-
grated to the region just in time for hunting season, bypassed the re-
gion because all the natural habitats and food sources were destroyed
in the flood.
Agricultural and livestock production significantly declined as

829
1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993

well and generated almost $9 billion in losses. Minnesota farmers

burned wheat fields because they were too saturated to harvest. Corn
and soybean yields dropped by 30 percent. These losses aided farm-
ers in Indiana, Ohio, and other states that remained dry, but overall
the loss of agricultural income decimated many state economies and
forced the federal government to assume responsibility for disaster
relief.
Other record losses shattered the transportation network. Dam-
ages to the infrastructure and revenue losses totaled $2 billion and
forced many people out of work. Barges carry approximately 15 per-
cent of all freight in America, with most of this traffic taking place
along the Mississippi River. With the flood, however, over 2,900
barges and 50 towboats were stranded. Once the river reached the
flood stage in June, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers halted all
barge traffic, and by the end of July this industry was losing $3 million
per day. This also caused widespread unemployment in St. Louis as
over 3,200 dockworkers were laid off.
The railroad industry experienced similar problems; its losses
amounted to $241 million. Tracks, bridges, and signals were deci-
mated and forced companies to close or to seek alternate routes. In-

Two bridges over the Mississippi River were washed out during the 1993 flood.
(FEMA)

830
 1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993

dustry leaders such as Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific were

forced to halt operations from Wisconsin to St. Louis. Amtrak’s
Memphis-to-Chicago run had to be diverted 900 miles off course in
order to complete its journey.
States were also forced to close roads and highways. More than 100
flooded roads and 56 bridges were shut down in Wisconsin, and in
Missouri, many workers faced hours of delay in their daily commute
to work. Finally, and most threatening, bridge traffic came almost to a
halt. In early July, bridges were closed in Hannibal, Missouri, and
Keokuk, Iowa. When the Quincy, Illinois, levee broke on July 15,
there was no way to cross the river for a 250-mile area north of St.
Louis. Coupled with the inability of ferries to operate in this weather,
trucks and buses were forced to add over 200 miles to traditional
delivery and transportation routes. Damage in this sector alone
spawned over $1 billion in repair costs.
Personal Losses. Nothing, however, outweighed the personal
tragedies. More than 74,000 people lost their homes, heirlooms, and
belongings. As water levels swelled and levees ruptured, entire com-
munities were eliminated, and for many the carnage was so immense
that they decided to never return to the river’s edge. While the flood
claimed many victims, the river towns did not go down without a
fight. Communities built temporary levees with sandbags, plywood,
and concrete. As the river continued to rise, people risked their
safety to remain on the levees checking for seepage, leaks, and sand
boils. These attempts, however, were highly unsuccessful. Over 80
percent of all state and local levees failed, causing many towns to
evacuate.
Other towns were decimated beyond repair. Residents of Grafton,
Illinois, along one of the most scenic stretches of highway in America,
the Great River Road, were forced to flee as water covered the roof-
tops of many two-story homes. Roads in Alton, Illinois, were impass-
able, and water virtually obliterated many of the town’s historic land-
marks. In Valmeyer, Illinois, the community labored to save the town,
only to see it completely demolished by the flood. In fact, when the
waters receded, Valmeyer residents decided to relocate their entire
town to a bluff overlooking the river instead of rebuilding on the
banks. The entire island of Kaskaskia, Illinois, was covered with over
20 feet of water after its 52-foot-high levee broke. Most residents felt

831
1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993

confident that they could withstand this disaster, but their plight
clearly reveals the power of the Mississippi. At 9:48 a.m. on July 22,
the levee ruptured, and since the island’s bridge had previously been
flooded out, everyone was forced to flee on two Army Corps of Engi-
neers barges. Many livestock could not get out and drowned. By
2 p.m. Kaskaskia Island was entirely covered by water.
Effects on Towns. Both the devastation and personal courage
that the flood generated can be observed in the story of one commu-
nity. As the water traveled south down the river, the historic town of
St. Genevieve, Missouri, was directly threatened. The home of several
historical landmarks, including a number of two-hundred-year-old
French colonial buildings, this town was the first European settle-
ment west of the Mississippi River. It had experienced tragic floods in
the past and had responded by building an elaborate set of levees and
flood walls. It had survived the flood of 1973 when the river crested at
43 feet, and it had already begun to recover from a brief period of
flooding in April. Yet nothing in its history could prepare St. Gene-
vieve for its upcoming battle with the river.
Largely a town filled with quaint bed-and-breakfast inns, restau-
rants, and antique shops, St. Genevieve depended upon tourism for
its survival. While the flood eliminated this industry and virtually de-
stroyed the town’s economy, it did not diminish the community’s en-
ergetic struggle to avoid disaster. By the middle of July, Governor Mel
Carnahan ordered in the National Guard in an effort to save one
of America’s most valuable historic treasures. The media quickly
flocked to Missouri to cover this event, and St. Genevieve was fea-
tured on every major news network. The governor also allowed local
prison inmates to work on the levee, and volunteers flocked to Mis-
souri to fill sandbags and offer relief help. For the rest of July, the na-
tion watched as St. Genevieve fought for its survival.
The river, however, continued to rise. By the end of July, as the
water level reached 48 feet, one levee ruptured, sending more than 8
feet of water over sections of the town, damaging a number of homes
and businesses and knocking some buildings right off their founda-
tion; the people continued to fight. Volunteers worked at a feverish
pace to raise the main levee to 51 feet and staved off disaster when the
river crested at a record level 49 feet on August 6. Employees at a lo-
cal plastic plant saved their factory by volunteering their time to

832
 1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993

build a levee around their plant. Yet the flood claimed several casual-
ties. Forty-one historic buildings were damaged, tourism became
nonexistent, and all the levee work had significantly undermined the
town’s service infrastructure.
The city of St. Louis, on the other hand, was spared. Once the river
exceeded the 30-foot flood level, water started to steadily creep up
the steps of the Gateway Arch. Several barges, including one contain-
ing a Burger King restaurant, broke away and crashed into the Popu-
lar Street Bridge. Oil refineries and petroleum processing plants
threatened to dump poisonous chemicals into the river. Yet despite
springing several leaks, the 50-foot flood wall held. Cities such as Des
Moines, Iowa, and Kansas City and St. Joseph, Missouri, suffered rec-
ord losses, but St. Louis’s riverfront property remained dry.
The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993 was the most costly
flood in recorded history to date. Some experts claim it represents a
five-hundred-year-flood of unprecedented proportions due to its
length, volume, and carnage. It permanently eliminated numerous
small towns, obliterated historical treasures, and destroyed priceless
memories such as wedding pictures, souvenirs, high school year-
books, and family correspondence. While the Midwest’s struggle with
the raging river held the nation’s attention for only a few months, the
devastation it wrought will be forever remembered as one of the most
costly natural disasters in history.
Robert D. Ubriaco, Jr.

For Further Information:

“America Under Water: A Special Section.” USA Today 123, no. 2590
(July, 1994).
Changnon, Stanley, ed. The Great Flood of 1993: Causes, Impacts, and Re-
sponses. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.
Guillory, Dan. When the Waters Recede: Rescue and Recovery During the
Great Flood. Urbana, Ill.: Stormline Press, 1996.
Myers, Mary Fran, and Gilbert F. White. “The Challenge of the Missis-
sippi Floods.” In Environmental Management, edited by Lewis Owen
and Tim Unwin. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997.
National Weather Service. The Great Flood of 1993. National Disaster
Survey Report. Washington, D.C.: National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration, 1994.

833
1993: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993

Pielke, Roger A., Jr. Midwest Flood of 1993: Weather, Climate, and Societal
Impacts. Boulder, Colo.: National Center for Atmospheric Re-
search, 1996.
Stevens, William K. The Change in the Weather: People, Weather, and the
Science of Climate. New York: Delacorte Press, 1999.

834
■ 1994: The Northridge
earthquake
Earthquake

Date: January 17, 1994

Place: Southern California, in an area extending from the San
Fernando Valley to Los Angeles and Santa Monica
Magnitude: 6.7
Result: 57 dead, more than 9,000 injured, approximately $20 bil-
lion in damage

S everal different faults extend from Alaska to Mexico,

and earthquakes with magnitudes exceeding 5.0 on the
Richter scale occur rather frequently in areas of North America lo-
cated near the Pacific Ocean. However, the epicenters of most of
these serious earthquakes have not been located near heavily popu-
lated regions. The worst American earthquake was centered in New
Madrid, southeastern Missouri, on February 7, 1812. Although the
Richter scale was not developed until 1935, contemporary reports
have enabled seismologists to conclude that this earthquake had a
magnitude between 8.4 and 8.8 and caused the earth to shake over 5
million square miles. That area of the United States was not then
heavily populated, however, and only about 1,000 people died. On
March 27, 1964, the Good Friday earthquake took place in Alaska; it
was recorded at 9.2 on the Richter scale. It caused tsunamis, giant
waves which drowned 120 people in relatively sparsely populated ar-
eas of Alaska such as Valdez, Seward, Kodiak Island, and the Kenai
Peninsula. Only 131 people died as a result of this earthquake. An
earthquake of magnitude 9.2, 10.0, or 11.0 in a heavily populated
area of California, for example, would most certainly result in hun-
dreds of thousands of deaths.
Lessons from Other California Quakes. Before the North-
ridge earthquake of January 17, 1994, many earthquakes had oc-
curred in California, but the three which affected the lives of large
numbers of people were the San Francisco earthquake of April 18,

835
1994: The Northridge earthquake

Oregon Idaho

Reno Utah
Carson City

Nevada
Sacramento

San Francisco

Fresno

Las Vegas
CALIFORNIA

Bakersfield

P a c i f i c
Northridge
O c e a n Los Angeles Burbank San Bernardino
Santa Monica Riverside
Santa Ana
Long Beach
Arizona

San Diego
Mexicali

1906; the Sylmar earthquake of February 9, 1971; and the Loma

Prieta earthquake of October 17, 1989. When the 1906 San Francisco
earthquake took place, the population of San Francisco was around
400,000. This earthquake measured 8.2 or 8.3 on the Richter scale
and shook the earth over an area of approximately 300 square miles.
It caused numerous fires when gas mains burst, and approximately
700 people died.
Not many lessons were learned from the 1906 San Francisco earth-
quake. Developers and government officials did not then realize that
it was extremely dangerous to build on hilly areas and land reclaimed
from the sea by filling the water with a combination of sand, mud,

836
 1994: The Northridge earthquake

and rocks. In both the greater San Francisco and the greater Los An-
geles regions, houses, bridges, dams, and public buildings were con-
structed near faults and in areas where the ground was highly suscep-
tible to seismic shocks.
During the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, centered just to the north of
Los Angeles, 65 people died, 47 of them in the collapse of the San
Fernando Veterans Administration Hospital. This hospital, com-
pleted in 1925, was not designed to resist seismic shocks. People did
not realize that public buildings should be constructed with rein-
forced bricks or that installing additional steel rods and wrapping
more of them around existing rods made buildings more resistant to
seismic shocks.
The deaths of so many people in the San Fernando Veterans Ad-
ministration Hospital persuaded the California legislature to act
quickly. In 1972, it created a Seismic Safety Commission and in-
structed the members to make recommendations to the governor
and state legislators so that houses, public buildings, and other struc-
tures could be made more earthquake-resistant. The commission
recommended that strict building codes be implemented in Califor-
nia to improve the safety of buildings and public structures through-
out California. New building codes approved in the 1970’s required
builders to install more steel rods than had been previously required
in new construction and to use reinforced bricks. In addition, the
Seismic Safety Commission strongly recommended that existing
bridges, dams, and overhead highways be “retrofitted,” or reinforced
with additional steel rods.
The changes implemented after the Sylmar earthquake dramati-
cally decreased the number of deaths and the amount of property
damage caused by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which was re-
corded at 7.1 on the Richter scale. The result was 67 deaths, more
than 3,000 injuries, and damage well in excess of $5 billion dollars.
However, only 18 of the more than 4,000 bridges and overhead high-
ways in the region between San Francisco to the north and Santa
Cruz and Watsonville to the south had to be closed for repairs as a re-
sult of this earthquake. Had not so many bridges and highways been
retrofitted during the 1970’s and 1980’s, the loss of life and the
amount of property damage would have been much higher.
The number of deaths and the property loss caused by an earth-

837
1994: The Northridge earthquake

quake depend on a variety of factors. The epicenter and the time of

an earthquake play major roles in determining the number of fatali-
ties and the amount of damage. The epicenter of the Loma Prieta
earthquake was located 70 miles south of San Francisco and Oak-
land, in the middle of the Santa Cruz Mountains and several miles
from the cities of Watsonville and Santa Cruz. This distance signifi-
cantly decreased the effect of this earthquake on very heavily popu-
lated cities such as San Francisco and Oakland and their surrounding
communities.
The Northridge Earthquake. In 1994, the residents of South-
ern California were not as fortunate as their neighbors in Northern
California in terms of location. The Northridge earthquake on Janu-
ary 17 originated in the heavily populated San Fernando Valley of
Los Angeles, just 20 miles northwest of the downtown area. (The epi-
center was later determined to be not in Northridge but in Reseda,
an adjoining community.) The focal point of the Northridge earth-
quake was 12 miles below the surface, and it caused the ground to
shake over a wide area. Serious damage occurred as far west as
Sherman Oaks and Fillmore; north to Santa Clarita; as far east as
Glendale, Pasadena, and Los Angeles; and south to Santa Monica. It
is fortunate, however, that this earthquake struck the greater Los An-
geles area at 4:31 a.m. Had it struck during rush hour, the loss of life
on Southern California highways would have been exceedingly high.
Moreover, Southern Californians were fortunate indeed that the
magnitude was not higher than 6.7. An earthquake of the magnitude
of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake or the 1906 San Francisco earth-
quake would have killed far more people and resulted in property
damage well in excess of the $20 billion caused by the Northridge
earthquake.
When this earthquake took place, people were sleeping in their
apartments, mobile homes, and houses. Sixteen were killed when the
three-story Northridge Meadows apartment complex collapsed. The
victims all lived on the first floor, which was flattened by the weight of
the two floors above. Some of the victims died in their sleep, while
others had been jolted awake moments before the collapse but had
no means of escape. Many were crushed instantly, and some slowly
suffocated in the rubble before help could reach them. Emergency
personnel were able to rescue all those who lived on the second and

838
 1994: The Northridge earthquake

third floors, but few were pulled out alive from the first floor.
This apartment complex was made of wood frame stucco, which is
not very resistant to seismic shocks. To make matters worse, the car-
ports on the first floor were supported by a series of single steel sup-
ports, which buckled and collapsed. Many wood frame stucco apart-
ment complexes, like the Northridge Meadows apartment complex,
were built in the 1950’s and 1960’s to accommodate the large influx
of people who had moved to the greater Los Angeles region. Such
apartment complexes were much cheaper to build than buildings
constructed with reinforced bricks. It should be remembered, how-
ever, that people did not know at the time that such apartment
houses would perform so poorly during earthquakes. Building codes
in effect during the twenty years before the 1994 Northridge earth-
quake would have prohibited the construction of wood frame stucco
apartment complexes with carports supported by single steel col-
umns. Other similar apartment complexes collapsed in such widely
separated cities or communities as Fillmore, Van Nuys, Los Angeles,
and Sherman Oaks. In affected areas, apartment houses built with re-

A house is shifted from its foundation by the powerful Northridge earthquake.

(FEMA)

839
1994: The Northridge earthquake

inforced bricks and reinforced with more steel rods than had been
required before the 1970’s performed rather well during this earth-
quake and did not collapse.
Mobile home parks also suffered greatly either as a direct result of
the seismic shocks or because of the fires that occurred when under-
ground gas mains burst and ignited when the gas encountered a fire
source. Over one hundred mobile homes were destroyed by fire, but
quick and effective action by firefighters and other emergency officers
resulted in the loss of just one life, an extraordinary figure because the
fires began while almost all the residents were asleep. Fires of intensity
equal to those seen in San Francisco’s Marina District right after the
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake broke out in many different regions of
the San Fernando Valley and the rest of Los Angeles.
Damage in the San Fernando Valley. Since Northridge was
very near the epicenter of this earthquake, it is not surprising that
this community suffered such extensive damage on that Monday
morning. Part of the precast concrete parking garage for the North-
ridge Fashion Center collapsed. Both this parking garage and the ad-
joining mall suffered major structural damage. No loss of life oc-
curred, however, because there were no customers in the mall or
garage at such an early hour of the morning. Only one employee was
at the site—a man driving a steam cleaning truck in the parking ga-
rage was trapped for several hours before being rescued. Had the
earthquake taken place a few hours later, when the mall would be
open for business on the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday, thousands
might have been killed or seriously injured.
Seismic shocks also caused a similarly built precast concrete park-
ing garage on the campus of California State University, Northridge
(CSUN), to collapse, destroying the cars inside. Many other build-
ings there suffered major structural damage. However, there was no
loss of life on the campus. It is fortunate that this earthquake took
place on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day because all state and federal of-
fices were closed, as were all schools and universities. More students
would have been on campus had this disaster not occurred on the
third day of a long weekend.
Both of these two parking garages and the Northridge mall had
been constructed after the implementation of strict building codes
in the 1970’s, but these structures could not resist the seismic shocks

840
 1994: The Northridge earthquake

since they were located so close to the epicenter of this 6.7 earth-
quake.
In other areas of the San Fernando Valley, office buildings, private
homes, and public buildings constructed after 1972 performed gen-
erally quite well during the earthquake because they were in confor-
mity to codes which required that buildings be relatively resistant to
seismic shocks.
Liquefaction. A common result of earthquakes is liquefaction of
the ground. This phenomenon occurs when the ground upon which
houses and structures have been built is primarily soft material such
as sand or clay, not bedrock. When encountering seismic shocks, the
ground itself weakens and behaves like water.
This effect had been noticed in 1989 in San Francisco’s Marina
District, which had been reclaimed from the sea by filling the area
with massive amounts of mud, sand, and rocks. This combination
appeared to make the ground stable, but liquefaction caused the
collapse of many buildings and structures which had conformed to
strict building codes. The buildings themselves were sound, but the
ground on which they had been constructed was too weak to support
structures during a major earthquake.
Geologists who studied the Northridge earthquake concluded
that liquefaction caused major landslides in the Santa Susana Moun-
tains, which literally changed the shape of the terrain, and in residen-
tial areas such as Pacific Palisades where houses built on cliffs over-
looking the Pacific Ocean came loose from their foundations and
slid down hills. The ground on which these expensive homes had
been built was simply not solid enough to resist seismic shocks. In
hindsight, it becomes clear that houses should not be built on cliffs
located near faults.
The problem of liquefaction was by no means limited to mountain
ranges and houses built on palisades. Much of what now appears to
be stable ground in Southern California was, in fact, created by drain-
ing wetlands. Those who drained the wetlands thought that they were
helping people by making more land available for housing and busi-
ness, but ironically they had created a disaster waiting to happen. The
Santa Monica Freeway was built over land reclaimed from marshes.
The ground on which this heavily traveled expressway was built was
not as earthquake-resistant as the architects and contractors had

841
1994: The Northridge earthquake

The Interstate 5 and SR14 freeways collapsed during the quake. (Na-
tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

thought. A portion of the Santa Monica Freeway collapsed not be-

cause of structural deficiencies but rather because some of the
ground on which it was built liquefied during the Northridge earth-
quake and the ground itself was no longer strong enough to support
the weight of the freeway.
Other overhead highways collapsed because even well-constructed
and reinforced highways could not resist such strong shocks emanating
from such a close epicenter. Amazingly, only one motorist died as a re-
sult of the collapse of a highway. In the darkness of the early morning

842
 1994: The Northridge earthquake

and with the power out, police officer Clarence Dean could not see
that a portion of Highway 14 on which he was driving had collapsed.
He drove his motorcycle over the edge and was killed instantly. During
the Loma Prieta earthquake, 41 people were killed when a portion of
the Nimitz Expressway collapsed in Oakland; that earthquake took
place at 5:05 p.m., when many people were driving on the highways
and bridges of the San Francisco Bay area. There was very little traffic
on the highways in and around Los Angeles when the Northridge
earthquake struck at 4:31 a.m. on a national holiday. At another time
of day, hundreds if not thousands of deaths could have occurred on
the usually heavily traveled highways around Los Angeles.
Fire and Flood. Another serious problem faced by residents and
emergency personnel following the Northridge earthquake was the
extremely large numbers of fires which occurred throughout the af-
fected areas. Fires were fought over an area extending 25 miles in all
directions from the epicenter. The Los Angeles Fire Department had
to extinguish 476 earthquake-related fires on January 17, 1994, in
Los Angeles County alone, and the earthquake caused dangerous
fires in surrounding counties as well.
The community of Granada Hills experienced simultaneous
flooding and massive fires, when water mains and gas mains burst. A
gas main explosion on Balboa Boulevard in Granada Hills was the
worst fire caused by the Northridge earthquake. People living in that
area had to flee their homes and apartments in their pajamas.
firefighters brought water trucks with them because the water main
had burst and they could not obtain water from fire hydrants. An-
other earthquake-related fire began when 40,000 gallons of gasoline
spilled onto the street in Pacoima and caught fire. Emergency per-
sonnel managed to extinguish this inferno, and although there was
extensive property damage in Pacoima, no one was killed.
There was also environmental damage when a pipeline burst and
spilled 150,000 gallons of crude oil into the Santa Clara River. Toxic
specialists were able to control this potentially dangerous situation,
and the river itself did not catch fire. A chemical fire started in a sci-
ence building of the campus of CSUN, and another potentially dan-
gerous situation occurred when a train derailment resulted in the re-
lease of 8,000 gallons of sulfuric acid. In both cases, prompt response
by representatives from various local, state, and federal environmen-

843
1994: The Northridge earthquake

tal agencies permitted control of the situation and the prevention of

an environmental disaster.
It is very fortunate that the federal government, the state of Cali-
fornia, and hospital administrators learned a valuable lesson from
the 1971 Sylmar earthquake. People realized that it was necessary to
reinforce existing hospitals and to build new hospitals so that they
would not collapse during earthquakes. Considerable money was
spent between 1971 and 1994 in order to make the hospitals of
Southern California more resistant to seismic shocks. It was expected
that the hospitals might experience minor structural damage during
severe earthquakes but that they would not collapse. These newly
built or reinforced hospitals were designed to continue operating af-
ter a major earthquake. Although patients had to be evacuated from
the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda and from St.
John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, no one was killed in either hospital,
and most hospitals in the greater Los Angeles area continued normal
operations despite the Northridge earthquake. Two other hospitals,
Olive View Medical Center and Holy Cross Medical Center, both in
Sylmar, had to cease operations temporarily because of flooding and
the loss of electrical power, but neither hospital had very extensive
structural damage. The systematic reinforcement of existing hospi-
tals and the construction of new, quake-resistant ones enabled medi-
cal personnel to meet the needs of the thousands of people injured
as a result of the Northridge earthquake.
Effects. The effect of the Northridge earthquake on the greater
Los Angeles region was profound. By early 1994, California, espe-
cially Southern California, was slowly beginning to recover from an
economic downturn that had begun in the late 1980’s.
The Northridge earthquake caused at least $13 billion in damage,
but most estimates place the actual damage as close to $20 billion. In
comparison, the Loma Prieta earthquake, which took place four
years before the Northridge earthquake, caused property damage of
between $5 billion and $6 billion. Massive assistance from the federal
government helped the state of California restore the infrastructure
in and around Los Angeles, and interest-free loans from the federal
government made it possible for individuals to rebuild their homes
and for business owners to rebuild their establishments. As was the
case for the Loma Prieta earthquake, most property owners in the

844
 1994: The Northridge earthquake

Los Angeles region did not carry earthquake insurance because such
insurance is almost prohibitively expensive and comes with very high
deductibles and very limited coverage. Regular homeowner’s insur-
ance does not cover damage caused by earthquakes. Loans from the
federal government remain the only real option for most people.
Emergency officials from local, state, and federal governments;
members of the California National Guard; and volunteers from the
Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other nonprofit organizations
met the immediate needs of the survivors. Makeshift housing was cre-
ated for people whose homes and apartments had been destroyed.
Food and bottled drinking water were distributed to those who had
lost almost everything but their lives during this terrible earthquake.
The federal government gave housing vouchers to survivors so that
they could rent homes or apartments until they could return to their
former places of residence. The Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) coordinated relief operations. In the days after the
Loma Prieta earthquake, emergency personnel realized that they
had not hired enough Spanish-speaking people to assist Latino vic-
tims of that earthquake. Emergency organizations learned from this
experience, and there were enough bilingual personnel from both
government agencies and volunteer organizations to assist Spanish-
speaking survivors of the Northridge earthquake.
It took several months to repair the many highways which had suf-
fered serious damage. Traffic on the remaining highways and bridges
in Southern California was even worse than usual because travelers
could no longer use such frequently traveled highways as the Golden
State Freeway and the Santa Monica Freeway. Using financial incen-
tives, the federal government and the state of California had these
damaged highways rebuilt in record time and made sure that they
met strict building codes. By 1995, Southern California had basically
recovered economically from the property damage caused by the
Northridge earthquake, but it is difficult to assess the psychological
damage experienced by survivors who had lost their homes and their
personal possessions. Although property damage caused by the earth-
quake was very high, Southern Californians were thankful that no
more than 57 people had died during this disaster. With a different set
of circumstances, it could have been much worse.
Edmund J. Campion

845
1994: The Northridge earthquake

For Further Information:

Bolin, Robert. The Northridge Earthquake: Vulnerability and Disaster.
New York: Routledge, 1998.
Bolt, Bruce A. Earthquakes. 5th ed. New York: W. H. Freeman, 2006.
Earthquakes and Volcanoes 25, nos. 1/2 (1994).
Fradkin, Philip L. Magnitude 8. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.
Hall, John F., ed. Northridge Earthquake January 17, 1994. Preliminary
Reconnaissance Report. Oakland, Calif.: Earthquake Engineering
Research Institute, 1994.
Newsweek, January 31, 1994, 16-37.
Sieh, Kerry, and Simon Le Vay. The Earth in Turmoil: Earthquakes, Vol-
canoes, and Their Impact on Humankind. New York: W. H. Freeman,
1998.
Woods, Mary C., and W. Ray Seiple, eds. The Northridge, California,
Earthquake of 17 January 1994. Sacramento: California Depart-
ment of Conservation, Division of Mines and Geology, 1995.

846
■ 1995: The Kobe earthquake
Earthquake
Also known as: The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, the South
Hyogo Prefecture earthquake
Date: January 17, 1995
Place: Kobe, Japan
Magnitude: 7.2
Result: 5,502 dead, 37,000 injured, 200,000 buildings destroyed or
damaged, more than $50 billion in damage (the most financially
costly natural disaster to that time)

T he city of Kobe (pronounced koh-beh) lies on the

southern coast of Japan’s main island of Honshw. Situ-
ated on the Inland Sea between the islands of Honshw and Shikoku,
it is Japan’s second largest seaport and an important center for ship-
building, steel-making, and other commerce and industry. Its popu-
lation of 1.4 million is densely concentrated along the narrow coastal
plain that fronts inland mountains.
Without warning, just before dawn on the wintry morning of Janu-
ary 17, 1995, the Kobe area was struck by an earthquake that would be
the most devastating seismic event in earthquake-prone Japan since
the Tokyo quake of 1923, and the most expensive natural disaster to
that time. The epicenter was 20 miles (32 kilometers) southwest of
downtown Kobe, at 34.6 degrees north latitude and longitude 135 de-
grees east. This was about 19 miles (30 kilometers) south of the coast-
line, near the tip of Awaji Island. Slippage occurred on the Nojima
fault, including surface rupture along at least 6 miles (9 kilometers)
with displacement (slip) up to 5 feet (1.5 meters), and perhaps 6.5 feet
(2 meters) depth. The total length of the ruptured fault at depth was
19 to 31 miles (30 to 50 kilometers). The movement was lateral (strike-
slip), with the fault oriented to the northeast toward the northern por-
tion of the city of Kobe. The focus (zone of initial slip) was at a depth of
13 miles (21 kilometers) below the tip of Awaji Island.
This event has been called the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake
or the South Hyogo Prefecture earthquake, after the local province,

847
1995: The Kobe earthquake

but internationally it is more commonly known as the Kobe earth-

quake for that nearby city. While it was not a truly great earthquake in
magnitude and energy release, it had devastating consequences for
people and urban structures because of its proximity to Kobe and the
densely populated corridor along the coast, because of the orienta-
tion of the rupture directly toward the city, and because of the shal-
lowness of the rupture.
The magnitude of the main shock was 7.2 on the Richter scale,
and 6.9 on the moment-magnitude scale. It occurred at 5:46 a.m.
local time on January 17, which was 8:46 p.m. January 16, Univer-
sal time (Greenwich Mean Time). Aftershocks continued for many
months after the initial major shock. In the seven days after, there
were nineteen aftershocks having magnitudes of 4 to 5. People re-
ported that the approaching seismic waves created a rumble, then a
roar, followed by strong vibrations both vertically and horizontally.
The wrenching vibrations lasted about twenty seconds.
Aftereffects. The casualties and destruction were staggering. At
least 5,502 people were killed, mostly from immediate crushing or en-
trapment in the rubble. This figure included 28 who were killed in a
landslide at Nishinomiya, a town just east of Kobe. Early reports re-
vealed 27,000 injured, but this was later raised to 37,000. As many as
310,000 people had to be evacuated to temporary shelters, including
school gymnasiums and city offices, and over 70,000 were still in those
shelters two months later. Initially, many residents had to camp out in
the freezing January weather, having lost their homes or being afraid
of more damage and collapse from the continuing aftershocks. Ac-
cording to the international edition of Newsweek for January 30, 1995,

Everything but misery was in short supply. Many people spent the
nights in the open air because no one could provide them with shel-
ter. One moment they were well-dressed, propertied, and secure; the
next they were refugees shuffling through rubble-strewn streets fret-
ted by flame, lugging possessions on their backs, surrounded by the
corpses of loved ones and neighbors.

Approximately 200,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged.

More than 50,000 were reduced to rubble or complete collapse,
thousands of others were so damaged that they had to be torn down,

848
 1995: The Kobe earthquake

and others were consumed in the subsequent fires. While some mod-
ern structures, especially those built to an earthquake-resistant code
(with reinforcing and bracing) instituted in 1981, were relatively un-
scathed, many suffered damage. Some collapsed, tilted, or sank be-
cause of unstable or settling soil and sediment.
Superficial ground accelerations in Kobe and adjacent Nishino-
miya were measured at up to 50 to 80 percent of the acceleration of
gravity—too high for most unreinforced structures to withstand.
When materials (soft soil, alluvial deposits, landfill) are unconsoli-
dated, and especially when they are water-saturated as after rains and
in coastal regions, they lose strength and absorb energy when vi-
brated by seismic waves. Ground motions are amplified, and damage
is intensified. This behavior, termed liquefaction, causes much worse
damage than that received by structures on firm bedrock. Some of
the worst structural damage was thus along the Kobe waterfront, with
its water-saturated landfill in place for port development and cre-
ation of habitable land for the expanding population.
Portions of the elevated Hanshin four-lane expressway, Japan’s
primary east-west traffic artery through coastal Kobe, collapsed. A
section 656 yards (600 meters) long toppled over sideways to rest at a
45-degree angle. There was much ground failure, cracking, and sink-
ing along the waterfront. The elevated rail line of the high-speed
Shinkansen (“bullet”) train, constructed to be almost indestructible,
was snapped in eight places. Fortunately, the first train of the day had
not yet left for Kobe.
Particularly vulnerable to the horizontal shaking of earthquake
waves were the older two-story houses built of wood frames with heavy
tile roofs. They collapsed, trapping their occupants, and were then
burned in fires ignited by ruptured gas lines. There were over 300
fires in the area, and a dozen of them raged for twenty-four to forty-
eight hours. Fire fighting was impossible, because major utilities—
water mains, as well as electricity, gas, and telephone lines—were sev-
ered and disabled. Further, the roadways were congested with fallen
buildings, rubble, and people fleeing, checking on relatives, or en-
gaged in rescue efforts. Roads, bridges, and rail lines (for the public
transportation electric trains) were cut. With the loss of utilities,
there was no heat for the cold January weather and no water for
drinking, plumbing, or bathing.

849
1995: The Kobe earthquake

Factories and shops that did survive the earthquake had to shut
down operations because of lack of power and other utilities, toppled
equipment, and lack of employees. Despite the destruction and
abandonment of homes, stores, and shops, there was virtually no
looting or civil disturbance. The Japanese virtues of order and disci-
pline, stoicism, and civility were evident and focused the citizenry on
applying their perseverance and hard work to the tasks of survival
and reconstructing their lives.
Damage and casualties occurred along the coast through Nishino-
miya and as far as Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, which is 18 miles
(30 kilometers) from Kobe. The latter had cracked walls, broken win-
dows, and 11 earthquake-related deaths.
Japan is a nation with high cost of living and an elaborate urban in-
frastructure. Rebuilding costs, public and private, have been vari-
ously estimated from U.S. $40 to 100 billion—exceeding those of any
other natural disaster to that time. This figure does not include indi-
rect losses such as lost economic productivity and business activity.
Little of the residential losses was covered by insurance—only 9 per-
cent of Japan’s population has home earthquake insurance, and only
3 percent in Kobe, which was thought to be in a region of low seismic
risk.
Rescue and Relief. The rescue efforts and distribution of emer-
gency relief materials—food, water, fuel, and blankets—were ham-
pered by an initially slow response by local government authorities
and uncharacteristic disorganization. Assistance was also slowed by
the congested urban destruction and impassable roadways. Roads
that could have been cleared for emergency vehicles—fire, police,
and search and rescue—were not cordoned off and thus became
clogged with residents with their vehicles and possessions. The offi-
cials also delayed in calling in the national armed forces for assis-
tance.
The lack of civic preparedness for such an earthquake disaster was
surprising, considering the generally high awareness in Japan of
the prospect of such an event. Many people have an earthquake-
emergency kit of supplies in their homes. Every September 1, Disas-
ter Prevention Day, on the anniversary of the Great Kwanto Earth-
quake that hit Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923, there are nationwide
community drills on disaster response, evacuation, mock rescues,

850
 1995: The Kobe earthquake

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

The Kobe earthquake toppled part of the Hanshin expressway. (AP/

Wide World Photos)

and protective measures. Ironically, Kobe rose to become a busy port

and international trading city in 1923, when foreign merchants left
the devastated port city of Yokohama after the earthquake there. In
fact, some Japanese survivors of the 1923 earthquake had come to
Kobe to settle and were still alive for the 1995 event—thus experienc-
ing the two most devastating earthquakes in Japan in the twentieth
century.

851
1995: The Kobe earthquake

Reasons for the Scope of the Destruction. Kobe was not

well prepared, psychologically and organizationally, for a major earth-
quake. First, it was some distance back from the seismically active
zone of earthquakes associated with the oceanic trenches off Japan’s
southern and eastern margins. It was thus believed to have less poten-
tial for suffering a major shock. Second, there was a belief that mod-
ern engineering and building design had made structures less sus-
ceptible to being damaged and disabled by an earthquake. This
event, having a fairly large magnitude and being shallow and nearby,
demonstrated the continuing vulnerability of an urban infrastruc-
ture.
Third, there was an expectation, or hope, that Japan’s application
of technology to the problems of understanding earthquake mecha-
nisms, monitoring for precursory indications of an impending event,
and public warnings issued to the citizenry would give advance warn-
ing of a likely event. Unfortunately, the earthquake struck on a then-
unsuspected fault and without any obvious premonitory indicators
such as minor foreshocks. However, there were reports of odd animal
behavior near Kobe in the hours and days before the earthquake.
These included fish near shore, birds, and sea lions at the zoo. The
composition of well water used for local sake (rice wine) production
varied unusually—especially for radon, a gas whose presence in deep
groundwater has been linked to pre-earthquake straining.
Ironically, on the day the earthquake struck Kobe, the fourth
Japan-United States Workshop on Urban Earthquake Hazard Reduc-
tion was beginning down the road in Osaka. After the earthquake,
the meeting was canceled because the participants had gone to Kobe
to assess and investigate the disaster and its consequences.
Three years after the earthquake, in April, 1998, the world’s lon-
gest suspension bridge opened there. The Akashi Kaikyo bridge con-
nects the mainland west of Kobe across the Akashi Strait to Awaji Is-
land. Its total length is 15 miles (24 kilometers), and the center
suspension span is 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) long. The bridge is de-
signed to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake. Each of the tall tow-
ers supporting the center span is equipped with 20 vibration-control
pendulums to reduce bridge movement if buffeted by earthquake
waves or high winds.
This was the biggest earthquake to hit a densely populated area of

852
 1995: The Kobe earthquake

Japan since June, 1948, when a magnitude 7.1 quake struck Fukui, on
the north coast of Honshw island, killing about 5,000. With Kobe’s
death toll of 5,502, it was the deadliest seismic disaster since the Sep-
tember, 1923, Great Kwanto Earthquake of magnitude 8.3 that struck
Tokyo and Yokohama and killed 143,000, mostly in the fires that
raged after the shock.
The geological fact of life for Japan is that the beautiful island na-
tion, the world’s second-largest economic power, is constructed on
vulnerable and unstable terrain. The inexorable movement and col-
lision of tectonic plates—the Pacific and Philippine from the east,
the Eurasian from the west, and the North American from the
north—mean that faults will continue to rupture and cause earth-
quakes into the foreseeable future.
Robert S. Carmichael

For Further Information:

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Earthquake Engineering
Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the 1995 Kobe Earthquake:
January 13-16, 2005, Kobe/Awaji, Japan. Tokyo: Japan Association
for Earthquake Engineering, 2005.
Reid, T. R. “Kobe Wakes to a Nightmare.” National Geographic, July,
1995, 112-136.
Schiff, Anshel J., ed. Hyogoken-Nanbu (Kobe) Earthquake of January 17,
1995: Lifeline Performance. Reston, Va.: American Society of Civil
Engineers, 1999.
Shea, Gail Hynes, ed. Lessons Learned Over Time. Oakland, Calif.:
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, 2000.
Somerville, Paul. “Kobe Earthquake: An Urban Disaster.” EOS/Trans-
actions of American Geophysical Union 76, no. 6 (February 7, 1995):
49-51.
“Twenty Seconds of Terror.” Newsweek, January 30, 1995, 19-30.

853
■ 1995: Ebola outbreak
Epidemic
Date: April-May, 1995
Place: Kitwit, near Kinshasa, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the
Congo)
Result: 245 dead, 50 infected

G aspard Menga died on January 13, 1995, in Kitwit

General Hospital. For a week he struggled against
some unknown enemy, suffering a soaring fever, headaches, horrible
stomach pains, uncontrollable hiccups, and massive bleeding—
blood in his vomit, diarrhea, nose, and ears. Bebe, Philemond, and
Bibolo Menga all died in a similar manner within weeks of preparing
Gaspard’s body for burial, the preparation being a traditional proce-
dure that involved washing the corpse. Philemond’s nineteen-year-
old daughter Veronique also died in the same manner, having helped
care for her ailing father.
Of 23 members of the extended Menga-Nseke family, 13 perished
because of the Ebola virus between January 6 and March 9, 1995.
Four of them died in Kitwit General Hospital, which means the
deadly virus probably lurked in the hospital for more than two
months—perhaps mistaken for shigellosis, a common bacterial dis-
ease—before erupting in mid-April when surgery on an infected lab-
oratory technician named Kimfumu spread Ebola to a dozen doctors
and nurses. Kimfumu was a thirty-six-year-old laboratory technician
who was responsible for collecting blood samples from suspected
shigellosis cases. Kimfumu became ill, and his stomach was dis-
tended; the physicians thought he had an intestinal perforation
caused by typhus. They operated twice. During the first operation,
the physicians could not find any perforation, but they did remove
Kimfumu’s inflamed appendix on April 10, 1995. When Kimfumu’s
stomach remained severely distended, they operated again. This
time when they opened the abdomen, they were horrified to see
huge pools of blood—uncontrollable hemorrhaging from every or-
gan. Kimfumu died, and soon, one after another, members of the two

854
 1995: Ebola outbreak

surgical teams that had operated on the man also died. The dead in-
cluded four anesthesiologists, four doctors, two nurses, and two Ital-
ian nuns.
Symptoms and Spread of Ebola Virus. Symptoms of Ebola
hemorrhagic fever (EHF) begin four to sixteen days after infection.
Victims develop fever, chills, headaches, muscle aches, and loss of ap-
petite. As the disease progresses, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal
pain, sore throat, and chest pain can occur. The blood fails to clot,
and patients may bleed from infection sites, as well as into the gastro-
intestinal tract, skin, and internal organs.
Ebola virus is spread through close personal contact with a person
who is very ill with the disease. In previous outbreaks, person-to-
person spread frequently occurred among hospital care workers or
family members who were caring for an infected person. Transmis-
sion of the virus also has occurred as a result of hypodermic needles
being reused in the treatment of patients. Reusing needles is a com-
mon practice in developing countries, such as Zaire and Sudan,
where the health care system is underfinanced. “The major means of
transmission appears to be close and unprotected patient contact or
preparation of the dead for burial,” said a World Health Organiza-
tion (WHO) statement.
Ebola virus can also be spread from person to person through sex-
ual contact. Close personal contact with persons who are infected but
show no signs of active disease is very unlikely to result in infection.
Patients who have recovered from an illness caused by Ebola virus do
not pose a serious risk for spreading the infection. However, the virus
may be present in the genital secretions of such persons for a brief
period after their recovery, and therefore it is possible they can
spread the virus through sexual contact.
Epidemic Site and Sanitary Conditions. Kitwit, a community
of between 250,000 and 400,000 people, is located about 260 miles
(400 kilometers) northeast of Kinshasa, the capitol of Zaire, now the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kitwit, really no more than a
huge village without running water, a sewage system, or electricity, be-
came filled with fear. As of May 20, 1995, Ebola had infected 155 peo-
ple and killed 97. Most of the fear in Kitwit was directed at the hospi-
tal, where the gruesome illness with mysterious origins spread slowly,
doctors believed, unnoticed for months until magnified by non-

855
1995: Ebola outbreak

sterile practices. These practices and conditions, including a lack of

adequate medical supplies and the frequent reuse of needles and sy-
ringes, played a major role in the spread of disease. The outbreak was
quickly controlled when appropriate medical supplies and equip-
ment were made available and quarantine procedures were used.
The same was true for earlier outbreaks of Ebola.
Birth of the Epidemic. The Mengas’ experience, like the other
chains of transmission, seem to show that Ebola initially simmered in
Kitwit, spreading within families for two to three months. It exploded
into an epidemic in mid-April of 1995 in the hospital. In all chains of
transmission the virus seems to have hit hardest in the first rounds of
spreading, waning in transmissibility and virulence over time, eventu-
ally burning itself out.
Early in the epidemic a nurse at the Mosango Mission Hospital be-
came infected tending a patient who had fled Kitwit, a ninety-minute
drive from Mosango. The nurse died after particularly acute hemor-
rhaging. The terrified staff disinfected and scrubbed the room,

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

Hospital workers transport the body of an Italian nun who died after contracting the
Ebola virus in Zaire. (AP/Wide World Photos)

856
 1995: Ebola outbreak

burned the bed linens, and sealed the chamber for two weeks. Fif-
teen days after the nurse died, a young woman with an unrelated
problem was placed in the room, Mosango physicians said. She con-
tracted Ebola and died. Her only contact with the virus, scientists
said, was the mattress upon which she had lain.
Physicians in Kitwit General Hospital were in a state of panic.
Their patients were dying despite antibiotic therapy, and the medical
staff and nuns were falling victim to the mysterious ailment as well. A
tentative diagnosis of shigellosis—a bacterial disease that normally
had a 30 percent fatality rate but should have been curable with anti-
biotics—was assigned to the crisis. The fatality rate from Ebola
proved to be in the vicinity of 90 percent.
Aid from Belgium and Elsewhere. A Zairean doctor who ar-
rived in Kitwit in mid-April radioed an urgent message to a contact in
Brussels requesting ciproflaxin, one of the most powerful and expen-
sive antibiotics on the market. The doctor also mentioned in his mes-
sage to Brussels that the cases in Kitwit reminded him of an epidemic
he had seen in 1976 in Yambuktu, Zaire, the country’s first Ebola out-
break. Money was not available for the antibiotic, but the contact
passed the message on to Antwerp’s Institute of Tropical Medicine.
The word Ebola stood out for an official of the Institute of Tropical
Medicine who had been involved in the 1976 Ebola outbreak in
Zaire. He told the Brussels contact to tell the Zairean doctor to send
blood and tissue samples immediately. The samples arrived in Ant-
werp on May 6, 1995, but were quickly sent to the American Centers
for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. If it was Ebola, the official at
the Institute of Tropical Medicine and officials from the World
Health Organization (WHO) agreed, then it should be handled in
the most secure facility available. Physicians from both the CDC and
the WHO were dispatched to Kitwit, and a physician and a team of
two volunteers arrived from Médecins sans Frontières (MSF, or Doc-
tors Without Borders).
Physicians and Volunteers Arrive. On May 10, 1995, the
CDC physician, an American epidemiologist, arrived at the Kitwit
General Hospital and surveyed the situation. He recalled that
“[t]here was blood everywhere. Blood on the mattresses, the floors,
the walls. Vomit, diarrhea . . . wards were full of Ebola cases. [Non-
Ebola] patients and their families were milling around, wandering in

857
1995: Ebola outbreak

and out. There was lots of exposure.” The women mourners sat on a
slab of concrete walkway that led from the wards, which were full of
Ebola patients, to the morgue. Family after family sat on the walkway,
rocking and wailing near the morgue.
Dr. Barbara Kierstein from MSF later said that the hospital was in a
sorry state and the patients were in a sorrier state. The Kitwit General
Hospital staff had no protection, and they had not been paid for risk-
ing their lives. So Kierstein and her team decided to focus on hospital
sanitation and establishment of an isolation ward. On Thursday, May
11, 1995, Kierstein and her team began hooking up the hospital’s an-
cient water system but gave up after realizing that all the pipes were
blocked and rusted. Instead, they set up a plastic rainwater collection
and filtration system. A thin, plastic wall was set up, isolating a ward
for Ebola patients. The doctors dispensed gloves and masks to the
hospital staff.
Supplies and the End of Quarantine. On Saturday, May 13,
1995, Kierstein decided that additional help was needed, and she and
her team spent Saturday morning listing essential supplies, using a sat-
ellite telephone to pass the list to Brussels. The request was to send res-
pirator masks, latex gloves, protective gowns, disinfectant, hospital lin-
ens and plastic mattress covers, plastic aprons, basic cleaning supplies,
water pumps and filters, galoshes, and tents. Kierstein commented
that she had seen many African countries, and, even compared to oth-
ers, the conditions at Kitwit General Hospital were shocking. She fur-
ther stated that the only thing the hospital staff had to work with was
their brains. For twenty-six days, however, the brains and dedication of
the on-site rescue teams—as well as the numerous Zairean volunteers
and medical workers—continued to be their main weapon. The sup-
plies did not begin arriving in suitable amounts until May 27, 1995.
Meanwhile, Zairean officials had quarantined the Kitwit area. The
quarantine was lifted on Sunday, May 21, 1995, so as to allow long-
awaited food deliveries to reach Kinshasa. The road between Kitwit
and Kinshasa carries much of the capital’s food, grown in the fertile
Bandundu region where Kitwit is located. Compulsory health checks
continued on road travelers from Kitwit to Kinshasa until the number
of recorded deaths remained static at 245. The road health checks
ceased on Tuesday, June 6, 1995. The final count was 245 deaths re-
corded out of 315 people known to have been infected.

858
 1995: Ebola outbreak

Even as a long-term investigation strategy was being prepared that

would reveal the entire history of Kitwit’s epidemic, officials in Zaire
said that bloody diarrhea had broken out elsewhere in Kitwit’s prov-
ince of Bandundu. In an area 470 miles north of Kitwit, in a town
called Tendjuna, 25 people had died from the ailment. Experts ini-
tially assigned a diagnosis of shigellosis to the illness.
Researchers have begun to get a handle on the Ebola virus’s high
pathogenicity. Research work at the University of Michigan Medical
Center in Ann Arbor reports results suggesting that the virus uses
different versions of the same glycoprotein—a protein with sugar
groups attached—to wage a two-pronged attack on the body. One
glycoprotein, secreted by the virus, seems to paralyze the immune sys-
tem response that should fight it off, while the other, which stays
bound to Ebola, homes in on the endothelial cells lining the interior
of blood vessels, helping the virus to infect and damage them.
It seems that as Ebola invades and subverts the cells’ genetic ma-
chinery to make more of itself, it also damages the endothelial cells,
making blood vessels leaky and weak. The patient first bleeds and
then goes into shock as failing blood pressure leaves the circulatory
systems unable to pump blood to vital organs. Long before their im-
mune systems can mount an antibody response—a process that can
take weeks—most Ebola victims bleed to death. If confirmed in in-
fected animals and humans, the findings suggest that these glyco-
proteins could be targets for anti-Ebola vaccines as well as for drugs
that treat Ebola infections. A vaccine has been developed that works
in monkeys, but human trials have not yet proved successful.
Dana P. McDermott

For Further Information:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Outbreak of Ebola Viral
Hemorrhagic Fever—Zaire, 1995.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Re-
port 44 (1995): 381-382.
_______. “Update: Outbreak of Ebola Viral Hemorrhagic Fever—
Zaire, 1995.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 44 (1995): 399.
Cowley, Geoffrey. “Outbreak of Fear.” Newsweek 125 (May 22, 1995):
48.
“Ebola’s Lethal Secrets.” Discovery Magazine 19, no. 1 (July 1, 1998):
24.

859
1995: Ebola outbreak

Klenk, Hans-Dieter, ed. Marburg and Ebola Viruses. New York: Springer,
1999.
Murphy, Frederick A., and Clarence J. Peters. “Ebola Virus: Where
Does It Come from and Where Is It Going?” In Emerging Infections,
edited by Richard M. Krause. San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press,
1998.
Regis, Ed. Virus Ground Zero: Stalking the Killer Viruses with the Centers for
Disease Control. New York: Pocket Books, 1996.
Smith, Tara C. Ebola. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2006.

860
■ 1995: Chicago heat wave
Heat wave
Date: July 12-17, 1995
Place: Midwest and Northeast, especially Chicago and Milwaukee
Temperature: Up to 106 degrees Fahrenheit
Result: More than 1,000 dead (465 in Chicago, 129 in Milwaukee)

I n July of 1995 an unusually strong upper level ridge of

high pressure slowly moved across the Great Plains and
came into contact with exceptionally humid conditions at ground
level. The slow progression of the air mass created good opportuni-
ties for daily heating and the accumulation of humidity. Working to-
gether, these two factors produced extraordinarily hot and humid
weather in the Midwest and on the East Coast. When this air mass
came into contact with the urban sprawl of Chicago, Milwaukee, and
other cities, the results became particularly deadly. The concrete and
steel buildings trapped the heat, while the lack of a breeze made for
stifling conditions. Further, even the daily low temperatures re-
mained unusually high, preventing nighttime cooling from helping
to dissipate the daytime heat buildup.
The Temperatures Climb. Temperatures across the Midwest
and East Coast soared during the record-breaking event. The Na-
tional Weather Service (NWS) issued the first heat advisory for Chi-
cago on July 12, 1995. By July 13 Chicago experienced temperatures
of 104 degrees Fahrenheit at O’Hare airport and 106 degrees Fahr-
enheit at Midway. Both represented the highest daily temperatures
ever recorded at those locations up to that point, and the city wit-
nessed the second-highest summer temperatures in its history to that
date, falling just one tenth of a percentage point short of the overall
record. Taking into account the Heat Index, which reached 119 de-
grees Fahrenheit on July 12 and continued to climb, it became the
worst summer on record for Chicago. The intense heat caused a sec-
tion of Interstate 57 in downtown Chicago to buckle, closing an inter-
section for repairs.
Milwaukee also witnessed extreme temperatures, experiencing a

861
1995: Chicago heat wave

high of 101 degrees Fahrenheit on July 14. As the air mass moved
eastward, other cities reported record-breaking heat. Philadelphia
hit 103 degrees Fahrenheit on July 15, while New York City hit 102 de-
grees the same day. Baltimore had a city record of 102 degrees, and
Danbury, Connecticut, also set a city record with 106 degrees. Wash-
ington, D.C., had to close the Washington Monument for several days
to prevent heat exhaustion in tourists.
The Death Toll. As the temperatures soared, people suffered
physically from the heat, and the first injuries and deaths were soon
reported. Because the heat came early in the summer, before peo-
ple’s bodies became acclimated to hotter temperatures, residents, es-
pecially of northern locations, suffered more from the heat, with
some succumbing to death. Heat caused the heart to pump blood
more forcefully, because of the expansion of blood vessels to cool the
body. Hearts needed time to become fully acclimated to the extra ex-
ertion. When the heat wave happened suddenly, as in 1995, heart at-
tacks and other physical distress resulted.
Dr. Edmund Donoghue, the Cook County medical examiner dur-
ing the summer of 1995, established three specific criteria for deter-
mining if a fatality resulted at least in part from the heat. Donoghue
maintained a death was attributable to the heat if one of the follow-
ing factors was indicated at the time of death. If the body tempera-
ture had risen to at least 105 degrees at or shortly after the time of
death, if there was evidence of elevated temperatures at the location
where the victim was discovered, or if the victim was seen alive for the
last time at the height of the heat wave and subsequently found in a
decomposed state, then Donoghue called the death heat-inspired.
His findings were later adopted by the NWS to establish the death toll
for the heat wave of 1995.
Although people died in other locations, such as the 11 who died
in New York City and the 21 in Philadelphia, the worst fatalities oc-
curred in Chicago and Milwaukee. In Chicago, 435 people officially
died as a result of the heat wave, with 162 being recorded on July 15
alone. Others were rushed to local hospitals. At one point, 18 hospi-
tals in Chicago placed their emergency rooms on bypass status, as
they were unable to handle any more patients because of the over-
whelming numbers of victims from the heat wave. The Cook County
coroner’s office filled the 222-bay morgue and needed to use 7 refrig-

862
 1995: Chicago heat wave

erated tractor trailers to store additional corpses awaiting autopsies.

Everyone at the morgue worked overtime to clear the backlog of
heat-related cases. In Milwaukee, 129 people officially died as a result
of the event. Bodies were directed to local funeral homes when the
medical examiner’s office became full. Many of the dead had body
temperatures in the range of 107-108 degrees. Emergency rooms in
Milwaukee also experienced an upsurge in patients, with some clos-
ing for short periods of time because of the caseload.
Two of the dead were three-year-old boys left inside a locked van
for an hour when their caregiver forgot about them when she took
several other children into a mall on a field trip. Most of the people
who died from the heat were senior citizens, especially those living
alone or who had apartments on the second floor and higher. They
often died with their windows closed and doors locked. A. D. and
Willie May Gross of Chicago, both in their sixties, died together in
their home, which did not have air-conditioning. Rescuers found the
doors and windows bolted and shut, with the temperature inside the
house at 125 degrees Fahrenheit. The Chicago Housing Authority
never placed enough air-conditioning units into the public housing
projects, even though managers asked for units in recreation rooms
and common areas to provide a cool area for residents. Many resi-
dents, especially of public housing, feared the crime outside their
apartments more than the heat and refused to open doors and win-
dows to allow air circulation. The homes of many of the dead were in
the range of 100 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Other victims declined assistance even when it was offered to
them. One eighty-seven-year-old casualty, Mabel Swanson, could have
gone to stay at a neighbor’s air-conditioned apartment in Chicago,
but she preferred to stay in her own home. She died during the night
from the heat and was discovered by a neighbor the next morning.
Chicago established designated cooling stations where residents
could enjoy air-conditioning and get relief from the oppressive con-
ditions, but these centers went largely underused during the crisis.
One center had room for 200 people but was empty during the heat
of the day.
Most of the dead lacked air-conditioning in their homes and
apartments and used fans instead. In Kansas City, Missouri, which
also saw its share of deaths, Arthur Castlebery died at home with

863
1995: Chicago heat wave

three fans blowing on him. When the mercury rose above 90 degrees
and the humidity was above 35 percent, fans acted like a convection
oven, heating the room further by circulating the hot air, rather than
cooling it off. The temperature in the room was 110 degrees when
Castlebery’s body was discovered.
Other Effects. Commonwealth Edison Company, the local
electric company for Chicago, demonstrated an inability to handle
the increased demand for electricity during the heat wave. Several
substations caught fire or otherwise failed, and the company resorted
to rolling blackouts to ration the power throughout the city without
notifying consumers in advance. During these rolling blackouts, resi-
dents experienced two- to four-hour power outages over the course
of the day. In other instances, substations failed entirely, leaving tens
of thousands of residents without electricity for up to forty-eight
hours. This critical situation contributed to some fatalities. Although
eighty-nine-year-old Florentine Aquino had air-conditioning in his
home, a rolling blackout halted his electric service. His wife awoke to
discover him lying dead next to her in their bed the next morning.
After the event, lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against Common-
wealth Edison because of the outages.
Most of the victims of the heat wave suffered from diseases exacer-
bated by the high temperatures. Diabetes, pulmonary heart disease,
upper respiratory problems, and high blood pressure contributed to
their deaths. Others had more unique problems. Eight-year-old Kyle
Garcia from Kenosha, Wisconsin, died from dehydration. Garcia was
in a full body cast, covering his chest to his feet, and his body could
not process liquids, making it unable to prevent death. Mental illness
also contributed to a number of deaths. An antipsychotic medication
given to schizophrenics prevented perspiration and impaired their
ability to dissipate heat, causing heat exhaustion and death for some.
Twelve of the dead in Milwaukee took these psychotropic or mind-
altering medications, with fatal consequences.
The heat wave of 1995 initiated a spate of research into deaths
caused by heat exhaustion and related causes. The NWS conducted a
study for later emergency disaster procedures in the event of future
heat waves. It found that, although heat waves annually killed more
Americans than hurricanes, tornadoes, or blizzards, the general pub-
lic lacked awareness of the deadly potential. In particular, the NWS

864
 1995: Chicago heat wave

implemented a series of policies, such as better warning systems and

the establishment of cooling stations, to handle heat waves and to
prevent the high casualty rate of the summer of 1995.
James B. Seymour, Jr.

For Further Information:

Changnon, S. A., K. E. Kunkel, and B. C. Reinke. “Impacts and Re-
sponses to the 1995 Heat Wave: A Call to Action.” Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society 77, no. 7 (1996): 1497-1506.
Klinenberg, Eric. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Kunkel, K. E., S. A. Changnon, B. C. Reinke, and R. W. Arritt. “The
July, 1995, Heat Wave in the Midwest: A Climatic Perspective and
Critical Weather Factors.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Soci-
ety 77, no. 7 (1996): 1507-1518.
U.S. Department of Commerce. Natural Disaster Survey Report, July,
1995, Heat Wave. Silver Springs, Md.: National Weather Service,
1995.

865
■ 1996: The Mount Everest Disaster
Blizzard
Date: May 10-11, 1996
Place: Mount Everest, Nepal
Wind Speed: 45 to 80 miles per hour
Temperature: With wind-chill factor, minus 94 to minus 148 de-
grees Fahrenheit
Result: 9 dead, 4 injured with severe frostbite

E xtremes attract adventurers who seek to fly the fastest,

descend the deepest, or climb the highest. Mount Ever-
est, the Earth’s highest peak at 29,108 feet, has long been considered
the crowning goal for many mountaineers. Because of its location in
the Himalayas between Tibet (where its name is Jomolungma) and
Nepal (where its name is Sagarmatha), Mount Everest is often subject
to extreme and unpredictable weather. The unexpected arrival of a
savage blizzard on the high slopes of Everest during the spring of
1996, when the mountain was crowded with climbers, played an im-
portant role in the greatest tragedy in this mountain’s long history of
calamities.
By 1996, in the seventy-five years since the first attempt to climb
Everest, more than 140 climbers had died. The largest single cause of
death was avalanches, with falls into crevasses and from the mountain
a distant second. Until the 1996 tragedy, there had been only 13
weather-related deaths. Furthermore, throughout most of the his-
tory of mountaineering on Everest, almost all deaths were of profes-
sional or highly skilled climbers. After 1985, however, climbing high
mountains became a business, and populating the slopes of this dan-
gerous mountain with amateurs of varying abilities was another fac-
tor that figured into the disastrous loss of life in 1996.
The leaders of the commercial companies that developed to meet
the need of those who could pay $65,000 to reach the top of the world
knew that their success depended on the vagaries of Everest’s weather,
and so clients were brought to the mountain in the spring to take ad-
vantage of the brief period of good weather between the decline of

866
 1996: The Mount Everest Disaster

H
I CHINA
M
A
L Mount Everest
A
NEPAL Y A S
Kathmandu BHUTAN

INDIA

BANGLADESH

winter and the arrival of the summer monsoons. It was during this
time period that, in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide,
Tenzing Norgay, became the first people to reach the summit; their
route, up the Khumbu Icefall and Glacier through the West Cwm and
up the Southeast Ridge, became the standard way to the top. Because
of the brief weather window, Everest’s base camp at 17,600 feet was
crowded with more than four hundred people in the spring of 1996.
The Everest Expeditions. Some of these people had specific
goals other than merely climbing Everest. For example, the film di-
rector David Breashears was shooting a $5.5 million giant-screen
(IMAX) film about climbing the mountain. Others were part of com-
mercial expeditions. For example, Rob Hall, who, like Hillary, was a
skilled New Zealand climber, led the Adventure Consultants Guided
Expedition. Among his clients was Jon Krakauer, an American jour-
nalist who had been assigned by Outside magazine to research an arti-
cle on commercial climbing. Hall had already guided a record 39
climbers to the summit, but he was receiving competition from an
American company, Mountain Madness Guided Expedition, led by
Scott Fischer. Fischer was assisted by the guides Anatoli Boukreev, a
Russian, and Neal Beidleman, an American. Among Fischer’s clients
was the millionaire socialite and journalist Sandy Hill Pittman, who
was making daily reports of his trip on the World Wide Web.
As the clients acclimatized to the altitude, they also adapted to
each other. Variations in economic backgrounds, states of health,
and climbing ability did not make such adaptation easy. Nevertheless,

867
1996: The Mount Everest Disaster

Hall and Fischer guided their groups through the Khumbu Icefall, a
river of glacial ice, to Camp 1, at 20,000 feet. Later, their clients
trekked 4 miles and 1,700 vertical feet from Camp 1 to Camp 2, in the
West Cwm, the earth’s highest box canyon. While more than 100
climbers were going through the Icefall and up the West Cwm, a
storm hit on April 21, with winds of over 60 miles per hour. Another
storm arrived on April 23, with very strong winds pummeling the up-
per slopes, delaying the establishment of Camp 3 (at 24,000 feet) and
Camp 4 (at 26,000 feet). When the weather stabilized, toward the end
of April, oxygen cylinders and other materials necessary for the sum-
mit climbs were carried to the higher camps.
By the first week in May, most clients had completed their acclima-
tization at the higher camps and were preparing for a summit bid.
The IMAX climbers, who were higher on the mountain than the Hall
and Fischer groups, decided against their attempt to reach the sum-
mit on May 9 because of a violent windstorm, which also hampered
Sherpas setting up tents in the South Col (the plateau where Camp 4
was located).
The Ascent to the Summit. Despite the storm, Hall and Fischer
brought their guides and clients to Camp 4 for a possible ascent on
Friday, May 10. When the climbers awoke late Thursday night, the
winds had died down, and they left the Col around midnight. Mount
Everest above the South Col is called the Death Zone because the
combination of the lack of oxygen, low temperatures, and high winds
can quickly amplify small mistakes into tragedies. Each climber car-
ried two oxygen cylinders (a third was available on the South Summit
in a cache stocked by the Sherpas). Within two or three hours after
leaving the South Col, Fischer’s Mountain Madness climbers began
to overtake Hall’s group, and by 4 a.m. both groups were commin-
gled. Though the groups were mixed, the philosophies of their lead-
ers differed. For example, Hall taught his clients the Two O’Clock
Turnaround Rule: If you are not on the summit by 2 p.m., go back
down the mountain, no matter how close you are to the top.
Because there were so many climbers on the Southeast Ridge, the
pace was slow and traffic jams occurred, such as at the Hillary Step, a
steeply sloped tower of rock not far from the summit. Guides rigged
ropes up this 40-foot cliff to help their clients conquer Everest’s final
obstacle. Boukreev, Fischer’s chief guide, reached the summit several

868
 1996: The Mount Everest Disaster

minutes after 1 p.m. Krakauer arrived about five minutes later. Dur-
ing the next few hours clients and guides from both Hall’s and
Fischer’s groups reached the summit, along with others, and the
weather, though very cold, did not appear threatening. Most climb-
ers were worried about their dwindling supplies of oxygen, not about
a storm. However, some guides noticed that clouds were filling the
valleys below, obscuring all but the highest peaks. Unknown to the
climbers, these innocent-looking puffs were actually the tops of
thunderheads gradually moving up the mountain’s sides.
Rob Hall reached the top at 2:30 p.m., thus breaking his own Two
O’Clock Turnaround Rule. More ominously, Scott Fischer did not
reach the summit until 3:40 p.m., and others arrived still later. In fact,
Hall had left the summit to help his client Doug Hansen up the final
section of the Southeast Ridge. Why Hall encouraged Hansen to con-
tinue his ascent so late in the day is one of the perplexing questions of
the Everest tragedy. In 1995 Hall had turned Hansen back when he
was close to the summit, and it is reasonable to speculate that it would
have been particularly difficult for Hall to deny Hansen the summit a
second time. After Hansen reached the top, Hall and his client began
their descent and quickly ran into trouble. Beginning at 4:30, Hall re-
peatedly sent radio messages that he and Hansen were in trouble
high on the summit ridge and urgently needed oxygen. Fischer, too,
was in difficulty. On the summit he had told a Sherpa that he was not
feeling well, and he experienced debilitating problems during his de-
scent.
The Blizzard Strikes. The situation of the many climbers de-
scending the Southeast Ridge was made even more difficult by the
storm clouds which, by 5:15, had blanketed Everest’s heights. Be-
tween 6:30 and 6:45 p.m., as dim daylight turned to darkness, Kra-
kauer stumbled into Camp 4. By this time the storm was a full-blown
blizzard, and visibility had dropped to 20 feet. Ice and snow particles
carried by 80-mile-per-hour gusts froze exposed flesh. Despite these
conditions, Hall had managed to get Hansen down to the top of the
Hillary Step, but their progress then stopped. Fischer, too, was
stranded on the ridge, and several of the clients of Hall and Fischer
were lost in the snow and ice as they tried to descend to Camp 4 (one
later compared their plight to trying to find a path in a gigantic milk
bottle).

869
1996: The Mount Everest Disaster

When the Mountain Madness clients did not return to Camp 4 by

6 p.m., Boukreev decided to discover their whereabouts, but the high
winds and whiteout conditions made his search fruitless, and he was
forced to return to camp. Meanwhile, Beidleman, Boukreev’s fellow
guide, had managed to get his group off the ridge and onto the
broad expanse of the South Col, but they were on its eastern edge, far
from the tents of Camp 4 about 330 yards to the west (a fifteen-
minute walk in good weather). The storm was so intense that they
could not see the lights of Camp 4, and only a few people in their
group had headlamps with functioning batteries. Since their oxygen
supplies had been depleted, they were all at the point of physical col-
lapse. Some in Beidleman’s group were Hall’s clients (Yasuko Namba
and Beck Weathers), while others were part of Fischer’s group (Tim
Madsen, Charlotte Fox, and Sandy Pittman). Failing to find Camp 4,
the group decided to huddle and wait for the storm to subside.
Fearing they would all die, Beidleman later gathered a small
group of the ambulatory climbers to make another attempt to find
their camp. Wobbling into the wind, which occasionally knocked
them down, they eventually stumbled into Camp 4 sometime before
midnight. They told Boukreev that those left behind needed help.
After his attempts to find volunteers for a rescue team were frus-
trated, Boukreev, on his own, made two long forays into the furious
storm to bring the stranded climbers to safety. He eventually saw the
faint glow of Madsen’s headlamp and was thus able to save his life,
along with those of Fox and Pittman. (He assumed that Namba was
dead, and he did not come across Weathers.)
During the night, Rob Hall, still on the ridge, was in radio contact
with base camp. Without Hansen, who was presumed dead, Hall had
managed to descend to the South Summit. At 5 a.m. on Saturday, May
11, base camp was able to arrange a telephone call from Hall to his
wife in New Zealand. In this conversation and a later one at 6:20, she
tried to get her husband to move down the mountain, but his legs
were frozen, and he was too weak.
With daylight, there was a break in the storm, and a team was orga-
nized to locate the bodies of Beck Weathers and Yasuko Namba. The
team found Namba partially buried in snow and, surprisingly, still
breathing although judged to be near death. Namba did die, but
Weathers was later able to rescue himself by walking directly into the

870
 1996: The Mount Everest Disaster

wind and stumbling into Camp 4. He was bundled into two sleeping
bags and given oxygen.
Another Storm. The gale that struck on Saturday evening was
even more powerful than the one that had lashed the Col the night
before. The storm collapsed Weathers’s tent and blew his sleeping
bags off him. With his badly frostbitten hands, he was unable to pull
the bags back over his body. The storm was so intense that his an-
guished cries were unheard, and he had to suffer, unprotected,
through yet another Everest blizzard. When the murderous winds
abated and his condition became known to the other climbers, he
was injected with dexamethasone, which helped him recover enough
to stand and walk with assistance. He somehow managed to get to a
lower camp, where a helicopter evacuated him to Kathmandu.
When the storm finally ended, the remaining members of Hall’s
and Fischer’s groups descended the mountain, but the bodies of Rob
Hall and Scott Fischer were left where they had died. By the time
Krakauer reached base camp, 9 climbers from four expeditions were
dead. Because all this drama on the high slopes of Everest had been
closely followed by the world media, the tragedy generated great in-
terest. Jon Krakauer’s account of what happened appeared in the
September, 1996, issue of Outside and in his book, Into Thin Air, which
was published in April of 1997 and began its long run on the best-
seller charts. In his book, Krakauer criticized some of Boukreev’s de-
cisions in the Death Zone. Boukreev defended his actions in his own
book, The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest, published in 1997. His
views were given some sanction when, on December 6, 1997, the
American Alpine Club honored him with their David A. Sowles Me-
morial Award for his courageous rescue of three climbers trapped in
a storm on the South Col of Mount Everest. The controversy between
Krakauer and Boukreev came to an end when Boukreev was killed in
an avalanche on the slopes of Annapurna on Christmas Day of 1997.
Robert J. Paradowski

For Further Information:

Boukreev, Anatoli, and G. Weston DeWalt. The Climb: Tragic Ambitions
on Everest. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Coburn, Broughton. Everest: Mountain Without Mercy. Washington,
D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1997.

871
1996: The Mount Everest Disaster

Groom, Michael. Sheer Will. Milsons Point, New South Wales, Austra-
lia: Random House, 1997.
Jenkins, Steve. The Top of the World: Clmbing Mount Everest. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Di-
saster. New York: Villard, 1997.

872
■ 1997: The Jarrell tornado
Tornado
Date: May 27, 1997
Place: Jarrell, Texas
Classification: F5
Result: 27 dead, 8 injured, 44 homes damaged or destroyed

D uring the last week of May, 1997, a cold front pushed

through the central plains of Oklahoma and Kansas.
The front caused severe thunderstorms and caught the attention of
Dr. Charles Doswell, a research meteorologist at the National Severe
Storms Laboratory (NSSL) in Norman, Oklahoma. Dr. Doswell rec-
ognized that the higher humidity near the Gulf of Mexico would add
strength to the storms as the front plunged into Texas. In order to fol-
low atmospheric developments, Doswell drove to the Fort Worth Na-
tional Weather Service office on the morning of May 27.
As expected, the morning was typical of spring. It started with
clear skies, high humidity, and rapidly warming temperatures. Ini-
tially, cooler temperatures aloft slowed vertical development of storm
clouds. In the early afternoon, however, the sky grew darker near
Waco, Texas, as a single towering cumulus erupted through the up-
per layers of the atmosphere to form a supercell, the strongest type of
thunderstorm. Doswell’s hunch of pending trouble proved correct as
the cold front plowed into the rich humidity from the Gulf of Mex-
ico. This collision of energetic air masses would sustain this individ-
ual supercell for the next six hours. However, instead of moving in
the typical northeasterly direction, this supercell plunged southward,
growing in strength along the intersection between the cold front
and the warm moist air to the south. That uncommon southerly
movement would cause one of the most devastating tornado effects
ever recorded. Before the day was over, this supercell spawned 22 tor-
nadoes, killing 30 in all.
The first of the tornadoes formed 10 miles south of Waco at 1:37
p.m. It was followed by a continuous succession of tornadoes forming
one after another. Each tornado in turn traced a southerly course,

873
1997: The Jarrell tornado
Missouri
Enid
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Santa Fe
Arkansas
Oklahoma City
Amarillo
Albuquerque

New Mexico
Wichita Falls
Lubbock

Fort Worth
Dallas
Abilene Shreveport
Midland

Lo
uis
El Paso Odessa TEXAS

ian
Waco
San Angelo

a
Jarrell

Austin Beaumont
Houston Port
Arthur
San Antonio
Galveston
Victoria

Chihuahua

Mexico Corpus Christi

Laredo

Gulf of

McAllen Mexico
Reynosa
Brownsville
Matamoros
Monterrey
Saltillo

following the leisurely pace of the parent supercell. These tornadoes

achieved F2-level strength, with winds approaching 150 miles per
hour. One of the tornadoes in this series tracked across Lake Belton,
briefly assuming the characteristics of a waterspout. A flotilla of cabin
cruisers, ski boats, and party barges disappeared below the surface as
this tornado sank the largest marina on the lake.
Word of the approaching tornadic thunderstorm had circulated
from numerous radio and television sources during the first two
hours of tornadic activity. Initially, only a small number of people
were at risk. Forming just west of Interstate 35, these tornadoes spi-
raled through rural areas without nearing any population centers. By
3:50 p.m., a new tornado was just forming 3 miles north of Jarrell,
Texas. Its forward motion was very slow, and many Jarrell residents,

874
 1997: The Jarrell tornado

who had been watching the tornado for several minutes, escaped by
driving south on the interstate at its approach. Unfortunately, school
had let out for the day twenty minutes earlier. Many of the younger
students were just reaching home either on foot or by bicycle. Aware
of the danger, some of these students accompanied their friends to
the new subdivision just west of town. In some instances, a few parents
left work early to be with their children at home.
The Initial Touchdown. The initial touchdown point was north
of Jarrell in a cotton field. Green with maturing cotton plants, the 30-
acre field was instantly defoliated. Although relatively weak, the wind
force scoured away several acres of topsoil, exposing the limestone
base a foot below the original surface. As a result, a great mud storm
developed at the base of the tornado, plastering 4 inches of mud
against fence posts, tree trunks, foundations, and farm equipment.
Typical in an F2 tornado, with winds exceeding 100 miles per hour,
the first farm home lost its roof.
The tornado rapidly grew in strength over the next 0.5 mile as the
second home was flattened, with most of the debris strewn down-
wind. On this day the owner chose to drive away rather than stay in his
underground storm shelter. The 4,000-pound concrete roof of the
shelter was torn from its moorings, never to be found in subsequent
searches. With winds now approaching 200 miles per hour, the tor-
nado siphoned 25 vertical feet of water from the well nearby.
The track of the tornado was plainly evident in the grassland be-
yond the homestead. It was mostly defoliated, the few remaining
blades of grass shredded and flattened to the ground. The tornado
path, now 800 feet across, bore the spiraling marks characteristic of a
multiple-vortex tornado. Sometimes called suction spots, these in-
tense whirlwinds within the main funnel carved their spirals several
inches into the soil.
In the field beyond, the tornado raked across a wheat field ready
for harvest, sending millions of wheat shafts spiraling into the vortex.
The wheat shafts, as rigid as ice picks at such high velocities, impaled
the cattle in the adjoining field. Of a herd of 130 cattle, half a dozen
survived, wheat stitched into their hides and underbellies. Film evi-
dence taken at the time revealed that many of the animals were
vaulted into the air and dropped to the ground repeatedly. Inter-
nal injuries were severe; most of the cattle had four broken legs.

875
1997: The Jarrell tornado

Typically, hair was removed from the hide. In extreme examples,

even the hide was stripped away, exposing muscle and bone.
Double Creek Estates. For the next 2 miles, the rotational ve-
locity and width of the tornado continued to increase. Its intensity
was most apparent along the only road leading to Jarrell’s newest
housing addition. This is where the devastation of an F5 tornado first
became apparent. Winds in excess of 300 miles per hour lifted steel,
concrete, and rock as easily as a wind gust stirring a leaf pile. For ex-
ample, steel posts that once supported barbed-wire fences were
lashed back and forth by the strong winds, breaking them off at
ground level. Many sections of roadway were destroyed by the intense
pressure of wind that gripped the pavement, disintegrating the
pieces as they vaulted into the air. The energy of the wind alone
peeled bark from the few tree trunks still standing.
At 0.5 mile wide, the path of the tornado now curved westward,
centering on Double Creek Estates. Perhaps because of its westward
travel, the forward motion of the tornado had slowed to a walking
speed. It would take seventeen minutes for the tornado to travel the
next mile over Double Creek, pulverizing homes, appliances, and au-
tomobiles, and taking human life. One of the residents had a collec-
tion of nearly 75 vintage Chevrolets that was swept into the mael-
strom. Only a handful of cars remained intact, while most were
reduced to shrapnel. Even engine blocks and transmissions were
shattered from the repeated blows. In the first seconds, the great
wind swept entire homes from their foundations. The residents were
also swept along in a torrent of wind, metal, and wood.
With the exception of shattered fragments of wood that had
speared the ground, there was little debris remaining in the vicinity of
Double Creek Estates. The house foundations left behind gave mute
testimony to the sequence of destruction. Although most of these
homes were solidly built of brick veneer construction, the force of the
wind and flying debris instantly disintegrated roofs and walls. Even the
bricks were launched into the air, to be shot out of the tornado in a
great fusillade. Bricks were scattered across the countryside, dispro-
portionately favoring the left side of the tornado path. Clearly, with the
counterclockwise rotation of the funnel, these homes were destroyed
at the first instant by the leading edge of the tornado.
In some houses, the vinyl flooring was glued to the concrete foun-

876
 1997: The Jarrell tornado

dation in bathrooms and kitchen areas. Long slashes in the vinyl cut-
ting from right to left also confirmed that these floors were entirely
exposed in those first moments. Modern construction practices at-
tach the lumber to the concrete slab by shooting nails through the
wood into the concrete beneath. All lumber attached in this manner
was removed from the slabs. Other attached objects, including door
thresholds, carpet tacking strips, toilets, tubs, and brick veneer fire-
places, were also removed. Copper water lines, plastic fittings, and
wires were sheared off at the surface level of each slab. Even the con-
crete slabs had great gashes on their surfaces, with chunks of con-
crete nicked away from the corners and edges. Apparently, the
homes of Double Creek Estates were not simply flattened, with their
debris accounted for nearby, but rather annihilated one hundred
times over as the tornado ground away any object that extended
above ground.
While at its maximum strength over the subdivision, even the dis-
tant surface winds plunging into the tornado created amazing ef-
fects. Round hay bales weighing 1,500 pounds were tumbled into the
tornado from 0.25 mile away. About 1,000 feet south of the path, a
home seemed undamaged on the side facing the tornado. However,

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

A tornado that struck Jarrell, Texas, on May 27, 1997. (AP/Wide World Photos)

877
1997: The Jarrell tornado

the inbound winds shattered windows and removed shingles on the

side facing away from the tornado. This homeowner also lost his
tractor-trailer rig as the inflowing winds pulled it into the tornado.
The Weakening Tornado. The tornado would not lift for an-
other 3 miles; however, the first signs of weakening began about 1
mile beyond the subdivision. Three great piles of debris spaced about
1,000 feet apart formed into a straight line near the centerline of the
tornado footprint. At about 100 feet long, each streamlined hill was
formed from the most massive objects available: automobile parts,
appliances, trucks, and farm implements. Such objects apparently
accumulated as flying debris slammed into the side of each pile.
Smaller debris, perhaps transported higher in the tornado, rained
down over a dozen square miles near the lift-off point. Consisting
mostly of metal, plastic, and wood, these objects typically weighed just
a few pounds. Finally, the lightest debris was transported by the
supercell thunderstorm, later to fall to earth at great distances. Al-
though most of this material could not be absolutely confirmed as
originating from this event, a box of checks bearing the name of one
of the victims was discovered 100 miles south of Jarrell.
The Aftermath. The shattering intensity of this tornado is ex-
pressed in the statistics: 27 dead and 8 injured. Other great tornadoes
have claimed more lives, but no other tornado event can claim a 75
percent mortality rate. The irresistible force of 300-mile-per-hour
winds sitting in place for several minutes caused more complete dam-
age than a rapidly moving tornado of similar force.
Despite all odds, there were survivors. A woman hid in her bathtub
as her home was destroyed around her. Located just outside the path
under weaker wind conditions, her house was carried several hundred
feet away. She rode along with her house while in her tub. When she
stood up at the end of her ride, the bathtub fell into pieces around her.
Even more amazing is the foresight of a family that survived be-
neath their house in the Double Creek subdivision. Having experi-
enced a tornado ten years earlier, this family built a storm shelter by
hand-digging a hole through the slab. Taking two years to complete,
this unique structure built of solid concrete and encased beneath the
original foundation may have been the only shelter that could sur-
vive the intensity and duration of the Jarrell tornado.
Don M. Greene

878
 1997: The Jarrell tornado

For Further Information:

“Funnel Cloud of Death.” Newsweek, June 9, 1997, 68.
Grazulis, Thomas P. The Tornado: Nature’s Ultimate Windstorm. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Lindell, Chuck. “Jarrell’s Healing Year.” Austin-American Statesman,
May 24, 1998.
_______. “A New Day in Jarrell.” Austin-American Statesman, January 4,
1998.
Phan, Long T., and Emil Simiu. The Fujita Tornado Intensity Scale: A Cri-
tique Based on Observations of the Jarrell Tornado of May 27, 1997.
Gaithersburg, Md.: U.S. Department of Commerce, Technology
Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology,
1998.

879
■ 1997: Soufrière Hills eruption
Volcano
Date: June 25, 1997
Place: Montserrat, Caribbean
Result: 19 dead, 8,000 evacuated

W hen explorer Christopher Columbus sighted an

eastern Caribbean island and named it Montserrat
in 1493, no one then knew enough geography to understand what
lands he could yet discover in the region, and no one yet knew—and
would not know for another four and a half centuries—about plate
tectonics and the geological reason for the island’s existence. After
permanent settlers arrived from England and Ireland in 1632, and
then indentured servants and slaves from West Africa later in that
century, they would be intermittently reminded of the dramatic
power of volcanic activity and the evolution of such an island—a les-
son that continues to this day.
Geography. Montserrat is an island of 39 square miles (102
square kilometers). It is one of an eastern Caribbean chain of islands,
the Lesser Antilles, extending in a crescent 400 miles (650 kilome-
ters) long, which connects the Virgin Islands in the north to Trinidad
near Venezuela in the south. Montserrat is a dependent island gov-
erned by Great Britain. Some of the better-known islands in the chain
are St. Kitts, Antigua, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Marti-
nique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada. They owe their existence
to the collision of tectonic plates moving slowly under the earth’s sur-
face.
While the American Plate is moving westward from the spreading
Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the small Caribbean Plate (from Cuba and the
West Indies south to South America) is moving relatively eastward at
about 0.4 inch per year. The slow collision in the eastern Caribbean
causes oceanic crust to be thrust downward, causing partial melting
in the mantle, and magma (molten rock) erupts periodically to form
volcanic islands.
Montserrat is, like the others in the Lesser Antilles, a typical strato-

880
 1997: Soufrière Hills eruption

volcanic or composite-type volcano, built up of successive lava flows

plus layers of ejecta (ash and larger rock fragments) erupted explo-
sively. The process creates attractive conical-shaped volcanoes with
dangerous capabilities for destruction. The magma in this crustal en-
vironment tends to be viscous, and it can congeal into a domed plug
in the crater at the top of the vent of the volcano. The pressure in the
subterranean magma, especially from its contained gases, can build
up and produce periodic plumes of ash or, occasionally, a cata-
strophic and massive eruption with much ash and gas. Many of these
islands have experienced volcanic activity in the past few thousand
years.
The active volcano on Montserrat is called Soufrière Hills, and is
about 3,000 feet (915 meters) high. The bottom of the volcano, and
of the island, is on the seafloor, at a subsea depth of about 4,900 feet
(1,500 meters). La soufrière is French for “sulfur pit,” and in creole
French it also refers to volcanic and sulfurous hot springs.
History of Eruption. Soufrière began erupting, mostly ash and
gas, on July 18, 1995, after having been dormant since the island’s set-

Codrington
Mazinga
ANTIGUA
St. Kitts AND
Newcastle Saint John’s
BARBUDA
Antigua

Soufrière Hills
MONTSERRAT
Saint-Jacques
Grande–Terre

Grande-Anse

Basse Terre
Marie–Galante
Grand-Bourg

GUADELOUPE

881
1997: Soufrière Hills eruption

tlement. Unusual subterranean activity had been noted as early as

1989 by a local seismograph, which detects and records seismic wave
vibrations from such behavior as magma cracking rock as it wells up-
ward. The instrument was one of thirty-two seismographs situated in
the Antilles Islands and operated by the Seismic Research Unit of the
University of the West Indies, in Trinidad. With the active eruptive ac-
tivity, an international team of geologists and geophysicists was gath-
ered, from the Trinidad unit, the British Geological Survey, and the
U.S. Geological Survey. They set up monitoring instruments on and
around the volcano—seismographs and ground-deformation and
gravity instruments—to try to monitor the pulse of the volcano to as-
sess and possibly predict its future activity. This would be done at the
Montserrat Volcano Observatory, which was recently established.
For several weeks, a series of earthquakes caused the volcano to
tremble, and there were intermittent small phreatic (steam-charged)
eruptions of fine gray ash and sulfurous gases. The ash showered the
southern half of the island, including the main town and capital,
Plymouth, on the southwest coast only 3 miles away.
The volcano crater began to fill with a viscous lava dome that
plugged the vent. If this plug, like a cork in a bottle, could not con-
tain the pressure, it and the underlying magma could explode up
into a plume of ash and could generate fearsome pyroclastic flows
down the volcano’s slopes. Pyroclastic, from the Greek pyro for fire
and klastos for broken, refers to the hot fragmental material being
erupted, in this case as a flowing cloud of searing hot ash and gas,
much of the latter poisonous. Such hot gaseous flows, or nuées
ardentes, are one of the greatest hazards of eruptions. They are
denser than air and thus hug the slopes, travel very fast—up to 70 to
120 miles per hour (110 to 190 kilometers per hour)—and kill peo-
ple by scorching, roasting, and asphyxiating.
In late August, 1995, a series of eruptive ash events darkened the sky
over Plymouth. The authorities recommended the evacuation of the
south half of the island, either to the sparsely settled north end or to
other islands or countries. Because no one could know when—if
ever—the volcano might erupt massively, this was a wrenching devel-
opment for the island society. There is uncertainty with a dome-build-
ing, slowly erupting volcano, because an end can come—after months
or years—with a final catastrophic explosion or it can simply fizzle out.

882
 1997: Soufrière Hills eruption

Plymouth itself housed half the island’s population of 11,000 as

well as the nation’s only port, only hospital, government, industries,
and people’s homes. Most of Plymouth had just been reconstructed
from the effects of the devastating Hurricane Hugo of 1989. Tour-
ism—the main economic activity, along with agriculture and a small
but thriving music industry—would be decimated, unemployment
would soar, and people would have to abandon their homes, schools,
and farms for an indefinite time.
By the following April, 5,000 people had moved to the north end
of the island, and 3,000 people had left the island. Of the latter, about
1,000 went to Great Britain, which was also providing funds on Mont-
serrat for resettlement, social services, and maintenance of island
life.
On September 17, 1996, the lava dome collapsed to produce a
pyroclastic flow that moved quickly toward the sea to the east, as well
as an ash plume over 32,000 feet (10 kilometers) high. The ashfall
darkened the sky, and there was a sulfurous smell; the lava doming
continued. By early June the following year, there were more earth-
quakes from the volcano and its subterranean magma chamber. A
few farmers, disobeying the evacuation orders, still tended their
crops on the fertile lower slopes of the volcano.
The Big Eruption. On June 25, 1997, there was a more persis-
tent ash eruption, and at about 1 p.m. a major eruption began, finally,
but as the volcanologists had feared. The crater’s lava dome col-
lapsed, and the pyroclastic ash and rubble cascaded down the volca-
nic slopes at more than 70 miles per hour and with a temperature of
about 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit (8,000 degrees Celsius). Trees were
flattened and scorched, and structures were devastated. Nineteen
people were killed, by burning or asphyxiation, and many were en-
tombed in the pyroclastic flow. Twenty-seven other people were res-
cued in time from the mountain region by helicopter.
In late August, 1997, there were more pyroclastic flows in all direc-
tions off the mountain. These covered the now-desolate and deserted
southern half of the island and smothered Plymouth’s structures that
were still standing. More people left the island—many probably per-
manently—as life and the environment became progressively less
hospitable and more uncertain. For two years, Soufrière Hills on
Montserrat had been volcanically active and making the lands pro-

883
1997: Soufrière Hills eruption

gressively more uninhabitable. However, some good things resulted

from the eruptions: Once the activity subsided to dormancy again
the ash would weather in the warm moist climate there to create new
fertile soil. Also, the oceanic island was enlarged, in an age-old pro-
cess, by the volcanic flows that reached and extended the shoreline.
Other Eruptions. There are other notable eruptions in the
Lesser Antilles that also involved the hazard of pyroclastic flows. In
1979, St. Vincent’s volcanic peak, La Soufrière, erupted, but a prior
evacuation of the area saved many lives. This was unlike May 7, 1902,
there, when an explosive eruption created an ash and steam plume
that rose over 30,000 feet (9 kilometers) and a pyroclastic flow that
caused about 1,600 deaths. In 1976, some eruptive activity of another
volcano named La Soufrière, on Guadeloupe just to the southeast of
Montserrat, prompted an evacuation of 70,000 people for several
months; however, in this case there were only minor explosions. The
most devastating eruption was from Mount Pelée, on the island of
Martinique farther to the south. On May 8, 1902, an explosion gener-
ated a pyroclastic flow that killed 30,000 people—virtually the entire
town of St. Pierre.
Robert S. Carmichael

For Further Information:

Davison, Phil. Volcano in Paradise: The True Story of the Montserrat Erup-
tions. London: Methuen, 2003.
Dittmer, Jason. “The Soufrière Hills Volcano and the Postmodern
Landscapes of Montserrat.” FOCUS 47, no. 4 (Spring, 2004): 1-7.
Druit, T.H., and B. P. Kokelaar, eds. The Eruption of Soufrière Hills Vol-
cano, Montserrat, from 1995 to 1999. London: Geological Society,
2002.
Graham, Wade. “Getting to Know the Volcano.” The New Yorker 73,
no. 1 (February 17, 1997): 43-47.
Pulsipher, Lydia M. “Montserrat: The People, the Land, and the Vol-
cano.” FOCUS 44, no. 3 (Fall, 1997): 29-33.
Williams, A. R, and Vincent J. Musi. “Montserrat: Under the Vol-
cano.” National Geographic 192, no. 1 (July, 1997): 58-77.

884
■ 1998: Papua New Guinea tsunami
Tsunami
Date: July 17, 1998
Place: Northwestern Papua New Guinea
Result: 2,000 dead, 500 missing

O n July 17, 1998, an undersea earthquake measuring

7.0 on the Richter scale struck about 18 miles (29 ki-
lometers) off the northwest coast of Papua New Guinea. Although
seismological stations in the South Pacific measured the tremor, the
earthquake erupted under the seabed so close to the coast that there
was no time to send warnings to villagers to evacuate.
Starting as long, silent ripples on the deep waters of the Bismarck
Sea, the waves swept toward the shore at dusk. They gathered height
and power as they neared the beaches around Sissano Lagoon in
West Sepik Province. At that point, they were up to 33 feet (10 me-
ters) high and sounding, some said, like a jet plane taking off. The
waves crashed over the thatched wooden houses as villagers were pre-
paring dinner. “We just saw the sea rise up and it came toward the vil-
lage and we had to run for our lives,” said a man who lost 8 members
of his family.
The Death Toll. The population of the affected area, a strip of
land about 25 miles (40 kilometers) long and 370 miles (590 kilome-
ters) northwest of the capital Port Moresby, numbered between 8,000
and 10,000. At least 6,000 people were homeless after their houses
were reduced to matchwood by the tsunami. The governor of West
Sepik Province said, “I am looking at a very conservative figure of
3,000 people dead, based on the number of bodies recovered so far
and the number of people seen hiding in the jungle. I’ve had a look
and all there is are bodies. The stench is overpowering.” A Roman
Catholic priest echoed the governor’s estimate. He said that many of
those killed were children who had been too small to run away and
too weak to climb coconut trees to safety before the waves engulfed
them. The area disaster coordinator said that the village of Warapu
alone had a death toll of 500, mostly elderly people and schoolchil-

885
1998: Papua New Guinea tsunami
Admiralty Islands
Vanimo Bism
Jayapura Sissano arck
Arop Arc
Aitape h ip
el ag
Bismarck Sea o
Rabaul
INDONESIA
New Ireland
Madang
Bougainville
New Britain
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Lae Solomon
Islands

Solomon Sea
Gulf of Papua

Port Moresby
Torres Str. Honiara
Guadalcanal
Gre
at
Bar
rier

Coral Sea
R

Gulf of Carpentaria
eef

AUSTRALIA

dren. “Schools in Arop, Sissano, and Warapu will be closed because

we don’t have the children. They’re all dead,” he said. The final
count would be 2,500 dead or missing.
Papua New Guinea is the eastern half of the large island of New
Guinea and a former British colony. It has been a member of the Brit-
ish Commonwealth since 1975, when Australia, which administered
the country on Britain’s behalf, granted it independence. Queen
Elizabeth II sent a message of sympathy to the region. “She said she
was shocked at the tidal wave and that her thoughts were with the
families of the bereaved and injured,” a Buckingham Palace spokes-
person said.
Relief Efforts. A week after the disaster, the official death toll
was 1,500, but thousands remained unaccounted for. Bodies, some
partly eaten by crocodiles, dogs, and pigs, were still being spotted in
the lagoon and nearby mangrove and bush areas. With many of the
bodies quickly deteriorating because of the tropical heat, bereaved
families dug makeshift graves in the rubble of their homes. There
were no coffins. The dead were simply covered with straw matting.
While 700 injured were being treated in local hospitals and by doc-
tors and nurses flown in from Australia, Japan, and New Zealand,
numbed survivors gathered in makeshift aid centers. Some parents
had lost all of their children. Other victims had been unable to find a
single family member alive. Approximately 200 children who were

886
 1998: Papua New Guinea tsunami

visiting one of the villages for a traditional festival were feared dead,
swept away in an instant.
Many of the survivors, fearing more waves, took refuge on higher
ground. Some walked for four hours through dense jungle to villages
that lay inland. Devastation lay behind them. Village huts, some built
on the sandy shoreline shaped by a 1935 tsunami, had been ripped
from the ground. The region’s lack of airstrips meant that Australian
Army Hercules planes ferrying in medical supplies and a mobile field
hospital had to land in Vanimo, the provincial capital, about 69 miles
(110 kilometers) west of the disaster zone. Their cargo was then re-
loaded onto small planes and helicopters to be taken to the centers
where aid workers and church officials cared for survivors.
Several days after the disaster, the Adventist Development and Re-
lief Agency (ADRA) flew into the area sixteen water tanks that had
been shipped from Australia the previous year for drought victims.
Helicopters carried another twenty of the 317-gallon (1,200-liter)
tanks into accessible areas of the rugged country. The area surround-
ing the lagoon and the worst-hit villages of Sissano, Warapu, and
Arop were sealed off to stop the spread of disease from decaying
corpses. However, some people from the vanished villages were al-
ready asking aid workers for axes and bush knives so they could re-
build their homes and vegetable plots on their traditional lands.
Dana P. McDermott

For Further Information:

Geist, E. L. “Source Characteristics of the July 17, 1998, Papua New
Guinea Tsunami.” EOS/Transactions of the American Geophysical Union
79, supp. (1998): 571.
Monastersky, R. “How a Middling Quake Made a Giant Tsunami.” Sci-
ence News 154 (August 1, 1998): 69.
_______. “Waves of Death.” Science News 154 (October 3, 1998): 221.
Satake, Kenji, ed. Tsunamis: Case Studies and Recent Developments.
Springer, 2006.
Tappin, David R. “Sediment Slump Likely Caused 1998 Papua New
Guinea Tsunami. ”EOS/Transactions of the American Geophysical Union
80 (July 27, 1999): 333.

887
■ 1998: Hurricane Mitch
Hurricane
Date: October 27, 1998
Place: Central America
Classification: Category 5
Result: More than 11,000 dead, 1 million homeless, $4 billion in
damage

H urricane Mitch began as a tropical wave that moved

across West Africa beginning on October 8, 1998. For
the next seven days it moved over the tropical Atlantic to the Carib-
bean Sea, entering that body of water on the 18th and 19th. Showers
and thunderstorms developed at that time, coming to the attention
of a United States Air Force Reserve reconnaissance plane patrolling
the area. On October 22, the plane reported that the storm had be-
come a tropical depression, a harbinger of the troublesome weather
conditions ahead.
Mitch achieved hurricane strength on October 24, developing
heavy winds and dumping enormous quantities of rain on Jamaica
and the Cayman Islands. Damage to the Caribbean islands proved to
be slight compared to what followed as the storm moved further west.
Mitch reached the Central American coast on October 27. The hurri-
cane turned out to be one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on re-
cord, with winds exceeding 180 miles per hour. As a result, Central
America and southern Mexico experienced torrential rainfall for sev-
eral days in a row, inundating some principal cities and much of the
countryside as well. The U.S. National Hurricane Center classified
Mitch as a Category 5 hurricane.
As it moved toward the mainland, the direction of the storm in its
earliest stages proved to be unpredictable. Not knowing what to ex-
pect, most of the population of Belize City, estimated at 75,000 per-
sons, fled inland. The refugees utilized both private transportation
and government-commandeered buses. Mexico’s southern state of
Quintana Roo evacuated all of its villages in a 165-mile swath south of
the city of Playa del Carmen. The tens of thousands of tourists staying

888
 1998: Hurricane Mitch

in the resort cities of Cancún and Cozumel stood in long lines at air-
ports seeking flights inland to any destination available that was con-
sidered outside the danger zone. Cancún had been hit in 1988 by
Hurricane Gilbert, during which some 300 people were killed.
After moving briefly through the Caribbean on October 25, Mitch
arrived off the coast of Honduras two days later, making landfall on
the morning of the 29th. Because of the slow progress of the storm,
the rainfall from it reached tremendous proportions, estimated at up
to 35 inches initially, primarily in Honduras and Nicaragua. The re-
sulting flash floods and mudslides pouring down from the isthmus’s
central mountain range killed thousands of people.
The Damage. The damage suffered by the areas reached by Mitch
resulted primarily from the rainfall rather than the direct loss caused
by the heavy winds themselves. Before it ended, the hurricane
dumped a peak load of 50 inches of rain in some areas. The high wa-
ters that followed carved paths of destruction that destroyed entire
neighborhoods, especially the low-lying communities exposed to rag-
ing rivers that had been only small streams prior to the hurricane.

Yucatán
Gulf CUBA
Campeche
of
Mexico JAMAICA
Chetumal
MEXICO
BELIZE
Belmopan
Chiapas
Tuxtla
GUATEMALA
Gutierrez
Quiche
Province Puerto Lempira
Quezaltenango HONDURAS
Tegucigalpa Caribbean Sea
Guatemala City

San Salvador
San NICARAGUA
EL SALVADOR Miguel
Managua
Lake Bluefields
Pan American Nicaragua
Highway Rivas
Liberia
Pacific San Jose Panama
Puntarenas
Canal
Colon
Ocean Cañita Lake
COSTA Panama Bayano
PANAMA
RICA City

COLOMBIA

Medellin

889
1998: Hurricane Mitch

The storm not only destroyed homes but also wiped out roads,
schools, and bridges, impeding any attempts to furnish aid to its vic-
tims. In addition to the destruction of the isthmus’s commercial agri-
culture, many poor families lost the small plots of land from which
they drew much of their basic diet, consisting of corn, beans, rice,
and other vegetables. Fertile topsoil washed away in the heavy inun-
dation. Chickens, pigs, and cattle also disappeared under the rising
floodwaters. Military mines, souvenirs of the civil wars of the previous
decade, washed down from the mountains, ending up in areas where
survivors sought to start replanting. A number of deaths and serious
injuries occurred after the storm was over as a result of this further
threat to life and property.
Substantial damage to the commercial banana plantations along
the Central American east coast also meant the loss of livelihood for
hundreds of workers. Until the banana area could be replanted, esti-
mated to take a full year at least, no work existed for the majority of
the employees of such large concerns as the United Fruit Company
and its numerous subsidiaries.
The contamination of local drinking water gave rise to the threat
of dysentery and other waterborne communicable diseases for the
survivors. People were exposed to respiratory illnesses. Wells caved
in, debris clogged streams, and rotting garbage contaminated neigh-
borhood cisterns. The authorities advised citizens that water had to
be boiled before it could be used for either drinking or cooking. A
large number of schools also fell victim to the storm, depriving the
children in many areas of the opportunity to continue pursuing their
education.
Once the storm hit the Central American mainland, it soon be-
came apparent that the neighboring countries of Honduras and Nic-
aragua would sustain the most damage, with lesser problems arising
in El Salvador and Guatemala. Mitch largely spared Belize, southern
Mexico, and Costa Rica.
Nicaragua’s most deadly loss occurred when a mudslide, triggered
by the collapse of a wall of the volcano Casitas, wiped out whole vil-
lages. The onrushing mud and rain reached to the rooftops of the
tiny pueblo of El Porvenir, close to the volcano, and buried many of
its inhabitants before they had the opportunity to evacuate. Posol-
tega, another nearby village, met an equally horrendous fate. Only a

890
 1998: Hurricane Mitch

few hundred of its 2,000 inhabitants survived the sea of mud that tore
through the small hamlet.
In its initial assessment, the Honduran government estimated that
the final death count in the country could reach 5,000. Honduras’s
president, Carlos Roberto Flores Facusse, said that the floods and
landslides had wiped out many villages as well as whole neighbor-
hoods in the larger cities. Two large rivers, the Ulúa and Chameleon,
rose so high as to isolate Honduras’s second major city, San Pedro
Sula, and convert the valley surrounding it into a lake. The Choluteca
River near the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa, also flooded over its
banks, pouring into the city at such a rapid rate that the water
reached the second story of Tegucigalpa’s major commercial build-
ings. The president estimated that the storm had destroyed over 70
percent of the nation’s crops, the economic mainstay of this nation of
6 million people. The dollar crop loss amounted to $6 billion for the
impoverished country. One million homes needed to be replaced.
El Salvador, on Central America’s west coast, suffered mostly from
the heavy runoff of rain from the mountains of its eastern highlands.
The water poured into the country’s principal river, the Lempa, so
quickly that it destroyed a number of villages on its banks. Remote vil-
lages, such as Chicuma, El Salitre, Las Marías, and Hacienda Vieja,
lost all of their subsistence crops.
While Guatemala did not experience the same degree of damage
as did neighboring Honduras and Nicaragua, the Polochic River Val-
ley and the southern coast lost over $1 million in vital food supplies as
well as a substantial amount of housing and potable water. A plane
carrying religious missionaries seeking to do relief work crashed, kill-
ing 10 passengers and injuring 7 others. The plane had sought to fly
into San Andreas Xecul, 60 miles west of Guatemala City, during the
downpour.
Relief Efforts. For Nicaragua and Honduras, the poorest of
the Central American republics, Mitch created an economic disaster.
Neither country possessed the resources to meet their immediate
emergency requirements, much less the long-term essentials needed
restore the countries to their pre-hurricane conditions. Their gov-
ernments pleaded for outside assistance.
The destruction of the roads and bridges throughout Central
America precluded any rapid response by surface vehicles to much of

891
1998: Hurricane Mitch

the damaged countryside. As a result, both foreign governments and

private groups began massive airlifts, utilizing light planes and heli-
copters to ship emergency food and medical supplies into the more
remote areas of both countries.
President Bill Clinton of the United States pledged $80 million for
immediate emergency aid, then raised the total dollar commitment
to $300 million by March, 1999. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter
urged that the $16 billion in foreign debt owed by Honduras and Nic-
aragua be forgiven by their First World creditors. Scores of nongov-
ernmental organizations throughout Europe, including those from
such small countries as Ireland, Finland, and Denmark, joined in the
major effort. Mitch had set the economic development of Central
America back by twenty years.
The United States government sent in Army engineers to recon-
struct the key roads necessary to open the badly damaged backlands.
The engineers built four pontoon bridges at critical junctures to re-
place key destroyed structures. These so-called temporary replace-
ments were designed to be strong enough to support all but the
heaviest of trucks, supplies, and equipment. Military helicopters
from a number of countries continued to push far into the hinter-
land to deliver food and medical supplies and to establish bases from
which the rescuers could operate. Medical teams from the U.S. Army,
Navy, and Air Force, the reserves from all three, and the National
Guard sent in medical teams to cope with respiratory and gastrointes-
tinal diseases and cholera.
A major problem developed with the indiscriminate influx of vari-
ous types of medicinal supplies into the beleaguered countries. Ini-
tially, the affected countries provided little direction for their trans-
mittal. Finally, the Pan American Health Organization took over and
established a priority list of critical medicines that the personnel on
site felt were needed, seeking to end the shipment of unwanted or in-
appropriate drugs.
The response to requests for aid by Central Americans living
abroad proved to be overwhelming. Southern California, home to
many Central American immigrant families, responded with tons of
medicines, food, and clothing. The American Red Cross alone re-
ceived over 100,000 inquiries during the first five days following the
commencement of the storm. Directed to deliver their contributions

892
 1998: Hurricane Mitch

to the consulates representing Honduras and Nicaragua, those anx-

ious to help found that these officials could not cope with the influx
of aid packages. The sorting, boxing, and storage of the goods and
their transportation to Central America were beyond the physical
and financial capabilities of these small offices.
Confusion reigned when the goods arrived at their Central Ameri-
can destinations as well. Neither Honduras nor Nicaragua had orga-
nized distribution centers to process the materials received from vari-
ous overseas sources. At the Honduran port of Puerto Cortés, by early
January, over 1,000 huge containers of relief supplies lay unclaimed
at the docks. Ships seeking to unload more supplies had a difficult
time finding any adequate space ashore for their cargos.
In the case of Nicaragua, the Catholic Church had been desig-
nated initially to fulfill the distribution function. A change in govern-
ment plans resulted when President Arnoldo Alemán assigned his
Liberal Party to the task, seeking to take political advantage of the ca-
tastrophe. Not only did many of the contributions end up in hands
for which they were not originally intended, but also a great deal of
the material continued to remain stranded at the airport and seaport
sites where it had been unloaded. Alemán, in a further gesture of de-
fiance to the international community, refused to allow President Fi-
del Castro’s Cuban medical teams and supplies to enter the country,
despite the great shortage throughout the devastated areas of Nica-
ragua.
Faced with the backup of supplies, relief agencies asked the public
to donate cash rather than goods. Unfortunately, those wishing to
help preferred to collect canned goods and clothing in their own
communities regardless of how appropriate such collected goods
were. They continued to ship the accumulated commodities to the
already-crowded port facilities. Once there, local relief organiza-
tions, hamstrung by local government red tape, quite often lacked
the funds to pay for shipment of the goods into the interior.
Moreover, the fact that the major commercial fruit companies had
to devise a recovery program before they could start producing for
the export market exacerbated the problems for both Honduras and
Nicaragua. The two countries characteristically suffer a high unem-
ployment rate, but Mitch wiped out most of the jobs held by those
agricultural workers with the big fruit producers. The number of la-

893
1998: Hurricane Mitch

borers heading north to the United States to find work increased sub-
stantially. Often they were accompanied by young boys and girls of
school age who could not continue their education because of the
heavy destruction of the school plants throughout the isthmus. More-
over, rumors began to circulate among the unemployed that the U.S.
government had approved the entry of immigrants into the country
because of Mitch’s damage. Such was not the case. The government
had agreed only to suspend temporarily the deportation of illegals al-
ready residing in the United States. The new wave of illegal immi-
grants, when apprehended, were turned back by the American bor-
der patrol.
Conclusion. Hurricane Mitch precipitated a series of unmiti-
gated disasters in Central America. Thousands of residents of the
isthmus either died, suffered debilitating injuries, or simply dis-
appeared as a result of the storm’s ferocity. The infrastructure to all
the countries in the area experienced extensive damage. Mitch de-
stroyed roads, bridges, communications lines, and key public build-
ings, such as hospitals and schools. Critical crops and livestock were
lost in the ensuing deluge. Long after the storm was over, corpses lit-
tered the paths of the torrents of water that had passed through in-
habited areas.
Within a few days of the storm’s inception it became apparent that
both Honduras and Nicaragua would sustain the greatest long-term
damage. Whole communities in both countries had disappeared un-
der the heavy inundations that accompanied the fierce winds. The
governments of the two nations could not cope with the immensity of
the tragedy. The rest of the world community would have to respond
to the emergency created by the hurricane.
During the decade prior to the 1998 debacle, the U.S. govern-
ment gradually had reduced the aid it had provided to the fledgling
democracies of the area. Having determined that Central America
would not fall under the influence of the former Soviet Union and
Cuba, the interests of American foreign policy turned elsewhere.
U.S. aid had amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars to rightist
elements in conflict with leftist governments and insurrections, but
the American government stopped paying. By 1998, aid to El Salva-
dor had diminished from $500 million annually to a mere $35 mil-
lion. At one time in the 1980’s the American government had spent

894
 1998: Hurricane Mitch

over $300 million a year supporting Nicaragua’s Contra movement.

In 1998 the U.S. commitment to that country had dropped to $24
million.
Nevertheless, when Mitch hit the isthmus the United States
quickly furnished emergency aid. Other countries, large and small,
forwarded money and relief supplies as well. The World Bank pro-
vided emergency loans for the reconstruction of both housing and
commercial buildings. Nongovernmental organizations, such as the
American Red Cross, Cooperative for American Relief to Everywhere
(CARE), and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), responded
promptly with goods and aid workers.
The work of the rehabilitation of Central America would continue
for a long time, taking years for the area to recover from the effects of
the storm. The vast majority of the region’s poor still live below the
poverty level. It has been argued that the United States could do
some things to alleviate some of Central America’s economic and so-
cial problems: canceling the outstanding debt owed to the United
States by Honduras and Nicaragua, offering the same trade agree-
ments to Central America as are presently enjoyed by Mexico and
Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
treaty, and giving Central American immigrants currently residing
and working in the United States at least temporary protection from
deportation until the economic emergencies in their home countries
are brought under control.
Suggested measures for improving the Central American econ-
omy from within included the affected governments launching social
programs designed to alleviate the economic hardship facing the
poorest segments of their societies. Restoration of the economies
cannot be left to market conditions or to chance. Also, a common
emergency policy in the region would ensure a cooperative effort to
meet the threat of other natural disasters like Hurricane Mitch,
which are likely to threaten Central America again in the future.
Carl Henry Marcoux

For Further Information:

Carrier, Jim. The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the
“Fantome.” New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Gass, Vicki. Democratizing Development: Lessons from Hurricane Mitch Re-

895
1998: Hurricane Mitch

construction. Washington, D.C.: Washington Office on Latin Amer-

ica, 2002.
Granby, Phil. “Hurricane Mitch Aftermath.” JAMA: Journal of the
American Medical Association 281 (April 7, 1999): 1162.
Lapp, Elam D. Hurricane Mitch in Central America. Millersburg, Pa.:
Brookside, 1999.
LeoGrande, William M. “Central America’s Agony.” The Nation, Janu-
ary 25, 1999, 21.
Mastin, Mark C. Flood-Hazard Mapping in Honduras in Response to Hur-
ricane Mitch. Tacoma, Wash.: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S.
Geological Survey, 2002.
Padgett, Tim. “The Catastrophe of Hurricane Mitch.” Time Interna-
tional, November 16, 1998.
Zarembo, Alan. “Helping Honduras.” U.S. News & World Report, De-
cember 21, 1998.
_______. “A Hurricane’s Orphans.” Newsweek, March 15, 1999, 43.

896
■ 1999: The Galtür avalanche
Avalanche
Date: February 23-24, 1999
Place: Galtür and Valzur, Austria
Result: 38 dead, 10 houses destroyed, 2,000 trapped

T he winter of 1998-1999 produced heavy snowfalls in

the Alpine countries of Europe: Switzerland, Austria,
southeastern France, and northern Italy. After several winters of little
snowfall—and therefore poor skiing conditions—the snow was wel-
comed by skiers, hoteliers, tour operators, and local inhabitants in-
volved in the tourist industry. Unfortunately, the snow produced a
number of hazards and disasters, the worst of which befell the two
neighboring Austrian villages of Galtür and Valzur.
These small but popular resorts, known as the Gem of the Tirol,
lie almost at the end of the Paznaun Valley, which runs approximately
25 miles southwestward from Landeck, in the western Tirol. The val-
ley nearly touches the neighboring Austrian province of the Vorarl-
berg and runs almost to the Swiss border. Conditions in the valley
had been deteriorating for six days before the first avalanche struck
Galtür. The previous Wednesday, February 17, a storm had broken.
The villages had been whipped by high winds and heavy snow, closing
the main road down the valley. A small slide hit Galtür, “a wall of white
and black,” as an eyewitness described it, but it went largely unre-
ported. The temperature rose sharply over the weekend of February
20-21, but snow continued to fall. Tourists were being told, however,
that it was still safe at Galtür, even though notices of high avalanche
risk had been issued at the main resort of Ischgl.
Meanwhile, conditions were deteriorating elsewhere in the Alps.
On February 20, 100 tourists, including Queen Beatrix of the Nether-
lands and Princess Caroline of Monaco, had been flown to safety by
helicopter from the Austrian ski resort of Lech. By Monday, February
22, the Chamonix Valley in the French Alps had been closed off be-
cause of the risk of avalanches, and the melting snow was causing
flooding along the Rhine and elsewhere. In Valais, Switzerland, an av-

897
1999: The Galtür avalanche

alanche was being reported every twenty minutes, and in the worst of
them, 9 chalets and a car were swept away, leaving 8 people missing
and 2 dead.
In western Austria (the Vorarlberg and Tirol), some 30,000 tour-
ists were trapped in various ski resorts because of heavy snowfall, max-
imum avalanche warnings having been issued. In Galtür itself, Mon-
day, February 22, saw temperatures drop and the wind pick up again.
On the same day, chamois (small goatlike antelope) were spotted
coming down off the high mountains into the valley, an unusual
event. The mood in the village was becoming uneasy.
The Avalanche. On Tuesday, February 23, a traditional ski race
had been arranged around the village streets to alleviate the boredom
of the skiers who had, by now, been unable to ski for a week. Many peo-
ple, fortunately, left their chalets and hotels to gather in the main
square to watch, despite blizzard conditions that afternoon. Suddenly
a great wall of snow, some 45 feet high, rushed down on the village, de-
molishing a boardinghouse, ripping off the two top floors of two
houses, and filling many other houses completely with snow, trapping
those inside. Nobody had heard the avalanche coming; they were sud-
denly plunged into a darkness created by a thick white cloud, like very
dense fog. The avalanche did not reach the main square, however,
stopping just short of the church. People were immediately dazed and
shocked, but locals began digging into the snow at once, as it takes only
fifteen minutes to be suffocated if buried within the snow.
The avalanche had, in fact, forked into two parts, with the other
branch going around the western part of the village, causing serious
damage to chalets on the outskirts. The maximum speed was esti-

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ra Landeck Innsbruck
Vo Graz
Valzur s t s
Bern zt a l A l p
Ö

l p HUNGARY
A
SWITZERLAND e t ian
R ha
SLOVENIA
ITALY

898
 1999: The Galtür avalanche

mated at 180 miles per hour. The weather forecast continued to call
for poor conditions, and new snow was expected. Because of this, re-
lief efforts from the outside could not begin until early the next
morning.
Digging Out. On Wednesday, the skies were clear for the first
time in a week. At 7 a.m., two hundred Austrian soldiers and firemen
arrived by helicopter to take over the rescue operations. Using dogs
and scanning equipment, they managed to recover 18 corpses, in-
cluding 3 children and a pregnant mother, but by the end of the day
15 people were still missing. A serious effort was also being made to
helicopter out some 2,000 villagers and tourists to Landeck, but even
with helicopters landing and taking off every two minutes many were
left waiting when bad weather closed in again. Some people had only
blankets and tea, according to a local doctor.
Worse was to follow. A second avalanche hit the neighboring vil-
lage of Valzur on February 24, destroying 4 houses and burying 6
people. The snowslide was 45 feet high and some 600 feet wide and
traveled up to 180 miles per hour. Four bodies were immediately re-
covered, but 9 more remained missing.
Perhaps one of the most amazing rescues was at Valzur. A four-
year-old boy, Alexander Walter, was found by rescue dogs after one
hundred minutes; he was pronounced dead at first but was resusci-
tated in the helicopter and taken to the hospital at Zams, where he
made a full recovery within six days. It was suggested that his young
age had saved him, his body having closed down so as to need almost
no oxygen.
The next day, Thursday, February 25, sunshine returned, but by
then, the three-hundred-strong rescue team had begun to crumple
with fatigue and the emotional strain of finding corpses. Counselors
were helping them, parents who had lost children, and disoriented
children. One German woman, for example, had survived, only to
learn that her two children were dead. The Austrian helicopters had
been joined by those from Italy and U.S. bases in Bavaria and were
able to evacuate all those remaining who wished to leave.
Rescuers found 2 more bodies the next day at Galtür, bringing the
total to 30, and 2 more in Valzur, bringing the final death toll there to
7. They were still looking for a girl believed to be in the ruins of the
house where her parents’ bodies had been discovered. The body of

899
1999: The Galtür avalanche

the fourteen-year-old German girl was finally found in the cellar on

the 27th.
The victims were taken to St. Wilten monastery chapel, Innsbruck.
Sunday, February 28, was declared a day of mourning by the Austrian
prime minister, Viktor Klima. Thirty-eight bodies were buried that
morning in a service attended by the prime minister and representa-
tives from those countries affected—Germany, the Netherlands, and
Denmark in particular. The disaster was the worst in Austria in nearly
fifty years, when in 1954 more than 50 people had been killed at
Blons in the Vorarlberg.
Amazingly, some one thousand tourists chose to stay in Galtür to
complete their holiday or wait for the roads to reopen, even though
local authorities, backed by the Austrian government, had decided to
evacuate the whole valley. At Ischgl, many returned to skiing on the
slopes, though they too were unable to get out of the village.
Controversy. By now, serious criticisms were being leveled
against the Austrian tourist industry for ignoring avalanche warnings
from meteorologists and against tour companies for bringing out yet
more skiers. The largest British tour operator, Thomsons, did cancel
vacations to Galtür and four other destinations (St. Anton and Ischgl
in Austria, Zermatt and Grindelwald in Switzerland), offering full re-
funds, but most operators merely sent their clients to different re-
sorts. It was estimated that another 15,000 Britons alone were head-
ing for the Alps at the weekend, while tourists who were stuck there
had to hire private helicopters to get out. One German lawyer
trapped at Ischgl threatened to sue the authorities for negligence.
Scientific Questions. The immediate scientific causes for the
avalanche lie in the types of snowfall in the preceding months, al-
though a very hot summer in 1998 had given rise to speculation that
the winter would not be normal. In late January there were heavy
snowfalls, but the snow was light and dry. This was followed by an-
other snowfall in mid-February that was very wet and heavy, due to
different temperatures. The snow base was therefore very unstable,
the heavy snow not binding at all with the light snow, which in itself
was not solid enough to act as a foundation. The second snowfall had
been exceptionally heavy: 12.1 feet (3. 7 meters) of snow fell in Feb-
ruary in the Galtür area, four times the average for the month.
This was not all, however. Gale-force winds at high altitudes, up to

900
 1999: The Galtür avalanche

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

Rescue workers uncover the body of a Galtür avalanche victim. (AP/

Wide World Photos)

95 miles per hour, had left some mountaintops bare, causing huge ac-
cumulations of snow on the sheltered slopes. The winds were then
followed by rain, which made the snow even heavier and more unsta-
ble. These factors made the avalanche risk huge. Even so, Christian
Weber, an Austrian avalanche expert, was quoted as saying, “With all

901
1999: The Galtür avalanche

our predictive mechanisms, we were not able to forecast Galtür. Ava-

lanches are coming and crashing down in areas where they never
happened before.”
In the longer term, the joint effects of increased road traffic
through the Alps—both heavy trucks and tourist cars—with the resul-
tant increase in pollution, and of global warming are creating new cli-
matic conditions, whose effects are not yet certain. The summers
seem to be longer, delaying the snowfall. Such changing environ-
mental factors raise serious questions over the future safety of skiing
in the Alpine region.
Political Questions. As indicated, both the Austrian authori-
ties and the tourist industry were blamed for the loss of lives. Al-
though it is difficult to know whether the number of tourists in
Galtür had any significant effect on the force of the avalanche, it is
possible to question both the building regulations and the early
warning systems. In Switzerland, new chalets are banned in all areas
likely to suffer from avalanches; this is not so in Austria.
The other questions, about the number of tourists allowed in and
the problem of dissuading them from coming, are more compli-
cated. On the Tuesday of the Galtür avalanche, Hansjorg Kroll, chief
of tourism of the Austrian chamber of commerce, is quoted as saying,
“We must thank the Lord God for sending us this snow.” With book-
ings up 30 percent over several poor seasons, there seemed every jus-
tification for such a statement. However, it is not merely the number
of skiers that is significant, it is also the areas to which they are al-
lowed to go. Although this does not seem to have been significant at
Galtür, elsewhere avalanches were set off by skiers going off the trails.
Where some warnings were posted for the areas, no one seemed to
want to pay attention. Officials concluded that there was thus an ur-
gent need to reassess the demands of the tourist industry, which is
much needed for the local economy, against the needs for safety.
David Barratt

For Further Information:

BBC. Horizon. “Anatomy of an Avalanche.” www.bbc.co.uk/science/
horizon/1999/avalanche.shtml.
The Sunday Times (London), February 28, 1999.
The Times (London), February 23-March 1, 1999.

902
■ 1999: The Oklahoma Tornado
Outbreak
Tornadoes

Date: May 3, 1999

Place: Primarily central Oklahoma, especially near Oklahoma City,
and Sedgwick County, Kansas
Classification: Up to F5
Result: 49 dead, more than 900 injured, more than 17,000 build-
ings damaged or destroyed, about $1.5 billion in damage

A ccording to the weather forecast that the Daily Oklaho-

man published early in the morning of Monday, May
3, 1999, Oklahoma City was to have winds that day ranging from 10 to
20 miles an hour, but storms were possible in much of Oklahoma the
following day. That forecast of storms, as events turned out, was off by
a day.
At about 6:00 Monday morning in Norman, a short drive south of
Oklahoma City, the Storm Prediction Center of the National Weather
Service noted a dry line extending from south to north across the
panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and said there was a low possibil-
ity of severe thunderstorms and even tornadoes in Oklahoma as a re-
sult of this meeting of hot, dry air from the west and warm, wet air
from the east. By 11:15 that morning, the possibility had become
moderate. By 3:49 p.m., after having received weather-balloon read-
ings indicating layers of winds in different directions and at different
speeds, the Storm Prediction Center officially revised its forecast to
include a high possibility of dangerous spring storms.
When, at 4:30 p.m., radar in Norman found a tornado in a super-
cell, the National Weather Service sent out a tornado warning for
central Oklahoma, including metropolitan Oklahoma City. Fifteen
minutes later, a tornado touched the ground near Lawton, in the
southwestern part of the state. An evening of death and destruction
had begun for both Oklahoma and Kansas.
Storms. Of the 76 tornadoes that formed late in the afternoon

903
1999: The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak

and night of May 3, the worst was the 0.5-mile-wide one, which trav-
eled about 90 miles in Oklahoma from the Lawton area northeast
into the central part of the state. That long path included 19 miles
through the Oklahoma City area only a little after the evening rush
hour, from the unincorporated community of Bridge Creek in north-
eastern Grady County; through the big suburbs of Moore, Del City,
and Midwest City; to the town of Choctaw in eastern Oklahoma
County. According to meteorologists from the University of Okla-
homa, the rotating wind in that tornado reached the very top of the
F5 category of the Fujita scale—318 miles an hour—and may have set
a record speed up to that date for any natural wind on earth. That
monstrous tornado was one of from three to five produced along one
storm path.
Among the other storm paths in Oklahoma, a second, northwest
of the greatest one, reached from southern Blaine County well into
Kingfisher County, where the little town of Dover endured an F4 tor-
nado, with wind between 207 and 260 miles an hour. A third storm
path, west and north of Oklahoma City, stretched from northern
Grady County into Noble County; in Logan County, that storm path
generated another F4 tornado. A fourth storm path, south and east
of the metropolitan area, extended from eastern Cleveland County
through Pottawatomie County and into Lincoln County. That same
night, in Kansas, a severe thunderstorm generated tornadoes in
Sedgwick County. Most notably, an F4 tornado passed through Hays-
ville and the adjacent southern part of Wichita.
Property. In all, tornadoes in the Great Plains on May 3 caused
such damage that President Bill Clinton declared Sedgwick County,
Kansas, a disaster area, along with 11 counties in Oklahoma, from
Caddo and Grady Counties, southeast of Oklahoma City, to Tulsa
County, in the northeastern part of the state. Property damage in the
two states was about $1.5 billion, and while people in the building
trades found their work in high demand after the storms, many other
people worried about how they would ever make a living again.
As in all tornadoes, motor vehicles and mobile homes were espe-
cially vulnerable. Whirling winds tossed cars many yards from where
they had been and flipped them upside down; even huge tractor-
trailer rigs fell victim to the winds. The big tornado in Sedgwick
County shredded and knocked over trailers in the Lakeshore Mobile

904
 1999: The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak
Great Bend McPherson
Emporia
Hutchinson

Missouri
Garden City Newton

Colorado Dodge City

KANSAS El Dorado
Wichita Chanute

Parsons
Winfield Pittsburg
Independence
Liberal Arkansas City Coffeyville
Miami
Ponca Bartlesville
City
OKLAHOMA
Woodward Enid
Claremore
Stillwater Sand Springs
Sapulpa
Tulsa
Guthrie
Muskogee
New Mexico

Edmond
The Village Midwest Okmulgee
Oklahoma City City
Moore Shawnee Fort
Norman Smith
Chickasha McAlester

Arkansas
Texas Ada
Fort Sill
Altus
Lawton Duncan

Ardmore
Durant
Wichita Falls

Homes Resort and at Pacesetter Mobile Homes; earlier, the even

more powerful tornado in central Oklahoma had devastated mobile
homes in the Southern Hills section of Bridge Creek.
More surprising, for persons accustomed only to weak tornadoes,
the most powerful of the tornadoes on May 3 virtually flattened sol-
idly built, fairly new houses, as in the especially hard-hit Highland
Park neighborhood in Moore, Oklahoma, where concrete slabs were
the chief evidence after the storm of the sites of many families’
homes. The devastation there and in other severely affected neigh-
borhoods and towns resembled the devastation from wartime bomb-
ing, as one Oklahoma City survivor said. In some places, cars rested
where houses had once stood, debris seemed to be everywhere, and
returning citizens, deprived of landmarks, could hardly find where
they had lived before the storm had struck.
Schools and businesses also sustained damage. In Moore, the F5
tornado wrecked part of Westmoore High School; not long after-
ward, in tiny Mulhall, Oklahoma, north of Oklahoma City, another
tornado destroyed the elementary school. At Stroud, a town of 3,200
on Interstate 44, midway between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, the dam-
age to businesses imperiled the town’s economic life, because the tor-
nado that passed through the town tore much of the roof off the
Integris Stroud Municipal Hospital; devastated the headquarters of

905
1999: The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak

the Sygma Network, a distributor of restaurant supplies; badly dam-

aged the Wendy’s Restaurant, the Best Western Motel, and two mo-
bile home parks; and in effect destroyed the large Tanger Outlet Mall
that had for several years been a familiar sight to motorists between
Oklahoma’s two largest cities.
People. Even more important than the indirect effects the torna-
does of May 3 had on people through the immense destruction of
property were the direct effects the tornadoes had through injuries
and death. Altogether, 49 people died because of the dangerous
weather, 44 in Oklahoma and 5 in Kansas. More than 900 other per-
sons in those states suffered injuries.
The scenes of horror were many. For instance, while the F5 tornado
was ravaging Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, a mother and her six-year-old
son raced toward a creek to take what meager shelter they could, but
the child saw his mother fly away in the wind and looked for her in vain
after the storm. After the tornadoes in the Wichita area, police officers
saw the body of a young, bearded man lying with his face in storm
water amid the wreckage at Pacesetter Mobile Homes. On May 12,
nine days after the storm, two young women were searching together
on their own for the last of the Oklahoma missing, Tram Thu Bui, in
the hope of finding her alive. Instead, they found her dead, her shoul-
der exposed amid wreckage in a ditch in Moore, 50 yards from the
overpass under which she, her husband, her daughter, her son, and
other persons had tried to take refuge when the tornado had ap-
proached as they were traveling on Interstate 35.
Along with the horror, however, came heroism and generosity. Of-
ficial storm chasers and law enforcement officers sometimes risked
their lives as they tried to warn people of oncoming tornadoes. Res-
cue workers, paid and unpaid, roamed through debris looking for
the dead and the living. Members of the National Guard patrolled
ravaged neighborhoods, and nurses, doctors, and other medical pro-
fessionals worked hour after hour to care for the wounded. Crews
from utility companies labored to ensure public safety and eventually
to restore water, electricity, gas, and telephone service. Charitable or-
ganizations sent their workers and opened their buildings to help. In
Moore, the First Baptist Church, just east of Interstate 35 and adja-
cent to the Highland Park neighborhood, became a makeshift hospi-
tal soon after the F5 tornado had done enormous damage nearby.

906
 1999: The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak

Letting the tall, generator-lit cross at the front of the building serve as
a beacon for the hurt and homeless, rescuers established a triage cen-
ter in one part of the building, while the choir room became a tempo-
rary morgue.
A few of the heroes died while saving other persons. Ordinary peo-
ple did extraordinary things. For example, to save her eleven-year-
old son, Levi, Kathleen Walton released her grip on him as the giant
tornado in metropolitan Oklahoma City sucked her out from under
the overpass on Interstate 35 where they had sought shelter. Not far
away, in Del City, Gustia Miller, seventy-six years old, and his wife, Dor-
othy, tried to use their bathtub as a tornado shelter when the same
tornado approached their home. When the bathroom window
broke, Mr. Miller put himself in extreme peril to hold a pillow to the
opening in an effort to keep debris from hitting his wife. During the
night, he died of his injuries.
Yet there were happy stories too. For days after the tornadoes, a
British couple, John and Barbara Potten, were feared dead. They had
been touring the United States in a motor home and had telephoned
relatives in Britain around 3:00 in the afternoon of May 3 to report
their arrival in south Oklahoma City. When, the next day, they failed
to follow their standard practice of calling home, their relatives and
Oklahoma law enforcement officers worried. In reality, however, the
Pottens had quickly driven out of Oklahoma when they had learned
of the possibility of tornadoes and, several days later, near the Cana-
dian border, they called relatives in Australia. Amazingly, another
person was found alive in a dramatic incident. Soon after the huge
tornado had hit Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, Grady County deputy
sheriff Robert Jolley, looking at rubble, spotted brown hair and real-
ized that a silent baby was lying in the mud. When he had dug her out
and started cleaning the mud from her eyes, she began crying, much
to his relief; he took her to a school where emergency medical techni-
cians were working. Thus, although her grandmother, Catherine
Crago, died in the tornado, ten-month-old Aleah Crago survived
without serious injury.
Lessons. Besides lessons about courage and generosity, one of the
lessons Oklahomans and Kansans learned from the tornadoes of
May 3, 1999, was the importance of skillfully operated, technologi-
cally sophisticated equipment for the detection both of the weather

907
1999: The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak

conditions that produce tornadoes and of the tornadoes themselves.

The expensive Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) used by
the National Weather Service meteorologists in Norman led to early
and accurate tornado warnings and therefore saved many lives. Had
there been no radar at all, and had there been no warnings broadcast
on radio and television, the death toll would have been enormous, es-
pecially in the Oklahoma City and Wichita metropolitan areas.
Another lesson is one that President Bill Clinton mentioned while
touring a devastated neighborhood in Del City, Oklahoma, on Satur-
day, May 8. Looking at the ruins of homes, he noted how few of them
had had basements or storm cellars and urged his audience to in-
clude safe rooms when they rebuilt their houses. Designed at Texas
Tech University, safe rooms are closetlike shelters on the ground
floor inside houses; indeed, interest in safe rooms greatly increased
in the disaster areas after May 3, as did interest in old-fashioned
storm cellars and in above-ground shelters standing outside the
home. Thousands of victims, along with many thousands of others,
realized in the aftermath of the tornadoes of May 3 how powerful
those storms can be.
Victor Lindsey

For Further Information:

Federal Emergency Management Agency. Midwest Tornadoes of May 3,
1999: Observations, Recommendations, and Technical Guidance. Wash-
ington, D.C.: Author, 1999.
Kavanaugh, Lee Hill. “‘Slight’ Chance of Storms, Then . . . Death
Dropped from Sky.” Kansas City Star, May 5, 1999, p. A1.
Riley, Michael A. Reconnaissance Report on Damage to Engineered Struc-
tures During the May, 1999, Oklahoma City Tornado. Gaithersburg,
Md.: U.S. Department of Commerce, Technology Administration,
National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2002.
Stevens, William K. “Winds of Change.” Tulsa World, May 16, 1999.
U.S. National Weather Service. Oklahoma/Southern Kansas Tornado
Outbreak of May 3, 1999. Silver Spring, Md.: U.S. Department of
Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
National Weather Service, 1999.
Zollo, Cathy. “Tornadoes Were in the Air.” Wichita Falls Times Record
News, May 5, 1999.

908
■ 1999: The Ezmit earthquake
Earthquake
Also known as: The Kocaeli earthquake, the Marmara earthquake
Date: August 17, 1999
Place: Northwestern Turkey
Magnitude: 7.4
Result: More than 17,000 dead, 25,000 injured, more than 250,000
homeless, 17,000 buildings destroyed, 25,000 buildings badly
damaged, total economic cost estimated at $15 billion

T he Northern Anatolian fault, which is some 600 miles

long, runs east to west through northern Turkey, paral-
leling the coastline of the Black Sea. It marks the division of the Eur-
asian Plate to the north and the Anatolian Plate to the south. The
Anatolian Plate itself is a small plate, wedged between the north-
thrusting Arabian and African Plates. It is highly unstable—both the
Northern and Southern Anatolian faults have given rise to frequent
earthquakes over the centuries. Like the San Andreas fault in Califor-
nia, the Anatolian fault is a right lateral strike-slip fault, about 10
miles deep. Also like the San Andreas fault, it moves about an eighth
of an inch a year and has branches at either end.
Seismologists noted a steady east-to-west shift of earthquake epi-
centers along the North Anatolian fault in the twentieth century,
thrusting the Anatolian Plate in a westward direction. An earthquake
occurred in eastern Turkey, for example, with a magnitude of 7.9 on
the Richter scale, followed by another, some 100 miles to the west, in
1942, with a magnitude of 7.1. Then, just two years later, in an area
north of the capital Ankara, in central Turkey, another earthquake
occurred, with a magnitude of 7.3.
Since then, earthquakes occurred along the fault in 1957 and
1967, each one moving further west, of approximately the same mag-
nitude. Seismologists warned the Turkish government that the next
earthquake along the fault could be in northwestern Turkey, and
that suitable preparations needed to be made. More specifically, in
1997, Ross Stein, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey at

909
1999: The Ezmit earthquake

Menlo Park, California, suggested, together with two colleagues, that

there was “an increased probability” that the next earthquake would
be around Ezmit, some 50 miles east of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city.
Northwestern Turkey is the most densely populated area in the
country. With 20 million inhabitants, it contains nearly a third of Tur-
key’s population. In it lies Istanbul, with 8 million inhabitants, grow-
ing at a rate of almost half a million a year; the new industrial areas
around Ezmit, with over half a million inhabitants; and Bursa, with
nearly 1 million residents. Some new resort areas along the south
coast of the Sea of Marmara, especially on the Gulf of Ezmit around
the town of Yalova, are also located in northwest Turkey. Half the na-
tion’s production takes place in the eleven provinces (or counties)
surrounding Istanbul. Many migrants from the relatively poor areas
of eastern Turkey come to these cities and towns to find work. A ma-
jor oil refinery was constructed by the government-owned gas com-
pany just outside Ezmit, as well as Honda and Toyota vehicle factories,
a Pirelli tire factory, and several other multimillion-dollar construc-
tion projects largely financed by Western companies. Many small-
scale businesses also sprang up. New hotels and apartment blocks
were quickly constructed to deal with the sudden boom in workers
and tourists. Swampland was drained around the Gulf of Ezmit to cre-
ate more building space.
To guard against earthquake hazards, the Turkish government
laid down strict building codes, equal, it claimed, to those in force in
other earthquake-prone areas, such as California and Japan. These
included regulations of the height of buildings (a two-story maxi-
mum in many cases), quality of concrete, strength of steel rods, and
depth of foundations. Unfortunately, the inspection and control of
these regulations was left in the hands of local city and town officials,
who were subject to political pressures, bribery, and lack of expertise.
Enforcement procedures were generally weak.
Turkey itself is a centralized secular country, even though 99 per-
cent of its population is Muslim. It has had a number of military re-
gimes, and the army has always been large for the size of the coun-
try—some 800,000 personnel. Turkey’s democratic structures have
been considered weak and open to corruption. Nevertheless, respect
for the country has been continuously inculcated into the popula-
tion, particularly in an effort to keep the state secular—its ideal when

910
 1999: The Ezmit earthquake

the country became a republic after World War I. The economy grew
during the 1990’s at a rate of 7 to 8 percent yearly. At the time of the
1999 earthquake it was economically sound, despite some loss of
tourist revenue over recent terrorist attacks by Kurdish rebels. Its an-
nual gross national product stood at $200 billion.
The Earthquake. At 3:02 a.m. on Tuesday, August 17, a temblor
shook northwestern Turkey with its epicenter near Ezmit. It lasted
forty-five seconds. First estimates of its magnitude were put at 7.1 by
the National Earthquake Information Center at Golden, Colorado,
and at 6.8 by the Turkish authorities. Both figures were later revised
to 7.4, making it one of the worst quakes to hit Turkey in the twenti-
eth century. It was felt as far away as Ankara, 270 miles to the east.
At the time the quake hit, the population was asleep, so first re-
ports were confused. A few deaths at Adama, Eskisehir, and Istanbul,
162 in total, were reported on Turkish television at daylight. One of
the worst-hit areas was Bursa, the foreign press reported, where an oil
refinery was blazing out of control. (In fact, the refinery was at Ezmit.)
As the day wore on, it became clear that the worst-hit areas were
MO

UKRAINE
L DO
VA

RUSSIA

ROMANIA
Crimea

Black Sea
BULGARIA GEORGIA
AZER.
Bosporus
GREECE Istanbul Zonguldak ARMENIA
Yalova Izmit
Gölcük
Bursa AZER.
Ankara
Dardanelles
A
TURKEY IRAN
eg
ea

Izmir
n

Athens
Sea

Antalya Adana

Aleppo
IRAQ
Crete
S
SYRIA
RU
CYP
Mediter ranean Sea
LEB.

911
1999: The Ezmit earthquake

Ezmit; Gölcük, where there was a naval base; and Yalova, where 90 per-
cent of the houses had collapsed. At Gölcük 248 sailors and officers
were reported trapped under collapsed buildings.
It soon became apparent that initial numbers were hopelessly un-
derestimated. Large parts of many towns and cities had been totally
devastated, many buildings had simply collapsed on their sleeping
occupants, and many others that remained standing were in too per-
ilous a condition for people to remain. A seawall had given way in the
Bay of Haldere, and further along the coast, a mile of shoreline had
sunk into the sea. Many places within an area of 100 miles east of Is-
tanbul were without electricity and water. Road and rail communica-
tions were severely disrupted by fallen bridges and sunken pave-
ments, although telephone communications between the main cities
were quickly restored. So many aftershocks occurred (250 within the
first twenty-four hours, 1,000 in the ensuing month) that people were
afraid to stay indoors even when their houses stood secure.
Rescue and Relief Efforts. By the end of the first day, the
Turkish government had reported 13,000 injured. Hospital beds
were set up in the streets of Ezmit. In one of the suburbs of Istanbul,
reporters saw piles of debris 20 feet higher than the bulldozers that
were working to rescue people from the collapsed buildings. In fact,
bulldozers and other heavy moving equipment were in very short
supply over the first few days, and most early rescue attempts were
characterized by families and neighbors working by hand or with
small-scale machinery—often borrowed or stolen—to rescue their
kin. Many inhabitants seemed too shocked and dazed to do anything.
Soon, great tent cities sprang up for the homeless, whose numbers
were constantly being revised upward, finally reaching half a million
people. Some of the shortage of suitable vehicles could be explained
by their being trapped or destroyed in collapsed buildings, as could
the shortage of medical supplies. However, the biggest feature of the
first few weeks after the quake was the complete lack of any large-
scale local rescue plans. There were no militias or civil-defense per-
sonnel, no official rescue workers seen by the vast majority of inhabit-
ants, nor any sign of the army becoming immediately involved.
In fact, it was the foreign rescue teams who were the first to reach
many of the stricken areas. An Israeli team was the first to arrive, the
morning after the quake. The Israeli rescue team was also the largest.

912
 1999: The Ezmit earthquake

The Israelis sent 2 fire-fighting planes, teams of dogs, and 350 rescue
workers. They also sent a field hospital and 200 medical workers.
Eventually 80 countries and international organizations sent rescue
teams or aid, with about 2,000 personnel directly involved. Besides
the response from Israel, immediate responses were also made by
Germany, the United States, France, Switzerland, and Great Britain,
among others. The U.S. 70-person rescue team from Fairfax, Vir-
ginia, was typical of many. It naturally took several days to assemble
and fly out, not reaching Turkey until two days after the quake. The
unit was rushed to Ezmit. A much larger U.S. relief effort was then
promised, consisting of 3 naval vessels equipped with 80 beds, operat-
ing tables, doctors, dentists, and paramedics, as well as 22 rescue heli-
copters. This could not arrive until the weekend, however.
Those teams that were near at hand found movement difficult,
with blocked roads and little direction or coordination from the
Turkish government. Many foreign teams, as has been stated, found
no local network at all and had to devise their own plans and organi-
zation. In the end, many rescue teams felt they had accomplished far
less than they might have in better circumstances.
The government did slowly begin to make specific requests for
help: body bags, tents, flashlights, blankets, garbage trucks, disinfec-
tant, and tetanus vaccine. At the same time it imposed a blockage on
aid by insisting that it be channeled through the Red Crescent (the
Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross). National pride and religious
feelings seemed to be the main cause for this demand. Indeed, the
minister of health, Osman Durmus, declared Turks should not ac-
cept blood donated by Greece nor medical aid from the United
States, and that foreigners should not actually deliver any relief aid.
Aid from Islamic countries and groups was also blocked, the govern-
ment fearing that any sympathy gained for political Muslims would
undermine the secularity of the state.
The Turkish Red Crescent appealed to the International Red
Cross for $6.92 million in aid. At the same time, the European Union
sent $2.1 million, Britain $800,000, Germany $560,000, and other
countries and charities smaller amounts for immediate help. The
United States gave some $3 million. Most of these amounts were
quickly increased as the scale of the disaster became apparent. A pri-
vate German television appeal raised $7 million, a Dutch appeal

913
1999: The Ezmit earthquake

raised $13 million. Even traditional foes of Turkey—Armenians,

Kurds, and Greeks—sent gifts.
Turkish television broadcast graphic scenes of the devastation and
early rescue attempts to drag people out of the wreckage. This caused
an unorganized stream of Turkish volunteers from other parts of the
country to make their way toward the devastated area. Some did ster-
ling work in helping with the rescue efforts, especially groups of
students from Istanbul, but many efforts were counterproductive,
causing 20-mile traffic jams along already damaged highways, thus
preventing heavy equipment and much-needed supplies from reach-
ing their destination. Such volunteers often brought aid that was not
actually needed, such as bottled water or bread. On the positive side,
very little looting was reported.
As stated, the epicenter was near the industrial city of Ezmit. One
of the main dangers there was the oil refinery on the edge of the city,
which had caught fire immediately and blazed uncontrollably for
three days, despite aerial attempts to douse the flames. A nearby fer-
tilizer plant with 8,000 tons of inflammable ammonia could have ex-
ploded easily, so all the nearby inhabitants had to be evacuated. At
the hospital, medical supplies ran out, and nearby pharmacies were
raided. An astonishing number of buildings less than five years old
had collapsed, and the mayor declared he would need 250 teams to
rescue everyone.
At Gölcük, the naval base and most of the town were flattened.
One of the prominent features here, as elsewhere, was the haphazard
nature of the building collapse. Some buildings were left standing;
others appeared to be until it was clear that the first floor had sunk
completely into the ground. Other buildings stood tilting sideways at
45-degree angles; many had cracks and fissures running through
them. Each building had to be assessed separately for rescuing those
still trapped inside, and it was often difficult to obtain the ground
plans for the structures. It was feared that up to 10,000 people were
trapped in the town.
Criticism was leveled against the government that its main rescue
efforts, using Israeli as well as naval personnel, had been directed to-
ward the army barracks, leaving individuals on their own. In fact, the
navy did set up a crisis center, but it was in the town center and few
trucks could reach it.

914
 1999: The Ezmit earthquake

By Friday the death toll in Gölcük had reached 7,000, and bodies
were being lined up in an ice rink for identification. Voices could still
be heard in the rubble two and a half days after the quake, but lack of
equipment or the wrong equipment continued to hinder the rescue
teams. In other towns, the death toll also continued to rise: Ezmit re-
ported 3,242 dead and 8,759 injured; Adapazari 2,995 dead and
5,081 injured; Yalova 1,442 dead and 4,300 injured; and Istanbul, 984
dead and 9,541 injured. In Adapazari 963 bodies were interred in a
mass grave. Not until Saturday, August 21, did soldiers appear, reach-
ing a total of 50,000 eventually. Their first jobs were to pick up the rot-
ting garbage, to spray disinfectant, and to set out lime. The stench of
rotting bodies and garbage was giving rise to fears of an epidemic of
cholera or typhoid, but in fact there was little medical evidence to
support such fears. Nevertheless, dysentry and scabies were real
threats to the tent-dwellers.
By the weekend, hope of pulling more survivors from the wreck-
age was fading. On Saturday the 21st, Austrian rescue workers pulled
a ninety-five-year-old woman from a seaside complex at Yalova; on
Sunday just two survivors were found. The last survivor to be pulled
out was a small boy who had somehow survived for six days. At this
stage, some foreign rescue teams began to pull out.
In some areas, it was reported that the army had intervened in
these final rescue attempts, taking over from the foreign teams, but
had only made a bad situation worse through their inexperience.
However, the army’s presence helped to stem the tide of volunteers
and ease the massive traffic jams. Rain began falling the second week,
keeping up for three straight days. To add to the misery of the home-
less, many of the army-supplied tents were found not to be water-
proof.
Public Criticism. After the initial shock of the quake, the sever-
ity of which affected the whole nation deeply, public criticism and an-
ger quickly took over, on the part of both the survivors and the mass
media. It was pointed in two directions: at the government for its in-
action and lack of preparedness, and at the contractors and local offi-
cials who had allowed substandard buildings to be erected. Both criti-
cisms point to the fact that the extent of the destruction was human-
made—that a 7.4 earthquake should not have had such a deleterious
effect.

915
1999: The Ezmit earthquake

The government tried to allay this criticism in a number of ways.

On the evening of the quake Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit made a na-
tional broadcast. Parliament met in special session on Thursday, Au-
gust 19, when Koray Aydin, minister of public works and housing,
gave a report, stating that this was the greatest natural disaster in the
history of Turkey. On the same day, the prime minister broadcast
again, trying again to allay public anger, but the only positive step he
took was to announce plans for more tents. The next day he ordered
immediate burial of the dead and asked for more body bags. The
much more robust response of the government and military to a No-
vember earthquake did lessen immediate criticism, even though con-
fusion and delay were still very much in evidence.
The minister of the interior, Sadettin Tantan, promised harsh
punishment for contractors, engineers, and building owners. In
Duzce alone, magistrates arrested 33 very quickly. Three provincial
governors were also dismissed for their failure to coordinate efforts,
being replaced by cabinet ministers. However, some politicians were
willing to avoid a cover-up. The minister of tourism, Erkan Mumcu,
declared the lack of response was symptomatic of the Turkish politi-
cal and economic system. By contrast, on August 25, Ecevit criticized
the press for its “demoralizing” earthquake reporting and shut down
one of the more outspoken private television stations under an anti-
incitement law.
The case against contractors and local officials was overwhelming.
For example, in Avcilar, the worst-hit suburb of Istanbul, a five-story
building had collapsed in twenty-seven seconds, while a mosque
standing nearby stood firm. The reasons the building collapsed were
clear: cheap iron for support rods, too much sand mixed with the
concrete, some buildings built without permits, and some with sto-
ries added without permission. In one case, local officials had or-
dered a halt three times to a building, but it had been completed just
the same, demonstrating the weak enforcement laws, even when lo-
cal inspectors were doing the job properly. A report by the Turkish
Architects and Engineers Association suggested that 65 percent of
new buildings put up in Istanbul were not in compliance with the
building regulations. The strength of the quake by the time it had
reached Istanbul was only 5.5, and all the buildings should theoreti-
cally have been able to withstand that magnitude quake. Other

916
 1999: The Ezmit earthquake

claims were made that of Turkey’s forty thousand contractors, most

were unqualified.
In Yalova, for example, survivors burned the car and stoned the
house of one local contractor by the name of Veli Gocer. Seven of the
16 buildings he had constructed had collapsed. He quickly fled to
Germany but is reported in an interview with the newspaper Bild am
Sonntaq to have said that while he sympathized with the victims, he
should not be made a scapegoat. His training was in literature, he
said, not in civil engineering, and he had believed the builders when
they had told him he could mix large quantities of beach sand with
his concrete as a way of cutting costs.
The Geological Aftermath. Besides the many small after-
shocks, two major aftershocks caused panic and some further deaths
and damage. The first of these was on August 31, lasting ten seconds,
with a 5.2 magnitude and its epicenter east of Ezmit. The second was
on September 13, registering 5.8 on the Richter scale. The Anatolian
fault had ruptured for at least 60 miles east of Ezmit, and in some
places the ground was offset by 12 feet. One possible reason for this
was that the original quake may in fact have been caused by two fault
segments splitting thirty seconds apart, thus causing such a large
shock.
Mehmet Au Iskari, director of Turkey’s leading observatory, ob-
served continuing unusual seismic movements that could suggest an-
other temblor soon. On Monday, November 15, a temblor of approx-
imately 7.2 magnitude struck with its epicenter at Düzce, 90 miles
east of Istanbul. At least 370 people were killed and 3,000 injured.
The U.S. government, aware of the similarities between the San
Andreas fault and the Anatolian, quickly dispatched a team of ex-
perts from Menlo Park, California, and Golden, Colorado, as well as
from the University of Southern California and San Diego State Uni-
versity. They were to investigate what lessons could be learned from a
country where building regulations were, in theory, as strict as those
in California, and especially the lessons from those buildings that
were left standing and the type of soil they were built on.
Geologists and seismologists made a prediction that the next big
quake on the fault will be in Istanbul itself, or a little to the south, in
the Sea of Marmara, in perhaps thirty to fifty years. Istanbul is some-
what more secure than the Ezmit area in that it is built on harder rock

917
1999: The Ezmit earthquake

and is 6 to 10 miles from the fault line. However, if the standard of

building construction is not improved, that will clearly be of little ad-
vantage in the next big quake.
The Economic Aftermath. The northwest region of Turkey was
the base for the country’s economic growth during the late twentieth
century, with many new industries creating new jobs. The destruction
of much of this area was bound to have enormous economic conse-
quences. Reconstruction of houses, apartments, shops, hotels, and
factories, as well as the infrastructure of roads, railways, bridges, sew-
erage, and water supply, would cost billions of dollars. Added to this
was the unemployment that followed the loss of workplaces and small
businesses, the loss of stock and capital, and the loss of production.
Worst hit were the small to medium-sized businesses that had fueled
the economic progress of the 1990’s. Fewer than 10 percent of
houses were covered by insurance, adding to the financial loss.
Turkey’s hopes of being in an economically sound position to
apply for membership in the European Union (EU), whatever its
democratic weaknesses, were thoroughly dashed. However, the EU
did express sympathy for Turkey’s plight. President Jacques Chirac of
France wrote to each of the EU states asking for a “new strategy” for
dealing with Turkey, after a two-year freeze in dialogue.
Turkey had also been in negotiation with the International Mone-
tary Fund (IMF), especially since it had been in financial difficulties
in 1999. It had been seeking to put the IMF’s recommendations into
practice. The loan originally requested had been $5 billion, but with
the estimated $25 billion total loss, such a sum had clearly become
too small. The government announced that it would endeavor to
stick to the previously agreed fiscal measures. The government also
immediately put aside $4 billion to repair businesses and $2 billion to
$3 billion to repair the oil refinery. However, foreign aid would
clearly be needed to supplement the long-term IMF loan. The World
Bank pledged $200 million for emergency housing, and the EU gave
$41.8 million. The future of Turkey’s economy looked considerably
bleaker than it had for many years, however.
The Political Aftermath. Potentially the most damaging re-
sults of the quake were in the political arena. The country’s disillu-
sionment with the government went deeper than particular individ-
ual politicians. It reflected a questioning of the paternalistic state that

918
 1999: The Ezmit earthquake

hitherto had been trusted by its citizens to care for them. Such an atti-
tude had been fostered to bring unity to a country whose secular ba-
sis lay counter to the traditionalism of many of its conservative Mus-
lims, who would prefer an Islamic republic.
The exposure of corruption at a local level, although well known
by the population before, added to public anger and frustration, as
did the inept bureaucracy. Most of the country’s residents had expe-
rienced this frustration daily in a minor way, but the earthquake
brought years of simmering annoyances to the boil. In a country
where the state was treated with great respect, the depth of such an-
ger and criticism may well have permanently undermined such trust,
making the job of future governments that much harder. Indeed,
some politicians and academics took the opportunity to call for re-
form, even to the extent of rewriting the constitution.
Not all the political aftermath was negative, however. Interna-
tional relationships were improved in a wave of sympathy, however
frustrated individual foreign relief and rescue teams were (the U.S.
naval ships were barely used in the end, for example). Prime Minister
Ecevit arranged a meeting with U.S. president Bill Clinton to ask for
more U.S. aid. Turkish-Israeli relationships were also strengthened
by the early and efficient arrival of Israeli rescue teams. Even the
Kurdish rebels in the southeast of the country offered a temporary
cease-fire.
Perhaps the most remarkable benefit politically was the blossom-
ing of Turkish-Greek relationships. Enemies for centuries, these
neighboring countries became antagonistic over the island of Cy-
prus, which was divided into Greek and Turkish sectors after a Turk-
ish military invasion in the 1970’s. The sending of a small Greek res-
cue team to the quake site was therefore an important symbolic
gesture. This gesture was returned by the Turks when Athens was hit
by an earthquake on September 9, 1999. A spontaneous response of
reconciliation was released between the two populations and taken
up by the media and politicians. The following month, President
Clinton sought to seize on this goodwill by offering to broker talks
over Cyprus. Rarely does an earthquake have such a profound effect
politically and economically, as well as in terms of human tragedy.
David Barratt

919
1999: The Ezmit earthquake

For Further Information:

The New York Times, August 17-September 14, 1999.
Tang, Alex K., ed. Izmit (Kocaeli), Turkey, Earthquake of August 17, 1999,
Including Duzce Earthquake of November 12, 1999: Lifeline Perfor-
mance. Reston, Va.: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2000.
U.S. Geological Survey. USGS Scientific Expedition: Earthquake in Tur-
key—1999. http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/research/geology/turkey/
index.html.
Youd, T. Leslie, Jean-Pierre Bardet, and Jonathan D. Bray, eds. 1999
Kocaeli, Turkey, Earthquake Reconnaissance Report. Oakland, Calif.:
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, 2001.

920
■ 2002: SARS epidemic
Epidemic
Date: November, 2002, to July, 2003
Place: Worldwide, but primarily Asia and Canada
Result: 8,422 reported cases and 916 known deaths

S evere acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was the first

major health crisis of the twenty-first century. SARS is
one of the fastest spreading and most virulent diseases known. It oc-
curs as a severe form of pneumonia and may result in death in pa-
tients with preexisting health issues or those who seek treatment too
late. From November 27, 2002, to July 14, 2003, SARS infected 8,422
victims worldwide and caused 916 known deaths. In China alone, the
source of the outbreak, there were 5,327 cases, with 349 people dying
of the disease.
Prior to the identification of SARS, an occurrence of an atypical
pneumonia was reported in Guangdong Province, China, in Novem-
ber, 2002. By February, 2003, 24 provinces in China reported cases of
atypical pneumonia. A Guangdong physician treating patients suffer-
ing from this pneumonia traveled to Hong Kong and checked into a
hotel in Kowloon on February 21, 2003. By March 4, he was dead, and
12 guests of the hotel housed on the same floor were infected even
though they had had no direct contact with him. Hong Kong is a ma-
jor transportation hub for all Asia. In a matter of days, these 12 peo-
ple spread SARS throughout Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, and
Vietnam. By the end of March, 2003, cases of SARS were diagnosed in
Italy, France, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Thailand, Malay-
sia, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Romania; by the end of April,
cases appeared in the United States, Australia, Brazil, India, Mongo-
lia, South Africa, Kuwait, the Philippines, Sweden, Indonesia, and
South Korea. During May, cases appeared in New Zealand, Colom-
bia, Finland, Macao, Russia, and Taiwan. It would take until mid-
summer 2003 to contain and control the SARS outbreak through
quarantine, isolation, and travel restrictions. In an age of globaliza-
tion and rapid transportation between nations—air travel to any loca-

921
2002: SARS epidemic

tion on the planet in less than 24 hours—the SARS outbreak demon-

strated the severe threat of pandemic posed by new and rapidly
emerging communicable diseases.
The Nature of SARS. SARS is an infectious respiratory illness
known as an atypical pneumonia. Typical pneumonia is primarily
caused by bacteria such as streptococcus, while atypical pneumonia
results from viruses such as influenza or specialized bacteria such as
chlamydia or mycoplasma. All pneumonia results in stress to the re-
spiratory system. In cases of SARS, however, not only is the respira-
tory system affected but other organs are involved in the infection as
well, especially the liver.
The onset of SARS is marked by a rapidly raising fever and dry
cough, followed by shivering, dizziness, lethargy, muscle ache, vomit-
ing, skin rashes, diarrhea, sore throat, and upper respiratory distress.
In some patients, these symptoms may be followed by difficulty in
breathing and rapidly progress to a severe form of pneumonia result-
ing in death when the heart and other organs fail from oxygen depri-
vation. The causal virus of SARS is a unique coronavirus. Corona-
viruses are one of the viruses responsible for influenza and about 20
percent of common colds. Coronaviruses can survive in an exposed
environment for up to three hours and can infect humans as well as
birds, cows, rabbits, dogs, cats, mice, and pigs.
The SARS virus is spread by direct person-to-person contact or
contact with aerosolized respiratory secretions from coughing,
sneezing, or breathing. In addition, droplets or respiratory secre-
tions that end up on a victim’s hands from rubbing the mouth or
nose can also transfer the infection to touched objects. A vaccine for
SARS is still in the experimental stage, but patients diagnosed and
treated in the early stages of an infection usually recover. Treatment
typically includes steroids and broad-spectrum antiviral drugs, and in
some cases supplemental oxygen and assisted ventilation.
Outbreak and Control. Coronaviruses and influenza are wide-
spread in the environment and exist in a range of animal hosts, espe-
cially birds and pigs. Certain avian strains of influenza have demon-
strated the ability to mutate and cross species barriers to infect
humans. Southern China is home to massive commercial-scale poul-
try and pig industries and has a history of spawning new, highly viru-
lent strains of influenza. In the last four decades of the twentieth cen-

922
 2002: SARS epidemic

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

Workers in Beijing spray disinfectant at the National Library in an attempt to combat

the spread of SARS. (AP/Wide World Photos)

tury, at least four new strains of influenza spread globally from China.
The huge number of poultry and pigs contained on these commer-
cial farms provides an easy opportunity for any virus, mutated or oth-
erwise, to find an available host and multiply readily. Animal han-
dlers, cooks, and fresh food market vendors may all have first-line
contact with an infected animal. If a cross-species mutation of an ani-
mal virus occurs, these people are the first to be exposed.
On November 16, 2002, in Foshan, China, a chef specializing in
the preparation of exotic meats was diagnosed and hospitalized with
an atypical pneumonia. The patient was able to recover, but four
members of the hospital staff who treated him soon showed signs of
the same infection. In a matter of days, a number of food handlers
and vendors from Guangdong Province’s street markets were hospi-
talized with a similar pneumonia. Chinese medical authorities sus-
pected that the patients were suffering from a new strain of influenza,
but tests for influenza came back negative, as did tests for anthrax
and plague. Tests did indicate several different respiratory pathogens
present in lung secretions, including metapneumovirus and chla-
mydia.

923
2002: SARS epidemic

By February, 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) was

notified of this unknown respiratory illness infecting 305 patients
and resulting in at least 5 deaths in Guangdong, China. All reports of
atypical pneumonia or other symptoms indicative of a new strain of
influenza reported to WHO are given high-priority status for tracking
and action. The outbreak of the illness remained localized around
Guangdong, with the majority of victims being food handlers work-
ing in open-air markets or health professionals who dealt with in-
fected patients. The epidemic seemed to reach its peak in early Feb-
ruary, and then cases began to decline. This all changed on February
21, 2003, when a physician from Guangdong traveled to Hong Kong
and checked into the Metropole Hotel. The physician had been
treating patients with SARS, and at the time of his arrival in Hong
Kong he was already symptomatic of the infection. The physician fell
ill and was taken to Prince of Wales Hospital, where he eventually
died after infecting many of the hospital’s staff and patients.
Within days, 12 guests staying on the same floor of the hotel as the
physician were diagnosed with the Guangdong respiratory illness.
One of the infected guests, an American businessman, traveled to
Hanoi, carrying the disease with him to Vietnam; he was asymptom-
atic at the time of his travel but on February 26, 2003, was admitted to
a Hanoi hospital and put under the care of a WHO physician, Dr.
Carlo Urbani. Another unknowingly infected guest traveled to Singa-
pore; she was hospitalized soon after her arrival, where she infected
medical staff and other patients. Two unknowingly infected guests
flew to Canada, one to Vancouver and the another to Toronto. Guests
in China who became symptomatic while still at the hotel were admit-
ted to Hong Kong hospitals, where again many of the staff members
and patients were exposed to the disease. The important fact of the
Metropole Hotel outbreak is that none of the infected guests had any
direct contact with the visiting Guangdong physician.
Because of SARS’ incubation period of 2 to 14 days, Hong Kong’s
cosmopolitan setting, and the ability of unknowing carriers to serve
as a vector in a matter of hours via air travel, infected travelers were
able to seed local epidemics throughout the world. The disease car-
rier from Singapore was eventually linked to more than 100 SARS
cases in Singapore; the Toronto carrier initiated an outbreak in a To-
ronto hospital resulting in 132 cases and 12 deaths.

924
 2002: SARS epidemic

On March 15, 2003, WHO issued a statement that severe acute re-
spiratory syndrome was a global health threat because it was spread-
ing so far and so quickly. On the same day, Air China Flight 112 flew
from Hong Kong to Beijing, and 22 passengers and 2 flight atten-
dants fell ill, beginning a SARS outbreak in Beijing. The Beijing out-
break resulted in the most cases and largest number of SARS-related
deaths in China.
During the last week of March, 2003, a second outbreak of the ill-
ness in Hong Kong began when an infected victim with renal disease
passed the disease throughout the Amoy Gardens apartments. The
Amoy Gardens is a densely populated housing development. Many of
the floor drain traps were not sealed, and many of the bathrooms
were openly connected to the sewer pipes. Virus-heavy droplets com-
ing from the infected apartment easily spread through the drains.
Initially, SARS was thought to be transmitted only through direct
person-to-person contact with respiratory secretions. Because many
cases suggested no direct contact between victims, however, environ-
mental transmission was suspected as an additional vector. The Amoy
Gardens cases tended to confirm this conclusion, as 213 residents fell
ill within the apartment complex. The Hong Kong government first
isolated the complex and then relocated residents to two “holiday
camps” for quarantine. That same week, a public housing complex
across the street from Amoy Gardens reported a new outbreak of 30
cases and was immediately isolated.
Dr. Carlo Urbani, the Italian epidemiologist working with WHO in
Hanoi who first named the disease “severe acute respiratory syn-
drome,” became a victim of SARS and died on March 29. In memory
of his research, WHO formally designated the disease “SARS” on
April 16. By the end of April, 2003, SARS was identified in 14 coun-
tries around the globe, with more than 1,300 cases and 50 known
deaths; by the end of the month, SARS was reported contained in
Vietnam, and new cases in Singapore and Hong Kong were diminish-
ing. Unfortunately, a new outbreak of SARS was reported in Taiwan,
where a misdiagnosis resulted in the disease spreading widely
throughout regional health care facilities. Random cases continued
to appear in China, but the second largest outbreak was in Toronto.
The traveler landing in Vancouver from Hong Kong arrived showing
signs of infection, was quickly isolated, and recovered without infect-

925
2002: SARS epidemic

ing others. In Toronto, the carrier from Hong Kong was able to infect
family members and eventually a number of health care providers. By
mid-March, Toronto public health officials alerted the public to the
outbreak of an atypical pneumonia. Before the end of May, nearly
7,000 cases of voluntary quarantine were imposed on suspected pa-
tients or carriers to stop the outbreak in and around Toronto.
Throughout the world, stringent control measures were taken to
stop the spread of SARS. Most important, airport and border guards
began screening travelers for fever, and strict isolation and quaran-
tine protocols were instituted in areas reporting SARS symptoms. By
mid-May 2003, the number of new cases of SARS diminished, and at
that time researchers in Hong Kong discovered the genetic sequenc-
ing of a coronavirus found in civet cats to be 99 percent the same as
the SARS virus. On May 24, 2003, the Chinese government tempo-
rarily banned importing exotic meat from civet cats, a popular Guang-
dong Province delicacy. It is likely that the original reported human
infection of SARS, the exotic meat cook from Foshan, had contracted
the disease from preparing civet cat.
Besides the human toll, SARS inflicted economic and political
damage. During the months of outbreak, Asian countries saw an esti-
mated financial loss of $28 billion. For the first time in its history,
WHO issued an advisory suggesting that travelers avoid parts of the
world infected with a disease. Airlines cut 10 percent of their flights
from North America to Asia, and some countries saw a drop of more
than 60 percent in tourism. In Canada, China, and the United States,
sporting events, public gatherings, film productions, religious ser-
vices, and parades were all canceled as a result of concerns about
SARS. After the SARS outbreak was contained, public health officials
and political leaders, especially in China, were accused of cover-ups
and mismanaging the crisis to avoid economic disruption.
An interesting footnote to the SARS legacy occurred in June,
2006, when Chinese researchers revealed that at least one of the re-
ported SARS deaths in China during 2003 was actually the result of
H5N1 avian influenza, raising the possibility that other cases attrib-
uted to SARS may have actually been human cases of H5N1 bird flu
and that the Chinese government covered up the possibility that two
pathogens were experiencing simultaneous outbreaks in China.
Randall L. Milstein

926
 2002: SARS epidemic

For Further Information:

Kleinman, Arthur, and James L. Watson, eds. SARS in China: Prelude to
Pandemic? Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Koh, Tommy, Aileen Plant, and Eng Hin Lee, eds. The New Global
Threat: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Its Impacts. River Edge,
N.J.: World Scientific, 2003.
Leung, Ping Chung, and Eng Eong Ooi, eds. SARS War: Combating the
Disease. River Edge, N.J.: World Scientific, 2003.
Levy, Elinor, and Mark Fischetti. The New Killer Diseases: How the
Alarming Evolution of Mutant Germs Threatens Us All. New York:
Crown, 2003.
Schmidt, A., M. H. Wolff, and O. Weber, eds. Coronaviruses, with Spe-
cial Emphasis on First Insights Concerning SARS. Boston: Birkhäuser
Verlag, 2005.

927
■ 2003: Europe
Heat wave and drought
Date: July-August, 2003
Place: Europe, especially France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal
Temperature: Up to 45 degrees Celsius (C) or 113 degrees Fahren-
heit (F)
Result: As many as 40,000 dead, 32 million tons of grain harvest lost,
1.6 million acres of land burned

I n July, 2003, an extreme buildup of high pressure in the

upper atmosphere over Europe created a deadly heat
wave that extended across the continent from northern Spain to the
Czech Republic and from northern Germany to southern Italy. In
early August, a second high pressure zone, existing both at surface
levels and aloft, extended from Canada across the North Atlantic
into western Russia and Central Europe. There it joined with ampli-
fied high pressure ridges to produce a massive formation that then
shifted westward to cover all of Europe. In addition, hot and dry
desert air from Africa, energized by sub-Saharan monsoons, swept
into Europe from the south. The result was the worst natural disaster
to affect the continent within the preceding 50 years, taking a toll of
as many as 40,000 lives.
Extreme Weather. In the spring of 2003, unseasonable high
pressure ridges deflected the rain and cool air that the jet stream nor-
mally carries into Western Europe from the Atlantic Ocean, resulting
in above-normal temperatures beginning in May. The situation wors-
ened the following month. Switzerland experienced its hottest June
in 250 years, and temperatures in Milan, Italy, hit a record of more
than 40 degrees Celsius.
Measurements of the heat wave in July and August established av-
erage temperatures of approximately 3.5 degrees Celsius higher than
seasonal averages. While these differences seem minimal, atmo-
spheric scientists cited the period as perhaps the hottest in 500 years.
Although Spain is subject to hot summers, its high temperature of 45
degrees Celsius may have set the record for the heat wave. Record

928
 2003: Europe

temperatures were also noted in Germany, where highs reached 40.6

degrees Celsius on August 9, and in Switzerland, where thermome-
ters recorded 41.1 degrees Celsius on August 11. Britain experienced
its hottest day in history at 38.1 degrees Celsius on August 10. During
the period from August 1 to August 12, Paris recorded average tem-
peratures that were 11.8 degrees Celsius above normal, while average
temperatures in Zurich, Switzerland, exceeded the norm by 9.5 de-
grees Celsius.
The Death Toll. Heat-related suffering and the risk of death es-
calate when normal or ambient temperatures are exceeded by as lit-
tle as about 5.6 degrees Celsius for two or more consecutive days. In
Europe, tens of thousands of deaths resulted from the unusually high
temperatures combined with the extended duration of the heat
wave.
Exacerbating the situation for city-dwellers was the phenomenon
known as the “heat island” effect, the result of common features of
the urban landscape such as dark surfaces that absorb heat, tall build-
ings that trap accumulations of stagnant air between them, and de-
creased vegetation. Waste heat from vehicles and machinery con-
tribute to the situation, while heat-induced chemical reactions in
automobile exhaust lead to dangerous levels of ozone concentration.
In comparison to surrounding areas, cities retain heat through the
night, allowing residents little relief. It is estimated that cities suffer
temperatures higher than those in suburban and rural areas by a
range of about 1.1 to 5.6 degrees Celsius. These factors contributed
to the high death tolls in Europe’s cities.
In France, an estimated 14,800 people died between August 1 and
August 20. The central and eastern regions of France were especially
hard hit, with high death rates in Dijon, Paris, Le Mans, and Lyon.
On the nights of August 11 and 12, death rates more than doubled as
Paris experienced its highest recorded nighttime temperature—25.5
degrees Celsius. In Paris, few doctors were available during the heat
wave; hospitals and morgues filled to capacity, and overflow bodies
had to be stored in refrigerated tents set up outside the city.
Not surprisingly, elderly city residents proved to be the most vul-
nerable to the heat wave, a result of both physical conditions and
social customs. Air-conditioning was not used extensively or systemat-
ically in French residences, hospitals, or retirement homes, endan-

929
2003: Europe

gering those unable to bear extreme heat and humidity. Many older
residents were without family to rely on because of summer holidays,
which typically fall in August. While a significant number of the el-
derly died at home alone, many others died in institutions. More
than 60 percent of the deaths in France during the heat wave took
place in hospitals, private health care facilities, and retirement
homes, with many of the deaths occurring among those aged 75 and
over. This situation subsequently led French authorities to question
their nation’s overall efforts at care for the elderly.
Although the epidemic proportions of the death toll in France
were the worst in all of Europe, death and suffering disrupted nor-
mal life across the continent. Several thousand casualties occurred in
Italy’s largest cities, with Rome reporting more than 1,000 deaths.
Further heat-related deaths took place in Spain, Portugal, the United
Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria,
the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Hungary, and the Balkan
nations.
Death toll figures rose in confusing proportions from country to
country. Totals were compiled using a variety of methods, resulting in
a perplexing series of estimates and revisions. The frequently quoted
higher death toll figures were eventually arrived at by using statistics
to compare the number of deaths during the heat wave to averages
from previous years. These “excess” mortality figures were based on
averages of “expected” mortality. Comparative mortality rates estab-
lished that the heat wave had intensified chronic medical conditions
such as heart disease and respiratory ailments, a factor that fre-
quently led to what were categorized as heat-related deaths. In the
years following the heat wave, reported death toll figures rose sharply
as methods of calculation were refined and additional heat-related
deaths were included in the totals. In 2006, Italy announced a death
toll for the heat wave of 2003 of nearly 20,000, more than twice the
country’s previous estimate.
Even when bodies were counted, they were not always identified.
In early September, for instance, 57 unclaimed victims of the Paris
heat wave were interred following a closed ceremony attended only
by city officials and the President of France.
Environmental Effects. Drought and wildfires heightened by
the heat wave adversely affected the economy of Europe. Drought

930
 2003: Europe

conditions in July and August of 2003 intensified as the days went by.
The heat wave followed a dry spring in which below-normal amounts
of rainfall left both Western and Eastern Europe in serious need of
moisture. In Western Europe, the hot, dry spring accelerated crop
growth; thus crops were in greater-than-normal need of moisture
during July and August when high temperatures and solar radiation
increased. The situation became so drastic in areas of Switzerland,
where water is rarely lacking, that the use of river water for agricul-
tural purposes was prohibited, causing losses of an estimated $230
million. Over all of Europe, the drought reduced crop yields and
killed some kinds of vegetation. The yield of green fodder for live-
stock was particularly hard hit. The United States Department of Ag-
riculture estimates that Europe lost 32 million tons of its projected
grain harvest—a figure comparable to half of the entire United
States wheat harvest. Such losses throughout Europe reached totals
in the billions of dollars.
Surface levels of rivers shrunk to record lows. The Sava River in
Croatia, for example, was at its lowest level in 160 years. The 1,800-
mile-long Danube, which passes through or forms a border of 10
countries in Central Europe, fell so low that the river, famous for its
beauty, seemed to be trickling away. Submerged tanks and ships from
the World War II era were revealed for the first time. Managers of
transportation on the international waterway attempted to keep river
travel operating, but smaller vessels became necessary as larger ships
and barges grounded out in shallows. When workers in Novi Sad, Ser-
bia, were unable to raise a pontoon bridge on the Danube, river
travel was halted for three weeks. An estimated 10 percent of the Dan-
ube delta wetlands dried out completely.
Surface water levels in lakes were depleted as well. Lake Balatan in
Hungary, the largest lake in Central Europe and a popular resort
area, shrank away from its shores by as much as 300 feet, forcing vaca-
tioners to trudge through wide expanses of mud in order to swim.
Forests were also affected by the drought, leading to concerns
over increased incidence of tree diseases. However, a more immedi-
ate danger threatened as wildfires set forests ablaze. More than
25,000 fires were reported in Portugal, Spain, Italy, France Austria,
Finland, Denmark, and Ireland, resulting in a loss of nearly 1.6 mil-
lion acres. In Portugal alone, nearly 965,000 acres burned—nearly 6

931
2003: Europe

percent of the country’s forested lands. The fires were so difficult to

control that Portugal requested assistance from the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO). When this aid was denied, the country
requested assistance from the European Commission to cover losses
exceeding $1 billion.
Responses to the Heat Wave. As water levels sank and fires
raged, officials attempted to protect citizens from other heat-related
dangers. The heat buckled roads in Germany and railroad tracks in
Britain, resulting in lowered rail and automobile speed limits. Cities
reduced speed limits to control ozone levels, and Portugal was forced
to suspend rail traffic altogether. Adding to the problems of Swiss of-
ficials, glacial melting in the Alps resulted in increased climbing acci-
dents as the ice became unstable. On a somewhat less serious note,
residents of the Croatian island of Pag were forbidden to shower at
the beach, while zoo officials in Austria sprayed ostriches with cold
water and fed iced fruit to chimpanzees.
During the extreme heat, electricity-producing utilities requested
that rules governing wastewater temperatures be relaxed so that nu-
clear reactors and coal-fired plants could continue operation. Ger-
man and French nuclear plants continued to produce electricity,
although a French coal-fired plant was shut down. Several nuclear re-
actors in France ran so hot during July that plant managers ex-
perimented with sprinkler systems, a situation that greatly concerned
environmentalists. Normally a leading electrical power exporter,
France cut sales to surrounding countries during the heat wave. It-
aly’s electricity grid was subject to rolling blackouts, affecting mil-
lions of Italians.
In the aftermath of the ruinous summer, Europeans focused on
preparations for future heat waves. Governmental entities through-
out Europe reviewed data and developed plans to cope more effec-
tively with extreme heat, often by expanding the roles of governmen-
tal health services. At least one scientific study found that global
warming, believed by most authorities to be exacerbated by green-
house gases and other pollutants created by human activity, had al-
most certainly doubled the risk of future heat waves.
Margaret A. Dodson

932
 2003: Europe

For Further Information:

Larsen, Janet. “Are More Killer Heat Waves on the Horizon?” USA To-
day 132 (May, 2004): 56-58.
Le Comte, Douglas. “A Year of Extremes: 2003’s Global Weather.”
Weatherwise 57, no. 2 (March/April, 2004): 22-29.
Stott, Peter. “Human Contribution to the European Heatwave of
2003.” Nature 432 (December 2, 2004): 610-614.
Tagliabue, John. “Utilities in Europe Seek Relief from the Heat.” The
New York Times, August 12, 2003, p. A6.
United Nations Environmental Programme. “Impacts of Summer
2003 Heat Wave in Europe.” Early Warning on Emerging Environ-
mental Threats. http://www.grid.unep.ch/product/publication/
download/ew_heat_wave.en.pdf.
Vandentorren, Stéphanie, et al. “Mortality in 13 French Cities During
the August 2003 Heat Wave.” American Journal of Public Health 94,
no. 9 (September, 2004): 1518-1520.

933
■ 2003: The Fire Siege of 2003
Fires
Date: October 21-November 4, 2003
Place: Los Angeles, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino, and River-
side Counties, California
Result: 22 dead, 80,000 residents displaced, 3,500 homes destroyed,
743,000 acres burned; insurance losses estimated at $2 billion

A series of wildfires that first broke out on October 21,

2003, raged across the landscape in the vicinity of Los
Angeles and San Diego in Southern California, collectively constitut-
ing the largest wildfire in California history. It came to be known as
the Fire Siege of 2003.
The Wildfires. In all, at least 12 separate wildfires burned dur-
ing this time period: the Verdale and Grand Prix Fires in Los Angeles
County; the Old Fire in San Bernardino County; the Cedar, Paradise,
Otay, and Roblar 2 Fires in San Diego County; the Piru and Simi Inci-
dent Fires in Ventura County; and the Pass, Mountain, and Wellman
Fires in Riverside County.
The first of these fires, the Grand Prix Fire, broke out on October
21 in the San Bernardino National Forest. Officials suspected that it
had been deliberately set. On October 25, the Cedar Fire, which
would become the largest of these blazes, broke out around San
Diego. It was known to have been caused by a lost hunter who fired a
flare. There was also a major outbreak in the Simi Valley to the north-
west of Los Angeles. The hot foehn winds, called Santa Ana winds,
that sometimes blow across Southern California had begun on Octo-
ber 23. They whipped up all the fires and made firefighting ex-
tremely dangerous, resulting in the death of a Canadian firefighter
whose position was overwhelmed by flames.
Although some 16,000 firefighters were deployed in an effort to
stop the blazes, their efforts were largely ineffectual. Protecting life
became more important than protecting property, as 3,500 homes
were destroyed. The fires moved quickly, and notice to evacuate
sometimes came too late. Of the 22 individuals killed by the fires, 10

934
 2003: The Fire Siege of 2003

had been trapped in their cars as they tried to flee the Cedar Fire.
On October 26, officials in San Diego advised residents not di-
rectly threatened by the fire to stay home because the quantity of ash
in the air had reached dangerous levels. Indeed, the smoke plumes
were so high that they were visible on the International Space Station
at the height of the wildfires. Conditions in the atmosphere were so
bad that it was necessary to close the Southern California Radar Ap-
proach Control facility near San Diego, disrupting air traffic through-
out the nation. An NFL game between the San Diego Chargers and
the Miami Dolphins, scheduled to take place in San Diego on Octo-
ber 27, had to be moved to Tempe, Arizona, because the Chargers’
regular stadium had been converted into an evacuation center.
A change in the weather on October 30 at last enabled fire officials
to get control of the situation. The Santa Ana winds had died down
on October 27, and light rain began to fall on October 30. By Novem-
ber 4, officials were at last able to get control of the fires. Although
President George W. Bush and California governor Arnold Schwarz-
enegger toured the area on November 4, relatively little federal aid
was available to cope with the destruction.
Factors in the Outbreak. Four factors played an important
role in the outbreak of so many destructive wildfires within two
weeks. They were topography, climate, vegetation, and demograph-
ics. All four played a role in creating a series of wildfires of unprece-
dented scale.
Los Angeles and San Diego Counties, located on the Pacific coast
of Southern California, are fringed by the San Gabriel and San
Bernardino Mountains that separate the areas from the Mojave
Desert directly to the east. The areas are effectively a bowl that en-
sures continuity of weather and vegetative conditions in the land so
embraced. The eastern edges of this bowl have been declared na-
tional forests, the Cleveland and the San Bernardino National For-
ests, which effectively transfers the maintenance of the vegetation to
the U.S. Forest Service. Even before European settlement of the area,
it was subject to periodic wildfires, as determined by the government
investigators who have been seeking to understand the causes of the
Fire Siege of 2003.
Besides topography, the climate that prevails in this basin is highly
conducive to wildfires. It is called a Mediterranean climate, with lim-

935
2003: The Fire Siege of 2003

ited precipitation occurring largely in the winter and high tempera-

tures and very dry conditions in the summer. Rainfall in the winter
months (November to April) is normally around 20 inches (500 milli-
meters), but in the summertime (May to October) it is less than 5
inches (125 millimeters). Moreover, the area is prone to Santa Ana
winds, especially in the fall, that can reach 60 miles per hour (100 ki-
lometers per hour), making firefighting both problematic and dan-
gerous. The mountain ranges just inland concentrate these winds by
funneling them through passes in the mountains.
The result of these two factors, topography and climate, is that most
of the land does not produce trees but rather a semi-desert brush
called chaparral, which is highly flammable. Of the area burned in the
fires, only 5 percent had coniferous trees growing on it, the rest being
covered in chaparral bushes. Such vegetation normally burns at inter-
vals varying between 5 and 100 years; within 3 to 5 years of a burn, new
chaparral growth appears and the cycle is repeated.

The remains of a house caught in a firestorm in San Bernardino, California.

(FEMA)

936
 2003: The Fire Siege of 2003

Because both Los Angeles and San Diego are located at the sites of
important seaports, they have experienced major population growth,
especially in the latter half of the twentieth century. Further, that
growth has been characterized by the expansion of housing into the
open lands on the fringes of the city centers, creating what is called
the intermix fire, one that occurs on land that is both wild and occu-
pied. Between 1950 and 1990, 100 million people moved into this
area. Between 1970 and 1980, counties that happened to adjoin wil-
derness areas increased their population by 13 percent; between
1980 and 1990, the increase was 24 percent. This explosive popula-
tion growth has continued since 1990.
This exurban expansion took the form of wooden houses with
wooden roofs, which are especially susceptible to fire. As population
expanded into lands that had been occupied previously only by vege-
tation, the risk of fires being started expanded exponentially, even if
they were not intended, as many of them were. Most of the fires in
this great sequence of wildfires were attributed to arson, even though
no one was caught.
Lessons of the Fire Siege. The Fire Siege of 2003 gave new fuel
to a controversy that had been engaging land management agencies
in the area for several decades: Were the fires the consequence of im-
proper fire management, and could they have been prevented?
The fires provoked an intense debate among many officials as to
the appropriate policy to follow in the Southern California region.
The drought that characterized much of the western parts of the
United States in the later decades of the twentieth century and that
has lasted into the twenty-first century has made the question of fire
control of vital concern, especially as the population of the western
states continues to grow at a very rapid rate.
Early in the twentieth century, as the U.S. Forest Service took
charge of many parts of the western United States with the creation
of the national forests, the Forest Service became responsible for
managing forest fires in the region as part of the obligation to main-
tain the forests in the areas that it controlled. Huge wildfires in the
early years of the century, especially those that burned in many parts
of the West in 1910, led the Forest Service to adopt a policy of fire
suppression of all fires in the first hours in which they were detected.
The development of many new technologies during World War II,

937
2003: The Fire Siege of 2003

such as helicopters and large water balloons towed by airplanes, to-

gether with the substantial expansion of the road system in the na-
tional forests by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s, led
the leaders of the Forest Service to believe that they had the situation
under control. In the 1960’s, however, the development of the envi-
ronmental movement, which advocated returning to the “natural”
conditions prevailing before settlement and in particular to the cre-
ation of “wilderness” forests, led to a policy in which fires in wilder-
ness areas were allowed to burn until they burned out. However, the
devastating fire that broke out in Yellowstone National Park in 1988
led to a reevaluation of this policy. Efforts were made to combine
“controlled burns” (fires deliberately set by government officials) in
strategic locations with the idea that deliberately burning lands con-
taining considerable burnable material would create patches that
would lack the fuels to support large fires.
At the same time, government officials began to realize that a uni-
form policy throughout the entire country was not practicable. Craft-
ing a policy specifically for the chaparral lands in the vicinity of the
major California cities became a high priority. Specialists in the U.S.
Geological Service and at the University of California at Los Angeles
(UCLA) began an intensive study of the history of fires in the region.
They discovered that fires recur on the topography and in the veg-
etation of the area every 30 to 40 years, although some particularly
sensitive areas may burn more frequently. The rapid growth of the
human population in the area has substantially raised the risk, be-
cause although many western fires are ignited by lightning, such
events are rare in the Los Angeles-San Diego coastal area. Over-
whelmingly, people are the cause, particularly fires that are deliber-
ately set, and there is little likelihood that this situation will change in
the future. They also realized that, although creating fire breaks may
work in many areas, the very high flammability of the chaparral vege-
tation makes this an unworkable strategy in this area. The one advan-
tage of periodic deliberate control of vegetation is that it can reduce
the risk of soil loss that occurs after a fire.
Thought needs to be given by local officials to the pattern of hu-
man settlement and to the regulations that control it, such as zoning
regulations. In addition, specific requirements governing exurban
houses, such as nonflammable roofing and siding materials, can

938
 2003: The Fire Siege of 2003

make it much easier to save houses in the path of a fire in this region.
Basically, the chaparral region, given its topography and its climate,
can be expected to burn at regular intervals, and there is not much
that wildland fire officials can do about it. The best approach is to
treat fires in this region as natural catastrophes much like earth-
quakes. Wildfire management would also benefit from the full devel-
opment of evacuation plans, as moving people out of the path of dan-
ger must be given a very high priority.
Nancy M. Gordon

For Further Information:

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. California Fire
Siege 2003: The Story. Sacramento, Calif.: Author, 2003. Also at
http://www.fire.ca.gov/php/fire_er_siege.php.
California Legislature. Joint Legislative Committee on Emergency
Services and Homeland Security. 2003 Historic Southern California
Fires: An Assessment One Year Later. Sacramento, Calif.: Senate Publi-
cations, 2004.
Keeley, Jon E., and C. J. Fotheringham. “Historic Fire Regime in
Southern California Shrublands.” Conservation Biology 15, no. 6
(December, 2001): 1536-1548.
Keeley, Jon E., C. J. Fotheringham, and Max A. Moritz. “Lessons from
the October 2003 Wildfires in Southern California.” Journal of For-
estry 102, no. 7 (October/November, 2004): 26-31.
Krauss, Erich. Wall of Flame: The Heroic Battle to Save Southern California.
Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
Pyne, Stephen J. World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth. Seattle: Univer-
sity of Washington Press, 1995.

939
■ 2003: The Bam earthquake
Earthquake
Date: December 26, 2003
Place: Bam, Iran, and the surrounding area
Magnitude: 6.5
Result: More than 26,000 killed, about 75,000 left homeless, includ-
ing 30,000 injured; more than 85 percent of the buildings in Bam
destroyed, including the historic Citadel

T he Earth’s crust is cracked and broken into large seg-

ments called plates. These plates may be 25 to 320 kilo-
meters (15 to 200 miles) thick and a few hundred to thousands of ki-
lometers wide. The plates dip into the mantle, a global layer of hot,
dense rock that is generally not molten but plastic. In a simplified
view, convection currents in the mantle rise, move across the top, and
then cool and sink at the glacial speed of a few centimeters (1 or 2
inches) per year. The motion of the mantle carries the plates on cha-
otic journeys so that some plates slide by, pull away from, or crash into
other plates. This movement is the source of earthquakes. Large
quakes occur when one plate is locked against another, allowing
stress to build for years or centuries until the weakest link gives way
and that part of the plate lurches forward.
With about 130 major earthquakes during recorded history, Iran
ranks among the most seismically active countries of the world. It is
spanned by a network of faults at the boundary between the Arabian
plate and the Eurasian plate. On Friday, December 26, 2003, a seg-
ment of the Arabian plate broke loose and ground northward. A
small precursor quake struck at 4:00 a.m., and some residents of Bam,
Iran, rushed out into the streets. Unfortunately, since small quakes
occur there often and nothing further happened immediately, most
went back to bed. The magnitude 6.5 quake struck at 5:26 a.m., re-
leasing energy equivalent to 5.6 megatons of TNT. The quake’s focal
point was almost directly beneath Bam. Seen from above, the sand-
colored houses, walls, towers, and arches gave Bam the look of a fan-
tastically intricate sand castle. After the quake, it looked as if vandals

940
 2003: The Bam earthquake

had kicked down the walls, stomped on the towers, and sat on the cas-
tle. Most of Bam was rubble.
Aftermath. The ancient city of Bam was built on a desert plateau
in the southeastern region of Iran. The old city was made of adobe,
bricks of mud mixed with straw or animal dung and dried in the sun.
Thick walls were constructed with bricks plastered together with lay-
ers of clay, and roofs were decked with heavy tiles or more bricks built
into cupolas and vaults. Adobe works well in a country where it rarely
rains, and the thick walls helped to keep the interiors of the houses
cooler during the heat of the day. During the quake, however, the
adobe disintegrated, turning walls and roofs into tons of dirt that cas-
caded down onto the sleeping inhabitants. Those who freed them-
selves or were quickly pulled from the rubble by family members or
neighbors had a good chance of survival, but after the first few hours,
searchers found very few survivors. There were two miracle survivors:
a 97-year-old woman, Sharbanou Mandarai, was trapped for eight
days in the airspace beneath a table near a ventilation pipe and was
rescued in amazingly good condition, but a 56-year-old man pulled
from the rubble after 13 days was in poor condition.
The final toll was 26,271 killed, more than 30,000 injured, and
more than 75,000 left homeless. Approximately 85 percent of the
buildings were completely destroyed. It made little difference if the
buildings were ancient or modern, since building codes had not
been followed. For example, two modern hospitals, supposedly built
to withstand such quakes, collapsed in ruins. All of Bam’s 131 schools
were destroyed, and about a third of the teachers were killed. A
prison at the edge of the city collapsed, setting the prisoners free. Af-
ter standing guard for nearly 2000 years, the largest adobe build-
ing in the world, the Citadel, or Arg-e-Bam, a magnificent warren of
ramparts, towers, arches, courtyards, and narrow passages, was now
largely rubble. Most of the date palms that were claimed to have pro-
duced the world’s best dates were lost.
Iranian president Mohammed Khatami announced that the disas-
ter was more than one nation could handle, and he appealed for in-
ternational aid. This was a dramatic change from the quake of June,
1990, when foreign aid was refused in spite of 50,000 killed and
60,000 injured. More than 60 nations responded to President Kha-
tami’s appeal, sending supplies and workers. Only aid from Israel was

941
2003: The Bam earthquake

refused. The United States had broken off diplomatic relations with
Iran during the 1980-1981 hostage crisis, dealing with the country
only through third parties, but in this situation U.S. officials spoke di-
rectly with their Iranian counterparts to arrange aid. U.S. military air-
planes brought emergency supplies on December 28, and 80 Ameri-
can doctors and aid workers arrived in Bam on December 30. Noting
Iran’s new openness, the U.S. government proposed a high-level hu-
manitarian mission to be headed by Senator Elizabeth Dole, a past
president of the American Red Cross, but the Iranian government
was not ready for this step and “held it in abeyance.” Iran accused the
United States of trying to turn the situation to its own advantage, al-
though the tone was far less strident than it had been in the past.
Eventually, medical care, food, water, temporary shelter, blankets, a
sanitation system, and more were provided by Iran and other nations.
Cultural Heritage. President Khatami promised that Bam
would be rebuilt, and in July, 2004, the World Heritage Committee of
the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza-
tion (UNESCO) declared Bam a World Heritage site, stating that it
represented a historical culture of which Iranians were justifiably
proud. With this declaration, UNESCO became the head of the inter-
national efforts for the cultural preservation of Bam. Under its direc-
tion, experts from Japan began helping to reconstruct the Citadel, a
project expected to take fifteen years.
Bam was a trading center as early as 250 b.c.e. and became a pil-
grimage site when a Zoroastrian fire temple was built there. After the
temple was destroyed, it was replaced in the ninth century c.e. by one
of the earliest mosques in Iran, the Jame Mosque. Built on the an-
cient Silk Road, the old trade route between Europe and Asia, Bam
was a convenient place for traders with silk from China or carved
ivory and gold baubles from India to bargain with traders bringing
fine Roman glass and other goods from the west. Bam became fa-
mous for textiles and for garments of silk and cotton. As water be-
came available for farming, Bam also became famous for its dates and
other fresh fruit.
Ingenuity allowed the inhabitants to live in a region that can reach
50 degrees Celsius on a hot summer day. Bam is built beside a river
that seldom has water, but water is available to those who know how to
find it. It comes from deep wells and from underground channels

942
 2003: The Bam earthquake

called qanats, which were invented in Iran perhaps 3,000 years ago.
They are channels built by hand underground to minimize evapora-
tion of the water into the dry desert air. They begin in the aquifer at
the base of the mountains many kilometers away. The qanat is con-
structed with only a shallow slope so that water flows nicely, but not so
rapidly that it erodes the tunnel. Vertical shafts every 20 or 30 meters
provide air as well as access to construct and maintain the qanat. Bam
has some of the oldest qanats in Iran. Before the quake, 126 qanats
supplied about half of the water used by Bam and its surroundings,
but most were damaged in the quake, and 40 percent were severely
damaged.
Windcatchers (badgir) have been used for more than 1,000 years.
The simplest is a vertical shaft from the ceiling of a room to the out-
side. The top of the shaft has a roof supported by columns or perfo-
rated walls. Wind blowing across the top of the shaft will reduce the
pressure there and suck the warmest air from the room below. If the
room has thick adobe walls that were chilled by the windcatcher
drawing in cold night air, the room may remain cool all day. If the
windcatcher has a scoop that diverts the wind down its shaft, over a
pool of water, and into a room, the air will be chilled by evaporative
cooling. It will be even cooler if the windcatcher forces dry air
through a qanat so that it undergoes evaporative cooling and also
draws chilled air from the underground chamber. In fact, if this com-
bination is used to chill a well-insulated building, ice can be har-
vested in winter and kept in such a building well into the summer.
Outlook for the Future. In an opinion piece for The Iranian
called “Ready for Future Bams?” on January 3, 2003, Sassan Pejhan
writes that as he watched the television coverage of the Bam quake,
he could not help but recall previous earthquakes in Iran: Roudbar
in 1990, where 50,000 were killed and 60,000 were injured, and the
Tabas earthquake in 1978, in which 25,000 were killed. The Tabas
quake reminded Pejhan’s parents of the 1968 earthquake at Khora-
san, where 12,000 were killed, and Pejhan’s grandparents were re-
minded of the earthquake at Salmas, where 4,000 were killed. Pejhan
wonders what can break this vicious cycle of tragedy and concern fol-
lowed by apathy and little progress.
Four days before the Bam quake, a quake of the same magnitude
struck California’s central coast and killed only 2 people in the town

943
2003: The Bam earthquake

of Paso Robles. On October 23, 2004, a series of quakes, the first of

magnitude 6.8 (several times more powerful than the Bam quake),
struck northern Japan, killing 35 and injuring 1,300. Simply put, Iran
has not invested in building earthquake-resistant structures to the ex-
tent that more developed countries have. It is not merely a matter of
mud brick construction, since modern buildings in Iran also col-
lapsed. After the quake, Investigators found that fired bricks were of-
ten so weak that they disintegrated when struck sharply. Weak bricks
had not been fired hot enough or long enough. Had buildings been
constructed to the standards required by the Iranian building code,
most probably would have survived. It is not simply a matter of
money, since Iran has a great deal of oil money but has chosen to
spend it elsewhere.
The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visited Bam three days after the
quake and comforted the people by assuring them that the quake was
not a punishment from God but instead a test to see if they would re-
main faithful during difficulties. Too many people have taken this
statement to mean that they should not work to prevent future trage-
dies. In fact, a consensus has been expressed by many writers both in-
side and outside Iran that a prevalent submissive and fatalistic mind-
set keeps the people from making necessary changes. Those who
are trying to implement steps to make buildings more earthquake-
resistant find it difficult to institute change because of these atti-
tudes.
Research shows that adobe homes could be greatly strengthened
by using iron straps to tie walls to foundations, floors, ceilings, and
roofs. Some horizontal and vertical concrete beams would also
greatly strengthen adobe buildings. Covering adobe with a layer of
adhesive, fiber-based polymers (quake wrap) has been shown to help.
Even placing adobe bricks in sandbags and putting barbed wire be-
tween layers of bricks greatly strengthened test buildings. Enforcing
building codes is probably the most effective step that could be
taken.
Locals complained that money donated by other nations for the re-
building of Bam was being withheld by the government and that the
rebuilding was proceeding too slowly. The government responded
that donor nations have been slow to fulfill their pledges. They also
pointed out that before rebuilding could be started, it took more

944
 2003: The Bam earthquake

than six months to develop a plan for a modern city that would solve
some of the problems with the old city. By 2006, although there were
still many piles of rubble waiting to be cleared, the rebuilding was
well underway, but ensuring that the new buildings are built to code
requires constant vigilance.
Charles W. Rogers

For Further Information:

Campi, Giovanni. “The Bam Earthquake: The Tragedy of a Cultural
Treasure ‘Depicted in the Faces of People.’” UN Chronicle 41 (De-
cember 1, 2004): 40.
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. 2003 Bam, Iran, Earth-
quake Reconnaissance Report. Oakland, Calif.: Author, 2006.
Ghafory-Ashtiany, Mohsen, et al. Journal of Seismology and Earthquake
Engineering: Special Issue on Bam Earthquake. Tehran: International
Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology, 2004.
Hough, Susan Elizabeth, and Roger G. Bilham. After the Earth Quakes:
Elastic Rebound on an Urban Planet. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006.
Lawler, Andrew. “Earthquake Allows Rare Glimpse into Bam’s Past—
and Future.” Science 303 (March 5, 2004): 1463.

945
■ 2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami
Earthquake and tsunami
Date: December 26, 2004
Place: 11 countries bordering the Indian Ocean—Thailand, Indo-
nesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, the Mal-
dives, the Seychelles, Somalia, and Kenya
Magnitude: 9.3
Result: Official death toll of 186,983, later revised upward to 212,000;
42,883 missing; thousands dead from injuries and diseases directly
attributable to the tsunami

T sunamis, which seldom occur in the Atlantic and In-

dian Oceans, are more frequent in the Pacific Ocean,
the average depth of which is much greater. However, one minute be-
fore 7:00 a.m. on December 26, 2004, the strongest earthquake re-
corded in the previous 40 years erupted on the floor of the Indian
Ocean near the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
This quake was originally assigned an magnitude of 9.0 on the
Richter scale, but seismologists ultimately determined that the actual
magnitude was 9.3. In contrast, the magnitude of the earthquake that
leveled much of San Francisco in 1906 measured 7.8 on the Richter
scale, and the greatest magnitude ever recorded was 9.5 in the earth-
quake the struck Chile on May 22, 1960.
Although the earthquake in the Indian Ocean did not immedi-
ately produce huge ocean surges, the energy emanating from its epi-
center equaled that of more than 23,000 atomic bombs of the sort
dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. The ocean’s surface immedi-
ately after the earthquake experienced waves of about 1 foot, which
made them virtually undetectable as a tsunami.
As the energy that the earthquake released moved in concentric
circles from the epicenter, however, the size of the waves increased
dramatically. They moved at speeds in excess of 600 miles an hour,
slowing down only when they reached the shallow coastal waters in ar-
eas bordering the ocean. As they advanced, the waves created out-
flows that drained harbors, causing the curious to walk toward reced-

946
 2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami

ing shorelines, fascinated by what was exposed in the shallow areas.

Almost instantly, without warning, the shoreline was inundated by
waves as high as 50 feet that crashed with a force that pulverized ev-
erything in their paths. In tsunamis, the tops of the waves travel much
faster than the bottoms, which results in a dramatic rising of the sea.
The combined speed and weight of the raging water makes human
survival unlikely.
The areas affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami were quite im-
poverished. Many of their structures, especially those in which na-
tives live, were badly built, making them incapable of resisting the
force of such a powerful tsunami. These structures were either flat-
tened or tossed about like matchboxes when the high waves hit.
Because this fearsome tsunami struck the day after Christmas, re-
sorts on the Indian Ocean were booked to capacity with tourists,
many from Europe and the United States. In the fishing villages abut-
ting the ocean, many of the men had gone out on their boats, which
accounts for the fact that four times more women than men died in
the disaster. In addition, one-third of the dead were children. The ini-
tial official combined death toll for 11 countries of 186,983 was ulti-
mately revised upward to about 212,000.
The Causes of the Tsunami. Earthquakes occur when two tec-
tonic plates push against each other to the point that they produce a
violent reaction. Such a reaction may build gradually over thousands
of years before it produces an earthquake. The section of the earth’s
crust called the India plate has been sliding at barely perceptible
speeds under the Burma plate for millennia. On December 26, 2004,
the India plate that was sliding under the Burma plate finally created
a rupture about 600 miles long off the coast of the Indonesian island
of Sumatra. It displaced the area beneath the water by an estimated
10 yards horizontally and several yards vertically.
The result was that rock measured in trillions of tons was displaced
and propelled by water moving at more than 600 miles an hour. It
moved along hundreds of miles, causing the worst underwater up-
heaval since the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964. Any earthquake
that measures more than 6.0 on the Richter scale can be devastating.
When the measurement exceeds 9.0, the results are staggering.
The fissure that the quake created filled with seawater, resulting in
a huge disruption on the ocean floor. As billions of gallons of water

947
2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami

poured into the newly created trench, waves radiated from the long
fissure, sending killer concentric waves toward land. When these
waves reached landfall, they engulfed everything in their paths with a
force so great that little could withstand them.
The Immediate Aftermath. The destruction the tsunami caused
was so widespread and all-encompassing that the engulfed coastal ar-
eas resembled war zones. The country hit hardest and first was Indone-
sia, with Sri Lanka, Thailand, and India suffering severe damage as the
waves raced across the Indian Ocean in all directions. Little remained
standing along the shore. Bodies dangled from trees or protruded
from the great rivers of mud left behind when the waters receded.
More people were dead than alive. After the tsunami retreated, the
gentler ocean waves washed thousands of bodies to shore.
The poverty of the affected areas prevented them from having the
sophisticated advanced tsunami warning systems that are available in
more prosperous regions. Had such systems been in place, mass evac-
uations could have spared thousands of lives. Moving to higher
ground saved some who sensed that the tsunami was imminent, but
most people did not realize the danger until it was upon them.
Many of those who survived were made numb by the magnitude of
the disaster. They wandered about aimlessly amid areas whose only
shelters had been washed out to sea or catapulted far into the higher
reaches of the terrain that was dotted by the boats, automobiles,
trucks, and heavy equipment that the rushing water had tossed like
toys and deposited up to 2 miles from where they had originated.
Aftershocks shook the area, causing not only additional damage
to the few remaining structures that might have been used to shelter
the survivors but also terrifying the stunned people who had man-
aged to escape the original assault. Between December 26 and Janu-
ary 1, 2005, the affected area was shaken by 84 aftershocks whose
magnitude ranged from 5.0 to 7.0 on the Richter scale.
Of these aftershocks, 26 were felt on the same day as the major un-
derwater quake that had triggered the tsunami. At least one such
aftershock had an magnitude of 7.0, which in itself was sufficient to
cause severe damage to inhabited areas. Survivors much in need of
shelter were reluctant to enter buildings that they feared would col-
lapse as the aftershocks destabilized the ground beneath them.
In the days immediately following the tsunami, tens of thousands

948
 2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami

of people needed medical treatment for such problems as open

wounds, broken bones, contusions, dysentery, and various endemic
diseases. Such assistance was not available to them because the af-
flicted areas, many of which never had adequate medical facilities,
had lost most of their physicians and nurses and had suffered the loss
of clinics that vanished beneath the waves.
Help from outside was on its way, but it did not arrive in time to
save many of the more critically injured victims of the tsunami. As the
survivors were forced to live in intensely crowded conditions, a great
danger arose from communicable respiratory diseases, particularly
influenza and pneumonia. Conditions were right for mosquitoes to
breed, raising the threat of malaria.
In the week following the December 26 disaster, survivors had lit-
tle to eat. They drank what water they could find at their own risk, as
water supplies had been contaminated by raw sewage and decaying
bodies. Among the first food shipments to arrive from outside the

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

A still image from a video shot by British tourists in Phuket, Thailand, on Decem-
ber 26, 2004, as a tsunami breaks on the shore. (AP/Wide World Photos)

949
2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami

stricken area were cases of dried noodles that these had to be pre-
pared by adding boiling water. Unfortunately, many people did not
have any means of boiling water, which in most cases was so polluted
that bringing it to boiling temperature would not wholly eliminate
the dangers that drinking it posed.
Factors Complicating Recovery. The immediate task facing
the survivors was to dispose of the decaying corpses that were quickly
deteriorating in the hot, humid climate. Survivors frantically tried to
find and identify dead relatives. In the end, many of the dead had to
be cremated or buried anonymously in mass graves.
Problems arose because many people in the tsunami’s path were
Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim. Muslims prohibit cremation of a dead
person’s remains, which made it difficult for many of the afflicted
communities to employ the most efficient and sanitary way to dispose
of bodies. Some efforts were made to photograph every body before
it was buried in a mass grave so that survivors might eventually iden-
tify their loved ones.
Some of the religions followed by people in the countries struck
by the tsunami deny death if a body is not present. Therefore, hordes
of people refused to admit that family members had perished be-
cause their bodies had not been found. Further, Hindus and Bud-
dhists believe in gods with mercurial temperaments and that natural
disasters reflect divine anger. Such beliefs caused many of the survi-
vors to suffer from guilt, which sometimes resulted in passivity and
resignation preventing them from facing the realities of the disaster
and taking the actions needed to set recovery efforts in motion.
In both India and Indonesia, separatist groups were seeking inde-
pendent political status, creating additional difficulties. Sometimes
such groups interfered with recovery efforts. The devastated city of
Banda Atjeh, which lost one-third of its 320,000 inhabitants, had
been a stronghold of Muslim extremists who were seeking indepen-
dence from Indonesia. It was feared that these extremists would do vi-
olence to rescuers who came into the area.
Also, Indonesia was slow to accept rescuers because, since the
country had gained independence in 1949, it had allowed no foreign
military personnel on Indonesian soil. When the Indonesian govern-
ment finally admitted military personnel from foreign countries, it
stipulated that rescuers must be unarmed.

950
 2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami

Worldwide Relief Efforts. All the civilized world was dis-

mayed by the loss of life and property that the tsunami caused. Early
reports that suggested casualty rates below 10,000 elicited immediate
help and support from a number of nations, but as reports of fatali-
ties zoomed, rapidly increasing offers of help were forthcoming.
On December 28, two days after the tsunami, U.S. president
George W. Bush pledged $15 million in relief funds to the stricken
nations. By December 31, when heightened casualty reports flooded
in, Bush increased that aid to $350 million. By February 10, as the di-
mensions of the tragedy grew, Bush urged Congress to appropriate
$950 million for tsunami relief. Congress passed the requested legis-
lation. Soon after the disaster, President Bush dispatched two Ameri-
can aircraft carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Bonhomme
Richard, to the area to serve as staging grounds for helicopter flights
to the places most in need of immediate relief. In many instances, the
tsunami had wiped out roads, making access by air the only workable
alternative.
Among other major contributors to the relief effort were Japan,
with a pledge of $500 million; Australia, with a pledge of $800 million
that was later increased to $1.1 billion; the European Union, with a
pledge of $675 million; Denmark, with a pledge of $420 million; Ger-
many, with a pledge of $653 million; and Canada, with a pledge of
$425 million. Even small countries offered assistance: tiny Monaco,
$133 million; Bosnia, $67,000; Cambodia, $40,000; Croatia, $917,000;
Belgium, $15.67 million; and Cyprus, $1.3 million.
Private donations, both corporate and personal, came pouring in.
When an Indian oncologist living and practicing in Florida set out to
raise $100,000 for tsunami relief, he raised twice that amount be-
tween December 26 and January 7.
Military personnel arrived from the United States as well as from
Australia, Singapore, and a number of European countries. Mem-
bers of the Australian and Singaporean air forces quickly built air
strips in Medan, Indonesia, so that relief planes could land. They flew
in large cargo planes filled with food, water, and medical supplies
that were then transferred to helicopters for transportation to the ar-
eas where they were needed the most.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited the stricken
areas of Sri Lanka and pledged food and other necessities to every

951
2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami

person who needed them. The United States remembered the dead
by flying flags on all public buildings at half-staff in the week follow-
ing the tsunami. Americans were urged to make donations to relief
organizations.
President Bush enlisted the aid of former presidents George H. W.
Bush and Bill Clinton to organize fund-raising efforts. Even though
Clinton was recovering from recent heart surgery, he plunged into
relief activities with characteristic vigor and enthusiasm, as did the
80-year-old Bush. The two visited the affected areas, bringing hope
and promises of tangible assistance to community leaders through-
out the region.
Outcomes. Remarkably, the epidemics many feared would follow
the tsunami did not develop. Broken bones mended and torn flesh
healed as survivors began to reconstruct their lives and rebuild their
communities. On a personal level, most of the people who had lived
near the Indian Ocean planned to rebuild in the same areas, as is of-
ten the case following such disasters as typhoons, hurricanes, earth-
quakes, and tsunamis.
As a result of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, considerable atten-
tion is being paid to natural phenomena that seem predictive of im-
pending disaster. Somehow, hundreds of members of a tribe that had
inhabited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands off the coast of India for
many centuries, through some unexplained sixth sense, foresaw that
a tsunami was imminent and moved to higher ground, thereby re-
ducing their casualty rate to zero.
Similarly, few animals were killed by the tsunami. Elephants, water
buffalo, dogs, cats, and many species of birds escaped the devastation
that wiped out so much of the human population in the places that
were their natural habitats. Biologists, meteorologists, and climatolo-
gists have engaged in far-reaching studies designed to explain what
clues cause animals to sense oncoming natural disasters.
Despite the relative poverty of the areas in which the tsunami
struck, efforts are being made to install sophisticated early warning
technologies such as those that exist in the Pacific Ocean to protect
such vulnerable places as Hawaii and Alaska. When such systems are
in place, mass evacuations may virtually eliminate the huge numbers
of deaths that marked the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
R. Baird Shuman

952
 2004: The Indian Ocean Tsunami

For Further Information:

Adamson, Thomas K. Tsunamis. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press,
2006.
Anderson, Robert Mark. “Wave Files.” Natural History 115 (February,
2006): 54.
Bernard, E. N. Developing Tsunami-Resilient Communities: The National
Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program. Norwell, Mass.: Springer,
2005.
Fang, Mark Bay. “Remembering All the Lost, and Rebuilding.” U.S.
News & World Report 40 (January 9, 2006): 10-11.
Stewart, Gail B. Catastrophe in Southeastern Asia: The Tsunami of 2004.
Chicago: Gale/Lucent, 2005.
Torres, John Albert. Disaster in the Indian Ocean: Tsunami 2004. Hock-
essin, Del.: Mitchell Lane, 2005.

953
■ 2005: Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane
Date: August 25-September 2, 2005
Place: South Florida, the Florida Panhandle, coastal Alabama, Mis-
sissippi, and Louisiana, particularly New Orleans
Classification: Category 4 at landfall
Result: 1,500-2,000 estimated dead, hundreds missing, $75 billion
in property damage

H urricane Katrina was the eleventh named storm of

the 2005 hurricane season. Meteorologists have re-
corded just 5 other hurricanes approaching Katrina’s intensity. It was
the second most deadly hurricane in U.S. history (after the 1900
Galveston hurricane) and the most costly, devastating coastal areas
from south Florida to New Orleans and beyond.
During the 2005 hurricane season, so many named storms devel-
oped that names beginning with the letters of the English alphabet
were exhausted, necessitating some storms to be assigned letters
from the Greek alphabet. The most destructive of the storms of
2005, one of three hurricanes to reach Category 5 at some point, was
Hurricane Katrina, which some eyewitnesses called “The Doomsday
Storm.” It swept slowly across south Florida, classified as a Category 1
storm that deposited heavy rains on the area. When it meandered
into the Gulf of Mexico, it gained considerable energy from the 80-
degree surface temperatures of the Gulf’s waters.
Accelerating quickly, Katrina hit the Florida Panhandle, then con-
tinued its ruinous course along the Gulf Coast, first as a Category 3
hurricane but quickly strengthening to a Category 4 and then a Cate-
gory 5 storm with winds exceeding 155 miles an hour. It made landfall
at Buras, Louisiana, some 60 miles southeast of New Orleans, leaving
havoc in its wake as its counterclockwise winds moved north. The
storm’s fury left the Alabama coast and the city of Mobile severely dam-
aged. It wiped out almost totally such Mississippi communities as
Pascagoula, Slidell, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pass Christian, and Bay St. Louis
before striking New Orleans, most of which lies below sea level.

954
 2005: Hurricane Katrina

The Situation in New Orleans. Before the hurricane, New Or-

leans had a population of more than 500,000 people, 23 percent of
whom lived below poverty level. On August 28, when New Orleans
mayor Ray Nagin issued the order for mandatory evacuation, 100,000
New Orleans residents would not or could not evacuate. Left behind
were the elderly, the chronically ill, the impoverished, thousands of
helpless children, and those without automobiles or other means of
transportation. Some people who could have left refused to abandon
beloved pets that they were not permitted to take with them to evacu-
ation centers.
The storm struck at the end of the month when many of the im-
poverished, living marginally on welfare checks, had exhausted
their August payments, leaving them without the wherewithal to af-
ford commercial transportation away from the storm’s path. Hard-
est hit was the poorest section of New Orleans, the Ninth Ward.
Even though Katrina flooded and flattened other wards, residents
from the more prosperous parts of town could evacuate in advance
of the devastation. Hurricanes can be predicted far enough in ad-
vance for people to be forewarned in time to escape the storm’s
deadly course.

Residents of New Orleans await rescue on a roof. (FEMA)

955
2005: Hurricane Katrina

Once the storm hit with full fury on the morning of August 29,
New Orleans, a crescent nearly surrounded by water—Lake Pont-
chartrain, the Mississippi River, the Industrial Canal, the Intercoastal
Waterway, and the Gulf of Mexico some 60 miles to the south—began
to flood. Many parts of the city are 6 feet below sea level, so the storm
surge of more than 20 feet that poured in from the Gulf of Mexico
proved devastating.
Nevertheless, Katrina’s eye passed southeast of New Orleans. So,
although the canals and the Mississippi River raged with great walls of
rushing water, the city did not receive the full brunt of the storm. The
following day, The New York Times reported that New Orleans had a
mess to clean up but suggested that the destruction could have been
much worse.
Only later was the full extent of the city’s problems evident. For
decades, New Orleans had been protected from floods by earthen-
ware dams, most of them topped with steel reinforced concrete, or by
more modern reinforced concrete barriers that had held through
dozens of previous storms. The city also had a well-developed system
of pumps that returned standing water from the lowlands to Lake
Pontchartrain to control flooding.
By August 30, it became clear that the city’s disaster was about to
be compounded. The levees, whose underpinnings were compro-
mised by the force of the water pushing against them, began to give
way. The Seventeenth Street and London Avenue levees came apart
bit by bit, dumping millions of gallons of water, most of it polluted,
into the streets of the flooded city. The hurricane had disabled many
of the pumping stations, which, even had they been working at top
capacity, could not have prevented the agitated waters from engulf-
ing everything in their paths.
Katrina killed many people. In one nursing home, 30 residents
died in its aftermath. Mayor Nagin announced immediately after the
hurricane that as many as 10,000 might be dead, although a number
of agencies soon lowered this figure. Flooded hospitals had to close
their doors. Bodies piled up in makeshift morgues: 22 in freezers in
the Convention Center, an estimated 1,200 in the St. Gabriel Prison
Morgue and its stopgap satellites.
The total number of people killed in all the communities ravaged
by Hurricane Katrina has been estimated at between 1,500 and 2,000.

956
 2005: Hurricane Katrina

As long as six months afterward, human remains were still being

found. Some refugees who were deployed to distant venues returned
to New Orleans eight to ten months following the storm to finally
identify and claim bodies in the city’s morgues.
Origins and Dimensions. Hurricane Katrina began as Tropical
Depression 12 that formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. It
advanced to South Florida the following day as a named tropical
storm, but by August 25, it was designated a Category 1 hurricane. It
inundated much of south Florida, and its 75-mile-an-hour winds
caused an estimated $400 million in property damage.
The storm pushed on slowly to the Gulf of Mexico, where, over the
Gulf’s warm surface waters, it gained considerable speed and inten-
sity, advancing to a Category 3 storm. It increased quickly to a Cate-
gory 4 and, within hours, to a Category 5. It left substantial wind and
water damage in the Florida Panhandle as well as in coastal Alabama.
Some meteorologists consider Katrina the strongest hurricane
ever to hit the United States. The breadth of the damage that it
caused, which ranged more than 100 miles from its center, makes it
unique in the annals of meteorology. Before it ended, Katrina had
left behind more than $75 billion in property damage as it moved re-
lentlessly from Florida to Louisiana, making it the costliest hurricane
in recorded history.
Preparing for the Hurricane. When it became evident on
August 26 that the Gulf Coast was in the path of a rapidly developing
hurricane, Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana declared a state
of emergency. On the same day, she requested that the federal gov-
ernment provide National Guard troops to help meet the emer-
gency. The following day, after Katrina was upgraded to a Category 3
hurricane, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Governor
Bob Riley of Alabama also declared a state of emergency.
On August 27, Governor Blanco asked President George W. Bush
to declare a federal state of emergency in her state, making it eligible
for federal assistance to supplement the assistance that state and city
governments could provide. The White House was slow to declare
the requested state of emergency but finally gave the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) the authority to respond to the threat that the hurri-
cane posed.

957
2005: Hurricane Katrina

On August 28, at 2 a.m., Katrina was upgraded to a Category 4 hur-

ricane. By dawn, it had been upgraded again, this time to a Cate-
gory 5, the most severe designation assigned to hurricanes on the
Saffir-Simpson scale. On that morning, the Lafayette Daily Advertiser
ran a story warning that the existing levees in New Orleans probably
could not withstand the exigencies of a Category 5 storm. The Na-
tional Hurricane Center’s director, Max Mayfield, echoed this senti-
ment, warning the White House that the levees had been compro-
mised and speculating on the results of their probable failure.
By 4 p.m. on August 28, the National Weather Service issued an ur-
gent warning that outlined what sort of damage would accompany a
Category 4 or 5 hurricane. The agency cautioned that the area might
not be habitable for weeks or, possibly, months. It predicted that even
well-built homes would suffer wall and roof failure and that the ensu-
ing power outages might last for weeks. Pure water would not be avail-
able unless it was imported from outside the hurricane zone.
As the hurricane approached, Mayor Nagin urged people in New
Orleans who had not already evacuated to gather at 12 designated
pickup points, where they would be collected and transported by bus
to the Superdome, which had been stocked with 2.5 million liters of
bottled water and 3 million meals ready to eat (MREs). An estimated
25,000 displaced people gathered in the Superdome.
Evacuees were urged to bring food and other supplies with them
to last for three days, but many arrived empty-handed. Some re-
mained there considerably beyond three days. The storm peeled off
portions of the Superdome’s roof, allowing the heavy rains that ac-
companied the storm to inundate the facility, which had already lost
its electrical power and whose overtaxed sanitary facilities were fail-
ing rapidly.
Another 25,000 people fled to the New Orleans Convention Cen-
ter, which was less well equipped than the Superdome to deal with
the emergency. Many stayed there for almost a week. Meanwhile, the
National Guard asked FEMA to provide 700 buses to help with the
evacuation, but only 100 were forthcoming. Some 700 school buses
and municipal buses that might have been pressed into service to
evacuate the city remained idle.
Rescue, Recovery, and Rehabilitation. Rescue efforts imme-
diately following the hurricane were blighted by a lack of focus. Local

958
 2005: Hurricane Katrina

The town of Gulfport, Mississippi, was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. (FEMA)

and state agencies responded as quickly and efficiently as they could,

but the federal government was slow to act. President Bush, vacation-
ing in Texas, was criticized for not coming immediately to the shat-
tered areas to inspect them and to set in motion federal rescue and
relief initiatives. Instead, he honored speaking commitments in Cali-
fornia and Arizona at a time when the hurricane had virtually obliter-
ated large sections of America’s Gulf Coast.
In New Orleans, most members of the city’s police force of 1,600
had themselves suffered severe personal losses. The homes of many
police officers were destroyed and their family members drowned or
injured. A total of 249 New Orleans police officers deserted. Some
committed suicide. Nevertheless, contingents of tireless rescuers
guided boats through flooded streets, picking up survivors wherever
they found them. The water in many sections had completely flooded
the second levels of houses, forcing residents to retreat into attics or
onto rooftops.
When federal aid finally arrived, its specific priorities were to save
lives, to sustain lives, and to execute a comprehensive recovery effort.
President Bush appointed former presidents George H. W. Bush and
Bill Clinton to lead a private fund-raising program, much like the one

959
2005: Hurricane Katrina

that the two had organized in response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami
of 2004. The two men worked unceasingly to obtain outside assis-
tance for the recovery effort.
FEMA, faced with monumental challenges, evacuated many home-
less survivors. Thousands were transported by bus to Houston, Texas,
to be housed temporarily in the Astrodome. FEMA subsidized the
transportation and placement for extended periods of many survi-
vors in apartments or hotel rooms throughout the United States.
The agency chartered cruise ships and docked them near New Or-
leans to provide housing for police officers and firefighters who had
lost their homes and for workers who came to the area to assist in re-
lief and recovery efforts. It also spent $400 million on mobile homes,
but survivors could not be moved into them until they had been con-
nected to electrical and water lines, which in many cases took weeks.
Nine months after the hurricane, 18,000 mobile homes were parked
unused in Hope, Arkansas, running up monthly storage charges ex-
ceeding $250,000.
In order to give storm victims immediate relief, FEMA issued debit
cards that holders could use without delay for purchases. Although
most of these cards were obtained legally and used to buy necessities,
some of them were procured fraudulently. Some claimants, using
phony Social Security numbers and other bogus identification, ob-
tained multiple debit cards and used them to pay for more than $1.4
billion in luxury vacations, season tickets to ballgames, pornography,
and, in one case, sex change surgery. In June, 2006, the Department
of Homeland Security sent to the Justice Department for possible
prosecution the names of more than 7,000 people accused of com-
mitting fraud in connection with obtaining and using FEMA debit
cards.
Many criticized the botched management of the Katrina recovery
effort, but federal agencies learned from their mistakes and per-
formed more efficiently following Hurricanes Rita and Wilma, which
struck shortly after Katrina.
The Aftermath. It will take years to repair the damage that Hur-
ricane Katrina left in its wake. Affected coastal areas are rebuilding.
Gambling casinos on the Mississippi coast, lifted off their founda-
tions and deposited far from where they initially stood, have been re-
built and have resumed business.

960
 2005: Hurricane Katrina

New Orleans was slow to recover, although the French Quarter,

being at the highest elevation in New Orleans, quickly resumed its ac-
tivities. In June, 2006, the American Library Association held its an-
nual convention in the city, and other such conventions were sched-
uled. Tourists soon began to trickle in.
Many displaced residents were relocated in distant cities that of-
fered housing and jobs to hurricane refugees. A number of these
people opted to remain in their new locations, although large num-
bers vowed to return to the city that they loved.
After the hurricane, many questioned the wisdom of rebuilding
New Orleans. Its location makes it extremely vulnerable when hurri-
canes strike. The city occupies a huge natural declivity, a virtual tub, 6
feet below sea level and surrounded by water. Moreover, industrial
and residential developments have destroyed wetlands that once
flourished beside the Mississippi River. Throughout history, these
wetlands flooded every year and were built up by the silt that the Mis-
sissippi River deposited during the annual floods. Now the wetlands
are disappearing at the rate of about 20 square miles a year, decreas-
ing the land available to absorb large quantities of water like those
that accompanied Katrina.
The case for restoring New Orleans is an emotional and ultimately
political one to which the federal government has responded by giv-
ing its assurance that the city will be rebuilt. Whether it is reasonable
to rebuild is beside the point. People who have spent their lives where
their parents and grandparents lived understandably resist sugges-
tions that they abandon such areas.
A crucial step in the process of rebuilding New Orleans is the im-
mediate restoration of a levee system that will prevent the sort of
flooding that Hurricane Katrina caused. The Army Corps of Engi-
neers is building new seawalls deeper and stronger than those that
crumbled during Katrina.
Housing has been a continuing problem in post-hurricane New
Orleans. In June, 2006, FEMA announced that it would rebuild only
6 of the 10 major public housing projects that had been ravaged by
the hurricane and that people who had lived in the buildings that
were not to be restored would be given vouchers to provide $1,100 a
month as rent subsidies until other arrangements could be found for
them in a city with few available rentals.

961
2005: Hurricane Katrina

A FEMA report to Congress in June, 2006, warned that most large

cities in the United States are ill-equipped to deal with disasters such
as Katrina. Time will tell whether New Orleans can withstand the rav-
ages of another Category 4 or 5 hurricane.
R. Baird Shuman

For Further Information:

Brinkley, Douglas. The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans,
and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. New York: William Morrow, 2006.
Cooper, Christopher, and Robert Block. Disaster: Hurricane Katrina
and the Failure of Homeland Security. New York: Times Books, 2006.
Dyson, Michael Eric. Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the
Color of Disaster. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006.
Horne, Jed. Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a
Great American City. New York: Random House, 2006.
Townsend, Frances Fragos. The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina:
Lessons Learned. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Of-
fice, 2006.
Van Heerden, Ivor, and Mike Bryan. The Storm: What Went Wrong and
Why During Hurricane Katrina—the Inside Story from One Louisiana
Scientist. New York: Viking Press, 2006.

962
■ 2005: The Kashmir earthquake
Earthquake
Date: October 8, 2005
Place: Kashmir and North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan
Magnitude: 7.6
Result: More than 90,000 dead; about 106,000 injured; 3.3 million
homeless; $5 billion in damage

A t 8:50 a.m. Pakistan Standard Time, an earthquake oc-

curred with an epicenter some 60 miles north of the
Pakistani capital of Islamabad. It proved to be the biggest natural di-
saster in the history of Pakistan and also affected the neighboring
country of India. The area in which it occurred was extremely moun-
tainous, with very poor lines of communication. It was also split by
political boundaries. More significant, the area was overpopulated
and very poor, with many makeshift buildings and few medical facili-
ties. The rescue efforts were hampered by these factors, plus the
sheer size of the operation needed. Although much international as-
sistance was forthcoming, many areas had to wait weeks for help to ar-
rive. The whole area was expected to need years to recover its infra-
structures and to rehouse the displaced.
Background. Three background factors governed the enormity
of the devastation created by the Kashmir earthquake. The first is
geological. The Indian subcontinent, including the countries of In-
dia and Pakistan, is separated tectonically from the rest of Asia. The
South Asian plate was originally attached to Antarctica some 150 mil-
lion years ago. It then started drifting northward, and 50 million
years ago it slammed into the Eurasian plate, forcing the ground up
to form the Himalaya mountain ranges, the highest on earth, includ-
ing the Hindukush and Karakoram ranges. The plate has continued
to move northward at the rate of more than an inch a year.
The result is frequent earth tremors and occasional major earth-
quakes. The most notable recent quakes have been the Quetta earth-
quake of 1935 in the Sind Province and the 2001 Gujrat earthquake in
India. In the more immediate area, a quake in 1974 with a 6.2 magni-

963
2005: The Kashmir earthquake

tude killed 5,300 people. Although a quake of the magnitude of 7.6 is

generally serious, the main factor with the Kasmir earthquake was the
shallowness of its hypocenter, which was no more than 16 miles deep.
The second background factor is geographical. The northern ar-
eas of Pakistan are extremely mountainous. For example, the Kaghan
valley running north of Balakot, one of the towns most affected by
the quake, is carved through the mountains, with cliffs up to 1,000
feet towering above it on either side. Even a moderately heavy storm
will send landslides crashing over the few dirt roads that hug the
mountainsides, requiring army bulldozers to cut a new road out. The
area is desperately poor, subsistence living at best on the rocky ter-
raced hillsides, but is seriously overpopulated. Pakistan is a Third
World country, despite being a nuclear power, and so provision of
medical and educational facilities is basic, often housed in buildings
that are below standard. Almost no regulations exist for reinforced
buildings in such areas.
Third, the area is divided politically. In 1947 the country of Paki-
stan was formed out of India for the Indian subcontinent’s Muslim
population. The mountainous northern region of Kashmir had a
Hindu ruler but a largely Muslim population. The result was that the
Vale of Kashmir was occupied by Indian forces, the mountainous west
and north by Pakistani ones. A cease-fire line was created as a tempo-
rary measure, but efforts to resolve the territorial dispute have been
thwarted. The dispute has led to several wars, an insurgency move-
ment, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Pakistani part
of Kashmir is known as Azad (Free) Kashmir. It is administered sepa-
rately from Pakistan proper and is even poorer than the neighboring
North-West Frontier Province. The epicenter of the quake lay inside
the cease-fire line.
Immediate Impact. The earthquake struck at around 9 a.m. Sat-
urday morning. Saturday is a normal working day, so the schools were
full of children. However, it was also during the month of fasting,
Ramadan, which meant than many people had gotten up before
dawn to eat and then gone back to bed for a while. The epicenter was
located near the village of Garhi Habibullah, on the border of Azad
Kashmir and the North-West Frontier Province, with the quake being
felt as far afield as Kabul in Afghanistan, New Delhi in India, and
Karachi on the coast of Pakistan.

964
 2005: The Kashmir earthquake

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book

The Kashmir earthquake caused a 10-story apartment building in

Islamabad to collapse. (AP/Wide World Photos)

The immediate effect of the quake was the collapse of many build-
ings, landslides, and the displacement of rocks and boulders. There
were even reports of new waterfalls appearing in the high mountain
valleys. A block of flats collapsed in Islamabad, causing immediate
panic, and there were similar scenes in Lahore, Pakistan’s second
largest city. Over the rest of the day, 147 secondary shocks were re-
corded, 28 with a magnitude between 5 and 6. Also, devastating hail
and rainstorms continued throughout that day and into the next. Re-
ports quickly came in of schools and hospitals collapsing, roads
blocked, and communications down. It was immediately obvious that

965
2005: The Kashmir earthquake

the devastation was enormous, though no one had any idea how
widespread it was.
What was also obvious in the light of the scope was the inadequacy
of the Pakistani government’s equipment in the more remote areas.
A state of emergency was declared in all the hospitals of Islamabad
and its twin city of Rawalpindi, and the army and emergency services
were put on full alert.
The first pictures from the region showed the collapsed apart-
ment block in Islamabad and efforts being made to rescue those
trapped inside. First estimates were 18,000 killed and 45,000 injured
in an area where close to 3 million people lived. The most affected ar-
eas appeared to be around Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Kash-
mir; Balakot, at the entrance to the Kaghan Valley; and the Mansehra
district. Efforts to reach those places, however, were hampered by
blocked roads. Muzaffarabad was reached only late Sunday after-
noon by a handful of trucks. It was estimated that 60 to 70 percent of
all buildings had collapsed in these places. In Garhi Habibullah, both
boys’ and girls’ high schools had collapsed, crushing students and
teachers, as had the hospital. Because of the aftershocks, few people
dared to stay in the remaining homes or any other building, prefer-
ring to stay out in the pouring rain.
On the Indian side of Kashmir, there was much damage, but not
on the scale of that on the Pakistani side. The army took over search-
and-rescue operations, the usual practice in both countries, with
both armies being well-equipped and well-trained. First estimates put
the dead in India at 600. Damage was also reported as far afield as
Delhi and Amritsar, and in Gujrat, the site of a major earthquake in
2001, there was panic.
Relief Efforts. The next day, Pakistan president Pervez Mu-
sharraf appealed to the international community for aid. The imme-
diate need was for search-and-rescue teams, heavy-lifting helicopters,
medical supplies, tents, and blankets. Pakistan possessed only 34 suit-
able helicopters. Many countries and groups made immediate
pledges, including the World Bank, the United States, the European
Union, China, and Russia. By contrast, the Indian government
claimed that it needed no assistance and even offered some to its tra-
ditional enemy, Pakistan. Various search-and-rescue teams arrived
very quickly. They were flown by helicopter to the worst affected ar-

966
 2005: The Kashmir earthquake

eas and pulled people out of the rubble for a number of days. The
real challenge, however, was to transport the injured by helicopter to
the designated hospitals and to ferry in supplies of food and shelter.
In fact, there were never enough helicopters at any time. In addition,
the weather conditions were poor and unrelenting, hampering
much of this effort.
Where aid did arrive, scenes were often chaotic, as people were
desperate to get what they could. By October 12, Pakistan had re-
ceived $350 million in pledges in answer to the president’s appeal
and also that of the U.N. aid chief, Nils Egland. Some 20,000 troops
had been deployed. U.S. aid slowly began to trickle, and U.S. secre-
tary of state Condoleezza Rice visited. The U.S. government felt it
particularly necessary to help, as Pakistan was a vital partner in its war
against al-Qaeda. President George W. Bush was also aware of criti-
cism over his slow response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans one
month before the Kashmir earthquake.
Despite heroic efforts by those on the ground, aid was slow to get
through. The voluntary aid agencies had been drained by such disas-
ters as the Indian Ocean tsunami just 10 months before and by ongo-
ing emergencies in Africa. Even during the rescue operation in Kash-
mir, another hurricane hit Central America. Muslim organizations
around the world responded, many starting their own makeshift op-
erations, raising aid and money on a private basis, especially among
immigrants in Europe and the United States who still had family in
the affected area. Some smaller charities and missions deployed
small teams of personnel in the country to help. Always, however, the
greatest problem was access to the worst affected areas. In Azad Kash-
mir, members of the insurgency were often the only ones who could
bring help and rescue.
Further Impact. Aftershocks continued the rest of October,
2005, those of magnitude 4 or above totaling nearly 1,000, mainly to
the northwest of the original epicenter. After a short time, it became
clear that many people were dying of injuries that had been left un-
treated. As more and more remote areas were reached, the scale of
this problem became even more evident. Also starvation was becom-
ing a threat, as were the increasingly cold nights in the mountains,
where elevations up to 20,000 feet were not uncommon and the win-
ter snows were due to begin soon. Anger against perceived govern-

967
2005: The Kashmir earthquake

ment inadequacies began to rise on both sides of the border in those

who had received little or no aid.
By now, estimates of dead were climbing to 38,000, 42,000, and
then 47,000, with similar numbers for the injured, with half of those
affected being children. These numbers continued to climb over the
next few months. The number of homeless stayed at around the 2
million mark. By contrast, the number of injured who were evacuated
was put at 6,000 when the total injured was being estimated at 52,000.
In Muzaffarabad, a French team of doctors were operating a 6-bed
field hospital, an indication of the desperate shortage of medical fa-
cilities. In all, it was estimated that 26 hospitals and 600 health clinics
had been destroyed. Amputations for gangrenous limbs became in-
creasingly common, as were cases of paralysis. By November, a pneu-
monia epidemic threatened more lives.
Although Pakistan was the main producer of tents worldwide, the
need for additional winterised tents was significant, with 350,000
more tents required. The Pakistan government started plans for refu-
gee camps along the flatter valleys, where people could be more eas-
ily reached during the winter. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz appealed
to the mountain people to come to the camps, but they were reluc-
tant, fearing the sense of enclosure in such camps and worrying that
their land would be stolen.
Fortunately, the winter did delay somewhat and people came to
the camps, only to live a miserable existence there. Possibly up to
1,000 villages had been destroyed.
On the Indian side, 30,000 families had been displaced, though
the number of dead and injured remained surprisingly low at 1,360
and 6,266, respectively. Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh vis-
ited the area and promised a grant of $2,255 to every family that had
suffered death or homelessness. Tents, however, were in as short a
supply as over the border, with only 13,000 available out of the 30,000
needed.
One hoped-for effect, a cessation of hostilities between Indian
forces and the insurgents, did not happen, and although the cease-
fire line was opened briefly, mainly for relief purposes, the overall po-
litical tension remained high. In fact, during the relief operations, a
female suicide bomber blew herself up near Indian troops and ter-
rorists attacked government buildings in New Delhi.

968
 2005: The Kashmir earthquake

At the international level, the Pakistani government claimed that

money pledged to it came too little and too late. In any case, the scale
of the earthquake was unprecedented, and it came in a year of quite
unprecedented disasters.
David Barratt

For Further Information:

Ali, M. M. “With Relief Slow to Arrive, Earthquake Death Toll Con-
tinues to Rise in Kashmir.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
25, no. 1 (January 1, 2006): 44.
The New York Times, October, 9-29, 2005.
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. Pakistan
Earthquake: International Response and Impact on U.S. Foreign Policies
and Programs. 109th Congress, 1st session, 2005. Senate Report
109-41.
Walton, Frances. “One Nurse Can Make a Big Difference.” Australian
Nursing Journal 14, no. 2 (August 1, 2006): 15.

969
■ 2006: The Leyte mudslide
Mudslide
Date: February 17, 2006
Place: Southern Leyte, the Philippines
Result: More than 200 confirmed dead, 1,800 missing and pre-
sumed dead; 297 of 300 houses in village of Barangay Guinsaugon
destroyed

T he tiny village of Saint Bernard in the southern

reaches of the Philippine island of Leyte was just com-
ing to life around 9 a.m. on Friday, February 17, 2006. The 246 stu-
dents in the local school and their 7 teachers had eaten their break-
fasts, come to school, and were beginning their daily lessons. About
100 visitors had arrived in the village for a women’s group meeting.
Suddenly, the entire town was awash in mud as the mountain be-
hind it collapsed. In some places, the mud reached depths exceeding
30 feet (more than 9 meters) and completely covered an area of 0.5
square mile (1 square kilometer). The mudslide obliterated every-
thing in its path almost instantly.
A slimy muck flowed relentlessly over some 15 other villages near
Saint Bernard, completely covering buildings such as Saint Bernard’s
school, from which just one student and one teacher emerged alive.
Everyone else in the school was sucked into the roaring river of roil-
ing mud that completely consumed the village. A police officer
watched helplessly as the school, where his wife taught and four of his
children were students, disappeared beneath a sea of mud, wiping
out his immediate family.
In the neighboring village of Barangay Guinsaugon, just 3 of the
town’s 300 houses survived the onslaught. Those who were not
pulled into the muddy maelstrom watched helplessly as people, pets,
livestock, and the town’s structures—houses, schools, shops, and offi-
cial buildings—vanished before their eyes. The irresistible force of
the mudflow precluded the possibility of immediate rescue by those
who had in some miraculous way escaped the unforgiving vortex of
the mudslide.

970
 2006: The Leyte mudslide

Southern Leyte’s History of Mudslides. The mudslide of

2006 was preceded by a number of similar disasters that occurred in
the quarter century before this devastating event. In 1991, Ormoc
City, on the western coast of Leyte, suffered floods and landslides trig-
gered by a tropical storm that dumped unprecedented rainfall upon
the countryside. More than 6,000 people died in these floods and
mudslides.
In December, 2003, an additional 133 people died in floods and in
the ensuing mudslides in San Francisco in southern Leyte, an area
close to where the 2006 mudslide occurred. In December, 2004, Phil-
ippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo suspended logging opera-
tions in geohazardous areas of the Philippines following mudslides
that took the lives of 640 Filipinos.
Only 5 days before the mudslide of February 17, 7 road workers
died when a landslide engulfed them in Sogod, a town close to
Barangay Guinsaugon. The Philippines’s Bureau of Mines and Geo-
sciences pointed out the danger areas in a geohazard mapping pro-
ject that specifically pinpointed the general area in which the Febru-
ary 17 disaster took place. This report, however, did not contain
sufficient detailed information about the towns that were under the
greatest threat. As recently as 2003, the Philippine government de-
clared more than 80 percent of Leyte to be subject to geological haz-
ards.
In the Philippines, which have long been subjected to the dangers
of floods, earthquakes, landslides, cyclones, and other natural catas-
trophes, it is estimated that more than 34,000 people perished in nat-
ural disasters between 1970 and 2000. Between 1990 and 2000, such
events are estimated to have disrupted the lives of 35 million people,
killing or injuring many.
Although people could have been evacuated from the villages
overwhelmed during the February 17 disaster, most of the impover-
ished villagers could not conceive of how great and imminent the
danger of annihilation was. Many of them had no place to which they
could flee. Most were reluctant to leave the places in which they
earned their scant livings.
During the weeks of February 6 and 13, when the villages near
Barangay Guinsaugon had four times the amount of rainfall consid-
ered normal for the area in that season, some residents did leave. Not

971
2006: The Leyte mudslide

realizing fully how unstable the saturated soil had become, however,
many of them ended their evacuation and returned to their homes
on February 15 or 16, encouraged because the rains had subsided
and the sun had broken through. Some of these villages had ongoing
activities planned for the upcoming weekend. The people who lived
in them were unwilling to participate in an evacuation that would dis-
rupt their plans.
Some Causes of the Mudslide. Several major factors contrib-
uted to the disastrous mudslide in southern Leyte on February 17,
2006. Climate change was in part responsible. Unusually heavy rain-
falls in the weeks preceding the mudslide—20 inches in one month—
were partially the result of La Niña, a climatic condition created by
higher-than-usual surface temperatures in the surrounding oceans.
The exceptional rainfall accompanying La Niña destabilized the soil
significantly.
Overpopulation was another salient factor in creating conditions
that made a mudslide likely. Related to this factor is the major defor-
estation that resulted from clearing land for human occupancy as
populations expanded sharply. Leyte is mountainous and is one of
the most heavily forested areas in the Philippines, but many of its for-
ests have been sacrificed as residential communities replace forested
areas to accommodate the country’s burgeoning population.
Another factor related to deforestation is the replacement of na-
tive, deep-rooted trees with coconut palms, whose roots are relatively
shallow. Trees have provided the area’s commercial interests with a
ready source of revenue both through selling the timber recovered
from the deep-rooted trees that were cut down and through the sale
of coconuts, a significant cash crop in the area. Whereas the native
trees with their deep roots served to stabilize the soil, the replace-
ment trees afforded little such protection.
Over and above these contributory factors was another one that
dates back several decades to the time when considerable mining was
done on Leyte. The earth beneath the island is honeycombed with
mine shafts and tunnels that were abandoned decades earlier. These
tunnels were subject to collapse when the soil became oversaturated.
The mud had already begun to flow when, on the morning of Feb-
ruary 17, the affected area was struck by an earthquake so minor that
under normal circumstances it would hardly have been noticed by

972
 2006: The Leyte mudslide

the average person. It had a magnitude of 2.3 on the Richter scale,

which is generally considered inconsequential. Given the instability
of the waterlogged soil, however, this almost imperceptible tremor
was sufficient to collapse abandoned mine shafts, to cause saturated
mountains to crumble, and to exacerbate the mudslide that had al-
ready begun to exact its fearsome toll.
The Rescue Effort. Initial rescue efforts were hampered in
many places because there were more victims than survivors. The
depth of the mud flow was so great that there was little hope of pene-
trating it. Attempts to do so were discouraged because those trapped
by the mud could not have survived beneath it. The instability of the
soil was such that rescue attempts presented extreme hazards to any-
one undertaking them.
A week before this disaster, when 7 road workers died in a land-
slide in nearby Sogod, only 3 bodies were retrieved because of the in-
stability of the earth where they had been lost. Now, with thousands
of people missing and with many of the survivors suffering physical
injury and severe emotional stress, immediate rescue attempts
proved futile.
As soon as she learned of the tragedy in southern Leyte, President
Arroyo sent military rescue teams and ships from the Philippine
coast guard and navy to the area to mount an immediate rescue ef-
fort. This effort, however, was impeded by a number of factors: roads
blocked by huge boulders, washed out bridges, and deep mud that
could swallow up rescuers in an instant. Rescuers also lacked the
heavy earth-moving equipment that would possibly have facilitated
their efforts, although the mud was so deep and the earth so unstable
that heavy equipment might simply have sunk into the quagmire that
covered the lost villages.
Much of the world offered the Philippines assistance. Malaysia
sent a search and rescue team of sixty people to the area. A Spanish
organization, Unidad Canina de Rescate y Salvamento, sent a special-
ized team of 6 rescuers with 5 trained sniffer dogs to assist in the res-
cue operation. New Zealand pledged $133,000 toward the rescue ef-
fort. South Korea pledged $1 million in aid. Japan sent 27 million
pesos to be used in the rescue effort, but only 3 million ever reached
the affected area, with the remainder being lost, presumably, to gov-
ernmental graft.

973
2006: The Leyte mudslide

By nightfall on February 17, the Philippine Red Cross reported

that 53 people had been rescued, but close to 2,000 remained unac-
counted for. Rescue efforts had to be suspended when night fell be-
cause of a lack of lighting and because of the imminent danger of
flash floods and further mudslides.
Relief Efforts. When the mudslide began, the U.S. Navy had
two vessels, the USS Essex and the USS Harper’s Ferry, nearby. These
ships were diverted immediately to the stricken area. About 6,000
U.S. Army and Marine Corps troops that were in the Philippines to
participate in a bilateral training exercise were also pressed into as-
sisting in the relief effort.
The United States distributed $100,000 worth of disaster equip-
ment to the Philippine Red Cross. It followed this contribution with
more than half a million dollars that USAID provided for the pur-
chase of food, blankets, mosquito netting, temporary shelters, medi-
cal supplies, and water purification tablets and equipment.
Relief also came in the form of contributions from China (about
$1 million in cash and materials), Taiwan ($100,000 as well as enough
medicine to treat 3,000 people for six weeks), Thailand ($100,000),
Australia (about $740,000), and a number of other countries. The
United States flew relief planes into the area with emergency trauma
kits, flashlights, medicine, rubber boots, and clothing to provide im-
mediate assistance.
The Aftermath. Recovering from a disaster such as the Leyte
mudslide is a discouraging process. The root causes of such a disaster
are, to a large extent, outside human and governmental control.
Such natural causes as La Niña, unusually heavy rainfall, and earth-
quakes are not preventable.
Contributing factors such as heavy mining in a mudslide area, de-
forestation, and rapidly expanding populations have taken place
over a long enough period that undoing their catastrophic results
seems all but impossible. When a disaster such as the mudslide in
southern Leyte strikes, the survivors, most of whom are rooted in the
area, are usually reluctant to relocate. They tend to rebuild and trust
that such disasters will not recur, although the odds do not support
this optimistic view.
Only totalitarian governments can forcibly relocate large popula-
tions, which would seem a possible remedy for the problems facing

974
 2006: The Leyte mudslide

southern Leyte. In a democracy such as the Philippines, however,

massive mandatory relocation is a virtual impossibility. The govern-
ment, therefore, has limited options. It can attempt to educate peo-
ple to the natural dangers of geohazardous areas, but even those who
are made aware of such dangers tend to become apathetic over time.
Nevertheless, the government can engage in massive reforestation
efforts, which have been launched in the Philippines and should
yield some long-term benefits. It can also support programs that of-
fer opportunities for young people to move away from dangerous ar-
eas, although family considerations often make such intervention in-
effective.
R. Baird Shuman

For Further Information:

Asio, Victor B., and Marlito Jose M. Bande. “Innovative Community-
Led Sustainable Forest Resource Conservation and Management
in Baybay, Leyte, the Philippines.” In Innovative Communities:
People-Centred Approaches to Environmental Management in the Asia-
Pacific Region, edited by Jerry Velasquez. New York: United Nations
University Press, 2005.
De Souza, Roger-Mark. “Is the Catastrophic Mudslide in the Philip-
pines Just Another Disaster Story?” Population Reference Bureau.
http://www.prb.org/Template.cfm?Section=PRB&template=/
ContentManagement/ ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=13677.
“Mudslides in Philippines; Merciless Heat and Drought in Africa;
Greenland Glaciers Melting: Israel and Hamas.” The America’s In-
telligence Wire, February 17, 2006.
“Philippine President Suspends Logging After Storms Unleash Mud-
slides That Kill 640.” The America’s Intelligence Wire, December 5,
2004.

975
■ Glossary
Acid rain: Rain with higher levels of acidity than normal; the source
of the high levels of acidity is polluted air.
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS): A progressive loss of
immune function and susceptibility to secondary infections that
arises from chronic infection with HIV.
African sleeping sickness: An infectious disease transmitted through
the bite of a tsetse fly with symptoms of fever, lymph node swelling,
fatigue, and possibly coma and death.
Aftershock: A minor shock following the main tremor of an earth-
quake.
AIDS. See Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)
Airship: A lighter-than-air aircraft that uses hydrogen for buoyancy.
Alluvium: Sediment deposited by flowing water.
Alpine glacier: A small, elongate, usually tongue-shaped glacier com-
monly occupying a preexisting valley in a mountain range.
Amplitude: Wave height.
Angle of repose: The maximum angle of steepness that a pile of loose
material such as sand or rock can assume and remain stable; the
angle varies with the size, shape, moisture, and angularity of the
material.
Anthrax: An infectious disease caused by a bacterium, with symptoms
of external nodules or lesions in the lungs.
Antibiotic: Any substance that destroys or inhibits the growth of mi-
croorganisms, especially bacteria.
Antibody: A protein substance produced by white blood cells in re-
sponse to an antigen; combats bacterial, viral, chemical, or other
invasive agents in the body and provides immunity against disease-
causing microorganisms.
Aquifer: A water-bearing bed of rock, sand, or gravel, capable of
yielding substantial quantities of water to wells or springs.
Arson: The willful or malicious burning of property.
Ash: Fine-grained pyroclastic material less than 2 millimeters in di-
ameter, ejected from an erupting volcano.
Asteroid: A small, rocky body in orbit around the sun; a minor planet.
Asteroid belt: The region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, con-
taining the majority of asteroids.

976
 Glossary

Atmosphere: The five clearly defined regions composed of layers of

gases and mixtures of gases, water vapor, and solid and liquid par-
ticles, extending up to 483 kilometers above the earth.
Atoll: A tropical island on which a massive coral reef, often ringlike,
generally rests on a volcanic base.
Avalanche: Any large mass of snow, ice, rock, soil, or a mixture of
these materials that falls, slides, or flows rapidly downslope; veloci-
ties may reach in excess of 500 kilometers per hour.

Bacteria: Microscopic single-celled organisms that multiply by means

of simple division; bacteria are found everywhere and most are
beneficial, with only a few species causing disease.
Base surge: The initial volcanic blast of an ash flow.
Basin: A regionally depressed structure in which sediments accumu-
late.
Bathymetry: The measurement of water depth at various places in a
body of water.
Beaufort scale: A scale from 0 to 12 that measures wind velocity.
Blizzard: A long, severe snowstorm.
Body wave: A seismic wave that propagates interior to a body; there
are two kinds—P waves and S waves—that travel through the
earth, reflecting and refracting off of the several layered bound-
aries within the earth.
Bore: A nearly vertical advancing wall of water that may be produced
by tides, a tsunami, or a seiche.
Brisance: The shattering or crushing effect of an explosive.
Brushfire: A wildfire.
Bubo: An inflammatory swelling of a lymph gland.
Bubonic plague: A form of plague characterized by the sudden onset
of fever, chills, weakness, headache, and buboes in the groin, arm-
pits, or neck.

Caldera: A large, flat-floored volcanic depression that is formed on

top of a large, shallow magma chamber during the eruption or
withdrawal of magma; calderas are usually tens of kilometers
across and can be a kilometer or more in depth.
Calve: To separate a piece from an ice mass.
Cannibalism: The eating of human flesh by human beings.

977
Glossary

CD4 cell: A type of white blood cell (helper T cell) that helps other
immune cells work together to fight a variety of diseases.
Cholera: A disease marked by severe gastrointestinal symptoms.
Cinder cone: A small volcano composed of cinder or lumps of lava
containing many gas bubbles, or vesicles; often the early stage of a
stratovolcano.
Cirque: A steep-sided, gentle-floored, semicircular hollow produced
by erosion at the head of a glacier high on a mountain peak.
Coal: Dark brown to black rock formed by heat and compression
from the accumulation of plant material in swampy environments.
Cold front: The contact between two air masses when a bulge of cold,
polar air surges southward into regions of warmer air.
Combustion: An exothermic, self-sustaining, chemical reaction usu-
ally involving the oxidation of a fuel by oxygen in the atmosphere
and the emission of heat, light, and mechanical energy, such as
sound.
Comet: A solar system body, usually in an elongated and randomly
oriented orbit, composed of rocky and icy materials that form a
flowing head and extended tail when the body nears the sun.
Comet nucleus: The central core of a comet, composed of frozen
gases and dust; the source of all cometary activity.
Conduction: Heat transfer between two bodies in direct contact with
each other.
Cone: The hill or mountain, more or less conical, surrounding a vol-
canic vent and created by its ejecta; it is normally surmounted by a
crater.
Conflagration: A fire that spreads from building to building through
flame spread over some distance, often a portion of a city or a
town.
Continental glacier or ice sheet: A glacier of considerable thickness
that completely covers a large part of a continent, obscuring the
relief of the underlying surface.
Convection: Heat transfer within a fluid.
Cordillera: A long, elevated mountain chain marked by a valley-and-
ridge structure.
Core: The spherical, mostly liquid mass located 2,900 kilometers be-
low the earth’s surface; a central, solid part is known as the inner
core.

978
 Glossary

Couloir: A mountain-side gorge.

Crater: The circular depression atop a volcanic cone or formed by
meteoritic impact.
Creep: The slow, more or less continuous downslope movement of
earth material.
Crust: The outermost layer of the earth; the continental crust, com-
posed of dominantly silicon-rich igneous rocks, metamorphic
rocks, and sedimentary rocks, is between 30 and 40 kilometers
thick, while the oceanic crust, composed of magnesium- and iron-
rich rocks such as basalt, is merely 5 kilometers thick.
Cwm: A cirque.
Cyclone: A major tropical storm that originates in the Indian Ocean.

Debris flow: A flowing mass consisting of water and a high concentra-

tion of sediment with a wide range of size, from fine muds to
coarse gravels.
Deflagration: An explosive reaction that spreads outward as burning
materials ignite the materials next to them at a rate slower than
the speed of sound.
Deforestation: The process of clearing forests.
Delta: A deposit of sediment, often triangular, formed at a river
mouth where the wave action of the sea is low.
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA): A protein found in the nucleus of a
cell comprising chromosomes that contain the genetic instruc-
tions of an organism.
Detonation: An explosive reaction in which a shock wave progres-
sively combusts materials by compressing them when the rate is
faster than the speed of sound.
Dew point: The temperature at which a vapor begins to condense.
Dike: A tabular igneous rock body that cuts across the fabric of the
solid rocks.
Dilatancy: An increase in volume as a result of rock forming cracks by
expansion, pressure, or agitation.
Diphtheria: A highly contagious bacterial infection that usually af-
fects the respiratory system.
DNA. See Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
Doppler radar: A radar system that measures velocity (as of wind).
Downburst: A downward outflowing of air and the associated wind

979
Glossary

shear from a thunderstorm that is especially hazardous to air-

craft.
Downdraft: A downward current of air or gas.
Drainage basin: The land area that contributes water to a particular
stream; the edge of such a basin is a drainage divide.
Drought: An extended period of below-normal precipitation that is
sufficiently long and severe that crops fail and normal water de-
mand cannot be met.
Dust Bowl: The period from 1932 to 1938 in the U.S. Midwest and
Southeast during which drought conditions caused much dust to
form and drift.
Dust devil: A rotating column of rising air, made visible by the dust it
contains; smaller and less destructive than a tornado, it has winds
of less than 60 kilometers per hour.
Dust storm: The result of wind erosion, desertification, and physical
deterioration of the soil caused by persistent or temporary lack of
rainfall and wind gusts.

Earthquake: A sudden release of strain energy in a fault zone as a re-

sult of violent motion of a part of the earth along the fault.
Ebola virus: A disease in which the patient experiences fever, muscle
pain, blood clots in vital organs, hemorrhaging, shock, kidney fail-
ure, and often death.
Ejecta: The material ejected from the crater made by a meteoric im-
pact; also, material thrown out of a volcano during eruption.
El Niño: Part of a gigantic meteorological system called the Southern
Oscillation that links the ocean and atmosphere in the Pacific,
causing periodic changes in climate.
Elastic waves: Waves that travel through a material because of its abil-
ity to recover from an instantaneous elastic deformation.
Encephalitis: Inflammation of the brain.
Enzootic: An infection that is present in an animal community at all
times but manifests itself only in a small fraction of instances.
Ephemeral stream: A river or stream that flows briefly in response to
nearby rainfall; such streams are common in arid and semiarid re-
gions.
Epicenter: The point on the earth’s surface directly above the focus
of an earthquake.

980
 Glossary

Epidemic: A disease that affects a large human population.

Epidemiology: The medical field that studies the distribution of dis-
ease among human populations, as well as the factors responsible
for this distribution.
Epizootic: An outbreak of disease in which many animals become in-
fected at the same time.
Ergotism: A disease of the central nervous system caused by ingesting
the alkaloids (one of which is LSD) of the ergot fungus, Claviceps
purpurea, which infects rye grain; symptoms include numbness of
the extremities, vomiting and diarrhea, dizziness, and delusions
and convulsions usually ending in a painful death.
Erosion: The removal of weathered rock and mineral fragments and
grains from an area by the action of wind, ice, gravity, or running
water.
Eruption: Volcanic activity of such force as to propel significant
amounts of magmatic products over the rim of the crater.
Evaporite: A rock largely composed of minerals that have precipi-
tated upon evaporation of seawater or lake water.
Evapotranspiration: The movement of water from the soil to the at-
mosphere in response to heat, combining transpiration in plants
and evaporation.
Exothermic reaction: A reaction in which the new substances pro-
duced have less energy than the original substances.
Explosion: Combustion that expands so quickly that the fuel volume
cannot shed energy rapidly enough to remain stable.
Extinction: The disappearance of a species or large group of animals
or plants.
Extrusion: The emission of magma or lava and the rock so formed
onto the earth’s surface.
Extrusive rock: Igneous rock that has been erupted onto the surface
of the earth.
Eye: The calm central region of a hurricane, composed of a tunnel
with strong sides.
Eyewall: The area surrounding the eye, or center, of a hurricane.

Famine: A lack of access to food, the cause of which can be a natural

disaster, such as a drought, or a situation created by humans, such
as a civil war.

981
Glossary

Fault: A fracture or system of fractures across which relative move-

ment of rock bodies has occurred.
Fault drag: The bending of rocks adjacent to a fault.
Fault slip: The direction and amount of relative movement between
the two blocks of rock separated by a fault.
Fifty-year-flood: A hypothetical flood whose severity is such that it
would occur on average only once in a period of fifty years, which
equates to a 2 percent probability each year.
Fire: The process of combustion.
Fireball: A very large and bright meteor that often explodes with frag-
ments falling to the ground as meteorites; sometimes called a bo-
lide.
Firebrand: A piece of burning material that is carried by convective
forces, such as wind, from one location to another.
Firestorm: A large, usually stationary fire characterized by very high
temperatures, in which the central column of rising, heated air in-
duces strong inward winds that supply oxygen to the fire.
Flash floods: Floods that begin very quickly and last only a short time.
Flash point: The minimum temperature at which vapors above a vola-
tile substance ignite in air when exposed to flame.
Flood: The result of a river overflowing its banks and spreading out
over the bordering floodplain; defined in terms of the volume of
water moving past a given point in the stream channel per unit of
time (cubic feet per second).
Floodplain: The relatively flat valley floor on either side of a river
which may be partly or wholly occupied by water during a flood.
Flow rate: The amount of water that passes a reference point in a spe-
cific amount of time, measured in liters per second.
Flu. See Influenza
Fluvial: Of or related to streams and their actions.
Focus: The region within the earth from which earthquake waves em-
anate; also called the hypocenter.
Foehn: A warm, dry wind blowing in the valleys of a mountain.
Fog: Dense water vapor, reducing visibility to less than 0.6 mile (l kilo-
meter), that occurs when the temperature of any surface falls be-
low the dew point of the air directly above it.
Freeze: The occurrence of abnormally low temperatures for an ex-
tended period of time over a region.

982
 Glossary

Fresh water: Water with less than 0.2 percent dissolved salts, such as is
found in most streams, rivers, and lakes.
Front: The boundary between two dissimilar air masses.
Fuel: A material that will burn.
Fujita scale: A rating scale that examines structural damage to assess
the wind speed of a tornado.
Fumarole: A vent that emits only gases.

Glacier: An accumulation of ice that flows viscously as a result of its

own weight; a glacier forms when snowfall accumulates and re-
crystallizes into a granular snow (firn, or névé), which becomes
compacted and converted into solid, interlocking glacial ice.
Graben: A roughly symmetrical crustal depression formed by the low-
ering of a crustal block between two normal faults that slope to-
ward each other.
Graupel: Soft hail.
Groundwater: Water that is located beneath the surface of the earth
in interconnected pores.

Hail: Precipitation consisting of layers of ice and snow in the form of

small balls.
Harmonic tremor: A movement or shaking of the ground accompa-
nying volcanic eruptions.
Hawaiian eruption: A low intensity volcanic eruption (VEI values of 0
or 1) characterized by a calm outpouring of low viscosity, low sili-
con lava.
Headwater: The source of a stream.
Heat Index: A scale that measures how hot it feels when the relative
humidity is factored into the actual air temperature.
Heat wave: The occurrence of abnormally high air temperatures for
an extended period of time over a region, destroying crops, dam-
aging infrastructures, and sometimes causing both animal and hu-
man deaths.
HIV. See Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
Host: A living animal or plant giving lodgment to a parasite.
Hot spot: A zone of hot, upwelling rock that is rooted in the earth’s
upper mantle; as plates of the earth’s crust and lithosphere glide
over a mantle plume, a trail of hot spot volcanoes is formed and

983
Glossary

the earth’s surface bulges upward in a dome several hundred kilo-

meters wide by 1 kilometer high. Also called a mantle plume.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV): A retrovirus that makes the
immune system weak by destroying CD4 cells, causing the body to
be susceptible to infection; the virus that causes AIDS.
Hundred-year-flood: A hypothetical flood whose severity is such that
it would occur on average only once in a period of one hundred
years, which equates to a 1 percent probability each year.
Hurricane: A severe tropical storm with winds exceeding 119 kilome-
ters per hour that originates in tropical regions; the term “hur-
ricane” is sometimes used only for storms originating in the Atlan-
tic Ocean, with “typhoon” used for those originating in the Pacific
Ocean and “cyclone” used for those originating in the Indian
Ocean.
Hydrocarbon: An organic compound composed of carbon and hy-
drogen often occurring in petroleum, natural gas, coal, and bitu-
mens.
Hyperthermia: Excessively high body temperature.
Hypocenter: The central underground location of an earth tremor;
also called the focus.
Hypothermia: Excessively low body temperature.

Ice storm: Rain falling from an above-freezing layer of upper air to a

layer of below-freezing air on or near the earth’s surface, coating
everything with a layer of ice called glaze.
Iceberg: An ice mass, originating from a glacier, that typically floats in
an ocean.
Ignimbrite: An igneous rock deposited from a hot, mobile, ground-
hugging cloud of ash and pumice.
Immune system: The body system that is responsible for fighting off
infectious disease.
Impact crater: A depression, usually circular, in a planetary surface,
caused by the high-speed impact of rocky debris or comet nuclei.
Influenza: Any one of a group of serious respiratory disease caused
by viruses.
Intensity: An arbitrary measure of an earthquake’s effect on people
and buildings, based on the modified Mercalli scale.
Island arc: A curved chain of volcanic islands, generally located a few

984
 Glossary

hundred kilometers from a trench where active subduction of one

oceanic plate under another is occurring.

Jet stream: A narrow current of high-speed winds in the upper atmo-

sphere.

K/T boundary: The thin clay layer that lies between the rocks of the
Cretaceous geological period and the rocks of the following Ter-
tiary period.

La Niña: The part of the Southern Oscillation that brings cold water
to the South American coasts, which makes easterly trade winds
stronger, the waters of the Pacific off South America colder, and
ocean temperatures in the western equatorial Pacific warmer than
normal.
Lahar: A mudflow composed chiefly of volcanic debris on the flanks
of a volcano.
Landslide: A general term that applies to any downslope movement
of materials; landslides include avalanches, earthflows, mudflows,
rockfalls, and slumps.
Lava: The fluid rock issued from a volcano or fissure and the solidi-
fied rock it forms when it cools.
Lava tube: A cavern structure formed by the draining out of liquid
lava in a pahoehoe (basaltic rock) flow.
Legionnaires’ disease: An acute bacterial pneumonia caused by a
bacterial infection, with symptoms of fever, chills, and muscle
pain; also called legionellosis.
Levee: A dikelike structure, usually made of compacted earth and re-
inforced with other materials, that is designed to contain the
stream flow in its natural channel.
Lightning: A high-voltage electrical spark which occurs most often
when a cloud attempts to balance the differences between positive
and negative charges within itself.
Limestone: A common sedimentary rock containing the mineral cal-
cite; the calcite originated from fossil shells of marine plants and
animals or by precipitation directly from seawater.
Liquefaction: The loss in cohesiveness of water-saturated soil as a re-
sult of ground shaking caused by an earthquake.

985
Glossary

Low: An area of low barometric pressure.

Lymphocyte: A white blood cell that produces antibodies.

Macrophage: A tissue cell that protects the body from infection.

Magma: Molten silicate liquid plus any crystals, rock inclusions, or
gases trapped therein.
Magnitude: A measure of the amount of energy released by an earth-
quake, based on the relation between the logarithm of ground mo-
tion at the detecting instrument and its distance from the epicenter.
Mantle: The portion of the earth’s interior extending from about 60
kilometers in depth to 2,900 kilometers; it is composed of rela-
tively high-density minerals that consist primarily of silicates.
Mantle plume: Hot spot.
Marine: Referring to a seawater, ocean environment.
Meteor: A bright streak of light in the sky, sometimes called a shoot-
ing star, produced by a meteoroid entering the earth’s atmo-
sphere at high speed and heating to incandescence.
Meteor shower: A meteor display caused by comet dust particles
burning up in the upper atmosphere during the annual passage
of earth through a cometary wake or debris field.
Meteoric water: Surface water that infiltrates porous and fractured
crustal rocks; the same as groundwater.
Meteorite: The remnant of an interplanetary body that survives a fall
through the earth’s atmosphere and reaches the ground.
Meteoroid: A natural, solid object traveling through interplanetary
space.
Meteorology: The study of weather.
Modified Mercalli scale: A means of calculating the intensity of shak-
ing at the surface of the earth.
Monsoon: A seasonal pattern of wind at boundaries between warm
ocean bodies and landmasses.
Mudflow: Both the process and the landform characterized by very
fluid movement of fine-grained soil with a high (sometimes more
than 50 percent) water content.

Nuée ardente: A hot cloud of rock fragments, ash, and gases that sud-
denly and explosively erupt from some volcanoes and flow rapidly
down their slopes.

986
 Glossary

Orography: A branch of physical geography that deals with mountains.

Oxidant: A substance that combines another substance with oxygen.
Oxidation: A chemical reaction in which an oxidizing agent and a re-
ducing agent combine to form a product with less energy than the
original materials.
Ozone: A gas containing three atoms of oxygen; it is highly concen-
trated in a zone of the stratosphere.

P wave: A type of seismic wave generated at the focus of an earth-

quake, traveling 6-8 kilometers per second, with a push-pull vibra-
tory motion parallel to the direction of propagation; P stands for
“primary,” as P waves are the fastest and first to arrive at a seismic
station.
Palmer Drought Index (PDI): Defines drought as the period of time,
generally measured in months or years, when the actual moisture
supply at a specified location is always below the climatically antici-
pated or appropriate supply of moisture.
Pandemic: A disease occurring over a wide geographic area.
PDI. See Palmer Drought Index (PDI)
Peléan eruption: A volcanic eruption often considered a subclass of
Vulcanian eruption, in which nuées ardentes often cause the col-
lapse or explosion of a volcanic dome sitting over the vent.
Photochemical smog: Smog caused by the action of solar ultraviolet
radiation on an atmosphere polluted with hydrocarbons and ni-
trogen oxides from automobile exhaust.
Phreatic eruption: An eruption in which water plays a major role; also
called hydrovolcanic.
Plague: An infection transmitted by fleas, which may prove fatal if left
untreated.
Plate tectonics: The theory that the outer surface of the earth con-
sists of large moving plates that interact to produce seismic, volca-
nic, and orogenic activity.
Plinian eruption: The most explosive and rare of the volcanic erup-
tions of historic record, having VEI values of 4 to 6; they spew an
abundance of ash into the stratosphere.
Pneumonic plague: A form of plague, limited to humans, which di-
rectly transmits the infection via infected aerosol droplets from a
person with a lung infection.

987
Glossary

Point-release avalanche: A loose snow avalanche caused by a cohe-

sionless snow layer resting on a slope steeper than its angle of re-
pose.
Poliomyelitis: A viral illness that may cause meningitis and perma-
nent paralysis; it can be prevented through immunization.
Pollution: A condition in which air, soil, or water contains substances
that make it hazardous for human use.
Precipice: A steep or overhanging area of earth or rock.
Primary explosives: Fuels that explode when ignited by a nonexplo-
sive source.
Pumice: A vesicular glassy rock commonly having the composition of
rhyolite; a common constituent of silica-rich explosive volcanic
eruptions.
Pyroclastic fall: The settling of debris under the influence of gravity
from an explosively generated plume of material.
Pyroclastic flow: A highly heated mixture of volcanic gases and ash
that travels down the flanks of a volcano.
Pyroclastic rocks: Rocks formed in the process of volcanic ejection
and composed of fragments of ash, rock, and glass.
Pyrolysis: The process of breaking a substance down through the ap-
plication of heat into its constituent elements before it can be oxi-
dized.

Quarantine: A state of enforced isolation designed to prevent the

spread of disease.

Radiant heat transfer: Heat transfer by electromagnetic waves across

distances.
Recurrence interval: The average time interval, expressed in number
of years, between occurrences of a flood of a given or greater mag-
nitude than others in a measured series of floods.
Ribonucleic acid (RNA): The material contained in the core of many
viruses that is responsible for directing the replication of the virus
inside the host cell.
Richter scale: The scale, devised by Charles F. Richter, used for mea-
suring the magnitude of earthquakes.
Rift valley: A region of extensional deformation in which the central
block has dropped down in relation to the two adjacent blocks.

988
 Glossary

Right-lateral strike-slip: Sideways motion along a steep fault in which

the block of the earth’s crust across the fault from the observer ap-
pears to be displaced to the right; left-slip faults are displaced to
the left.
Ring of Fire: The ring of earthquake zones and volcanoes in the Pa-
cific Ocean.
RNA. See Ribonucleic acid
Rock: A naturally occurring, consolidated material of one or more
minerals.
Rockfall: A relatively free-falling movement of rock material from a
cliff or steep slope.
Runoff: The total amount of water flowing in a stream, including
overland flow, return flow, interflow, and base flow.

S wave: The secondary seismic wave, traveling more slowly than the P
wave and consisting of elastic vibrations transverse to the direction
of travel; S waves cannot propagate in a liquid medium.
Saltation: The process of small particles being lifted off the surface,
traveling 10 to 15 times the height to which they are lifted, then
spinning downward with sufficient force to dislodge other soil par-
ticles and break down earth clods.
Sandstorm: A dust storm that results from dislodging larger, heavier
particles of soil and rock; sandstorms tend to occur in conjunction
with desert cyclones.
Scarp: A steep cliff or slope created by rapid movement along a fault.
Seiche: An oscillation in a partially enclosed body of water such as a
bay or estuary.
Seismic: Pertaining to an earthquake.
Seismic belt: A region of relatively high seismicity, globally distrib-
uted; seismic belts mark regions of plate interactions.
Seismic waves: Elastic oscillatory disturbances spreading outward
from an earthquake or human-made explosion; they provide the
most important data about the earth’s interior.
Seismicity: The occurrence of earthquakes, which is expressed as a
function of location and time.
Seismogram: An image of earthquake wave vibrations recorded on
paper, photographic film, or a video screen.

989
Glossary

Seismograph: An instrument used for recording the motions of the

earth’s surface, caused by seismic waves, as a function of time.
Seismology: The application of the physics of elastic wave transmis-
sion and reflection to subsurface rock geometry.
Shallow-focus earthquake: An earthquake having a focus less than 60
kilometers below the surface.
Shear: A stress that forces two contiguous parts of an object apart in a
direction parallel to their plane of contact, as opposed to a stretch-
ing, compressing, or twisting force; also called shear stress.
Shield volcano: A volcano in the shape of a flattened dome, broad
and low, built by flows of very fluid basaltic lava.
Shock wave: A compressional wave formed when a body undergoes a
hypervelocity impact; it produces abrupt changes in pressure,
temperature, density, and velocity in the target material as it
passes through.
Sinkhole: A hole or depression in the landscape, produced by dissolv-
ing bedrock; sinkholes can range in size from a few meters across
and deep to kilometers wide and hundreds of meters deep.
Slab avalanche: An avalanche in which a large slab of the snow layer is
released.
Sleet: Frozen or partly frozen rain.
Slump: A term that applies to the rotational slippage of material and
the mass of material actually moved; the mass has component
parts called scarp, failure plane, head, foot, toe, and blocks; the
toe may grade downslope in a flow.
Smallpox: A highly contagious viral disease with symptoms of fever,
cough, and a rash; it has been eradicated worldwide.
Smog: Air pollution in the form of haze, which can be sulfurous or
photochemical in origin.
Solfatara: A volcanic vent that emits hot vapors and sulfurous gases.
Spillway: A broad reinforced channel near the top of the dam, de-
signed to allow rising waters to escape the reservoir without over-
topping the dam.
Squall line: A line of vigorous thunderstorms created by a cold down-
draft with rain, which spreads out ahead of a fast-moving cold front.
Storm surge: A general rise above normal water level, resulting from
a hurricane or other severe coastal storm.

990
 Glossary

Stratovolcano: A volcano constructed of layers of lava and pyroclastic

rock; also called a composite volcano.
Stress: The force per unit area acting at any point within a solid body
such as rock, calculated from a knowledge of force and area.
Strike-slip fault: A fault across which the relative movement is mainly
lateral.
Strombolian eruption: A weakly explosive volcanic eruption (VEI val-
ues of 1 or 2) that usually begins with the volcano tossing out mol-
ten debris to form cinders and clots of liquid that solidify in the air
to fall as bombs.
Subduction zone: A region where a plate, generally oceanic litho-
sphere, sinks beneath another plate into the mantle.
Sulfurous smog: Smog caused by the mixture of particulate matter
and sulfurous compounds in the atmosphere when coal is burned.
Syncline: A folded structure created when rocks are bent downward;
the limbs of the fold dip toward one another, and the youngest
rocks are exposed in the middle of the fold.
Syncytium: A multinucleate mass of protoplasm resulting from fu-
sion of cells.
Syphilis: A sexually transmitted disease that causes widespread tissue
destruction and, potentially, death if left untreated by penicillin.

T lymphocytes: Small white blood cells that kill host cells infected by
bacteria or viruses or that produce a chemical compound which
mediates the destruction of the host cells.
T-test: A statistical test used especially in testing hypotheses about
means of normal distributions when the standard deviations are
unknown.
Tectonic plates: Segments that comprise the crust (either oceanic or
continental crust) and a portion of the earth’s mantle beneath it
Tectonics: The study of the processes that formed the structural fea-
tures of the earth’s crust; it usually addresses the creation and
movement of immense crustal plates.
Teleseism: An earthquake recorded at great epicentral distances.
Tephra: All pyroclastic materials blown out of a volcanic vent, from
dust to large chunks.
Thermocline: A layer within a water body, characterized by a rapid
change in temperature.

991
Glossary

Thunder: A loud sound resulting from the heating of air surround-

ing a lightning bolt, which causes a very rapid expansion of air
that moves at supersonic speeds and forms shock waves.
Tidal wave: The popular but inaccurate term for a tsunami.
Torino Impact Hazard Scale: A scale dealing with the perceived prob-
ability of an asteroid or comet hitting Earth.
Tornado: A violent rotating column of air extending downward from
a thunderhead cloud and having the appearance of a funnel,
rope, or column.
Tornado Alley: An area of the United States where tornadoes are
common, extending from Texas northward to Nebraska.
Trade winds: Winds in the tropics that blow from the subtropical
highs to the equatorial low.
Transform fault: A fault connecting offset segments of an ocean
ridge along which two plates slide past each other.
Trench: A long and narrow deep trough on the sea floor that forms
where the ocean floor is pulled downward because of plate sub-
duction.
Triage: Quick evaluation of victims before administering emergency
assistance; victims are grouped according to those likely to survive
without immediate treatment, those likely to survive only with im-
mediate treatment, and those unlikely to survive even with emer-
gency treatment.
Tropical storm: A severe storm with winds ranging from 45 to 120 ki-
lometers per hour.
Tsunami: A seismic sea wave created by an undersea earthquake, a vi-
olent volcanic eruption, or a landslide at sea.
Tuff: A general term for all consolidated pyroclastic rocks.
Twenty-year-flood: A hypothetical flood whose severity is such that it
would occur on average only once in a period of twenty years,
which equates to a 5 percent probability each year.
Typhoid fever: A particular disease syndrome most often associated
with infection by Salmonella typhi but occasionally caused by other
types of salmonella bacteria.
Typhoon: A major tropical storm that originates in the Pacific Ocean.
Typhus: An acute infectious disease caused by rickettsiae, microor-
ganisms that are smaller than bacteria but larger than viruses.

992
 Glossary

Ultra-Plinian eruption: A highly explosive volcanic eruption (VEI val-

ues of 7 and 8); none has occurred in recorded history.

Vaccine: A preparation of killed microorganisms or living organisms

that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to
a particular disease.
VEI. See Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)
Vent: A break or tear on the side of a mountain through which
magma and pressure can escape.
Vesiculation: The process of water being released from magma and
boiling to form bubbles.
Vigra: Precipitation that falls from clouds and evaporates before
reaching the ground.
Viscosity: A substance’s ability to flow; the lower the viscosity, the
greater the ability to flow.
Volcanic earthquakes: Small-magnitude earthquakes that occur at rela-
tively shallow depths beneath active or potentially active volcanoes.
Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI): A scale from 0 to 8 that classifies the
intensity of volcanic eruptions.
Volcanic rocks: Igneous rocks formed at the surface of the earth.
Volcanic tremor: A long, continuous vibration, detected only at active
volcanoes.
Volcano: A vent at the earth’s surface in which gases, rocks, and
magma erupt and build a more or less cone-shaped mountain.
Vulcanian eruption: An explosive volcanic eruption (VEI values rang-
ing from 2 to 4) in which the magma is viscous, there are few lava
flows, and thick liquid clots are shot far into the air.

Watershed: A region bounded by a divide and draining to a particular

body of water.
Waterspout: A tornado occurring over water.
Whiteout: A blizzard that severely reduces visibility.
Wildfire: An outdoor fire, occurring in forests, grasslands, or farms,
that is caused either by an act of nature, such as a lightning strike,
or by human actions; also called a brushfire.
Wind gust: A localized difference in atmospheric pressure caused by
frontal weather changes.
Wind shear: Radical shift in wind speed and direction.

993
Glossary

Yellow fever: An acute viral infection of the liver, kidneys, and heart
muscle with such symptoms as fever, muscle pain, vomiting of
blood, and jaundiced (yellow) skin.

Zoonosis: An animal disease that can also be transferred to humans.

994
■ Time Line
2 billion b.c.e.: An asteroid impact at Vredefort, South Africa, pro-
duces a 186-mile-diameter crater, the largest known on Earth.
1.85 billion b.c.e.: An asteroid impact at Sudbury, Ontario, Canada,
produces a 155-mile-diameter crater. Groundwater, upwelling
through fractured rocks, eventually produces one of the world’s
richest nickel deposits.
65 million b.c.e.: A 6.2-mile-diameter asteroid produces a 112-mile-
diameter crater on the Yucatán Peninsula. The associated envi-
ronmental disaster causes most of the species then living, includ-
ing the dinosaurs, to become extinct.
49,000 b.c.e.: The impact of a huge nickel-iron boulder forms the
Barringer meteorite crater in Arizona.
5000 b.c.e.: Crater Lake, Oregon, erupts, sending pyroclastic flows as
far as 37 miles (60 kilometers) from the vent; 25 cubic miles of ma-
terial are erupted as a caldera forms from the collapse of the
mountaintop.
c. 3500 b.c.e.: The first known references of famine are recorded in
Egypt.
c. 1470 b.c.e.: Thera erupts in the Aegean Sea, possibly causing the
disappearance of the Minoan civilization on Crete and leading to
stories of the lost “continent” of Atlantis.
11th century b.c.e.: Biblical passage Samuel I tells of the Philistine
plague, a pestilence outbreak that occurred after the capture of
the Ark of the Covenant.
7th century b.c.e.: Assyrian pestilence slays 185,000 Assyrians, forc-
ing King Sennacherib to retreat from Judah without capturing
Jerusalem.
600-500 b.c.e.: Perhaps the first recorded tornado is the “whirl-
wind” mentioned in Ezekiel 2:4 and 2 Kings 2:11 of the Old Tes-
tament.
451 b.c.e.: The Roman pestilence, an unidentified disease but proba-
bly anthrax, kills a large portion of the slave population and some
in the citizenry and prevents the Aequians of Latium from attack-
ing Rome.
436 b.c.e.: Thousands of Romans prefer drowning in the Tiber to
starvation during a severe famine.

995
Time Line

430 b.c.e.: The mysterious Plague of Athens early in the Pelopon-

nesian War against Sparta results in about 30,000 dead.
387 b.c.e.: According the records of Livy, a series of 11 epidemics
strikes Rome through the end of the republic.
250-243 b.c.e.: “Hunpox,” or perhaps smallpox, strikes China.
218 b.c.e.: Hannibal loses 20,000 men, 2,000 horses, and several ele-
phants in a huge avalanche near Col de la Traversette in the Ital-
ian Alps.
48 b.c.e.: Epidemic, flood, and famine occur in China.
64 c.e.: Much of the city burns during the Great Fire of Rome.
August 24, 79 c.e.: Vesuvius erupts, burying Pompeii and Hercu-
laneum.
May 29, 526: The Antioch earthquake in Syria (now Turkey), esti-
mated at magnitude 9.0, kills 250,000.
542-543: Plague of Justinian is the first pandemic of bubonic plague
that devastates Africa, Asia Minor, and Europe. The first year the
plague kills 300,000 in Constantinople; the infection resurfaces
repeatedly over the next half century.
585-587: The Japanese smallpox epidemic, probably the country’s
first documented episode of the disease, infects peasants and no-
bility alike. Because it occurs after the acceptance of Buddhism, it
is believed to be a punishment from the Shinto gods and results in
the burning of temples and attacks on Buddhist nuns and priests.
917-918: Famine strikes northern India as uncounted thousands die.
1064-1072: Egypt faces starvation as the Nile fails to flood for seven
consecutive years.
October 17, 1091: The earliest British tornado for which there is an au-
thentic record hits London, killing 2 and demolishing 600 houses.
12th and 13th centuries: Air pollution in London is caused by exten-
sive burning of coal.
1200-1202: A severe famine across Egypt kills more than 100,000;
widespread cannibalism is reported.
1228: Flooding in Holland results in at least 100,000 deaths.
1235: An estimated 20,000 inhabitants of London die of starvation.
1270-1350: A prolonged drought in the U.S. Southwest destroys Ana-
sazi Indian culture.
1273: A law passes in London to restrict the burning of soft coal in an
attempt to improve air quality in the area.

996
 Time Line

1306: England’s Parliament issues a proclamation requiring citizens

to burn wood instead of coal in order to improve local air quality.
1315-1317: Central Europe, struck by excessive rains, experiences
crop failures and famine.
1320-1352: Europe is stricken by the Black Death (bubonic plague),
claiming over 40 million lives.
1333: The Arno River floods Venice, with a level of up to 14 feet (4.2
meters).
1333-1337: Famine strikes China, and millions die of starvation.
1347-1380: The Black Death kills an estimated 25 million in Asia. A
reported two-thirds of the population in China succumbs.
1478: About 60 soldiers of the Duke of Milan are killed by an ava-
lanche while crossing the mountains near Saint Gotthard Pass in
the Italian Alps.
1494-1495: A syphilis epidemic strikes the French army in Naples and
is considered the first appearance of this venereal infection in Eu-
rope.
1507: Hispaniola smallpox is the first recorded epidemic in the New
World, representing the first wave of diseases that eventually de-
populate America of most of its native inhabitants. In the next two
centuries, the population plunges by an estimated 80 percent.
1512: A landslide causes a lake to overflow, killing more than 600 in
Biasco, the Alps.
1520-1521: About 2 to 5 million die in the Aztec Empire when they
contract smallpox during the Spanish conquest and colonization
of Mexico.
January 23, 1556: 830,000 people die in Shaanxi, China, the greatest
death toll from an earthquake to date.
1557: Severe cold and excessive rain causes famine in the Volga re-
gion of Russia.
1585-1587: A severe drought destroys the Roanoke colonies of En-
glish settlers in Virginia.
1588: A major storm destroys the Spanish Armada, which is seeking
to escape the English navy under Sir Francis Drake.
September, 1618: Two villages are destroyed by landslides, and 2,427
are reported dead in Chiavenna Valley, Italy.
September, 1618: An avalanche kills 1,500 inhabitants of Plurs, Swit-
zerland.

997
Time Line

August 15, 1635: A colonial hurricane strikes Massachusetts and

Rhode Island coastal settlements.
1642: More than 300,000 people die in China from flooding.
1643-1653: Europe experiences its severest winters after the Ice Age.
March, 1657: The Meireki Fire destroys Edo (now Tokyo), Japan, kill-
ing more than 100,000 people.
1665-1666: Very hot summers in London exacerbate the last plague
epidemic.
1666: In the Great Fire of London, about 436 acres of the city burn,
eliminating the Great Plague.
March 11, 1669: Sicily’s Mount Etna begins a series of devastating
eruptions that will result in more than 20,000 dead and 14 villages
destroyed, including the seaside town of Catania, Italy.
1679: Fire burns portions of the city of Boston.
1680: Scientist Isaac Newton notes that the comet of 1680 passes less
than 621,400 miles (1 million kilometers) from the Sun and de-
duces that its nucleus must be solid in order to survive.
1689: A series of avalanches kills more than 300 residents in Saas,
Switzerland, and surrounding communities.
1690: Siberia experiences extreme heat, probably due to southerly
winds; at this time, Europe is abnormally cold.
1692: An earthquake and tsunamis in Port Royal, Jamaica, kill 3,000.
1703: 5,000 die in tsunamis in Honshn, Japan, following a large earth-
quake.
1707: A 38-foot-high tsunami kills 30,000 in Japan.
January, 1718: The town of Leukerbad, Switzerland, is destroyed by
two avalanches that leave more than 55 dead and many residents
seriously injured.
1718-1719: Great heat and drought affect most of Europe during the
summers of these years.
September 27, 1727: A hurricane strikes the New England coast.
1741: Following volcanic eruptions, 30-foot waves in Japan cause
1,400 deaths.
September 15 and October 1, 1752: Two hurricanes strike South and
North Carolina.
November 1, 1755: An earthquake on All Saints’ Day kills worshipers
in Lisbon, Portugal, in the collapse of stone cathedrals or in the
accompanying tsunamis; as many as 50,000 perish.

998
 Time Line

December 25, 1758: The first predicted return of Halley’s comet is

observed.
1769: Drought-induced famine kills millions in the Bengal region of
India.
1769: 1,000 tons of gunpowder stored in the state arsenal at Brescia,
Italy, explode when struck by lightning. One-sixth of the city is de-
stroyed, and 3,000 people are killed.
September 8-9, 1769: The Atlantic coast of North America, from the
Carolinas to New England, is hit by a hurricane.
1783: A tsunami in Italy kills 30,000.
June 8, 1783-February 7, 1784: The Laki fissure eruption in Iceland
produces the largest lava flow in recorded history, with major cli-
matic effects. Benjamin Franklin speculates on its connection to a
cold winter in Paris the following year.
October 22-23, 1783: A hurricane strikes the Atlantic coast, from the
Carolinas to New England.
1786: The people of Paris make bell-ringing during thunderstorms il-
legal. The ringing of church bells was believed to prevent light-
ning strikes but often proved fatal to ringers.
1788: New Orleans burns.
July 13, 1788: A severe hailstorm damages French wheat crops.
1794-1803: Scientists prove that meteorites do fall from the sky.
September, 1806: Portions of Rossberg Peak collapse, destroying 4
villages and killing 800 people in Goldau Valley, Switzerland.
December 16, 1811; January 23 and February 7, 1812: In the sparsely
settled region of New Madrid, Missouri, the largest historic earth-
quakes in North America to date rearrange the Mississippi River
and form Reelfoot Lake.
1812: Moscow is set on fire by troops of Napoleon I.
1814: Washington, D.C. is burned by occupying British troops.
April 5, 1815: The dramatic explosion of Tambora, 248.6 miles (400
kilometers) east of Java, the largest volcanic event in modern his-
tory, produces atmospheric and climatic effects for the next two
years. Frosts occur every month in New England during 1816, the
Year Without a Summer.
June 3, 1816: The steamboat Washington explodes on the Ohio River.
May, 1817: The steamboat Constitution explodes on the Mississippi
River.

999
Time Line

1842: Most of the city of Hamburg, Germany, burns, leaving 100

dead.
1845: Moist, southerly winds and a hot summer provide the perfect
growing conditions for the potato blight fungus, resulting in the
Irish Potato Famine.
1845-1849: Ireland’s potato famine leads to the deaths of over 1 mil-
lion and the emigration of more than 1 million Irish.
Early October, 1846: An early blizzard in the Sierra Nevada traps the
Donner Party.
May 4, 1850: Fire burns large portions of the city of San Francisco.
May 3-4, 1851: San Francisco again experiences large fires; 30 die.
December 24, 1851: The Library of Congress is burned.
April 3, 1856: 4,000 are killed on the Greek island of Rhodes when
lightning strikes a church where gunpowder is stored.
August 13, 1856: A hurricane striking Last Island, Louisiana, results
in a death toll of 137.
January 9, 1857: The San Andreas fault at Fort Tejon, California, in
the northwest corner of Los Angeles County, ruptures dramati-
cally. Trees snap off near the ground, landslides occur, and build-
ings collapse into rubble.
1861: Earth passes through the tail of the Great Comet of 1861 with
no measurable effects.
April 27, 1865: 1,500 die in the explosion of the steamboat Sultana on
the Mississippi River.
January 23, 1867: The East River in New York City freezes.
1868: Tsunamis in Chile and Hawaii claim more than 25,000 lives.
October 8, 1871: The Great Peshtigo Fire affects a large area in north-
ern Wisconsin; 1,200 are killed, and 2 billion trees are burned.
October 8-10, 1871: The Great Chicago Fire leaves 250 dead and
causes $200 million in damage.
November 9-10, 1872: The Great Boston Fire kills 13, destroys 776
buildings, and causes $75 million in damage.
December, 1873: An air pollution event in London kills between 270
and 700 people.
1876-1878: Drought strikes India, leaving about 5 million dead.
1876-1879: China experiences a drought that leaves 10 million or
more dead.
August 13-October 29, 1878: The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic re-

1000
 Time Line

sults in over 100,000 cases and 20,000 deaths, particularly in Mem-

phis, Tennessee.
February, 1880: Approximately 1,000 people die in London from an
air pollution event.
September 8, 1880: A mine explosion at the Seaham Colliery in
Sunderland, England, kills 164.
January 19, 1883: 357 die in fog-related collision of steamers Cimbria
and Sultan near Borkum Island off the German coast.
August 26, 1883: A cataclysmic eruption of Krakatau, an island in In-
donesia, is heard 2,968 miles away. Many die as pyroclastic flows
race over pumice rafts floating on the surface of the sea; many
more die from a tsunami.
1887: The Yellow River floods, covering over 50,000 square miles of
the North China Plain. Over 900,000 people die from the flood-
waters and an additional 2 to 4 million die afterward due to flood-
related causes.
1887-1896: Droughts drive out many early settlers on the Great
Plains.
March 11-14, 1888: The Great Blizzard of 1888 strikes the eastern
United States; 400 die.
April 17, 1889: The first teleseism is recorded in Potsdam, Germany,
of an earthquake on that date in Japan.
May 31, 1889: A dam bursts upstream from Johnstown, Pennsylvania,
and the floodwaters kill over 2,200 people.
1890: The Federal Weather Bureau is created.
1892-1894: A cholera pandemic leaves millions dead but confirms
the theory that the disease is caused by bacteria in contaminated
water.
July, 1892: St. Gervais and La Fayet, Swiss resorts, are destroyed when
a huge avalanche speeds down Mont Blanc, killing 140 residents
and tourists.
December, 1892: A smog episode kills 1,000 people in London.
1896: As many as 27,000 die after tsunamis hit Sanriku, Japan.
May 27, 1896: The Great Cyclone of 1896, an F4 tornado, hits St.
Louis, Missouri, leaving 306 dead and 2,500 injured and destroy-
ing or damaging 7,500 buildings as well as riverboats and rail-
roads.
1898: A hurricane warning network is established in the West Indies.

1001
Time Line

1899: The failure of monsoons in India results in many deaths.

1900: The first quantitative measurements of peak current in light-
ning strikes are conducted.
September 8, 1900: A hurricane in Galveston, Texas, leads to the
highest death toll from a hurricane to date, from the ensuing
storm surge.
1900-1915: “Typhoid Mary” Mallon, a cook, spreads typhoid fever to
more than 50 people, causing at least 3 deaths.
1901: Transatlantic wireless radio sends first signal to receiver in St.
John’s, Newfoundland.
1902: Willis H. Carrier designs the first system to control the temper-
ature of air.
May 8, 1902: Pelée, on the northern end of the island of Martinique
in the Caribbean, sends violent pyroclastic flows into the city of St.
Pierre, killing all but 2 of the 30,000 inhabitants.
April, 1903: A 0.5-mile section of Turtle Mountain near Frank, Al-
berta, slides down the mountain, killing 70 people in the town.
1906: The term “air-conditioning” is used for the first time, by an en-
gineer named Stuart W. Cramer.
April 18, 1906: The San Andreas fault slips 20 feet near San Francisco
in a magnitude 8.3 earthquake. Much of the city is severely dam-
aged, and a firestorm starts when cinders escape a damaged chim-
ney, leveling the city.
June 30, 1908: A huge boulder or a small comet explodes over Tun-
guska, Siberia, causing widespread destruction.
December 28, 1908: The Messina earthquake kills 120,000 and de-
stroys or severely damages numerous communities in Italy.
November 13, 1909: A fire breaks out in the Cherry Mine in Illinois,
trapping and killing 259 miners.
1910: Wildfires rage throughout the U.S. West in the most destructive
fire year in U.S. history to date.
1910: American geologist H. F. Reid publishes a report on the 1906
San Francisco earthquake, outlining his theory of elastic rebound.
March, 1910: An avalanche sweeps through the train station in Wel-
lington, Washington State, destroying 3 snowbound passenger
trains and killing 96.
1910-1915: First in a series of recurring droughts affects the Sahel re-
gion in Africa.

1002
 Time Line

1911: The Yangtze River in China floods, killing more 100,000 peo-
ple.
March 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occurs in New
York City; 145 employees, mostly young girls, die.
June 6, 1912: Katmai erupts in Alaska with an ash flow that produces
the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.
April 28, 1914: An explosion in the Eccles Mine in West Virginia
leaves 181 dead.
May 29, 1914: More than 1,000 drown in the sinking of the Canadian
liner Empress of Ireland following its collision with Norwegian
freighter Storstad in heavy fog on the St. Lawrence River.
1916: The Great Polio Epidemic affects 26 states, particularly New
York, prompting quarantines and resulting in 27,000 reported
cases and at least 7,000 deaths.
June 30, 1916: Canada’s most lethal twister to date kills 28 in Regina,
Saskatchewan.
December, 1916: Heavy snows result in avalanches that kill more than
10,000 Italian and Austrian soldiers located in the Tirol section of
the Italian-Austrian Alps.
1917: The first photographic record of the spectrum from lightning
using a spectroscope is made.
December 6, 1917: Munitions ships in Halifax, Nova Scotia, harbor
explode and burn; 2,000 die.
1918: In Nasatch National Forest, Utah, 504 sheep are killed by a
lightning strike.
1918-1920: The Great Flu Pandemic sweeps the globe, killing 30 to 40
million, perhaps the largest single biological event in human his-
tory.
1920: Arizona’s Barringer Crater is the first Earth feature recognized
to have been caused by a meteorite impact.
December, 1920: An earthquake shears off unstable cliffs in Gansu
Province, China, destroying 10 cities and killing 200,000.
1921-1922: Famine strikes the Soviet Union, which pleads for interna-
tional aid; Western assistance saves millions, but several million die.
September 1, 1923: 143,000 people die as a result of the Great
Kwanto Earthquake, centered in Sagami Bay, Japan.
1925: First radio signal to warn of fog is sent to ships on the Great
Lakes.

1003
Time Line

1925: The U.S. Weather Bureau applies sensors to airplane wings to

record atmospheric conditions.
March 18, 1925: The Great Tri-State Tornado, the United States’
worst tornado disaster to date, occurs when a 219-mile-long twister
destroys entire towns along its path through Missouri, Illinois, and
Indiana, causing 689 deaths, more than 2,000 injuries, and $16-18
million in damage.
July 10, 1926: Explosions triggered by lightning at an ammunition
dump in New Jersey kill 21 people, blasting debris 5 miles.
September 15-22, 1926: The Great Miami Hurricane strikes Florida
and the Gulf states, resulting in 243 dead.
1927: French scientists produce the radiosonde, an instrument pack-
age designed to measure pressure, temperature, and humidity
during balloon ascents and radio the information back to earth.
1927: Extensive flooding of the Mississippi River results in 313 deaths.
March 12, 1928: The St. Francis Dam collapses in Southern Califor-
nia, leading to about 450 deaths.
September 10-16, 1928: A Category 4 storm, the San Felipe, or Lake
Okeechobee, hurricane claims over 4,000 lives in the Caribbean
and Florida.
1929: American scientist Robert H. Goddard launches a rocket carry-
ing an instrument package that includes a barometer, a thermom-
eter, and a camera.
Early 1930’s: Charles Richter, working with Beno Gutenberg at the
Seismological Laboratory of the California Institute of Technol-
ogy, develops the Richter scale.
December, 1930: A thick fog settles in the industrialized area along
the Meuse River in Belgium and is trapped for three days; thou-
sands of people become ill and 60 die.
1932-1934: Communist collectivization schemes in the Soviet Union
precipitate famine; an estimated 5 million die.
1933: 3,000 are killed by tsunamis in Sanriku, Japan.
December 23, 1933: Two trains collide in fog near Paris, killing 230.
1932-1937: Extensive droughts in the southern Great Plains destroy
many farms, creating the Dust Bowl, in the worst drought in more
than three hundred years in the United States. Between 15,000
and 20,000 die.
May 6, 1937: The German zeppelin Hindenburg explodes into a mas-

1004
 Time Line

sive fireball as it tries to land in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36.

1938: Chinese soldiers are ordered to destroy the levees of the Yellow
River in order to create a flood to stop the advance of Japanese
troops. It works, but at a terrible cost to the Chinese people; more
than 1 million die.
September 21, 1938: The Great New England Hurricane of 1938
causes high winds, flooding, and a storm surge that leave 680
dead, more than 1,700 injured, and $400 million in damage.
1939: Flooding of the Yellow River kills over 200,000 people.
November 28, 1942: The Cocoanut Grove nightclub burns in Boston,
killing 491.
1943: A major smog episode in Los Angeles leads local officials to be-
gin to look at regulations to reduce air pollution.
February 20, 1943: Paricutín comes into existence in a cultivated
field in Mexico. The eruption of this volcano continues for nine
years.
July, 1943: Hamburg, Germany, is destroyed, mostly by incendiary
bombs; 60,000-100,000 are killed.
July 17, 1944: Two ammunition ships in Port Chicago, California, ex-
plode, killing 300.
December 17-18, 1944: A typhoon in the Philippine Sea kills 790.
1945: Radar is used for tracking civilian traffic in ships and planes.
1945: A large section of the Oregon forest ignites in the third in a se-
ries of wildfires known as the Tillamook burn.
February 13, 1945: 25,000 die in the destruction of Dresden by incen-
diary bombs.
March 9, 1945: Incendiary bombs destroy 25 percent of Tokyo.
1946: The Aleutian tsunami creates 32-foot-high waves in Hilo, Ha-
waii, causing 159 deaths there.
1946: 2,000 die in Honshn, Japan, after an earthquake spawns tsu-
namis.
1947: Honshn Island, Japan, is hit by floods that kill more than 1,900
people.
March 25, 1947: A mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois, kills 111.
April 16, 1947: The French vessel Grandcamp explodes in Texas City,
Texas, killing 581.
September 4-21, 1947: A hurricane impacts the Gulf states, leaving
over 50 dead.

1005
Time Line

March 25, 1948: Air Force officers Ernest Fawbush and Robert Miller
issue the first tornado watch in the United States, but it is for mili-
tary use only.
December, 1948: Smog accumulates over Donora, Pennsylvania, and
is trapped in the valley of the Monongahela River for four days, re-
sulting in 18 deaths above the average number for that time pe-
riod.
November, 1949: Smog forms in Berkeley, California, from the ex-
haust of automobiles being driven into the area for a football game.
January, 1951: A series of avalanches leaves 240 dead; the village of
Vals, Switzerland, is completely destroyed.
March 17, 1952: The U.S. Weather Bureau issues the first tornado
watch to the American public.
December 5-9, 1952: A dense fog develops over London, mixes with
smoke, and remains stagnant for five days, leading to 4,000 deaths
above the average number for that time interval.
1953: The system of naming hurricanes is adopted.
1953: Smog accumulates in New York City, causing at least 200
deaths.
February 1, 1953: A massive flood in the North Sea kills 1,853 in the
Netherlands, Great Britain, and Belgium.
May 11, 1953: A tornado destroys much of downtown Waco, Texas,
leaving 114 dead and 1,097 injured.
June 8, 1953: A tornado devastates parts of Flint, Michigan, killing
120 and injuring 847.
June 9, 1953: The worst tornado to date to strike the northeastern
United States plows a path greater than a half-mile wide through
Worcester, Massachusetts; 94 people are killed, 1,288 are injured,
and more than 4,000 buildings are damaged or destroyed.
January, 1954: In one of the worst avalanches in Austrian history, 145
people are killed over a 10-mile area.
October 12-18, 1954: Hurricane Hazel strikes the Atlantic coast, caus-
ing 411 deaths and $1 billion in damage.
1956: A severe smog episode in London leads to the deaths of 1,000
people.
March 30, 1956: The volcano Bezymianny in Russia erupts with a vio-
lent lateral blast, stripping trees of their bark 18.6 miles (30 kilo-
meters) away.

1006
 Time Line

July 25-26, 1956: The Italian liner Andrea Doria sinks after being
struck by a Swedish vessel in fog.
November, 1956: At least 46 people die in a smog episode in New
York City.
June 27-30, 1957: More than 500 die when Hurricane Audrey hits the
Louisiana and Texas coastlines.
1958: H. Jeffreys and K. E. Bullen publish seismic travel time curves
establishing the detailed, spherically symmetrical model of the
earth.
1959: The first meteorological experiment is conducted on a satellite
platform.
1959: Hurricane rains and an earthquake combined with a series of
massive landslides bury the 800 residents of Minatitlan, Mexico,
and kill another 4,200 in surrounding communities.
November 1, 1959: More than 2,000 people die in floods in western
Mexico.
1959-1962: As many as 30 million die in Communist China as a result
of the Great Leap Forward famine.
May 22, 1960: A large earthquake, measuring 8.5, strikes off the coast
of Chile, making the earth reverberate for several weeks. For the
first time, scientists are able to determine many of the resonant
modes of oscillation of the earth.
September 6-12, 1960: The Atlantic coast’s Hurricane Donna results
in 168 dead and almost $2 billion in damage.
October, 1960: Bangladesh floods kill a total of 10,000 people.
1960-1990: Repeated droughts occur in the Sahel, east Africa, and
southern Africa.
1962: Over 700 people die in a smog event in London.
1962: Melting snow rushes down the second-highest peak in South
America at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, killing around
4,000 in Peru.
February 17, 1962: Major storms blanket Germany; 343 are killed.
December, 1962: 60 people die from smog in Osaka, Japan.
1963: The first quantitative temperature estimates are made for indi-
vidual lightning strikes.
1963: Lightning strikes a Boeing 707 over Elkton, Maryland, kill-
ing all 81 persons on board. This is the first verified instance of a
lightning-induced airplane crash.

1007
Time Line

January-February, 1963: Smog kills up to 400 people in New York

City.
October 9, 1963: A landslide caused by an earthquake destroys the
Vaiont Dam, drowning almost 3,000 residents of Belluno, Italy.
November, 1963: Grand Rivière du Nord, Haiti, is devastated by land-
slides brought about by tropical downpours; an estimated 500
tourists and residents are killed.
1964: Earthquakes and rains cause landslides near Niigata, Japan,
killing 108, injuring 223, and leaving more than 40,000 homeless.
1964: 195-foot waves engulf Kodiak, Alaska, after the Good Friday
earthquake; 131 die.
March 27, 1964: The Good Friday earthquake near Anchorage,
Alaska, with a magnitude of 8.6, causes extensive damage near the
southern coast of Alaska and generates tsunamis that damage ves-
sels and marinas along the western coast of the United States.
April 11, 1965: The Palm Sunday Outbreak of around 50 tornadoes
kills 271, injures more than 3,100, and causes more than $200 mil-
lion in damages in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and
Wisconsin.
1966: A four-day smog event in New York City results in the deaths of
80 people; Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller declares a state of
emergency.
January 29-31, 1966: The worst blizzard in seventy years strikes the
eastern United States.
June 8, 1966: The first $100 million tornado in the United States cuts
a path through Topeka, Kansas, killing 16 and destroying more
than 800 homes and much of the Washburn University campus.
October 21, 1966: A slag heap near Aberfan, Wales, collapses and
kills 147 people, including 116 children.
November 3-4, 1966: Flooding in Florence, Italy, destroys many works
of art.
January 24-March 21, 1967: Flooding in eastern Brazil takes 1,250 lives.
1967-1969: The Biafran civil war in Nigeria leads to the deaths of 1.5
million Biafrans because of starvation.
1968: More than 1,000 are killed in Bihar and Assam, West Bengal, by
floods and landslides.
July 21-August 15, 1968: Flooding in Gujarat State in India results in
1,000 deaths.

1008
 Time Line

October 7, 1968: Floods in northeastern India claim 780 lives.

1968-1974: The Sahel drought leads to famine; international aid lim-
its deaths to about a half million.
January, 1969: Torrential rains lasting more than a week trigger
mudslides that kill 95 and cause more than $138 million in dam-
age in Southern California.
August 15-18, 1969: Hurricane Camille rages across the southern
United States; 258 die.
1970’s: Severe smog conditions are recognized in many Chinese cit-
ies; death rates as high as 3,500 people per year are reported in
some areas in 1979.
January 3, 1970: The fall of the Lost City, Oklahoma, meteorite is
photographed, and its orbit is later traced back to the asteroids.
April, 1970: A hospital in Sallanches, France, is destroyed by an ava-
lanche that kills 70, most of them children.
May 11, 1970: A powerful tornado twists the frame of a twenty-story
office building as it plows through downtown Lubbock, Texas, kill-
ing 26 and injuring more than 1,500. This tornado initiates a new
interest in tornado studies, including Theodore Fujita’s develop-
ment of a tornado rating scale.
May 31, 1970: The magnitude 7.7 Ancash earthquake in northern
Peru leaves 70,000 dead, 140,000 injured, and 500,000 homeless.
November 12-13, 1970: The Bhola cyclone strikes the Ganges Delta
and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing at least 300,000 peo-
ple.
1971: An earthquake unleashes a huge avalanche of snow and ice,
killing 600 and destroying Chungar, Peru, and surrounding vil-
lages.
February 9, 1971: In the first serious earthquake to strike a densely
populated area in the United States since 1906, a moderate (mag-
nitude 6.6) earthquake centered in Sylmar, California, causes
$1 billion in damage.
1972: A heat wave affects Russia and Finland.
February 4-11, 1972: Heavy snow falls on Iran; 1,000 perish.
June 9, 1972: Heavy rainfall over Rapid City, South Dakota, causes an
upstream dam to fail and release floodwaters; 238 people lose
their lives.
June 21-23, 1972: 122 die during Hurricane Agnes.

1009
Time Line

July, 1972: Landslides caused by torrential rains kill 370 persons and
cause $472 million in property damage throughout Japan.
August 10, 1972: A house-sized rock forms a brilliant fireball as it hur-
tles through Earth’s atmosphere and back into space.
January, 1973: During an eruption on Heimaey Island, Iceland, the
flow of lava is controlled by cooling it with water from fire hoses.
January 10, 1973: South America’s worst tornado to date destroys
parts of San Justo, Argentina; 50 people are killed.
July 31, 1973: A Delta Airlines jet crashes while attempting to land at
Boston’s Logan International Airport in fog; 89 die.
1974: A landslide in Huancavelica, Peru, creates a natural dam on the
Mantaro River, forcing the evacuation of 9,000 living in the area
and killing an estimated 300.
April 3-4, 1974: In the Jumbo Outbreak, 148 tornadoes, including 6
rated F5, kill 316 and injure almost 5,500 in 11 midwestern and
southern states; an additional 8 deaths occur in Canada. Hardest
hit communities include Xenia, Ohio, with 35 deaths and 1,150 in-
jured, and Brandenburg, Kentucky, with 31 deaths and 250 in-
jured.
December 1-2, 1974: Nineteen inches of snow falls on Detroit in the
worst snowstorm in eighty-eight years.
December 23, 1975: A single lightning strike in Umtrali, Rhodesia
(now Zimbabwe), kills 21 people.
1975-1976: Heat waves are recorded in Denmark and the Nether-
lands.
1975-1979: Khmer Rouge policies of genocide provoke famine in
Cambodia; more than 1 million die of starvation.
February 4, 1976: A slip over a 124-mile stretch of the Motagua fault
in Guatemala kills 23,000.
July 21-August 4, 1976: 221 American Legion veterans contract a mys-
terious type of pneumonia at a hotel in Philadelphia, and 29 of
them die; the media names the illness “Legionnaires’ disease.”
July 28, 1976: The magnitude 8.0 Tangshan earthquake in northeast-
ern China kills an estimated 250,000 people and seriously injures
160,000 more; almost the entire city of 1.1 million people is de-
stroyed.
July 31, 1976: A flash flood rushes down Big Thompson Canyon, Col-
orado, sweeping 139 people to their deaths.

1010
 Time Line

September 1-October 24, 1976: An Ebola virus epidemic in Zaire kills

280 people and proves one of the deadliest diseases of the late
twentieth century.
January 28-29 and March 10-12, 1977: Blizzards ravage the Midwest;
Buffalo reports 160 inches of snow.
March 27, 1977: Two airliners collide in fog in Tenerife, Canary Is-
lands; 583 die.
1977-1978: The western United States undergoes a drought.
January 25-26, 1978: A major snowstorm strikes the midwestern
United States, with 31 inches of snow and 18-foot drifts.
February 5-7, 1978: The worst blizzard in the history of New England
strikes the Northeast; eastern Massachusetts receives 50 inches of
snow, and winds reach 110 miles per hour.
January 12-14, 1979: Blizzards in the Midwest yield 20 inches of snow,
with temperatures at –20 degrees Fahrenheit; 100 die.
February 18-19, 1979: Snow blankets the District of Columbia.
September 7-14, 1979: Hurricane Frederic strikes the Gulf Coast
states, causing $1.7 billion in damage.
1980: A heat wave in Texas produces forty-two consecutive days above
100 degrees Fahrenheit.
March 1-2, 1980: The mid-Atlantic region experiences a blizzard.
May 18, 1980: Mount St. Helens, in Washington State, erupts with a
directed blast to the north, moving pyroclastic flows at velocities of
328 to 984 feet (100 to 300 meters) per second (nearly the speed
of sound).
June, 1980: Luis Alvarez and others at the University of California at
Berkeley publish an article in Science presenting the hypothesis
that an asteroid impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
November 21, 1980: A fire in the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas kills
84.
1980’s-1990’s: Reports of increase of deadly air pollution conditions
in Eastern Europe, Mexico, and China.
1981: U.S. epidemic reported by U.S. Centers for Disease Control in
June and given the name acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
(AIDS). In some regions of Africa the infection touches 90 per-
cent of the population and poses a constant pandemic threat.
July, 1981: Over 1,300 people die in the flooding of Sichuan, Hubei
Province, China.

1011
Time Line

1982: Thirteen students and teachers are killed by an avalanche in

Salzburg, Austria.
March 28-April 4, 1982: El Chichón, an “extinct” volcano in Mexico,
erupts violently, killing 2,000, injuring hundreds, destroying vil-
lages, and ruining over 100 square miles of farmland.
1982-1983: Droughts affect Brazil and northern India.
June, 1982-August, 1983: A destructive El Niño episode is held re-
sponsible for more than 2,000 deaths and $13 billion in damage
and introduces the public to this Pacific Ocean weather phenome-
non.
February 5-28, 1984: A series of snowstorms strikes Colorado and
Utah.
March 29, 1984: A snowstorm covers much of the East Coast.
June 9, 1984: Europe’s worst tornado to date kills over 400 and in-
jures 213 in Belyanitsky, Ivanovo, and Balino, Russia.
1984-1985: Drought in Ethiopia, the Sahel, and southern Africa en-
dangers more than 20 million Africans, but extensive interna-
tional aid helps to mitigate the suffering.
September 19, 1985: A magnitude 8.1 earthquake near Mexico City
kills 10,000 people, injures 30,000, and causes billions of dollars
worth of damage.
November 13, 1985: Mudflows from the eruption of the Nevado del
Ruiz, in Colombia, kill at least 23,000 people.
March, 1986: The nucleus of Halley’s comet is photographed.
April 25-26, 1986: 32 are killed when a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl,
Russia, explodes.
August 21, 1986: After building up from volcanic emanations, carbon
dioxide escapes from Lake Nyos, Cameroon, killing more than
1,700 people.
1986-1988: Many farmers in the U.S. Midwest are driven out of busi-
ness by a drought.
September, 1987: Mudslides wipe out entire sections of the Villa Tina
area of Medellín, Colombia, killing 183 residents and leaving 500
missing.
May-October, 1988: Fires affect some 1.2 million acres in Yellowstone
National Park and other western forests.
July 6, 1988: The explosion of Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea
kills 167.

1012
 Time Line

September 12-17, 1988: Hurricane Gilbert kills 260 in the Caribbean

and Mexico.
December 7, 1988: The Leninakan earthquake in Armenia leaves
60,000 dead, 15,000 injured, and 500,000 homeless; it destroys
450,000 buildings, including thousands of historical monuments,
and causes $30 billion in damage.
April 26, 1989: The world’s deadliest tornado to date occurs in Ban-
gladesh when a twister slashes a 50-mile-wide path north of Dhaka;
about 1,300 people are killed, more than 12,000 are injured, and
almost 80,000 are left homeless.
September 13-22, 1989: 75 die as Hurricane Hugo strikes the Carib-
bean, then South Carolina.
October 17, 1989: An earthquake in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in the
vicinity of Loma Prieta, California, kills 67 and produces more than
$5 billion worth of damage in the San Francisco-Oakland area.
1990: The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) predicts that, if unchecked, greenhouse gases and
carbon dioxide emissions produced by human activity could raise
world surface temperatures by 0.25 degree Celsius per decade in
the twenty-first century.
1990’s: National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites employ ad-
vanced microwave sounding units for improved storm intensity es-
timates. Weather satellites view entire storm systems, sense condi-
tions of the ocean, measure temperatures at different altitudes,
and provide humidity profiles of the atmosphere, as well as sur-
face winds.
April 10, 1991: 138 die in crash of ferry Moby Prince and oil tanker
Agip Abruzzo in Italy.
April 30, 1991: A cyclone hits Bangladesh and kills over 131,000.
June, 1991: Pinatubo erupts in the Phillipines after having been dor-
mant for four hundred years.
September, 3, 1991: A chicken-processing plant in North Carolina
burns, killing 25 workers.
October 19-21, 1991: Wildfires burn much of Oakland Hills, Califor-
nia; 25 die.
August 22-26, 1992: Hurricane Andrew strikes southern Florida, leav-
ing 50 dead and $26 billion in damage.

1013
Time Line

October 9, 1992: A meteorite smashes the rear end of a 1980 Chevy

Malibu automobile in Peekskill, New York.
1992-1994: Civil war sparks famine in Somalia, where hundreds of
thousands die before international efforts restore food supplies.
April 19, 1993: A cult compound in Waco, Texas, is destroyed by fire;
80 people die.
June-August, 1993: Largest recorded floods of the Mississippi River
occur; 52 people die, over $18 billion in damage is inflicted, and
more than 20 million acres are flooded.
January 17, 1994: A moderate earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.7,
strikes the northern edge of the Los Angeles basin near North-
ridge, California. There are 57 deaths, and damage is estimated at
$20 billion.
June, 1994: An earthquake in the Huila region of Colombia causes
avalanches and mudslides that leave 13,000 residents homeless,
2,000 trapped, and 1,000 dead.
July, 1994: The impact of the fragmented Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
on Jupiter is widely observed.
July 4-10, 1994: A Glenwood Springs, Colorado, forest fire kills 14
firefighters.
August, 1994: A severe heat wave and drought parches Japan.
1995: The IPCC predicts carbon dioxide and greenhouse emissions
to raise Earth’s surface temperature between 0.8 and 3.5 degrees
Celsius within one hundred years.
January 17, 1995: The most costly natural disaster to date occurs
when an earthquake strikes Kobe, Japan. The death toll exceeds
5,500, injuries require 37,000 people to seek medical attention,
and damage is estimated at $50 billion.
April-May, 1995: An outbreak of Ebola virus in Kitwit, Zaire, leaves
245 dead.
July, 1995: A heat wave in the midwestern United States kills almost
500 people in Chicago alone, as well as 4,000 cattle.
November, 1995: A series of avalanches kills 43 climbers in Nepal.
January 7, 1996: The East Coast is hit by another big snowstorm.
May 10-11, 1996: A sudden and intense blizzard on Mount Everest,
Earth’s highest peak, traps climbers, killing 9 and leaving 4 others
with severe frostbite.
May 13, 1996: A large tornado levels several towns near Tangail, Ban-

1014
 Time Line

gladesh; more than 1,000 are dead and 34,000 are injured, with
100,000 left homeless.
July 5-15, 1996: Hurricane Bertha hits the Caribbean and the Atlantic
coast; winds exceed 100 miles per hour.
September-November, 1996: Eruption of lava beneath a glacier in
the Grimsvötn Caldera, Iceland, melts huge quantities of ice, pro-
ducing major flooding.
March, 1997: A park geologist and a volunteer are killed by an ava-
lanche while working on a project to monitor Yellowstone Na-
tional Park geothermal features.
April 1, 1997: The April Fool’s storm strikes the Northeast.
April 15, 1997: A fire at a tent city outside Mecca, Saudi Arabia, costs
300 lives.
May 27, 1997: An F5 tornado hits Jarrell, Texas; 27 are dead, 8 are in-
jured, and 44 homes are damaged or destroyed.
June 25, 1997: On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, 19 people
die and 8,000 are evacuated when the Soufrière Hills volcano
erupts.
November 3, 1997: Typhoon Linda kills more than 1,100 in Vietnam.
1998: Three avalanches in southeastern British Columbia, Canada,
leave 8 dead and injured.
1998: A drought destroys crops in the southern Midwest and causes
ecological damage on the East Coast.
January 5-12, 1998: A major ice storm covers northeastern Canada.
January-March, 1998: Large forest fires burn in Indonesia, sickening
thousands; 234 die in a Garuda Indonesia plane crash caused by
poor visibility from smoke.
June 8, 1998: A Kansas grain elevator explodes, killing 6.
June 9, 1998: A cyclone hits the Indian state of Gujarat; more than
1,300 are killed.
July, 1998: A heat wave hits the southwestern and northeastern
United States; daytime temperatures in Texas hit 110 degrees
Fahrenheit, with forty-one days of above-100-degree weather, caus-
ing huge crop losses and 144 deaths.
July, 1998: Worldwide, July is determined to be the hottest month in
history to date.
July 17, 1998: Waves created by an undersea landslide caused by an
earthquake kill 2,000 in Papua New Guinea.

1015
Time Line

August, 1998: The village of Malpa, India, is destroyed by boulders

and mud, leaving 202 dead; only 18 survive.
August, 1998: India reaches 124 degrees Fahrenheit; 3,000 people
die in the worst heat wave there in fifty years.
August, 1998: As a result of summer heat, 50 people die in Cyprus,
and 30 die in Greece and Italy; grapes die on vines.
August, 1998: In Germany, record heat produces severe smog, and
cars lacking antipollution devices are banned.
September 16-29, 1998: 400 die when Hurricane Georges strikes in
the Caribbean, then the Gulf Coast; winds exceed 130 miles per
hour.
October 27, 1998: Hurricane Mitch hits Central America; the death
toll exceeds 11,000.
1999: A major drought strikes the U.S. Southeast, the Atlantic coast,
and New England.
1999: 7 die in an epidemic of encephalitis in New England and New
York.
1999: A tsunami and earthquake at the island of Vanuatu kills 10, in-
jures more than 100, and leaves thousands homeless.
February, 1999: The Galtür avalanche in Austria kills 38 and traps
2,000.
February 11, 1999: Cyclone Rona strikes Queensland, Australia;
1,800 are left homeless.
May 3, 1999: Part of the Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak, one of the
most expensive tornadoes in U.S. history destroys nearly 2,500
homes and kills 49 in Oklahoma City and its suburbs; damage esti-
mates approach $1.5 billion.
August 17, 1999: More than 17,000 die when a magnitude 7.4 quake
strikes Ezmit, Turkey.
February-March, 2000: Severe flooding in Mozambique, caused by
five weeks of rain followed by Cyclone Eline, kills 800 people and
20,000 cattle.
2001: A tsunami in Peru leaves 26 dead and 70 missing.
October 4-9, 2001: Hurricane Iris kills 31 and does $150 million in
property damage in Belize.
2002: A severe, long-term drought begins in Australia. Urban areas
begin to feel its effects by 2006, as major cities pass heavy restric-
tions on water usage and Perth constructs a desalination plant.

1016
 Time Line

January 17, 2002: The Nyiragongo volcano erupts in the Democratic

Republic of Congo, sending lava flows into the city of Goma; 147
die and 500,000 are displaced.
November, 2002-July, 2003: A virulent atypical pneumonia, dubbed se-
vere acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), spreads quickly through
China and then internationally, infecting at least 8,422 victims and
causing 916 known deaths.
May 15, 2003: A researcher is able to insert probes called “turtles”
into an F4 tornado to measure its pressure.
July-August, 2003: A heat wave grips all of Europe, especially France,
Italy, Spain, and Portugal; as many as 40,000 die from heat-related
causes, and drought and wildfires follow.
September 18, 2003: Category 5 Hurricane Isabel makes landfall
south of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, leaving 53 dead and
property damage of $3.37 million.
October 21-November 4, 2003: Warm winds fuel at least 12 wild-
fires that burn simultaneously across Southern California; 22 die,
80,000 are displaced, and 3,500 homes are destroyed.
December 26, 2003: An earthquake in Bam, Iran, kills more than
26,000 and leaves 75,000 homeless.
2004: Four Category 5 storms—Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne—
make landfall in the United States, the most in a hurricane season
since 1963.
April 22, 2004: In Ryongchon, North Korea, a train carrying flamma-
ble cargo explodes at the railway station, killing 54 people and in-
juring 1,249.
December 26, 2004: A massive tsunami strikes 11 nations bordering
the Indian Ocean, leaving at least 212,000 dead and almost 43,000
missing.
January 20-24, 2005: A heavy blizzard blankets New England with
snow up to 40 inches in some places, shutting down Logan Inter-
national Airport in Boston.
August 25-September 2, 2005: Hurricane Katrina kills 1,500-2,000
people in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida and leaves
hundreds missing; property damage is estimated at $75 billion.
The levees protecting New Orleans are breached, and the city is
completely flooded. Two other powerful hurricanes, Rita and
Wilma, hit the Gulf Coast shortly afterward.

1017
Time Line

October 8, 2005: A powerful earthquake rocks Kashmir in Pakistan.

More than 90,000 are dead and about 106,000 are injured; 3.3 mil-
lion people are made homeless, and the damage is estimated at $5
billion.
December, 2005: In Tehran, Iran, businesses and schools close be-
cause of severe smog conditions; hundreds of people are taken to
the hospital.
February 17, 2006: A mudslide buries 16 villages on the island of
Leyte in the Philippines; more than 200 are confirmed dead, and
1,800 are missing.
May 26, 2006: A 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Java, Indonesia, kills
more than 6,000 people, injures nearly 40,000, and leaves 1.5 mil-
lion homeless.
January 12-16, 2007: A freezing winter storm moves across the United
States causing extensive power outages and 65 related deaths,
many of them in Oklahoma.
February 2, 2007: A tornado outbreak in central Florida kills 20 peo-
ple; it is the first event to be measured by the Enhanced Fujita
Scale, which factors in storm damage.

1018
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Avalanches
Armstrong, Betsy R., Knox Williams, and Richard L. Armstrong. The
Avalanche Book. Rev. and updated ed. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum,
1992.
Cupp, D. “Avalanche: Winter’s White Death.” National Geographic 162
(September, 1982): 280-305.
CyberSpace Avalanche Center. http://www.avalanche-center.org/.
Ferguson, Sue, and Edward R. LaChapelle. The ABCs of Avalanche
Safety. 3d ed. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2003.
Fredston, Jill. Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches. Orlando, Fla.: Har-
court, 2005.
Graydon, E. Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hill. Seattle: Mountain-
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Jenkins, McKay. The White Death: Tragedy and Heroism in an Avalanche
Zone. New York: Random House, 2000.
Logan, Nick, and Dale Atkins. The Snowy Torrents: Avalanche Accidents
in the United States, 1980-86. Denver: Colorado Geological Survey,
Department of Natural Resources, 1996.
Mears, Arthur I. Avalanche Forecasting Methods, Highway 550. Denver:
Colorado Department of Transportation, 1996.
National Research Council Panel on Snow Avalanches. Snow Ava-
lanche Hazards and Mitigation in the United States. Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press, 1990.
National Snow and Ice Data Center. Avalanche Awareness. http://
nsidc.org/snow/avalanche/
Parfit, M. “Living with Natural Hazards.” National Geographic 194
(July, 1998): 2-39.
Rosen, Michael J. Avalanche. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press,
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USDA Forest Service. Snow Avalanche: General Rules for Avoiding and
Surviving Snow Avalanches. Portland, Oreg.: USDA Forest Service,
Pacific North West Region, 1982.

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Blizzards, Freezes, Ice Storms, and Hail

Allaby, Michael. Dangerous Weather: Blizzards. Rev. ed. New York: Facts
On File, 2003.
Annual Frequency of Hailstorms in the United States. http://www.nhoem
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Battan, Louis J. Weather in Your Life. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1983.
Christian, Spencer, and Tom Biracree. Spencer Christian’s Weather
Book. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1993.
Eagleman, Joe R. Severe and Unusual Weather. 2d ed. Lenexa, Kans.:
Trimedia, 1990.
Erikson, Jon. Violent Storms. Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab, 1988.
Gokhale, Narayan. Hailstorms and Hailstone Growth. Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1975.
Laskin, David. The Children’s Blizzard. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
Ludlum, David M. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North Ameri-
can Weather. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
_______. The Weather Factor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
Lyons, Walter A. The Handy Weather Answer Book. Detroit: Visible Ink
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Murphy, Jim. Blizzard! The Storm That Changed America. New York:
Scholastic Press, 2000.

Disaster Relief
Comerio, Mary C. Disaster Hits Home: New Policy for Urban Housing Re-
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H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environ-
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Haas, J. Eugene, et al., eds. Reconstruction Following Disaster. Cam-
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Landesman, Linda Young. Public Health Management of Disasters: The
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Leaning, Jennifer, Susan M. Briggs, and Lincoln C. Chen, eds. Hu-
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Redmond, Anthony D., et al., eds. ABC of Conflict and Disaster. Malden,
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Droughts
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Dust Storms and Sandstorms

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Earthquakes
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Meteorites and Comets

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Benarde, Melvin A. Our Precarious Habitat. New York: John Wiley &
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Elsom, Derek M. Atmospheric Pollution: A Global Problem. Cambridge,
Mass.: Blackwell Scientific, 1992.
Environmental Protection Agency. Smog—Who Does It Hurt? What You
Need to Know About Ozone and Your Health. Washington, D.C.: Au-
thor, 1999.
Graedel, T. E., and Paul J. Crutzen. Atmospheric Change: An Earth Sys-
tem Perspective. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1993.
Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP). http://www.gasp-pgh
.org/.
Keller, Edward A. Environmental Geology. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River,
N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000.
Soroos, Marvin S. The Endangered Atmosphere. Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1997.
Wise, William. Killer Smog: The World’s Worst Air Pollution Disaster. New
York: Ballantine, 1970.

Tornadoes
Akin, Wallace E. The Forgotten Storm: The Great Tri-State Tornado of 1925.
Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2004.
Ball, Jacqueline A. Tornado! The 1974 Super Outbreak. New York:
Bearport, 2005.
Bluestein, Howard. Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Bradford, Marlene. Scanning the Skies: A History of Tornado Forecasting.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
Butler, William S., ed. Tornado: A Look Back at Louisville’s Dark Day,
April 3, 1974. Louisville, Ky.: Butler Books, 2004.
Church, Christopher, Donald Burgess, Charles Doswell, and Robert
Davies-Jones, eds. The Tornado: Its Structure, Dynamics, Prediction, and
Hazards. Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union, 1993.
Curzon, Julian, comp. and ed. The Great Cyclone at St. Louis and East St.
Louis, May 27, 1896: Being a Full History of the Most Terrifying and De-
structive Tornado in the History of the World. 1896. Reprint. Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997.
Eagleman, Joe R. “The Strongest Storm on Earth.” In Severe and Un-
usual Weather. Lenexa, Kans.: Trimedia, 1990.

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Felknor, Peter E. The Tri-State Tornado. Ames: Iowa State University

Press, 1992.
Grazulis, Thomas P. Significant Tornadoes: 1680-1991. St. Johnsbury,
Vt.: Environmental Films, 1993.
_______. Significant Tornadoes Update, 1992-1995. St. Johnsbury, Vt.:
Environmental Films, 1997.
_______. The Tornado: Nature’s Ultimate Windstorm. Norman: Univer-
sity of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Lane, Frank. The Violent Earth. Topsfield, Mass.: Salem House, 1986.
Ludlum, David. Early American Tornadoes: 1586-1870. Boston: Ameri-
can Meteorological Society, 1970.
Weems, John Edward. The Tornado. College Station: Texas A&M Uni-
versity Press, 1991.
Whipple, A. B. “Thunderstorms and Their Progeny.” In Storm. Alex-
andria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1982.

Tsunamis
Adamson, Thomas K. Tsunamis. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press,
2006.
Bernard, E. N. Developing Tsunami-Resilient Communities: The National
Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program. Norwell, Mass.: Springer, 2005.
Dudley, Walter C., and Scott C. S. Stone. The Tsunami of 1946 and 1960
and the Devastation of Hilo Town. Marceline, Mo.: Walsworth, 2000.
Karwoski, Gail Langer. Tsunami: The True Story of an April Fools’ Day Di-
saster. Plain City, Ohio: Darby Creek, 2006.
Lander, James F., and Patricia A. Lockridge. United States Tsunamis,
1690-1988. Boulder, Colo.: National Geophysical Data Center,
1989.
Lockridge, Patricia A., and Ronald H. Smith. Tsunamis in the Pacific
Basin, 1900-1983. Boulder, Colo.: National Geophysical Data Cen-
ter and World Data Center A for Solid Earth Geophysics, 1984.
Myles, Douglas. The Great Waves. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985.
Robinson, Andrew. “Floods, Dambursts, and Tsunamis.” In Earth-
shock: Hurricanes, Volcanoes, Tornadoes, and Other Forces of Nature.
Rev. ed. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002.
Satake, Kenji, ed. Tsunamis: Case Studies and Recent Developments.
Springer, 2006.
Solovev, Sergei, and Chan Nam Go. Catalogue of Tsunamis on the East-

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_______. Catalogue of Tsunamis on the Western Shore of the Pacific Ocean.
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Stewart, Gail B. Catastrophe in Southeastern Asia: The Tsunami of 2004.
Chicago: Gale/Lucent, 2005.
Torres, John Albert. Disaster in the Indian Ocean, Tsunami 2004. Hock-
essin, Del.: Mitchell Lane, 2005.

Volcanic Eruptions
Bardintzeff, Jacques-Marie, and Alexander R. McBirney. Volcanology.
2d ed. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett, 2000.
Bonaccorso, Alessandro, et al., eds. Mt. Etna: Volcano Laboratory.
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Bullard, Fred M. Volcanoes of the Earth. 2d rev. ed. Austin: University of
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Carson, Rob. Mount St. Helens: The Eruption and Recovery of a Volcano.
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Chester, David. Volcanoes and Society. New York: Routledge, Chapman
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Davison, Phil. Volcano in Paradise: The True Story of the Montserrat Erup-
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De Carolis, Ernesto, and Giovanni Patricelli. Vesuvius, A.D. 79: The De-
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seum, 2003.
Decker, Robert, and Barbara Decker. Volcanoes. 4th ed. New York:
W. H. Freeman, 2006.
Druit, T.H., and B. P. Kokelaar, eds. The Eruption of Soufrière Hills Vol-
cano, Montserrat, from 1995 to 1999. London: Geological Society,
2002.
Fisher, Richard V. Out of the Crater: Chronicles of a Volcanologist. Prince-
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Fisher, Richard V., Grant Heiken, and Jeffrey B. Hulen. Volcanoes:
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Fouqué, Ferdinand. Santorini and Its Eruptions. Translated by Alexan-
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Francis, Peter, and Clive Oppenheimer. Volcanoes. 2d ed. New York:

Oxford University Press, 2004.
Morgan, Peter. Fire Mountain: How One Man Survived the World’s Worst
Volcanic Disaster. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.
Newhall, Christopher G., James W. Hendley II, and Peter H. Stauffer.
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couver, Wash.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1997.
Rosi, Mauro, et al. Volcanoes. Buffalo, N.Y.: Firefly Books, 2003.
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canic Eruption of the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University
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_______. Volcanoes: An Introduction. College Station: Texas A&M Uni-
versity Press, 1994.
_______. Vulcan’s Fury: Man Against the Volcano. New ed. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Sigurdsson, Haraldur, ed. Encyclopedia of Volcanoes. San Diego, Calif.:
Academic, 2000.
Simkin, Tom, and Richard S. Fiske, eds. Krakatau, 1883: The Volcanic
Eruption and Its Effects. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1983.
Sparks, R. S. J., et al. Volcanic Plumes. New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1997.
Stommel, Henry, and Elizabeth Stommel. Volcano Weather: The Story of
1816, the Year Without a Summer. Newport, R.I.: Seven Seas Press,
1983.
Sutherland, Lin. The Volcanic Earth: Volcanoes and Plate Tectonics, Past,
Present, and Future. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press,
1995.
Tilling, Robert I., Lyn Topinka, and Donald A. Swanson. Eruptions of
Mount St. Helens: Past, Present, and Future. Reston, Va.: U.S. Depart-
ment of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, 1990.
Winchester, Simon. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27,
1883. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Wohletz, Kenneth, and Grant Heiken. Volcanology and Geothermal En-
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Zebrowski, Ernest. The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster That
Claimed 30,000 Lives. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
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Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle, and Donald Theodore Sanders. Volcanoes in

Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions. Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Wind Gusts
Freier, George D. Weather Proverbs: How 600 Proverbs, Sayings, and
Poems Accurately Explain Our Weather. Tucson, Ariz.: Fisher Books,
1992.
Kimble, George H. T. Our American Weather. New York: McGraw Hill,
1955.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Making the Skies
Safe from Windshear. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/
factsheets/Windshear.html.
National Transportation Safety Board. http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/
query.asp.
Palmén, E., and C. W. Newton. Atmospheric Circulation Systems: Their
Structure and Physical Interpretation. New York: Academic Press,
1969.
Wood, Richard A., ed. The Weather Almanac: A Reference Guide to
Weather, Climate, and Related Issues in the United States and Its Key
Cities. 11th ed. Detroit: Thompson/Gale, 2004.

1038
■ Organizations and Agencies
America Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (Oxfam)
Headquarters:
Oxfam America
226 Causeway Street, 5th Floor
Boston, MA 02114
Ph.: (800) 77-OXFAM
Fax: (617) 728-2594
Policy and Advocacy Office:
Oxfam America
1100 15th Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20005
Fax: (202) 496-1190
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.oxfamamerica.org
Creates solutions to hunger, poverty, and social injustice around the
world. Provides emergency aid when disaster strikes, assisting refu-
gees and survivors of natural disasters.

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)

1501 Cherry Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Ph.: (215) 241-7000, (888) 588-2372 (donations)
Fax: (215) 241-7275
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.afsc.org
A Quaker organization that focuses on issues related to economic
and social justice in the United States, Africa, Asia, Latin America,
and the Middle East.

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.jdc.org
Sponsors programs of relief, rescue, and reconstruction to Jews af-
fected by natural and human-made disasters around the world.

1039
Organizations and Agencies

American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund

2025 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20006
Ph.: (202) 303-4498, (800) REDCROSS (donations)
Web site: http://www.redcross.org
Provides relief to victims of disasters and helps people prevent, pre-
pare for, and respond to emergencies.

Americares Foundation
88 Hamilton Avenue
Stamford, CT 06902
Ph.: (800) 486-HELP
Web site: http://www.americares.org
Dispenses emergency medicines, medical supplies, and nutritional
items to victims of disasters, famine, and war to over 130 countries
worldwide. Supports long-term health care programs.

Baptist World Alliance

405 North Washington Street
Falls Church, VA 22046
Ph.: (703) 790-8980
Fax: (703) 893-5160
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.bwanet.org/bwaid
Supports refugees and victims of famine and natural disasters. Feeds
the starving and malnourished, especially in countries suffering
from drought and food shortages.

Brother’s Brother Foundation

1200 Galveston Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15233
Ph.: (412) 321-3160
Fax: (412) 321-3325
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.brothersbrother.org
Links America’s vast medical resources to global health care needs.
Provides immunizations and donates medical supplies and equip-
ment, seed, other agricultural inputs, and educational materials
to needy countries across the globe.

1040
 Organizations and Agencies

Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA)

Building #1 Manor Lodge
Lodge Hill, St. Michael
Barbados
Ph.: (246) 425-0386
Fax: (246) 425-8854
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.cdera.org
Coordinates regional disaster management activities within 16 coun-
tries. Mobilizes and arranges disaster relief from governmental
and nongovernmental organizations for affected participating
countries. Aims for response to, recovery from, rebuilding from,
and prevention of natural disasters.

Catholic Relief Services

Information:
209 West Fayette Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Ph.: (410) 625-2220, (800) 235-2772
Fax: (410) 685-1635
Web site: http://www.catholicrelief.org
Donations:
P.O. Box 17090
Baltimore, Maryland 21203-7090
Ph.: (888) 277-7575 (M-F), (800) 736-3467 (evenings/weekends)
Gives assistance based on need to people affected by natural disasters
in more than 80 countries around the world.

Christian Relief Services

2550 Huntington Avenue, Suite 200
Alexandria, VA 22303
Ph.: (703) 317-9086, (800) 33-RELIEF
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.christianrelief.org
Collaborates with grass-roots charitable groups, churches, and hu-
man service agencies to help those in need in their own communi-
ties. Enables people to help themselves.

1041
Organizations and Agencies

Cooperative for American Relief to Everywhere (CARE)

151 Ellis Street NE
Atlanta, GA 30303
Ph.: (404) 681-2552
Fax: (404) 589-2651
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.care.org
Reaches tens of millions of people whose lives are devastated by hu-
manitarian emergencies each year in more than 60 countries. Pro-
vides food, water, shelter, and health care to survivors of natural
disasters and armed conflicts.

Direct Relief International

27 S. La Patera Lane
Santa Barbara, CA 93117
Ph.: (805) 964-4767
Fax: (805) 681-4838
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.directrelief.org
A nonprofit, nonsectarian medical relief organization that provides
medical support with new and used medical equipment, pharma-
ceuticals, and supplies to over three thousand charitable health fa-
cilities worldwide. Distributes product contributions from manu-
facturers, hospitals, and health clinics.

Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Response

Association International (DERA)
Information:
P.O. Box 280795
Denver, CO 80228
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.disasters.org
Donations:
P.O. Box 797
Longmont, CO 80502
Assists communities in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.
Links professionals, volunteers, and organizations in all phases of
emergency preparedness and management.

1042
 Organizations and Agencies

Do Unto Others (DUO)

21 Tamal Vista Boulevard, Suite 209
Corte Madera, CA 94925
Ph.: (800) 934-9755
Web site: http://www.duo.org
Responds to human-made and natural disasters wherever they occur
in the world. Works to ease the suffering of people affected by war,
natural disaster, famine, and epidemics.

Doctors Without Borders

Information:
333 7th Avenue, 2d Floor
New York, NY 10001-5004
Ph.: (212) 679-6800
Fax: (212) 679-7016
Web site: http://www.dwb.org
Donations:
Doctors Without Borders USA
P.O. Box 5030
Hagerstown, MD 21741-5030
Ph.: (888) 392-0392
The world’s largest independent international medical relief agency,
aiding victims of armed conflict, epidemics, and natural and human-
made disasters in over 80 countries. Provides primary health care,
performs surgery, vaccinates children, operates emergency nutri-
tion and sanitation programs, and trains local medical staff. Also
known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Farm Service Agency (FSA)

U.S. Department of Agriculture
Farm Service Agency
Public Affairs Staff
1400 Independence Avenue SW
STOP 0506
Washington, DC 20250-0506
Web site: http://www.fsa.usda.gov/fsa
An agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Offers assistance to farmers and ranchers suffering from droughts,

1043
Organizations and Agencies

floods, freezes, tornadoes, or other natural disasters. Shares the

cost of rehabilitating farmlands damaged by natural disaster and
provides emergency water assistance. Programs include the Non-
insured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP), Emergency Loan
(EM) Assistance, and Emergency Haying and Grazing Assistance.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

500 C. Street SW
Washington, DC 20472
Ph.: (800) 621-FEMA to apply for disaster assistance
Web site: http://www.fema.gov
An independent agency of the federal government founded in 1979.
Helps millions of Americans face disaster and its terrifying conse-
quences. Aims to reduce loss of life and property and protect the
U.S. infrastructure from all types of hazards through a compre-
hensive, risk-based, emergency management program of mitiga-
tion, preparedness, response, and recovery.

Friends of the World Food Program (FWFP)

1819 L Street NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20036
Ph.: (202) 530-1694
Fax: (202) 530-1698
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.friendsofwfp.org
Supports the World Food Program (WFP), which provides food aid
to areas facing food deficits caused by human-made and natural
disasters and helps more than 86 million people in 82 countries.

Global Impact
66 Canal Center Plaza, Suite 310
Alexandria, VA 22314
Ph.: (703) 717-5200, (800) 638-4620
Fax: (703) 717-5215
Web site: http://www.charity.org
A coalition of America’s leading international relief and develop-
ment organizations. Helps people who suffer from hunger, pov-
erty, disease, or natural disasters.

1044
 Organizations and Agencies

International Aid
17011 W. Hickory Street
Spring Lake, MI 49456-9712
Ph.: (616) 846-7490, (800) 968-7490, (800) 251-2502 (donations)
Fax: (616) 846-3842
Web site: http://www.internationalaid.org
Provides medicines, medical supplies, food, blankets, and other tan-
gible resources to local groups caring for people in over 170 coun-
tries affected by natural disasters. Partners with local and national
churches and agencies that provide distribution, logistical sup-
port, and on-site administration for overseas relief efforts.

International Federation of Red Cross and Red

Crescent Societies
P.O. Box 372
CH-1211 Geneva 19
Switzerland
Ph.: (+41 22) 730 42 22
Fax: (+41 22) 733 03 95
Web site: http://www.ifrc.org
The Red Crescent is used in place of the Red Cross in many Islamic
countries. Provides humanitarian relief to people affected by di-
sasters or other emergencies and development assistance to em-
power vulnerable people to become more self-sufficient in 176
countries.

International Medical Corps (IMC)

1919 Santa Monica Boulevard, Suite 300
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Ph.: (310) 826-7800, (800) 481-4462 (donations)
Fax: (310) 442-6622
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.imcworldwide.org
Responds rapidly to emerging epidemics, purchases vaccines and
emergency medical supplies to vaccinate children against disease
and prevent thousands of needless deaths. Rehabilitates health
posts in remote areas in 16 countries.

1045
Organizations and Agencies

Lutheran World Relief

Information:
700 Light Street
Baltimore, MD 21230
Ph.: (410) 230-2800
Fax: (410) 230-2882
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.lwr.org
Donations:
P.O. Box 17061
Baltimore, MD 21298-9832
Ph.: (800) LWR-LWR2
Offers health care, food, water, and other relief supplies around the
world. Works to improve harvests, health, and education in some
50 countries.

MAP International
2200 Glynco Parkway
P.O. Box 215000
Brunswick, GA 31521-5000
Ph.: (800) 225-8550
Web site: http://www.map.org
Provides essential medicines, works for the prevention and eradica-
tion of disease, and promotes community health development
worldwide.

Mercy Corps
Information:
Dept W
3015 SW 1st Avenue
Portland, OR 97201
Ph.: (800) 292-3355
Fax: (503) 796-6844
Web site: http://www.mercycorps.org
Donations:
Dept W
P.O. Box 2669
Portland OR 97208

1046
 Organizations and Agencies

Ph.: (888) 256-1900

Works to alleviate suffering caused by drought and famine. Provides
food, shelter, health care, and economic opportunity to more than
3 million people in 68 countries, sending emergency goods and
material aid.

National Relief Network

P.O. Box 125
Greenville, MI 48838-0125
Ph.: (616) 225-2525, (866) 286-5868
Fax: (616) 225-1934
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.nrn.org
Brings large numbers of volunteers to areas struck by natural disasters
for as long as it takes to bring help to each and every family in need.

Nazarene Disaster Response USA

Information:
Ph.: (888) 256-5886
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.ncm.org/min_ndr.aspx
Donations:
General Treasurer
Church of the Nazarene
6401 The Paseo
Kansas City, MO 64131-1213
Provides disaster relief to victims in the United States.

Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC)

130 Prospect Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
Ph.: (617) 868-6600, (800) 388-3920
Fax: (617) 868-7102
Web site: http://www.uusc.org
A nonsectarian organization that promotes human rights and social
justice in the United States, South and Southeast Asia, Central Af-
rica, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Provides financial and
technical support when disasters strike impoverished areas.

1047
Organizations and Agencies

United Nations Office for the Coordination of

Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
United Nations Secretariat
S-3600
New York, NY 10017
Ph.: (212) 963-1234
Fax: (212) 963-1013
Web site: http://ochaonline.un.org
Provides information on emergencies and natural disasters collected
from over 170 sources. Coordinates emergency response primar-
ily through the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), with
the participation of humanitarian partners such as the Red Cross.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

Information Center
U.S. Agency for International Development
Ronald Reagan Building
Washington, DC 20523-1000
Ph.: (202) 712-4810, (202) 712-0000
Fax: (202) 216-3524
Web site: http://www.usaid.gov
A federal government agency that implements America’s foreign
economic and humanitarian assistance programs. The principal
U.S. agency to extend assistance to countries recovering from di-
saster.

U.S. Committee for UNICEF

333 East 38th Street
New York, NY 10016
Ph.: (212) 686-5522, (800) 4UNICEF
Fax: (212) 779-1670
Web site: http://www.unicefusa.org
Raises money for UNICEF, which works in more than 160 countries
and territories providing health care, clean water, improved nutri-
tion, and education to millions of children in Africa, Asia, Central
and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Promotes
the survival, protection, and development of children worldwide.

1048
 Organizations and Agencies

World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine

(WADEM)
P.O. Box 55158
Madison, WI 53705-8958
Ph.: (608) 263-2069
Fax: (608) 265-3037
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://wadem.medicine.wisc.edu
Promotes the worldwide development and improvement of emer-
gency and disaster medicine. Helps people affected by medical
emergencies and national and international disasters.

World Concern
International Headquarters
19303 Fremont Avenue North
Seattle, Washington 98133
Ph.: (206) 546-7201, (800) 755-5022
Fax: (206) 546-7269
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.worldconcern.org
Provides food relief and life skill enrichment to impoverished fami-
lies worldwide. Offers emergency relief, rehabilitation, and long-
term development.

World Health Organization (WHO)

Avenue Appia 20
1211 Geneva 27
Switzerland
Ph: (+41 22) 791 21 11
Fax: (+41 22) 791 3111
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.who.int
Promotes technical cooperation for health among nations, carries out
programs to control and eradicate disease, and cooperates with
governments in strengthening national health programs. Develops
and transfers appropriate health technology, information, and
standards and strives to improve the quality of human life. A special-
ized agency of the United Nations with 191 member countries.

1049
Organizations and Agencies

World Relief
7 East Baltimore St
Baltimore, MD 21202
Ph.: (443) 451-1900
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.wr.org
Provides quick, effective assistance to the most vulnerable victims of
earthquakes, hurricanes, drought, or war. Combats poverty and
disease to keep children healthy. Part of the World Evangelical Fel-
lowship.

World Vision
Headquarters:
34834 Weyerhaeuser Way South
Federal Way, WA 98001
Ph.: (888) 511-6548
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.worldvision.org
Mailing address:
P.O. Box 9716, Dept. W
Federal Way, WA 98063-9716
Serves the world’s poor and displaced by providing programs that
help save lives, bring hope, and restore dignity.
Lauren Mitchell

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