|Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Hazards and Disasters
Last updated October 18, 2005
Studying and understanding the worst that nature can throw at us is one of the most interesting parts of being an Earth scientist
|Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Hazards and Disasters
Last updated October 18, 2005
Studying and understanding the worst that nature can throw at us is one of the most interesting parts of being an Earth scientist. Defining 'worst' is, of course, subjective, and leads to a choice over whether the number of deaths, or $$ property damage, is the statistic to use. Here is a representative collection of some of the 'big ones', organized in more or less inverse chronological order.
1. The October 8, 2005 magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Pakistan was not especially large, but the more than 40,000 victims has raised it to the level of a major catastrophe. Without doubt, however, the most devastating loss of life in recent years was the much larger 9.3 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake (the third largest ever recorded) / tsunami in late 2004 that is now estimated to have claimed 275,000 lives. The tsunami was responsible for the bulk of the damage and casualties. The total costs of these events are still to early to measure, but probably won't exceed the property damage caused by the 1995 Kobe earthquake, now estimated at more than $150 billion. Within the US (excluding earthquake-prone Alaska), neither 