Top 10 Disasters! BY Dajour Augustine

Typhoon Tip 1 st Tip had one 1 minute sustained winds of 190 mph. It killed 99 people, a low number compared to some of the others on this list, but this must be placed in the perspective of a long warning before the typhoon strikes.

CHILLE EARTHQUAKE! 2 ND The most powerful earthquake ever recorded struck near Valdivia, Chile on May 22, 1960, at 2:11 PM local time. As many as 6,000 people were killed.

EUROPEAN HEAT WAVE! 3 RD There were at least 14,802 deaths from the heat in France alone, most of them old people in nursing homes, or in single family homes without the ability to cool off. The heat dried up most of Europe, and severe forest fires broke out in Portugal. Some 2,000 people died there from the heat.

THE STORM OF THE CENTURY! 4 TH From March 12 to 13, 1993, a cyclonic storm formed off the east coats of the United States, so vast in size that it caused a unique hodgepodge of severe weather.

THE GREAT FLOOD! 5 TH The deadliest natural disaster ever recorded occurred through the winter, spring, and summer of 1931 in central China. There are three major rivers draining this area, the Yangtze, the Yellow, and the Huai. All three flooded catastrophically, because the winter snowstorms were particularly heavy in the mountains around the river basins, and when spring began, all this snow melted and flowed into the rivers.

The Tunguska Explosion! 6 TH It exploded with the energy of the largest thermonuclear bomb the United States has ever tested, the Castle Bravo bomb, megatons. This is one-third the power of the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba.

Bridge Creek F5 Tornado! 7 TH 8,000 houses were obliterated. It shredded large vehicles with debris, and then wrapped them around telephone poles, threw them completely through warehouses, whipped 2x4s through wheel hubs, and pine straw all the way through 8-inch-thick pine trees.

Lituya Bay Mega tsunami! 8 TH This generated the highest wave ever recorded on Earth, 1,720 feet. That’s 470 feet taller than the tip of the Empire State Building’s antenna. It is, in fact, taller than all but the five tallest skyscrapers on Earth today, and most scientists agree that it had sufficient power to rip these buildings from their foundations.

Tambora Eruption! 9 TH 92,000 people were killed, most by starvation, the largest loss of life caused by a volcanic eruption in recorded history.

BUNCEFIELD! 10 th The Buncefield fire was a major conflagration caused by a series of explosions on 11 December 2005 at the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal, an oil storage facility located near the M1 motorway by Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, England. The terminal was the fifth largest oil-products storage depot in the United Kingdom, with a capacity of about 60,000,000 imperial gallons (272,765,400 l) of fuel The terminal is owned by TOTAL UK Limited (60%) and Texaco (40%).