1871 Peshtigo fire | |
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| Total costs | N/A |
| Deaths | 2500 |
The Peshtigo fire was a large forest fire on Oct. 8, 1871, in northeastern Wisconsin, United States, including much of the southern half of the Door Peninsula and adjacent parts of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The largest community in the affected area was Peshtigo, Wisconsin which had a population of approximately 1,700 residents. The fire burned about 1.2 million acres and is the deadliest wildfire in recorded history, with the number of deaths estimated between 1,500 and 2,500. Although the exact number of deaths is debated, mass graves [both those already exhumed and those still being discovered] in Peshtigo and the surrounding areas show that the death toll of the blaze was most likely greater than the 1889 Johnstown flood death toll of 2,200 people or more.Occurring on the same day as the more famous Great Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo fire has been largely forgotten, even though it killed far more people. In total, the Great Chicago Fire had taken one-fifth as many lives as the Peshtigo Fire. 'Everybody's heard about the Chicago fire, and that got all the publicity at the time,' said a volunteer at the Peshtigo Fire Museum, named Ruth Wiltzius, whose great-grandfather perished while trying to escape. 'Peshtigo was a backwards lumber town then -- who had ever heard of it? Chicago was the big city. Which one was going to get more attention?'Nonetheless, several cities in Michigan, including Holland and Manistee (across Lake Michigan from Peshtigo) and Port Huron (at the southern end of Lake Huron), also had major fires on the same day. These fires, along with many other fires of the nineteenth century had the same basic causes: small fires coupled with unusually dry weather.
Source: Wikipedia 1931 Fuyun earthquake | |
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| Total costs | N/A |
| Deaths | 10000 |
The 1931 Fuyun earthquake (富蕴地震) occurred on August 10 at 21:18 UTC. The epicenter was near Fuyun County of northern Xinjiang, China. It was a Mw 8.0 earthquake and had a surface rupture of 171 km with a maximal horizontal displacement of 14 m along the Koktokay-Ertai fault zone (可可托海-二台断裂带). The Koktokay-Ertai fault has a slip rate of 4±2 mm per year. The rupture of this earthquake was caused by right-lateral strike-slip movement with normal component. The rupture is well preserved and becomes one of the main features of the Koktokay National Geopark (可可托海国家地质公园) located in Koktokay.
Source: WikipediaKīlauea (US: KIL-ə-WAY-ə, Hawaiian: [kiːlɐwˈwɛjə]) is an active shield volcano in the Hawaiian...
The Black Dragon fire, also known as the 1987 Daxing'anling wildfire (Chinese: 大兴安岭特大森林火灾) or the...
The 1938 Yellow River flood (Chinese: 花園口決隄事件, literally 'Huayuankou embankment breach incident')...
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