What is Your Favorite Forgotten Disaster?

Dec. 6 1917 The Halifax, Nova Scotia Explosion. 2,000 killed and 9,000 injured. It was the largest man-made explosion before Hiroshima. I had friends visit me from England and they'd never heard of it. Each Christmas Halifax sends a Christmas tree to Boston as thanks for the aid that was supplied in the following weeks.

The Empress of Ireland accident and sinking:

The Boston Molassacre where 24,000,000 lbs of molasses ran rampant upon the city demolishing various buildings and killing 21.

Seveso, Italy 1976

Bhopal, India 1984

Stringfellow Acid Pits, California

Johnstown Flood, 1889

Boston molasses flood, 1919

Triangle Shirtwaist fire, 1911

The Tri-State Tornado. Occurred on March 18, 1925, the monster tornado was on the ground for over 200 miles across three states. Completely wiped several towns off the map. Conservative estimates put the number of people killed at 700.

It's still the largest tornado disaster in United States history.

"Maxie"

Hillsborough Disaster of 1985

I have a friend who survived it - he has PTSD now

96 were crushed to death

Not too sure the words Favorite & Disaster belong in the same sentence..

"Ishtar."

The July 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, China. No one knows how many people were killed, but a conservative estimate is 200,000 and it is possible a half-million could have been killed. It happened during a volatile political period in China, and the Chinese authorities did not want to allow foreign relief services into their country. There was no filmed news coverage, so it didn't make an impression on Americans. It was a huge coverup.

December 15, 1967; the Silver Bridge collapsed under the weight of rush-hour traffic, resulting in the deaths of 46 people.

OP, they're going to re-stage the queen's visit to Aberfan after the disaster this coming season of "The Crown."

Halloween night, 1963. Holiday on Ice was on the ice rink and performing in Indianapolis when a major explosion rocked the building. Over 4000 were in attendance. Over 80 were killed.

This.

The loss of the Normandie, but it's ok because I don't think anyone died. The French flagship Normandie was in NYC when the Nazis gained control of France. The U.S. seized the ship versus returning it to the Nazis. While being converted into a troop carrier, it caught fire and roller over at it's dock on the Hudson River.

A French Art Deco masterpiece, it was the finest ship afloat at the time.

....

R1, I read somewhere that Boston was so generous to Halifax, in part, because Halifax had previously come to Boston’s aid in an earlier tragedy. I can’t recall what that was, though.

The Collapse of the Pemberton Mill, Lawrence, Mass. 1860. Textile mill collapsed and then rubble caught fire. Not really taught about in history classes, but preceded the more well-known Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire by more than 50 years.

Bradford stadium fire. Amazing how fas a fire can spread. And listed to the moron chanting football cheers as people are burning to death in front of them.

The torpedo sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff former cruise ship in early 1945. Packed with refugees from Danzig, it was sunk by a Russian submarine. 10,000 people died. It’s still the greatest maritime disaster in history.

Because it was a Nazi ship packed with German refugees, the Allies couldn’t have cared less, and it has not been widely publicized.

The station nightclub fire in 2003 in Rhode Island. This isn’t ancient history. Another quick moving fire.

Bath School Disaster

2000 union prisoners, released and heading home on the Sultana, are killed then the ship’s boiler explodes. Greatest US maritime disaster.

USS Thresher sinks during sea trials in 1963 with a loss of all hands. My friend’s father was an officer on board. That family never recovered from the loss of the father and husband.

The 1937 New London School gas explosion in Texas that killed 295 students and teachers.

PS General Slocum riverboat fire in NYC East River in 1904. Over1,000 people died in the disaster, which held the record for NYC until 9/11.

Eerie. I was scrolling down to post the General Slocum.

[quote] 2000 union prisoners, released and heading home on the Sultana, are killed then the ship’s boiler explodes

Those prisoners had been freed from Andersonville. They survived hell and thought they were home-free.

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami

A series of large tsunamis up to 30 metres (100 ft) high were created by the underwater seismic activity that became known collectively as the Boxing Day tsunamis. Communities along the surrounding coasts of the Indian Ocean were seriously affected, and the tsunamis killed an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries. The Indonesian city of Banda Aceh reported the largest number of victims. The earthquake was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. The direct results caused major disruptions to living conditions and commerce particularly in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.

Link sorry

1977's Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire. 165 killed, over 200 injured. Place was over capacity because John Davison was slated to perform.

The Johnstown Flood, 1889, was a real tragedy with 2200 deaths, particularly because the failure was aided by actions taken by a reservoir-side country club for the area elite.

OP, I remember reading that the Queen's reaction was after receiving a bouquet of flowers with a message "From the remaining children of Aberfan."

The Iroquois Theatre Fire in Chicago, 1903. The deadliest fire in a single-building structure in US history. Over 650 killed, mostly children, during a holiday matinee of 'Bluebeard."

UpStairs Lounge gay bar fire bombing in New Orleans on June 24,1973. 32 people died, which until the Pulse Nightclub shooting was the deadliest attack on a gay club.

R29, that’s hardly forgotten.

Fascinating thread!

Boston's Coconut Grove Nightclub fire in 1942. Deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. 492 dead, hundreds injured.

The fame and coverage of this fire was so extensive it knocked WW2 reporting off the front page of many newspapers.

One of the problems was that the entrances to the nightclub required that they be pushed in order to be opened. When the mass panic erupted, bodies began to pile up against the doors as everyone tried to push the doors open from the inside when they required pulling to be opened. The uniform safety code was changed to require the entrances of all public business have doors that pulled opened from the outside so that one need only to push the doors from the inside to get out..

The Poseidon. Worst shipwreck ever.

R38, I thought the problem was that it had a revolving door, without “fire doors” on both sides, as have since become required. The revolving door got jammed (with bodies), and then people inside were crushed against the jammed door by people pushing from the back.

As late as the 1990s, I found in trips to Europe, when exiting smalls shops, as an American, I naturally push against the front store door to the street, and would wind up facing resistance. It seems the traditional street-door opens “in”, and they hadn’t retrofitted their doors to open “out”. More recently, I find they are switching to American style doors, especially on new construction.

In the late 1970s, I recall lighting sprinklers inside bars that had Christmas in July parties on Misquamicut Beach in RI. When I see that video of the Station Nightclub Fire, it horrifies me, twice-over.

I don't know if I'd call it a "favorite," but one that sticks with me is the Hyatt Regency Kansas City walkway collapse. It was pretty fucking horrific. The fourth floor walkway pancaked onto the second floor, and then both of them collapsed onto the lobby.

One site describes the aftermath like this:

[quote]Disembodied limbs sprouted from the wreckage; bodies lie in halves; necks snapped. Some skin had already turned blue. “It all looked like a human sandwich — arms and legs hanging out...”

Recent thread on airline disasters:

The PSA crash in San Diego on September 25, 1978 was at the time the worst air disaster on U.S. soil, although eclipsed 8 or 9 months later by the American Airlines crash in Chicago. The PSA crash is still, 40 years later, California's worst airline disaster. This is an incredibly detailed and researched accout of it:

Has Nipplegate been forgotten?

Our Lady of Angles Grammar Many children killed, arson now is suspected,

For R46 -

The Collinwood School Fire - March 4, 1908, killing 172 students, two teachers and one rescuer in one of the deadliest school disasters in United States history

Dyatlov Pass

The Babbs Switch fire on December 24, 1924 killed thirty-six people in a one-room school house at Babbs Switch, Oklahoma. Whole families died, and more than half the dead were children. According to the National Fire Protection Association, it is the sixth-deadliest school fire on record in the United States.

What is interesting is one child went missing; a woman came forward 33 years later claiming to be the child.

R1 A step by stop computer simulation of the Halifax explosion that leveled city blocks and created an air tsunami that toppled buildings .

Two planes, United and TWA, collided in midair over Brooklyn.

I’m not going out there ever again.

80s AIDS epidemic

R52 Thanks for the posting. It's an excellent account of how this disaster unfolded.

r3, I too was going to post about the Boston molasses disaster. That was fucking weird. I think I first heard about it on DL.

There's a podcaster out there that's done both the Boston molasses disaster as well as the Halifax explosion.

[quote] PS General Slocum riverboat fire in NYC East River in 1904. Over1,000 people died in the disaster, which held the record for NYC until 9/11.

One of the things that's so tragic about the Slocum is that the parents put lifejackets on their kids and tossed them into the water but the life jackets were useless and they sunk. None of the people knew how to swim, I think if that happened today more people would have been able to survive.

^^^ The life vests were 13 years old and had been exposed to the elements the whole time and the canvas covers were disintegrating. They were filled with substandard cork, which degrades over time, and iron bars were inserted into them to meet the weight requirements. Women and children at this time didn’t really have opportunities to learn how to swim, especially city kids. Clothing was another issue and all this happened in relatively shallow water.

Not unlike the Triangle Shirtwaist fire transforming fire code, this disaster launched a public safety campaign for women and children to learn to swim. Great article here to learn more.

[quote] What is Your Favorite Forgotten Disaster?

In three years, the Trump presidency.

Fascinating article on a psychiatrist who researched precognition in the UK; apparently quite a number of people had premonitions of the Aberfan disaster....

1947: Texas City Explosion: two ships filled with fertilizer exploded, igniting fires in surrounding factories and oil tanks. Over 600 dead, many missing, city destroyed.

The SS Eastland Disaster, July 24, 1915, Chicago, South bank of the Chicago River, between Clark and LaSalle. 844 passengers and 4 crew were killed.

The SS Eastland, along with 4 other steamers had been chartered to take Western Electric employees and their families on an excursion picnic to Michigan City, Indiana.

The ship was top heavy and when passengers rushed to one side, the ship rolled over onto its port side and settled on the river bottom. Although the river was only 20 feet deep, many passengers had already moved to the lower decks before the accident and were trapped below.

A cousin of my mother (my third cousin?) lost her only child in that disaster OP. My mother said that she was never the same again and died broken hearted years later. It ruined her life.

Those disasters mentioned so far is ducking nothing compared to this:

1876-79 Famine | North China, 9 million dead

Once in a while I'll look up stuff on the Hillsborough football stadium disaster, as I saw it happen live on TV back in the eighties in the UK.

The Port Chicago explosion, in 1944, in what is now Martinez, California. Munitions that were being loaded onto a naval cargo ship exploded, killing 320 outright, and injuring more. Most of the dead were African-American military support personnel, and the explosion was followed by a mutiny as the surviving workers refused to load more munitions without changes in working conditions.

The reason it's my favorite is that the local left-wing conspiracy theorists thought that the explosion was actually a nuclear test conducted on personnel who were thought to be expendable at the time. There used to be these nutters on the local progressive radio station, who'd go on for as long as they were allowed about the strength of the explosion and how a shipload of known munitions couldn't have done that much damage. Of course they never ONCE went out to Martinez to look at levels of radiation or anything.

Oh yeah, a link about the Port Chicago explosion.

Not sure favourite is the right or best word.

Heaven's Gate, the film.

Many of us have had something to say about that, R70, but I guess when you're on a forum where people talk about their favorite cum-dump or STD, that word has lost its traditional meaning! lol

R62 fascinating. This really deserves it's own thread.

I don't know if I'd use the term "favorite" to describe these but these affected me directly--I was either in the area or knew people who were involved.

Mt. Pinatubo Eruption, June 1991, Phillipines. I was stationed in Japan at the time, and the volcano had been very active in the months leading up to the explosion on June 15. Because of the activity, volcanologists all over the world were in the area, and one from the USGS took the chance of looking like the boy who cried wolf and advised the CO of Clark AFB to evacuate the base (my ship was part of the evacuation and later relief effort). Because of him the casualties were probably far fewer than they might have been--350 were killed, mostly from buildings collapsing, which is nothing like it could have been considering the population density and infrastructure and magnitude of the explosion. 200K were left homeless and if you were familiar with the Subic Bay area at the time, the before and after was shocking--it went from jungle to moonscape.

Similar before and after occurred a year later when Hurricane Iniki hit the Hawaiian Islands, mainly Kauai. My ship was scheduled for maintenance which was delayed then moved to the mainland when the storm system, which had been meandering around the Pacific, took a hard right and a made beeline for the islands. Casualties were minimal (I think 2 people drowned) but Kauai, aka The Garden Isle was stripped of every leaf and looked like a barren rock when we approached from the northwest. For almost 10 years the significance of September 11 meant Hurricane Iniki.

In January of 1997 I was living in Seattle when a mudslide on Bainbridge Island buried several homes on the beach at Rolling Bay, killing an entire family. The dad was a science teacher who had led a school field trip to my place of work the year before. I don't think it made the national news but it was big news locally. One that did make the headlines nationally was the landslide above the Stillaguamish River in March 2014--heavy rain all month caused a waterlogged hill to collapse and bury the town of Oso down the river, killing 43 people. A number of workers and/or their families at Everett Naval Station, where I often went for business, were among the dead. In both cases logging and development contributed to the instability of the hillsides.

One manmade disaster that didn't involve loss of life (though was financially catastrophic), the USS Miami fire in May 2012 at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, where I frequently travelled for business before my retirement. The sub had been in dry dock for 2 months of a 20-month long a scheduled Engineering Overhaul at when one of the workers had a fight with his girlfriend and came up with the bright idea of starting a small, easily extinguishable container fire to trigger an evacuation so he could get off early (a stunt he'd pulled before as it came out in the investigation). Because of the disposition of the boat (hatches and so forth removed) and the ever-present stiff wind coming off the Piscataqua River, the submarine essentially became a chimney for the rapidly out of control fire. Numerous ducts, scaffolds, hoses, electrical cords etc that are part of every overhaul clogged every potential entry for the fire department, further hampering efforts to control the blaze. Long story short, a billion dollar warship was totalled and a complete moron was sentenced to 17 years in prison plus a fine of 400 million bucks. It was borderline comical, not least because of his remarkable resemblance to Jesse Pinkman:

[quote]1876-79 Famine | North China, 9 million dead

Couldn't they have just ordered in?

My favorite thing about that clip at r39 is that when the ship is viewed from the outside , it is turned over almost immediately by the tidal wave (as it would be if such a thing actually happened--it would only few seconds), but from inside the ballroom, it takes forever. In fact, the ballroom starts turning over well BEFORE the tidal wave even hits the ship!

I did a (scientific) study of premonitions when I was in school, and then later updated it for my own interest.

What I found was there were a high number of people who reported (proved) premonitions for most major (US and UK) disasters, but that number fell off sharply after the mid-70s.

Whitney Houston said she had a premonition about 9/11, and if true, she was the only one...

Does anyone else agree with me and think "favorite" isn't the right word?

[quote] Fire Destroys Part of MX Missile Plant and Kills 4

They flew me from the East Coast there and I interviewed for a job. I terminated the interview process after the initial interview. If I’d taken the job, I’d have been there for the explosion.

My absolute favorite among so many favorites is the hillside near Naples where the illegal deforestation and house building caused a landslide with the burial of an unknown number of homes and loss of life because they were never documented. This was like 20 to 30 years ago.

[quote] The Texas City Refinery explosion occurred on March 23, 2005, when a hydrocarbon vapor cloud was ignited and violently exploded at BP's Texas City refinery in Texas City, Texas, killing 15 workers, injuring 180 others and severely damaging the refinery. The Texas City Refinery was the second-largest oil refinery in the state, and the third-largest in the United States.

This should never have happened. The company was grossly negligent.

I just drove through Texas City last month, R81, and it's still all refineries. I had no idea that happened, and just a few years ago.

This is been a hell of an informative thread!

Aberfan. I read about this a few years ago. Just awful. Those coal people sure had to put up with shit in their lives. But Maggie sure loved them.

As a kid I was fascinated by disasters of all kinds. We had an Encyclopedia and so every year we'd be sent the annual which chronicled the year of events and history. Right up front they had listed in chron order all the disasters and a little sentence about each. I couldn't wait for that annual to show up. God I was an odd child.

could you imagine fucking drowning in molasses? Or was it being burned by boiling molasses raining down on you? EEK

The financial crash of 2008. The global economy almost completely collapsed.

The Chinese related to the US treasury secretary, at the Beijing Olympics, that the Russians approached them. They wanted to coordinate an abrupt sale of US Treasury Bonds, which would have destroyed the US and world economy for 25 years, at least.

As it was, Greece and Spain were in trouble for a decade. The US stock market took a decade to clime back to pre-crash levels. So many people lost their homes, was it millions? It was a mess.

Bush, the Congress, and Obama acted wisely, saving us from another Great Depression, and because it only felt like a really bad recession, it isn’t appreciated for what it was - a near, total, economic collapse.

Bush acted wisely?

Hartford circus fire of 1944.

R74, I helped build the Miami! I was a design and construction engineer at EB!

I've been watching the Youtube coverage of the queen's visit to Aberfan, OP, and I have yet to see her there express anything other than her usual professional unemotional demeanor. Perhaps you or someone else could direct us to where her lip quivers?

[quote] R87: the tent's canvas had been coated with 1,800 pounds of paraffin wax dissolved in 6,000 [bold] gallons of gasoline, [/bold] a common waterproofing method of the time.

I heard a lot about this from my Mom, who lived there at the time. There was an unclaimed, unidentifiable, dead child, a girl, and it broke her heart. She was finally identified a few years ago using DNA.

Mt. St. Helens, Seattle eruption in 1980. 57 dead. A college friend from there wrote me a lot about it.

I condole you, R88--it must be depressing as hell to see something you worked on destroyed like that, especially through such stupidity.

I actually went through BESS training at Groton about the same time you were laying the keel for the Miami, only to realize that I just didn't have the temperament to be a bubblehead. But I spent my career as an engineering officer and most of my shore billets were at shipyards that serviced or were adjacent to submarine bases, so no training is wasted as they say.

Happy Land fire. I didn't realize that many people were killed.

The Bath school explosion..

There are some excellent books about some of these disasters; yes, I have read these.

- "Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919" by Stephen Puleo

- "The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy" by Stewart O'Nan - Hartford Circus Fire

- "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883" by Simon Winchester

- "A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906" by Simon Winchester

- "Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History" by Erik Larson - the 1900 hurricane that destroyed Galveston TX

Currently reading...

- "Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania" by Erik Larson

In the queue...

- "The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism" by John U. Bacon

- "Plague and Fire: Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown" by James C. Mohr - Great Honolulu Chinatown Fire of 1900

[quote] I condole you, [R88]--it must be depressing as hell to see something you worked on destroyed like that, especially through such stupidity.

Thanks, R93. It sometimes surprises me to see subs that were conceived, designed, built, and put into service since I left EB, since that process takes so long, and it sometimes seems like I was there just yesterday. I think my first sub was the 721.

I did good work while I was there. I got two DARPA projects approved (when the Navy Supervisor of Shipbuilding called to tell me they were approved, I had to tell him I had just given notice. It was a funny call, for me. He moaned.) I co-wrote “the Bible” on a certain technology, I later heard it referred to. I got two $11,000 bonuses representing 15% of the first year savings for two suggestions outside my work responsibility, and EB didn’t usually pay bonuses. I got a repair procedure approved that nobody ever thought I could get approved. I enjoyed it, too.

[quote] Mt. St. Helens, Seattle eruption in 1980.

First of all, Mt. St. Helens is far from forgotten (as the OP specified). It was the biggest news event in the US of its entire year, and people who were alive then remember it vividly.

Second, it is much closer to Portland, OR than to Seattle.

The Krakatoa volcano was the strongest, loudest explosion in human recorded history, at least since 1 BC, until the atomic bombs. It was heard extremely far away. Sorry, I forget exactly how far.

Eventually, we’ll get an eruption in a populated area, at great cost and possible loss of life. I’m thinking of Naples, Seattle (I mean [italic] Portland) [/italic] , Tokyo, or the Krakatoa successor. I think Yosemite is dormant for as long as humans will be around. What others are there?

[QUOTE] It's still the largest tornado disaster in United States history.

Happily, not NYC.

If Mt. St. Helens's lateral eruption had vented towards the south rather than towards the north, the loss of life would have been much worse. It probably would have killed many people in Vancouver, WA (which is just to the north across the Columbia River from Portland).

[quote] 1755 Cape Ann earthquake

The 1755 Cape Ann earthquake took place off the coast of Massachusetts Bay on November 18. At between 6.0 and 6.3 on the Richter scale, it remains the largest earthquake in the history of Massachusetts. No one was killed.

Modern studies estimate that if a similar quake shook Boston today, it would result in as much as $5 billion in damage and hundreds of deaths.

Not to be a stick in the mud, but has something like Hillsborough been forgotten? Particularly when the court cases are still ongoing and in the news? Or Mt. St. Helens?

Fairly macabre reading, but when I was a child in elementary school, there was a reader called something general like "Disaster!" that had a few paragraphs on these events and then had vocabulary and main idea type questions afterward. I had no idea how it got printed or put in our classroom but I appreciated it because I repeatedly read that cover to cover. I'm 30 and this must've been when I was in the fifth grade or so. It's how I learned about the Happy Land fire, for instance.

The first time I visited Boston, I went a little before Christmas so I got to see the tree Halifax sent. Really moving knowing why it was there. And then when I visited a friend in Chicago, we walked by where the theater used to be. The Chicago history museum also had some of the burnt of lighting fixtures they must've fished out of the wreckage, and I was very excited to see them. Deeply fucked up to think about how it took things like theater disasters to re-engineer doors for crowd management and how we benefited from these people dying horribly, but at least they didn't die in vain if we can avoid these traps in the future.

R99 - I'd also add somewhere on the west coast of South America.

The Magic Hour

R102 - that $5 billion is in 1990 dollars, which is approximately $10 billion in 2019 dollars.

The Who concert in Cincinnati. I was in high school. General admission (unassigned seating) was outlawed by lots of cities afterward. Eleven people were asphyxiated because somebody opened only door, instead of all the doors as planned, and everybody pushed to get in. The concert went on as planned, because nobody told the band members.

The Krakatoa explosion was heard almost 3,000 miles away at an island in the Indian Ocean.

Never knew there were two Texas City explosions (1947 and 2005).

Fire atop the Sherry-Netherland

[quote]The building was almost fully enclosed in April 1927 when, around 8 p.m., fire broke out on the wood plank scaffolding surrounding the uppermost floors. Elevators were not fully operational, and there was something wrong with the standpipes; the fire department could not muster up enough water pressure.

The fire burned itself out at around midnight and there were no fatalities.

Oh, this one too. I only knew about it because I visited the county historical society and saw a little display on it, otherwise I'd have no idea this happened. Tragic reading the victim list and seeing multiple men from the same family die, I always wondered how their relatives felt about it.

The Texas City Disaster 1947.

The sinking of Titanic

Re: Empress of Ireland and Titanic - there was a long standing story that one man survived both these and the Lusitania. The story even made it into Ripley’s. However, it was later proved to be an urban legend. However, during the investigation it was found that there actually was one man who survived the Empress and Titanic. Apparently after the Titanic he swore he’d never go to sea again. I can’t say I’d blame him!

[quote] R103: Not to be a stick in the mud, but has something like Hillsborough been forgotten? Particularly when the court cases are still ongoing and in the news? Or Mt. St. Helens?

Yes, Mt. St. Helens has been forgotten by most people I know. I live on the East Coast, and haven’t heard it mentioned in 20 years, at least. Nobody talks about it. I haven’t seen articles about it. You are exceptional for remembering it.

I am assuming that “forgotten” doesn’t mean that no one remembers it at all, because obviously such events wouldn’t be posted here, if absolutely no one recalled them. I imagine that some people would recall it with prodding. Maybe you could start a poll, and see the percentage on DataLounge that recalls it.

The Chicago Fire, October 8 -10, 1871, killed about 300 people and left about 100,000 homeless.

The Peshtigo Fire - on the same night, October 8, 1871 as the Chicago Fire, was the US's most devastating forest fire. It occurred in northeastern Wisconsin, destroying part of Door County and obliterating the towns of Peshtigo and Brussels, killing around 1500 people.

While most people have heard of the Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo Fire is must less well known.

The Kansas City Hyatt Regency collapse of hotel skywalks was insane — 114 people crushed to death, the biggest architectural disaster until 9/11.

And it could have been prevented by simple common sense.

r116 -- you mean "second only to 9/11."

The Hyatt disaster reminds me of the Versailles wedding hall disaster, in Jerusalem. It was in 2001.

Either phrasing is true, R117, you dumbass pedant.

More on the Kansas City Hyatt Regency collapse — this gets right to the disaster:

That *is* a tragedy R116. Forgotten since post R42...

Last words said by Dominique Bouhours, famous French grammarian, before dying:

“I am about to — or I am going to — die: either expression is correct.”

Makes me wonder if he talked like that all the time.

The Fat Acceptance Movement, late 2010s. Still counting the victims.

Oh, the humanity, R123

Yeah, favorite is not the best word!

The Eastland disaster is often talked about in Chicago. Oprah's studio was built on an old armory that had been used as a temporary morgue for the Eastland victims and rumor had it that some of them haunted her studio.

The Johnstown flood was so awful and completely the fault of the millionaires who built a huge dam above the city. Like the Chicago fire, it essentially destroyed the city down to dust. It didn't help that Johnstown is essentially a toilet bowl - not disparaging about its appearance (though it's seen better days) but seriously, it's a circle of tall hills and cliffs and the city is itself at the bottom of the bowl. Not very helpful for when lots of water hits all at once.

[quote] While most people have heard of the Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo Fire is must less well known.

A number of fires happened that day. Some believe there was a shared start to all, though a theory that a meteor hitting Earth did so has been debunked.

The Minoan civilization lasted about 1300 years on the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea. They were powerful, or at least influential. They were wiped-out by the eruption of a massive volcano on their island. Some scholars think their story was the inspiration for Plato’s story of Atlantis. c. 2700 to c. 1450 BC.

Late Bronze Age collapse

The half-century between c. 1200 and 1150 BC saw the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, of the Kassite dynasty of Babylonia, of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and the Levant, and of the Egyptian Empire; the destruction of Ugarit and the Amorite states in the Levant, the fragmentation of the Luwian states of western Asia Minor, and a period of chaos in Canaan. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed, and many abandoned, including Hattusa, Mycenae, and Ugarit.

And scholars today don’t know why!

Capsizing and sinking of the MS Estonia in September 1994, where 852 of the 989 passengers and crew lost their lives, after rough waves ripped off the bow doors.

I recall hearing about it on the radio and then it was quickly forgotten in North America, and I forgot about it until I saw a documentary about it on YouTube a few years back.

The mother of Flaming Lips member Klifton Skurlock was among those killed in the Hyatt regency Kansas City disaster.

This one is my favorite:

The Black Sea was once a smaller, fresh water lake. There are fresh water fossils there, and ancient settlements found well underwater. It is thought that the Mediterranean sea level rose, possibly at the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, because of melted glaciers, and eventually, the Mediterranean cut a path into the Black Sea, This expanded it, and turned it to salt water.

Some scholars think this event may have been the source of the story of Noah’s flood.

MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas in November 1980. Difficult to believe that even in the 70s, building codes for high rises did not require sprinkler systems.

Wasn't born yet at the time, but after reading a book about this disaster in the mid-90s, I would take the time to check where the fire exits were in hotels, and still do to this day.

January 26, 1700 Cascadia earthquake.

The 1700 Cascadia earthquake occurred along the Cascadia subduction zone on January 26 with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.7–9.2

The earthquake caused a tsunami which struck the coast of Japan. Japan was keeping written historical records then, the First Nations tribes of the Pacific Northwest coast had their oral traditions. Japan recorded a tsunami at that time. Entire villages on the west coast of Vancouver Island were lost to landslides.

THE CONNORS

R67. Guess you aren’t reading the thread.

I mentioned the Hillsborough disaster early on.

I have a friend who survived and has PTSD.

The Morro Castle

The Andrea Doria

1958 Lituya Bay, Alaska mega tsunami -- the largest recorded megatsunami of modern times, triggered by an earthquake and rockfall. Photo below shows maximum wave height.

for perspective ^^^

(Peshtigo is known to Catholics...)

"Fires had been burning in the area around and north of Green Bay for months that year. Drought conditions had dried up local creeks and marshes, and the flourishing lumber industry had left huge amounts of tree debris and branches — called slash — from local forests. Peshtigo was a city built, literally, on sawdust.

"Sr. Pius Doyle, one of the foundresses of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross, recorded events of late summer and fall 1871, noting how immigrant farmers were also clearing surrounding timberland for fields. Prairie fires resulted.

“Early in August in the afternoon,” Sr. Pius wrote, “the sun would be obscured, owing to the fire which steadily worsened so that, towards the end of the month, it was becoming frightful.”

"Nothing, though, can describe the horror of the firestorm that hit — including fire tornados and whirlwinds that witnesses described as sounding like freight trains. The fire was so intense that it had the power of a thermonuclear bomb and temperatures so high that people were cremated as they fled.

"Further south and east of Peshtigo, lower Door County and northern Brown and Kewaunee counties were also burning. (The town of Brussels was destroyed by the fire.) Adele Brise and her companions at the chapel knew they could not escape the fire. So they took up the statue of Mary and bore it in procession around the grounds. They were joined by local people fleeing to the site.

"By morning, he continued, all “the houses and fences in the neighborhood had been burned with the exception of the school, the chapel and fence surrounding the six acres of land consecrated to the Blessed Virgin.”

"Fr. Pernin noted that the area not burned by the fire, a “winding path surrounding the enclosure being only eight or ten feet wide… now shone out like an emerald island amid a sea of ashes.”

R7, R135 - was your friend physically injured? Did he lose any friends/family?

L'ambiance Plaza in Bridgeport, CT. This was huge news in CT when I was little.

The Hoboken docks fire of 6/30/00

Cotton bales caught fire on a Norddeutscher Lloyd Shipping Company's wharf and quickly engulfed the wooden piers and ships docked in the area

Over 300 people were killed

The Black Tom Explosion in Jersey City, 1916

Black Tom Island was one of the largest major munitions depots in the Northeast, supplying the vast majority of weapons to our European allies during WWI.

The explosion - with a force of a 5.5 magnitude earthquake that could be felt in Maryland, according to the Smithsonian - and its fires took years to investigate.

It turned out the culprit was sabotage by German agents.

R96 There is a novel by Hugh MacLennan about the Halifax Explosion called Barometer Rising. I've not read it but I've heard that it is well written.

Black Tom is also the reason people cannot climb up into the torch of The Statue of Liberty -- the blast weakened her arm.

The Zeebrugge disaster in 1987, in which the MS Herald of Free Enterprise flooded minutes after departure from port because someone had neglected to close the bow-door. 193 died.

R96 here - another disaster book I've read that was good:

- "The Johnstown Flood" by David McCollough

^^^ In Sunlight, In a Beautiful Garden is a well done novel about the Johnstown flood and worth a read.

St. Francis Dam collapse in March 1928 in Los Angeles. The resulting flood claimed 431 casualties and emptied victims 54 miles downstream into the Pacific Ocean. Bodies were recovered as far south as the Mexican border.

R142, my college friend, Joey Ganim, is mayor of Bridgeport. Between his multiple terms, he served time for a felony conviction. But they must like him there, since they re-elected him. He had a fuck buddy in college, and hired him when he became mayor. I think they blamed each other for the felonious actions, so had a falling out. The friend had a really bad drinking problem, so was an easy scape goat. The friend was beautiful in college. Buff and blond.

R151 - did his wife know about the FB.

R138 I'm from Alaska, and I've never heard of this. I'm going to have to do some research. Thanks!

R152, I don’t know. We lost touch before he got married.

The Dupont Plaza Hotel fire was spooky for me because I had actually been there a few weeks prior while on vacation. The set up in the casino was slot machines on three walls, and a glass wall entrance from the lobby. I remembered thinking it looked like a fire trap.

[R35] UpStairs Lounge gay bar fire bombing in New Orleans.

Barings Bank, the world’s second oldest merchant bank, was bankrupt in 1995 by one man. Nick Leeson was betting that the Japanese Yen would go up, illegally and secretly using the bank’s money, when the Kobe earthquake struck. He kept doubling-down, expecting the market to rebound. It did not rebound fast enough for him to recover his losses before being discovered. He lost £1.6 billion, valued in today’s pounds.

He wasn’t personally benefitting, other than in performance bonuses and reputation for being a top trader. He wasn’t stealing money for personal use, in other words.

I couldn’t find the number of jobs lost, or retirement savings and pension funds, but a failure of this size must have had huge ramifications.

Dutch bank ING bought Barings for £1. Part of it was later sold to MassMutual. (My brother worked for both.)

R149 It's a nice book but she didn't really capture the city much, though she did get a sense of the robber baron types.

I am fascinated by the mysterious collapse of civilizations.

The American Indians of Chaco Canyon, about 1000 AD had a flourishing society. They just disappeared at some point. The consensus seems to be that it got dryer and could no longer support agriculture or the animals dependent on this agriculture.

The Mayans. During the 9th century AD, the central Maya region on the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula suffered major political collapse, marked by the abandonment of cities, the ending of dynasties, and a northward shift in activity. No universally accepted theory explains this collapse, but it likely had a combination of causes, including endemic internecine warfare, overpopulation resulting in severe environmental degradation, and drought. There is a famous drawing of Indians, supposedly with small pox, but one scholar says it is pre-Columbian and from before the Spanish introduced smallpox to the Americas. This suggests some other, hideous, disfiguring and deadly disease. (This society/culture preceded the rise of the Aztecs, to the north.)

The Sea Peoples were a powerful seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions of the East Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BCE). Nobody knows where they came from, or went to, when their era was over.

The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812.

The Charleston earthquake of 1885.

1964 9.2 earthquake in Alaska. My uncle lived in Fairbanks at the time but was in Anchorage on that day. He said he never heard anything that loud, described the noise as thousands of snow plows. It went on for 4 minutes and he thought it was going to be over for him but he lived to tell.

R159, Are the Mayans really "forgotten"?

[quote] What is Your Favorite Forgotten Disaster?

Shanghai Surprise

The Tunguska Event in Siberia 1908. Devastation caused by the air burst of a meteor. Few if any human casualties due to the unpopulated region but can you imagine if the meteor had hit Western Europe or the American North East ?

The Vajont Dam in Italy. Completed in 1959 and straddling the Vajont River canyon beneath Monte Toc, it's one of the tallest dams in the world. On October 9, 1963, a massive landslide into the reservoir caused 820 foot wave of water to sail OVER the dam into the valley below, killing 1,917 people.

Oh that's a good one R165. Never heard of that one before.

The Great Smog of London, or Great Smog of 1952, was a severe air-pollution event that affected the British capital of London in early December 1952. A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants—mostly arising from the use of coal—to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 December 1952, and then dispersed quickly when the weather changed.

Up to 12,000 dead, up to 100,000 medical conditions.

The Piper Alpha Oil Platform Explosion of 1988.

An explosion and resulting oil and gas fires destroyed Piper Alpha on 6 July 1988, killing 167 people, including two crewmen of a rescue vessel; 61 workers escaped and survived. Thirty bodies were never recovered.

The Bhopal Disaster

The Bhopal disaster, also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy, was a gas leak incident on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is considered to be the world's worst industrial disaster. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas. The highly toxic substance made its way into and around the small towns located near the plant.

Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259. The government of Madhya Pradesh confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks, and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases. The cause of the disaster remains under debate.

Lake Nyos disaster

On 21 August 1986, a limnic eruption at Lake Nyos in northwestern Cameroon killed 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.

The eruption triggered the sudden release of about 100,000–300,000 tons (1.6m tons, according to some sources) of carbon dioxide (CO 2). The gas cloud initially rose at nearly 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) and then, being heavier than air, descended onto nearby villages, displacing all the air and suffocating people and livestock within 25 kilometres (16 mi) of the lake.

A degassing system has since been installed at the lake, with the aim of reducing the concentration of CO2 in deep waters and therefore the risk of further eruptions.

R167 That was featured in an episode of The Crown.

The same thing happened outside of Pittsburgh for the same reasons, but affected (and killed) a smaller number of people.

R164: It's been estimated that if the Tunguska event happened just 4-5 hours earlier, it would have wiped out St. Petersburg Russia, then a pre-revolution hotbed.

[quote] R162: [R159], Are the Mayans really "forgotten"?

Most people probably don’t know who they are, or confuse them with the Aztecs. (Mel Gibson’s great movie [italic] Apocalypto [/Italic] does so.) But in any event, the “forgotten tragedy” was their disappearance, the reason for which is still uncertain.

The Mayans were the only Indian people who developed a complex writing system. The Spanish burned most of their books, because they looked like they were satanic (filled with characters including those with gargoyle-like features.) the few books that survive are used to try to decipher temple engravings.

R162, you’re being too literal. Let it go, and let us just enjoy chatting about interesting, lesser known disasters. Thank you.

1955 Le Mans disaster

The 1955 Le Mans disaster occurred during the 24 Hours of Le Mans motor race at Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, France on 11 June 1955. A major crash caused large fragments of debris to fly into the crowd, killing 83 spectators and French driver Pierre Bouillin (who raced under the name Pierre Levegh) and injuring nearly 180 more. It was the most catastrophic crash in motorsport history.

Wikipedia link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_Le_Mans_disaster

Link below is British Pathe story of the crash.

Has the Balvano train disaster been mentioned? It's one of the eeriest: in WWII Italy, a packed train got stuck inside a tunnel on icy rails, unable to move forward or backward; due to the war, the engine was forced to utilize sub-par coal and that combined with the enclosed space created a cloud of CO2 that gradually enveloped the train, killing over 500 people.

The Sknyliv air show disaster in 2002 was the deadliest in history with 77 casualties.

R174, here’s more on the Le Mans disaster. If you like horror Stories, subscribe to this channel. It’s got some good ones.

Timekeeping was standardized in the US largely because there were so many trainwrecks from trains being in the wrong place at the wrong time due to local time variants.

Did I say that coherently?

The Manila Film Center accident of 1981.

Video of the Synyliv air disaster for R176.

R176 - Graphic, graphic, graphic footage from the Sknyliv air show disaster in 2002. The crash starts around1:00.

What is amazing is that the pilots ejected and you can see one walk away.

^^ Watching that is not recommended. A lot of gore.

The collapse of the Easter Island society due to warfare and environmental destruction....a warning for the rest of us.

R181, that is gruesome!

I think I read that the inhabitants of Easter Island eventually chopped down every tree on the island, cementing their collapse. Also, they had a rat infestation that can get out of control on an island, where the rats compete with humans for their agricultural products.

Some disasters don't turn out to be "human" disasters because few or no human deaths occur. Case in point is the 1663 Charlevoix Earthquake near Trois Rivieres in New France - now Quebec. At 7.9 magnitude ( a modern estimation based on historical accounts) it matches the San Francisco disaster of 1906, but there are no contemporary reports of any casualties. Of course, the Catholic priests exploited it as a warning of God's wrath against the sinfulness of the population.

Hello the New Madrid fault is due for another earthquake. The last one caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards.

The Erik Larsen books on the Galveston hurricane and the Lusitania sinking were both engrossing. Passengers on the Lusitania got in lifeboats that were stacked, one above the other. In one instance, the top one came right down on top of the one below, crushing its occupants.

Another thing I find interesting are archeological evidence that some disasters are historically far worse than we are prepared for.

For example, Naples, Italy has an evacuation zone because of its volcano. But archeologists have found evidence that the death zone in some past eruptions is miles further than the extent of the evacuation zone. And there are millions living there, now.

Likewise, the Cascadia earthquake fault has produced tsunamis in the Pacific Northwest that are more severe than we are prepared for. .

I mentioned New Madrid above, r187. Church bells were said to have rung in New York and Boston from the biggest quakes.

The 1928 St. Francis Dam Disaster, the second greatest loss of life in California history (after the 1906 SF quake). Official estimate is 600 killed, but the real toll will never be known. The St. Francis Dam was in Santa Clarita, just north of LA, near where Magic Mountain is now. It destroyed the career of William Mulholland, who built it.

It’s referred to several times in the movie “Chinatown,” where it’s called the “Vanderlipp Dam.”

Here’s three yet to happen:

There is is a mountain in the Canary Islands with an unstable side. If it slides into the ocean in one quick calamity, it could create a tsunami that races towards the shores of Western Europe, and the Americas, destroying waterfront cities from Canada to Brazil, including Boston, Providence, New York, Phili, Baltimore, DC, ...Miami... If I were a crazy terrorist with a nuke, the type who doesn’t mind living in a cave, instead of targeting one city, I’d explode the nuke at the base of that mountain.

The Yellowstone super volcano is mostly dormant at the present, but when it erupts, it will make the Midwest uninhabitable and unsuitable for farming, so the survivors across the country will face starvation.

The Oglala Aquifer is a huge underground reservoir that runs under much of the Midwest states, from Texas to, maybe the Dakotas, IIRC. The water is at least thousands of years old, maybe millions. It allows reliable farming there, without too much concern for rainfall. It’s being drawn down at a measurable rate. When it’s gone, it will take hundreds of years or longer to recharge itself. Ending food security in the US.

I think I posted this on another thread or possibly Reddit; the Los Alfaques Campground Explosion in 1978 wasn't maybe as big a story in the US as it was in Europe, but at the time my dad was stationed in Germany where it was headline news for weeks and weeks. I was a kid and the shadowy gruesome images on our neighbor's crappy old black and white TV combined with news reports in languages I didnt understand somehow elevated the horror of it because we had to fill in the blanks with our imaginations.

Essentially a the driver of an overloaded, poorly maintained fuel tanker truck hauling liquid methyl ethylene (a refinery byproduct often used in the manufacture of plastic containers) was pressured by his boss to take a bumpy coastal road from the refinery in Northern Spain to the Mediterranean South to avoid tolls on Spain's equivalent of the interstate. In the 80s, Spain was still pretty backward in terms of its infrastructure so the roads were in poor shape.

Some time Sometime after midnight on July 11, the tanker broke down next to a coastal campground in Catalonia which was packed with summer vacationers. I don't believe a cause was ever established, but it sprung a leak and a gas cloud formed, drifting into the campground, till it reached an ignition source that caused a massive explosion that vaporized everything in a 1000-foot radius. Over 200 people were killed right then and there and hundreds more died later of their injuries.

My dad and I talked about this not long ago--a number of burn victims were treated at the local military hospital and he said the injuries resembled the victims of napalm bombings. I think a the fuel company owners went to prison and the tragedy rested in major reforms of the petroleum and transportation industries in Spain. Its hardly known over here, partly because the Spaniards were so traumatized they didn't want to commemorate it.

There are a few documentaries and articles online (mostly in Spanish) but a word to the curious, the images are graphic and disturbing.

Oh, one more yet to be. This one could happen at any moment.

In the late 1800s, there were telegraph lines running across the US. There happened to be a solar flare with a “coronal mass ejection”, which is a discharge of charged particle travelling extremely fast. The CME made a direct hit on the Earth. It was so strong, it overwhelmed our magnetic field which usually deflects small CMEs. So, a lot of the Telegraph infrastructure was destroyed by the CME.

Today, we would see the solar flare about 8 minutes after it happened, and we’d have 2-3 days to prepare for the CME. We’re getting better at hardening our electric devices, but it could still wipe out much of the electric grid, satellites, computers, cars, and more. It could take years to get the grid back to capacity, but in the meantime, lots of people in the North who heat with electricity might be displaced or freeze to death in the Winters.

The Toba eruption

[quote]Has the Balvano train disaster been mentioned? It's one of the eeriest: in WWII Italy, a packed train got stuck inside a tunnel on icy rails, unable to move forward or backward; due to the war, the engine was forced to utilize sub-par coal and that combined with the enclosed space created a cloud of CO2 that gradually enveloped the train, killing over 500 people.

Sure, sure -- but at least the train was on time!

This.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they called 'gitche gumee'

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead

When the skies of November turn gloomy…

KDOC-56's first (ultimately last)New Years Eve special, hosted by Jamie Kennedy. This is the highlight reel, but someone has finally done the Lord's work and posted the entire gruesome event on YouTube (KDOC First Night with Jamie Kennedy 2013 -Full)

[quote]The Tunguska Event in Siberia 1908. Devastation caused by the air burst of a meteor.

Tons of trees were leveled by this event. I live on the west coast and a lot of wood from the disaster was shipped over from Siberia. The guy who refinished my hardwood floors said the wood probably came from there. My house was built in 1929.

[quote] What is amazing is that the pilots ejected and you can see one walk away.

They didn't completely walk away.

On 24 June 2005, a military court sentenced pilot Volodymyr Toponar and co-pilot Yuriy Yegorov to 14 and 8 years in prison, respectively. The court found the two pilots and three other military officials guilty of failing to follow orders, negligence, and violating flight rules. Two of the three officials were sentenced to up to six years in prison, and the last official received up to four years. In addition, Toponar was ordered to pay 7.2 million Ukrainian hryvnia (US$1.42 million; €1.18 million) in compensation to the families, and Yegorov 2.5 million hryvnia.

[quote] Watching that is not recommended. A lot of gore.

Welcome to the world of the first responders.

R178, you made sense to me. R192, holy shit, I never knew about this! I appreciate your write up.

The fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago in 1959. 92 pupils and 3 nuns killed.

R132 The MGM Grand fire was carried live on network TV. I remember watching it with my parents. Years later, I downloaded the final investigation report. Fascinating read.

R179 Wow... how horrifying: "According to legend, Imelda believed that rescuing the corpses would only delay her project. Thus, Betty Benitez, the project supervisor, ordered cement to be poured over the victims instead. Rumors say that around 168 men were buried alive."

The collapse of the Tay Bridge. In 1879, a railroad bridge spanning the Firth of Tay near Dundee, Scotland gave way during a violent storm as a train was passing over. All souls aboard were lost, between 60 and 80 people. The event lead to a serious reconsideration of engineering standards.

Perhaps even worse, it lead to the writing of The Tay Bridge Disaster, the magnum opus of Scottish poet William McGonagall, generally considered the worst poet in history.

First and last verses:

"Beautiful railway bridge of the silv'ry Tay

Alas! I am very sorry to say

That ninety lives have been taken away

On the last sabbath day of 1879

Which will be remember'd for a very long time."

....

"Oh! Ill-fated bridge of the silv'ry Tay,

I now must conclude my lay

By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,

That your central girders would not have given way,

At least many sensible men do say,

Had they been supported on each side with buttresses

At least many sensible men confesses,

For the stronger we our houses do build,

The less chance we have of being killed."

Oh, dear.

John Irving writes eloquently about the Halifax Explosion in one of his books, but I cannot remember which one. I had never heard of it either before reading his book.

The 1917 Speculator Mine disaster in Butte, Montana. I have family in Montana and have been to Butte several times; it has a colorful history to say the least. I heard about it from the mining museum there and visited the memorial, which was rather eerie. It was the deadliest underground mining disaster in U.S. history. A miner accidentally started a fire with a lamp in the mine, which quickly consumed the oxygen and asphyxiated 168 people.

My birthplace presents the Johnstown Flood: https://www.jaha.org/attractions/johnstown-flood-museum/flood-history/facts-about-the-1889-flood/

When Russia opened the Gate to Hell.

In 1971, Soviet geologists were drilling for oil when they accidentally set up a rig over an enormous cavern of natural gas. The rig punched through the earth and the desert floor collapsed, taking the rig with it.

The newly-formed crater was now leaking methane gas, so the Soviets decided to set the cavern ablaze and let the gas burn itself off. Big mistake. Over 40 years later, the crater is still burning.

Is that the spot where engineers are alleged to have sent a microphone thousands of feet below ground where they allegedly recorded the voices of thousands screaming in eternal pain?

I know it's true, I heard it on youtube.

Since R208 wasn't quite sure where to put the link, let me do it again for her, but correctly.

And an aside on the Flood:

The 1889 flood may have been the "big one" - it truly was almost more of a tsunami than a flood, at first - but the one in 1977 is the one that almost killed the city.

It was somewhat smaller in scope and killed fewer people (under 100) but was still severe, and it was one time too many for a city that was supposed to be "flood free."

It also coincided with the years where many of the businesses in town - especially the steel mills and the two main department stores, Glosser Brothers and Penn Traffic, were in decline. All three would shut down shortly after the flood.

[quote]Bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati, and as late as 1911

How do bodies travel 500 km from Johnstown southwest to Cincinnati?

United Airlines, Rose.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Also, remember that underwater oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico in Obama’s first term? It happened about a week after he opened-up sections offshore of the East Coast for drilling. It was really bad timing. They had a heck of a time stopping the leak. I recall wondering if they’d ever be able to stop it.

It also served as an object lesson as to why drilling offshore in the arctic is a bad idea. The conditions are so harsh there, it really might be impossible to stop a deep sea leak. I think some onshore wells in Alaska actually shutdown in the Winter, and resume in the Spring, because of the harsh conditions. Imaging it it were under a mile of ice and ocean!

[quote] Centralia mine fire

The Centralia mine fire is a coal seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, since at least May 27, 1962. The fire is suspected to be from deliberate burning of trash in a former strip mine, igniting a coal seam. The fire is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet over an 8-mile stretch of 3,700 acres. At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years. The fire caused the town of Centralia to be abandoned.

Interesting that a fire can rage under the Earth for centuries.

[quote] How do bodies travel 500 km from Johnstown southwest to Cincinnati?

The Conemaugh River eventually feeds into the Allegheny River, one of the two rivers in Pittsburgh that form the third river - the Ohio. Which goes to Cincinnati and then eventually becomes part of the Mississippi.

I'm not sure Hillsborough counts as forgotten - there are still court cases going on about it to this day.

R217 Thanx for that! Google maps weren't enlightening.

R214 I laughed. But fuck you anyway.

You bitches are slipping...

SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29. When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, and she remains the largest to have sunk there.

You must have skipped a post or two R220

The islands and bays are for sportsman!

R206 John Irving : Until I Find You (2005) according to this Wikipedia article.

Some of these would make great disaster movies like Titanic. You could make up whole stories about the passengers and workers. People would watch.

The parents of a few of my schoolfriends died in the Zeebrugge Ferry Disaster.

It had an absolutely huge impact here in the UK. The charity single Let It Be still remains one of the biggest selling records of all time.

The Springhill mining disaster (1958) was reportedly the first major event to appear in live tv broadcasts and had a significant impact on popular culture at the time. 75 miners died and 99 were rescued. Peggy Seeger's song was covered by many artists.

[quote] The charity single Let It Be still remains one of the biggest selling records of all time.

Chumbawamba in disguise. Released a week after a single with the same title was released by "Ferry Aid", a pop star charity record a la "Live Aid". a criticism of The Sun newspaper and the motives of the contributing performers which they regarded as hypocritical

Most of the British people on board the Herald of Free Enterprise were from low income families who'd only been able to afford their holiday through a token scheme run by the tabloid newspaper The Sun, hence the charity mobilisation.

One of my ancestors - or a wife of one, anyway - died in the Johnstown flood.

My family is from that area and frankly I am surprised it was just one.

When I was a wee lad, the elementary school's library had The Incredible Series of books about famous disasters and such in history; alongside the Titanic and the Hindenburg, they had a book about the Halifax Explosion called "17 Minutes To Live". (Note the author: do you think that's a pen name?)

Thanks to you G. Lightfoot at R22 we will never forget.

Does anyone have a link to Gordon Lightfoot singing that song about a shipwreck? I can't remember the name of it. HELP!!

The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 has been almost entirely forgotten, except by those of us who saw the PBS special a few years ago. I'd never heard of it until then.

In 1927 heavy rains cause the Mississippi to burst its banks in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, officially 500 people were killed and 700,000 were displaced in a thinly populated region, and an area the size of a small state was flooded for months. As you might expect, displaced people were given what relief the Jim Crow authorities thought appropriate to their race, white people were given food and shelter, and black people were put to work filling sandbags and building levees without pay. The Army Corps of Engineers was brought in to build a new levee system that would keep the Mississippi from flooding again (said system is now one of our current "disasters waiting to happen"), and it gave a huge boost to the "Great Migration". Huge numbers of African-Americans left the Deep South and went north to look for factory work; segregation was bad enough, but the flood showed them that they were STILL one step away from slavery.

R233 It's called "Swanee."

The 1976 Yuba City bus disaster. The bus was chartered to take a group of high school kids in the choir to another high school. the driver wasn’t familiar with vehicle and thought the low air pressure warning for the air brakes was the low engine oil pressure warning light. The bus took an off ramp but the brakes failed crashing into a bridge rail and plunging 22 feet. He bus landed upside down crushing the roof and windows. 28 students and 1 teacher were killed out of the 52 people that were on the bus.

There was that school girl in California that shot up a school. She was caught, and when asked why she did it, she stated, “I don’t like Mondays.”

There was also that slaughter in a McDonalds, also in SoCal, IIRC. They tore the restaurant down afterward as a result.

And countless mass shootings. The Newtown, CT murders of the 5 and 6 year olds really affected me. Plus I’m from CT.

R237 I think the shootings and things like the OK City bombings are crimes and deserve their own category.

I assume OP meant more the "acts of God" type of disasters.

“Santa Fe #19L leading the Super Chief, after smashing thru a concrete barrier at Los Angeles Union Station Jan 1948.”

Is that were they got the idea of the climax for the movie Silver Streak?

The Santa Susana nuclear accident. Worse than 3 mile island. Only 30 miles from Los Angeles. People living in Chatworth or Simi Valley are still exposed to waste to this day but don't know it.

There was a nuclear power plant built on Long Island. When it came time to license it, a judge ruled that I’d an evacuation was necessary, they have to drive past the plant to get off the island. Do the brand new was not allowed to open. That a few billions down the shitter.

Has anyone mentioned “New Coke”?

R242 can you correct your post, I’m confused.

There was a nuclear power plant built about midway on Long Island. When it came time to license it and start it up, a judge ruled that in the event of a disaster, and an evacuation was necessary, the people on the far end of Long Island would have to drive past the endangering plant to get off the island. So, the brand new nuclear plant was not allowed to open. That was a few billion dollars down the shitter.

R66, that was a good start. The Chinese are fucking horrible.

R245 Thanks, but wouldn’t they just have taken boats and ferries out to sea to get away? Why drive towards the disaster?

The London school disaster Texas. Unscented Natural gas blows up 300 children.

The 1927 Bath school bombing in Michigan, still America's worst school massacre.

The 1953 Tangiwai disaster in NZ when the bridge over the Whagaehu river was washed away and the North Island Limited Express crashed into the river. The Queen was on her first visit to NZ and Prince Philip attended the state funeral for the victims.

[quote] [R245] Thanks, but wouldn’t they just have taken boats and ferries out to sea to get away? Why drive towards the disasterP

Some would, but Long Island has almost 8 million people. Even if only 1/4 of them lived on the far side of the plant, that’s 2 million. There aren’t enough boats to transit that number of people, so they’d need the roads.

Think about Katrina and the poor slobs who stayed. Some didn't have the money to leave for a week.

long overdue bump

For the sake of the extinguished OP, Aberfan, One of the only times HM has cried in public.