What are some disasters, natural or man made, from your country’s history?
March 17, 2025
What natural or man made disasters happened in your country’s past?
27 comments
The “Watersnoodramp 1953” (Water emergency disaster 1953).
It was one hell of a flood after a break in a dike.
One that probably not many people have heard of or at least iv never seen it mentioned anywhere is the The Senghenydd explosion. A mining accident in 1913 in Wales.
1755 Lisbon earthquake.
Happened during the Feast of All Saints (1st of November) and killed thousands of catholics.
Because it was considered an “act of god”, it sent shockwaves through Europe and forced people to think about our relationship with religion. It strongly influenced the age on enlightenment.
Beside lost wars and plauge. we don’t have many disasters here. The Burchardi flood in 1634 must be one of the worst. With 8000+ dead.
Another flood on the east coast cost about 250 lifes in 1872.
The Battle Of Messines in 1917 involved the biggest man made explosion before the atomic bombs.
The Marcinelle mining disaster of 1956 killed 262 people, mainly Italian immigrant workers.
Watersnoodramp has been named, but also the train+primary school kidnapping at the Punt in 1977 is a famous disaster. It is a deep rabbit hole, the origins lie in our colonial history and the disaster that is our Post War decolonization
The main catastrophe for the country that once existed in the territories where I was later born was the communist coup of November 7, 1917, and the subsequent communist dictatorship that destroyed almost all of the nation’s best people
We still cannot completely eliminate this catastrophe, and the current usurper, the botox-injected dictator-pedophile putin aka Huilo, is trying to repeat it all once again, starting with capturing and destroying neighboring countries
The Great Smog of 1952 – Air pollution caused by coal fires combined with bad weather killed ~10000 people in the UK
The biggest mining accident in the world after the chinese Benxi incident of 1942 : “La catastroohe de Courières”
The 10th March 1906 a coaldust explosion caused 110km of gallery to be destroyed. Back in the day this mine produced 7% of the coal of France.
Of the 1800 official miners down there, 1099 died. But there was far more unaccounted victim as there was a lot of irregular worker.
The explosion in the mine was so big, testimony talk about horses and remains of rocks being propelled 10m off the ground on the surface.
The sinking of the royal ship [Vasa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)) is considered our most embarrassing moment in history, funny how it’s one of our greatest tourist attractions today, so we made use out of the ship anyway.
Chornobyl (1986). Destruction of Dnipro Hydroelectric Station (1941), Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam (2023)
The Vajont collapse of 1963 is up there among the worst disasters Italy has ever experienced. A dam built on unstable terrain caused a piece of the neighbouring Mount Toc to detach from the mountain and plunge in the reservoir beneath it, causing a huge wave that completely obliterated a town and killed 2000 people.
It held back our economic development, russia tried to replace our language by russian and imported lots of russian speakers here with whom we now have to deal with
Car ferry M/S Estonia’s sinking in finnish territorial waters on it way from Tallinn to Stockholm 1994.
For Lesser Poland and City of Krakow I would say:
– Sack of Krakow by the Mongols 1241
– Fire of Krakow 1494
– Galician Rabation 1846
– Fire of Krakow 1850
– Russian occupation of Galicja 1914-1915
– German occupation of Krakow 1939-1945 and extermination of the Jewish population
The Erfurt Latrine Disaster. A collapsing floor dumped a bunch of nobles into a cesspit (with the king narrowly escaping because he had a private talk in an alcove) where most of them literally drowned in shit.
In 1976, there was an explosion in the factory of a small western Finnish town which injured or killed many of the local town’s women.
Italy is a seismic, volcanic peninsula so our history of natural disasters is long and varied, from Pompeii onwards – the most horrible man made disaster -at least in contemporary history- is the accident at the Vajont Dam, in the Alps. A huge hydropower dam (260m, one of the tallest in the world) was built, closing a steep gorge in the eastern Alps and was being commissioned when in Oct. 1963 the side of a mountain overlooking the lake fell into the water in a landslide – the resulting wave was calculated to be 250m tall, overtopped the dam (which was left intact) and washed upon the villages in the valley downstream, causing an estimated 1900 – 2500 victims.
An Gorta Mór, or the Great Hunger (Famine) of 1849/50. I wouldn’t call it a “disaster” as such because it was man made, but it was certainly disastrous in its consequences for the Irish.
Natural: 1977 Earthquake in Bucharest. Killed >1500 persons. The only (audio) recording of the event is this one: [https://youtu.be/sVKvicc4BD4?feature=shared&t=23](https://youtu.be/sVKvicc4BD4?feature=shared&t=23)
Man-made: (1984–1997) The construction of the Palace of the Parliament, which dislodged an entire neighborhood from Bucharest (>50.000 people) and meant having 20.000 people working 24hours/day for 7 years straight. A few hundred people died in the process: [https://www.rferl.org/a/ceaucescu-s-grand-vision-a-legacy-built-on-rubble/33066370.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/ceaucescu-s-grand-vision-a-legacy-built-on-rubble/33066370.html)
What’s even more dramatic is that, if an earthquake like the one in 1977 hits Bucharest again, the death toll will be in the tens of thousands or even more, because most of the buildings in the historical districts of the city should have been consolidated or demolished and rebuilt, but certain audits from the city hall have given their OK to the buildings’ integrity. I guess stupidity and incompetence will take its toll at some point.
Certainly the earthquake in the Ionian islands, in 1953. I think the centre was Zakynthos. Or Athens, 1999. Now, for man-made disasters, a fairly recent at Tempe region, with two trains, 2 years ago. Or the Mati and Mandra wildfire and flood, in Attica, almost 10 years ago. Generally, wildfires during the summer months, or whenever. One wildfire in 2007 touched Olympia, in the Peloponnese. The state mechanism is (n)ever vigilant. Oh, and the floods in Thessaly, 2 years ago.
Not sure if you could classify it as a natural disaster but during the ”little ice age” we and most of Northern Europe had several famines. There were years where summer was basically canceled, snow still on the ground and lakes still frozen in June. Many years farming wasn’t possible until July and some years it would be followed by cold autumns so the little they managed to grow in that short window was spoiled by frosty nights as early as August or early September. This was back when pretty much everyone lived off farming so what your household could provide for yourself was what you got. People made bread from moss, bark and thatch roof. In the 1770s around 100k people starved to death. These famines must’ve been extremely traumatic to go through so I’m very grateful it’s warmer these days.
**Vajont dam disaster**
Date: 9th October 1963
Victims: ~1900 dead, ~1300 missing
Cause: construction of the dam on unstable ground
A landslide collapsed into a resevoir, causing a massive wave. Curiously, the dam (which, at the time of its contruction, was the tallest in the world and still ranks among the top 10) remained almost intact and is still open to visitors
**Messina earthquake**
Date: 28th December 1908
Victims: ~80,000
Cause: natural
A 7 magnitude earthquake destroyed the city of Messina, Sicily.
**Ustica Disaster**
Date: 27th June 1980
Victims: 81
Cause: uncertain
Itavia flight 870 was destroyed mid-air by a sudden explosion, killing everyone on board. To these days, the true cause of the disaster remains uncertain. The most likely hypothesis is that of a Libyan MiG using the plane’s radar track to hide from a NATO fighter jet, which then fired a missile that mistakenly locked onto the civilian flight. This version is supported by Radar recordings misteriously disappearing, the finding of a crashed Libyan MiG and a nearby NATO base denying access to their Radar archives to Italian authorities
**Collapse of Polcevera viaduct (also known as “Ponte Morandi)**
Date: 14th August 2018
Victims: 43 dead, 11 injured
Cause: lack of manteinance
A motorway viaduct on the Polcevera stream in Genoa collapsed due to poor manteinance. Despite the relatively low death toll compared to the other disasters listed, I decided to include it because of the impact and massive coverage it received from national media. Footages can be easily found on youtube
**Seveso disaster**
Date: 10th July 1976
Victims: unknown
Cause: Failure of the safety system and lack of control procedures
A massive leak of dioxin occurred in a chemical plant in Seveso, Lombardy, which resulted in the contamination of a vast area. The disaster was ranked 8th in a list of man-made environmental disasters.
Slovenia immediately post ww2.
Between 100.000 and 200.000 people were summarily executed by Tito’s communist partizans in June-July 1945. Mostly members of anti-communist units from Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia. Also numerous civilian refugees, including women and children. More then 700 killing sites uncovered so far, some of them really ghastly, e. g., the Barbara pit, where several thousand have been murdered by pickaxes and subsequently walled-in with a good number still partially alive (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Pit_massacre). The massive crime had been covered up by communist authorities until 1991 and even today the details have remained obscure since NOT A SINGLE PERPETRATOR has been brought to justice. This judical abomination has been partialy made possible by the judiciary that has been never cleaned of communists, but the main cause is that the ex-secret police has never relinquished it hold on power in Slovenia. The effects of this are twofold. First, the level of barely hidden hatred between the pollitical poles is such that a civil war at some point does not seem impossible. Second, the ruling mafia has almost ruined our economy.
The Fire of Turku in 1827. It is still the largest urban fire in the history of Finland and the Nordic countries. Large parts of the city were destroyed and only 25% of the buildings, mostly in the outer sections of city, survived. Lots of books, art as well as museum and academical items were lost to the fire. 11 000 people were left homeless and 27 people died. It was also a huge blow to the study of the history Finland as the archives of the University of Turku held tons of material from the middle ages, and those were all destroyed. At the time it was big international news, reported in France, Germany and UK, where they even set up charity fund raisers to help the people of the city.
27 comments
The “Watersnoodramp 1953” (Water emergency disaster 1953).
It was one hell of a flood after a break in a dike.
One that probably not many people have heard of or at least iv never seen it mentioned anywhere is the The Senghenydd explosion. A mining accident in 1913 in Wales.
1755 Lisbon earthquake.
Happened during the Feast of All Saints (1st of November) and killed thousands of catholics.
Because it was considered an “act of god”, it sent shockwaves through Europe and forced people to think about our relationship with religion. It strongly influenced the age on enlightenment.
Beside lost wars and plauge. we don’t have many disasters here. The Burchardi flood in 1634 must be one of the worst. With 8000+ dead.
Another flood on the east coast cost about 250 lifes in 1872.
The Battle Of Messines in 1917 involved the biggest man made explosion before the atomic bombs.
The Marcinelle mining disaster of 1956 killed 262 people, mainly Italian immigrant workers.
Watersnoodramp has been named, but also the train+primary school kidnapping at the Punt in 1977 is a famous disaster. It is a deep rabbit hole, the origins lie in our colonial history and the disaster that is our Post War decolonization
The main catastrophe for the country that once existed in the territories where I was later born was the communist coup of November 7, 1917, and the subsequent communist dictatorship that destroyed almost all of the nation’s best people
We still cannot completely eliminate this catastrophe, and the current usurper, the botox-injected dictator-pedophile putin aka Huilo, is trying to repeat it all once again, starting with capturing and destroying neighboring countries
The Great Smog of 1952 – Air pollution caused by coal fires combined with bad weather killed ~10000 people in the UK
The biggest mining accident in the world after the chinese Benxi incident of 1942 : “La catastroohe de Courières”
The 10th March 1906 a coaldust explosion caused 110km of gallery to be destroyed. Back in the day this mine produced 7% of the coal of France.
Of the 1800 official miners down there, 1099 died. But there was far more unaccounted victim as there was a lot of irregular worker.
The explosion in the mine was so big, testimony talk about horses and remains of rocks being propelled 10m off the ground on the surface.
The sinking of the royal ship [Vasa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)) is considered our most embarrassing moment in history, funny how it’s one of our greatest tourist attractions today, so we made use out of the ship anyway.
Chornobyl (1986). Destruction of Dnipro Hydroelectric Station (1941), Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam (2023)
The Vajont collapse of 1963 is up there among the worst disasters Italy has ever experienced. A dam built on unstable terrain caused a piece of the neighbouring Mount Toc to detach from the mountain and plunge in the reservoir beneath it, causing a huge wave that completely obliterated a town and killed 2000 people.
Manmade: possibly the [Kaprun Desaster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaprun_disaster)
Natural desaster: probably the 1954 avalanche in Vorarlberg
There are a few I still remember growing up. First one was the [Bijlmer disaster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862) where an Israeli jet crashed in an apartment building in Amsterdam Bijlmer. Another one is the [Volendam New Years eve fire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volendam_New_Year%27s_fire) where a bar caught fire. And the third one is [Enschede firework disaster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster) where a fire in a fireworks warehouse in Enschede caught fire and caused an explosion.
Being occupied by the soviet union.
It held back our economic development, russia tried to replace our language by russian and imported lots of russian speakers here with whom we now have to deal with
Car ferry M/S Estonia’s sinking in finnish territorial waters on it way from Tallinn to Stockholm 1994.
For Lesser Poland and City of Krakow I would say:
– Sack of Krakow by the Mongols 1241
– Fire of Krakow 1494
– Galician Rabation 1846
– Fire of Krakow 1850
– Russian occupation of Galicja 1914-1915
– German occupation of Krakow 1939-1945 and extermination of the Jewish population
The Erfurt Latrine Disaster. A collapsing floor dumped a bunch of nobles into a cesspit (with the king narrowly escaping because he had a private talk in an alcove) where most of them literally drowned in shit.
In 1976, there was an explosion in the factory of a small western Finnish town which injured or killed many of the local town’s women.
Italy is a seismic, volcanic peninsula so our history of natural disasters is long and varied, from Pompeii onwards – the most horrible man made disaster -at least in contemporary history- is the accident at the Vajont Dam, in the Alps. A huge hydropower dam (260m, one of the tallest in the world) was built, closing a steep gorge in the eastern Alps and was being commissioned when in Oct. 1963 the side of a mountain overlooking the lake fell into the water in a landslide – the resulting wave was calculated to be 250m tall, overtopped the dam (which was left intact) and washed upon the villages in the valley downstream, causing an estimated 1900 – 2500 victims.
An Gorta Mór, or the Great Hunger (Famine) of 1849/50. I wouldn’t call it a “disaster” as such because it was man made, but it was certainly disastrous in its consequences for the Irish.
Natural: 1977 Earthquake in Bucharest. Killed >1500 persons. The only (audio) recording of the event is this one: [https://youtu.be/sVKvicc4BD4?feature=shared&t=23](https://youtu.be/sVKvicc4BD4?feature=shared&t=23)
Man-made: (1984–1997) The construction of the Palace of the Parliament, which dislodged an entire neighborhood from Bucharest (>50.000 people) and meant having 20.000 people working 24hours/day for 7 years straight. A few hundred people died in the process: [https://www.rferl.org/a/ceaucescu-s-grand-vision-a-legacy-built-on-rubble/33066370.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/ceaucescu-s-grand-vision-a-legacy-built-on-rubble/33066370.html)
What’s even more dramatic is that, if an earthquake like the one in 1977 hits Bucharest again, the death toll will be in the tens of thousands or even more, because most of the buildings in the historical districts of the city should have been consolidated or demolished and rebuilt, but certain audits from the city hall have given their OK to the buildings’ integrity. I guess stupidity and incompetence will take its toll at some point.
Certainly the earthquake in the Ionian islands, in 1953. I think the centre was Zakynthos. Or Athens, 1999. Now, for man-made disasters, a fairly recent at Tempe region, with two trains, 2 years ago. Or the Mati and Mandra wildfire and flood, in Attica, almost 10 years ago. Generally, wildfires during the summer months, or whenever. One wildfire in 2007 touched Olympia, in the Peloponnese. The state mechanism is (n)ever vigilant. Oh, and the floods in Thessaly, 2 years ago.
Not sure if you could classify it as a natural disaster but during the ”little ice age” we and most of Northern Europe had several famines. There were years where summer was basically canceled, snow still on the ground and lakes still frozen in June. Many years farming wasn’t possible until July and some years it would be followed by cold autumns so the little they managed to grow in that short window was spoiled by frosty nights as early as August or early September. This was back when pretty much everyone lived off farming so what your household could provide for yourself was what you got. People made bread from moss, bark and thatch roof. In the 1770s around 100k people starved to death. These famines must’ve been extremely traumatic to go through so I’m very grateful it’s warmer these days.
**Vajont dam disaster**
Date: 9th October 1963
Victims: ~1900 dead, ~1300 missing
Cause: construction of the dam on unstable ground
A landslide collapsed into a resevoir, causing a massive wave. Curiously, the dam (which, at the time of its contruction, was the tallest in the world and still ranks among the top 10) remained almost intact and is still open to visitors
**Messina earthquake**
Date: 28th December 1908
Victims: ~80,000
Cause: natural
A 7 magnitude earthquake destroyed the city of Messina, Sicily.
**Ustica Disaster**
Date: 27th June 1980
Victims: 81
Cause: uncertain
Itavia flight 870 was destroyed mid-air by a sudden explosion, killing everyone on board. To these days, the true cause of the disaster remains uncertain. The most likely hypothesis is that of a Libyan MiG using the plane’s radar track to hide from a NATO fighter jet, which then fired a missile that mistakenly locked onto the civilian flight. This version is supported by Radar recordings misteriously disappearing, the finding of a crashed Libyan MiG and a nearby NATO base denying access to their Radar archives to Italian authorities
**Collapse of Polcevera viaduct (also known as “Ponte Morandi)**
Date: 14th August 2018
Victims: 43 dead, 11 injured
Cause: lack of manteinance
A motorway viaduct on the Polcevera stream in Genoa collapsed due to poor manteinance. Despite the relatively low death toll compared to the other disasters listed, I decided to include it because of the impact and massive coverage it received from national media. Footages can be easily found on youtube
**Seveso disaster**
Date: 10th July 1976
Victims: unknown
Cause: Failure of the safety system and lack of control procedures
A massive leak of dioxin occurred in a chemical plant in Seveso, Lombardy, which resulted in the contamination of a vast area. The disaster was ranked 8th in a list of man-made environmental disasters.
Slovenia immediately post ww2.
Between 100.000 and 200.000 people were summarily executed by Tito’s communist partizans in June-July 1945. Mostly members of anti-communist units from Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia. Also numerous civilian refugees, including women and children. More then 700 killing sites uncovered so far, some of them really ghastly, e. g., the Barbara pit, where several thousand have been murdered by pickaxes and subsequently walled-in with a good number still partially alive (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Pit_massacre). The massive crime had been covered up by communist authorities until 1991 and even today the details have remained obscure since NOT A SINGLE PERPETRATOR has been brought to justice. This judical abomination has been partialy made possible by the judiciary that has been never cleaned of communists, but the main cause is that the ex-secret police has never relinquished it hold on power in Slovenia. The effects of this are twofold. First, the level of barely hidden hatred between the pollitical poles is such that a civil war at some point does not seem impossible. Second, the ruling mafia has almost ruined our economy.
The Fire of Turku in 1827. It is still the largest urban fire in the history of Finland and the Nordic countries. Large parts of the city were destroyed and only 25% of the buildings, mostly in the outer sections of city, survived. Lots of books, art as well as museum and academical items were lost to the fire. 11 000 people were left homeless and 27 people died. It was also a huge blow to the study of the history Finland as the archives of the University of Turku held tons of material from the middle ages, and those were all destroyed. At the time it was big international news, reported in France, Germany and UK, where they even set up charity fund raisers to help the people of the city.