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Natural disasters
Name: Rachel M Pugh
Status: Other
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
Which natural disasters cause the most human deaths?
Are there any countries that get just about every type of disaster?
What is the worst disaster to mankind?
Replies:
Probably the worst disasters worldwide have occurred with tropical storms
(hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones) especially in southeast Asia. The storms and
their associated storm surge and flooding rains have killed hundreds of
thousands of people in Bangladesh. To answer your second question, the United
States has strong earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, blizzards, hurricanes,
thunderstorms and tornadoes. In fact tornadoes are more frequent and more
violent in the central United States than any place else in the world. Which
is the worst depends on how you look at the statistics. The worst natural
disaster in United States history was a hurricane that killed 6000 people in
Galveston, Texas in 1900.
However, satellite, radar, advanced forecasting
techniques and high speed telecommunications have prevented those kinds of
casualties in even the most powerful hurricanes in the United States in recent
times. The worst tornado ever was the Tri-state tornado of March 1925. It
killed 695 people in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. But the number of
tornado fatalities has been steadily declining in the last few decades due to
better forecasting and faster communications. Lightning was the number one
killer in the United States for many years but in the last 20 years flooding
has become the worst weather related killer.
Allsopp
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Update: June 2012
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