Disasters
Content
Disasters
What is the Ring of Fire?
H
urricanes—called typhoons or cyclones in the Pacific— are Earth’s biggest storms. When conditions are right, they form over the ocean from collections of storms and clouds known as tropical disturbances. Strong winds create a wall of clouds and rain that swirl in a circle around a calm center called the eye.
Hurricanes
page 65
Hurricane Categories 1: 74-95 mph 2: 96-110 mph 3: 111-130 mph 4: 131-155 mph 5: over 155 mph
The eye develops as warm, moist air is forced upward in the storm by denser, cooler air. From the outer edge of the storm to the inner eye, the pressure drops and wind speeds rise sharply, creating swirling convection currents around the eye. If wind speeds reach 39 mph, the storm is named. If wind speeds top 74 Cool dense air mph, the storm is called a hurricane. Convection Eye
currents
Hurricanes can be up to 300 miles wide. On land, the storm can snap trees and tear buildings apart. Strong winds blowing toward shore can create a rise in the ocean water called a storm surge. It can combine with heavy rains to cause flooding and massive damage.
Warm moist air
Hurricane winds and rain
For the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico, hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30. Most hurricanes happen in August, September, and October, when the oceans are warmest.
Notable U.S. Hurricanes
Date Location What Happened? Deaths 8,000+ 600+ 65 1,833 Sept. 8, 1900 Galveston, TX Category 4 storm flooded the island with 15-foot waves. Sept. 19, 1938 Aug. 24-26, 1992 Aug. 25-29, 2005 NY, CT, RI, MA FL, LA LA, MS, AL, GA, FL “The Long Island Express,” with storm surges rising 10-25 feet, caused $306 million in damages. Hurricane Andrew swept across the Gulf of Mexico, leaving 250,000 homeless. Hurricane Katrina, with 175 mph winds and a 25-foot high storm surge, caused about $125 billion in damage.
Hurricane Names
The U.S. began using women’s names for hurricanes in 1953 and added men’s names in 1979. When all letters (except Q, U, X, Y, and Z) are used in one season, any additional storms are named with Greek letters. Six Greek letters were needed to name 2005 storms. 2010 Names: Alex, Bonnie, Colin, Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Igor, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Matthew, Nicole, Otto, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tomas, Virginie, Walter 62
DISASTERS
Tornado Categories WEAK
EF0: 65-85 mph EF1: 86-110 mph
Tornadoes T
STRONG
EF2: 111-135 mph EF3: 136-165 mph
ornadoes are rapidly spinning columns of air. They form when winds change direction, speed up, and spin around in or near a thunderstorm. They can also spin off from hurricanes.
Tornadoes can happen any time that the weather is right, but they are more common between March and July. They can happen in any state, but strong tornadoes touch down most often in the U.S. southeast or central plains. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA), an average of 1,200 tornadoes occur in the U.S. each year. They cause an average of 60 deaths and 1,500 injuries each year and over $400 million in damage. Tornadoes are measured by how much damage they cause. In February 2007, the U.S. began using the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale (at left) to measure tornadoes. The EF-Scale provides an estimate of a tornado’s wind speed based on the amount of damage. If a tornado doesn’t hit anything, it may be hard to classify it. Wind speeds are difficult to measure directly, because measuring instruments can be destroyed in more violent winds. The highest wind speed ever recorded—318 mph—was taken in May 1999 in an Oklahoma tornado. The U.S. city hit by the most tornadoes is Oklahoma City, with more than 100 recorded tornadoes.
VIOLENT
EF4: 166-200 mph EF5: over 200 mph
U.S. Tornado Records
YEAR: The 1,819 tornadoes reported in 2004 topped the previous record of 1,424 in 1998.
(since record keeping began in 1950)
MONTH: In May 2003, there were a total of 543 tornadoes, easily passing the old record of 399 set in June 1992.
TWO-DAY PERIOD: On
April 3 and 4, 1974, 147 tornadoes touched down in 13 states.
For more information on storms and weather, go to the NOAA Education page: www.education.noaa.gov/cweather.html 63
EARTHQUAKES
T
here are thousands of earthquakes each year, but most are too small to be noticed. About 1 in 5 can be felt, and about 1 in 500 causes damage.
North America Pacific Ocean Europe Africa South America Asia Pacific Ocean Australia Antarctica
WHAT CAUSES EARTHQUAKES?
To understand earthquakes, imagine the Earth as an egg with a cracked shell. The cracked outer layer (the eggshell) is called the lithosphere, and it is divided into huge pieces called plates (see map above). Underneath the lithosphere is a softer layer called the asthenosphere. The plates are constantly gliding over this softer layer, moving away, toward, or past one another. Earthquakes result when plates collide. The cracks in the lithosphere are called faults. Many quakes occur along these fault lines.
MAJOR EARTHQUAKES
The earthquakes listed here are among the largest and most destructive recorded in the past 50 years.
Year
1960 1970 1976 1988 1989 1990 1994 1995 1999 2001 2004 2005 2008 64
Location
near Chile Northern Peru Tangshan, China Soviet Armenia United States (San Francisco area) Western Iran United States (Los Angeles area) Kobe, Japan Western Turkey Western India Sumatra Pakistan and India Sichuan, China
Magnitude
9.5 7.8 8.0 7.0 7.1 7.7 6.8 6.9 7.4 7.9 9.0 7.6 7.9
Deaths (estimated)
5,000 66,000 255,000 55,000 62 40,000 61 5,502 17,200 30,000 225,000 80,000 87,652
VOLCANOES
ash and gas crater lava
DISASTERS
A
volcano is a mountain or hill (cone) with an opening on top known as a crater. Hot melted rock (magma), gases, and other material from inside the Earth mix together and rise up through cracks and weak spots. When enough pressure builds up, the magma can escape, erupting through the crater. Magma is called lava when it reaches the air. Lava may be hotter than 2,000°F. The cone of a volcano is often made of layers of lava and ash that have erupted, then cooled. Some islands, like the Hawaiian Islands, are really the tops of undersea volcanoes.
magma
Some Famous Volcanic Eruptions
Year The hundreds of active volcanoes near the edges of the Pacific Ocean make up what is called the Ring of Fire. They mark the boundary between the plates under the Pacific Ocean and the plates under the surrounding continents. (Earth’s plates are explained on page 64, with the help of a map.) The Ring of Fire runs from Alaska, along the west coast of South and North America, to the southern tip of Chile. The ring also runs down the east coast of Asia, starting in the far north. It continues down past Australia. 79 1586 1792 1815 1883 1902 1980 1982 1985 1986 1991 Volcano (place) Mount Vesuvius (Italy) Kelut (Indonesia) Mount Unzen (Japan) Tambora (Indonesia) Krakatau, or Krakatoa (Indonesia) Mount Pelée (Martinique) Mount St. Helens (U.S.) El Chichón (Mexico) Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia) Lake Nyos (Cameroon) Mount Pinatubo (Philippines) Deaths (estimated) 16,000 10,000 14,500 10,000 36,000 28,000 57 1,880 23,000 1,700 800
TSUNAMIS
Tsunami (pronounced tsoo-NAH-mee) comes from two Japanese words: “tsu” (harbor) and “nami” (wave). These huge waves are sometimes called tidal waves, but they have nothing to do with the tides. The strongest tsunamis happen when a big part of the sea floor lifts along a fault (see page 64), pushing up a huge volume of water. The resulting waves are long and low, and might not even be noticed in deep
water. They move at speeds of up to 500 miles per hour. As they near shore, they slow down and the great energy forces the water upward into big waves. On December 26, 2004, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The tsunami hit 12 countries. An estimated 225,000 people were killed, and 1.6 million were left homeless. 65
MAJOR DISASTERS
Here are some other disasters the world has faced.
Aircraft Disasters
Date May 6, 1937 Aug. 12, 1985 Location Lakehurst, NJ Japan
Hindenburg disaster What Happened? German zeppelin (blimp) Hindenburg caught fire as it prepared to land. Deaths 36 520 582 Nearly 3,000 228
Boeing 747 jet collided with Mt. Osutaka. Japan’s worst single-aircraft disaster in history. March 27, 1977 Tenerife, Canary Two Boeing 747s collide on the runway of Los Rodeos airport. Islands Sept. 11, 2001 New York, NY; Two hijacked planes crashed into Arlington, VA; the World Trade Center, one into the Shanksville, PA Pentagon, one went down in a PA field. Airbus A330-200 crashed into the June 1, 2009 Atlantic Ocean (off the coast of Brazil) ocean.
Explosions and Fires
Date June 15, 1904 Location New York City What Happened? General Slocum, wooden ship carrying church members up the East River, caught fire. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory caught fire. Workers were trapped inside. Fire swept through the Coconut Grove nightclub; patrons panicked. Deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. A pesticide factory explosion spread toxic gas; worst industrial accident in history. Deaths 1,021 146 146
March 25, 1911 New York City Nov. 28, 1942 Boston, MA
Dec. 3, 1984
Bhopal, India
15,000
Rail Disasters
Date Jan. 16, 1944 March 2, 1944 June 6, 1981 Location León Prov., Spain Salerno, Italy Bihar, India What Happened? Train crashed in the Torro Tunnel. Passengers suffocated when train stalled in tunnel. Train plunged off of a bridge into the river; India’s deadliest rail disaster ever. Deaths 500 521 800
One of the most unusual disasters ever occurred in Boston on January 15, 1919. A giant steel vat holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses ruptured. Thirty-foot waves of the gooey substance flooded the streets, killing 21 people and injuring 150.
66
DISASTERS
Lusitania disaster Date April 14, 1912 May 7, 1915 Jan. 30, 1945 Location near Newfoundland Atlantic Ocean, near Ireland Baltic Sea
Ship Disasters
What Happened? Luxury liner Titanic collided with iceberg. British steamer Lusitania torpedoed and sunk by German submarine. Liner Wilhelm Gustloff carrying German refugees and soldiers sunk by Soviet sub. Highest death toll for a single ship. Explosions sank Russian submarine Kursk; multiple rescue attempts failed. Senegalese ferry capsized. Egyptian ferry returning from Saudi Arabia sank after fire broke out onboard. Deaths 1,503 1,198 6,000 7,000 118 1,863 1,000
Aug. 12, 2000 Sept. 26, 2002 Feb. 3, 2006
Barents Sea Atlantic Ocean near The Gambia Red Sea
Other Disasters
Date Aug. 1931 1984 April 1986 Location China Africa (chiefly Ethiopia) Chernobyl, USSR (now Ukraine) What Happened? Vast flooding on the Huang He River. Highest known death toll from a flood. Several years of severe drought caused one of the worst modern famines. Explosions at a nuclear power plant leaked radioactive material. 135,000 people were exposed to harmful levels of radiation. A severe summer heat wave swept across Europe. More than 14,000 died in France alone. Landslide on Leyte Island buries a village. Deaths 3,700,000 800,000 31
Summer 2003
Europe
35,000
Feb. 2006
The Philippines
1,000
One of the worst snowstorms in U.S. history happened March 1114, 1888, just a week before the first day of spring. Much of the northeastern U.S. was buried in up to four feet of snow, with towering snowdrifts up to 30 feet high! At least 400 people died in the “Great White Hurricane,” many of them in New York City. People were stranded by blocked streets, huge drifts, and powerless streetcars. There was no way to bring food or supplies into the city. 67
What is the Ring of Fire?
H
urricanes—called typhoons or cyclones in the Pacific— are Earth’s biggest storms. When conditions are right, they form over the ocean from collections of storms and clouds known as tropical disturbances. Strong winds create a wall of clouds and rain that swirl in a circle around a calm center called the eye.
Hurricanes
page 65
Hurricane Categories 1: 74-95 mph 2: 96-110 mph 3: 111-130 mph 4: 131-155 mph 5: over 155 mph
The eye develops as warm, moist air is forced upward in the storm by denser, cooler air. From the outer edge of the storm to the inner eye, the pressure drops and wind speeds rise sharply, creating swirling convection currents around the eye. If wind speeds reach 39 mph, the storm is named. If wind speeds top 74 Cool dense air mph, the storm is called a hurricane. Convection Eye
currents
Hurricanes can be up to 300 miles wide. On land, the storm can snap trees and tear buildings apart. Strong winds blowing toward shore can create a rise in the ocean water called a storm surge. It can combine with heavy rains to cause flooding and massive damage.
Warm moist air
Hurricane winds and rain
For the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico, hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30. Most hurricanes happen in August, September, and October, when the oceans are warmest.
Notable U.S. Hurricanes
Date Location What Happened? Deaths 8,000+ 600+ 65 1,833 Sept. 8, 1900 Galveston, TX Category 4 storm flooded the island with 15-foot waves. Sept. 19, 1938 Aug. 24-26, 1992 Aug. 25-29, 2005 NY, CT, RI, MA FL, LA LA, MS, AL, GA, FL “The Long Island Express,” with storm surges rising 10-25 feet, caused $306 million in damages. Hurricane Andrew swept across the Gulf of Mexico, leaving 250,000 homeless. Hurricane Katrina, with 175 mph winds and a 25-foot high storm surge, caused about $125 billion in damage.
Hurricane Names
The U.S. began using women’s names for hurricanes in 1953 and added men’s names in 1979. When all letters (except Q, U, X, Y, and Z) are used in one season, any additional storms are named with Greek letters. Six Greek letters were needed to name 2005 storms. 2010 Names: Alex, Bonnie, Colin, Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Igor, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Matthew, Nicole, Otto, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tomas, Virginie, Walter 62
DISASTERS
Tornado Categories WEAK
EF0: 65-85 mph EF1: 86-110 mph
Tornadoes T
STRONG
EF2: 111-135 mph EF3: 136-165 mph
ornadoes are rapidly spinning columns of air. They form when winds change direction, speed up, and spin around in or near a thunderstorm. They can also spin off from hurricanes.
Tornadoes can happen any time that the weather is right, but they are more common between March and July. They can happen in any state, but strong tornadoes touch down most often in the U.S. southeast or central plains. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA), an average of 1,200 tornadoes occur in the U.S. each year. They cause an average of 60 deaths and 1,500 injuries each year and over $400 million in damage. Tornadoes are measured by how much damage they cause. In February 2007, the U.S. began using the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale (at left) to measure tornadoes. The EF-Scale provides an estimate of a tornado’s wind speed based on the amount of damage. If a tornado doesn’t hit anything, it may be hard to classify it. Wind speeds are difficult to measure directly, because measuring instruments can be destroyed in more violent winds. The highest wind speed ever recorded—318 mph—was taken in May 1999 in an Oklahoma tornado. The U.S. city hit by the most tornadoes is Oklahoma City, with more than 100 recorded tornadoes.
VIOLENT
EF4: 166-200 mph EF5: over 200 mph
U.S. Tornado Records
YEAR: The 1,819 tornadoes reported in 2004 topped the previous record of 1,424 in 1998.
(since record keeping began in 1950)
MONTH: In May 2003, there were a total of 543 tornadoes, easily passing the old record of 399 set in June 1992.
TWO-DAY PERIOD: On
April 3 and 4, 1974, 147 tornadoes touched down in 13 states.
For more information on storms and weather, go to the NOAA Education page: www.education.noaa.gov/cweather.html 63
EARTHQUAKES
T
here are thousands of earthquakes each year, but most are too small to be noticed. About 1 in 5 can be felt, and about 1 in 500 causes damage.
North America Pacific Ocean Europe Africa South America Asia Pacific Ocean Australia Antarctica
WHAT CAUSES EARTHQUAKES?
To understand earthquakes, imagine the Earth as an egg with a cracked shell. The cracked outer layer (the eggshell) is called the lithosphere, and it is divided into huge pieces called plates (see map above). Underneath the lithosphere is a softer layer called the asthenosphere. The plates are constantly gliding over this softer layer, moving away, toward, or past one another. Earthquakes result when plates collide. The cracks in the lithosphere are called faults. Many quakes occur along these fault lines.
MAJOR EARTHQUAKES
The earthquakes listed here are among the largest and most destructive recorded in the past 50 years.
Year
1960 1970 1976 1988 1989 1990 1994 1995 1999 2001 2004 2005 2008 64
Location
near Chile Northern Peru Tangshan, China Soviet Armenia United States (San Francisco area) Western Iran United States (Los Angeles area) Kobe, Japan Western Turkey Western India Sumatra Pakistan and India Sichuan, China
Magnitude
9.5 7.8 8.0 7.0 7.1 7.7 6.8 6.9 7.4 7.9 9.0 7.6 7.9
Deaths (estimated)
5,000 66,000 255,000 55,000 62 40,000 61 5,502 17,200 30,000 225,000 80,000 87,652
VOLCANOES
ash and gas crater lava
DISASTERS
A
volcano is a mountain or hill (cone) with an opening on top known as a crater. Hot melted rock (magma), gases, and other material from inside the Earth mix together and rise up through cracks and weak spots. When enough pressure builds up, the magma can escape, erupting through the crater. Magma is called lava when it reaches the air. Lava may be hotter than 2,000°F. The cone of a volcano is often made of layers of lava and ash that have erupted, then cooled. Some islands, like the Hawaiian Islands, are really the tops of undersea volcanoes.
magma
Some Famous Volcanic Eruptions
Year The hundreds of active volcanoes near the edges of the Pacific Ocean make up what is called the Ring of Fire. They mark the boundary between the plates under the Pacific Ocean and the plates under the surrounding continents. (Earth’s plates are explained on page 64, with the help of a map.) The Ring of Fire runs from Alaska, along the west coast of South and North America, to the southern tip of Chile. The ring also runs down the east coast of Asia, starting in the far north. It continues down past Australia. 79 1586 1792 1815 1883 1902 1980 1982 1985 1986 1991 Volcano (place) Mount Vesuvius (Italy) Kelut (Indonesia) Mount Unzen (Japan) Tambora (Indonesia) Krakatau, or Krakatoa (Indonesia) Mount Pelée (Martinique) Mount St. Helens (U.S.) El Chichón (Mexico) Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia) Lake Nyos (Cameroon) Mount Pinatubo (Philippines) Deaths (estimated) 16,000 10,000 14,500 10,000 36,000 28,000 57 1,880 23,000 1,700 800
TSUNAMIS
Tsunami (pronounced tsoo-NAH-mee) comes from two Japanese words: “tsu” (harbor) and “nami” (wave). These huge waves are sometimes called tidal waves, but they have nothing to do with the tides. The strongest tsunamis happen when a big part of the sea floor lifts along a fault (see page 64), pushing up a huge volume of water. The resulting waves are long and low, and might not even be noticed in deep
water. They move at speeds of up to 500 miles per hour. As they near shore, they slow down and the great energy forces the water upward into big waves. On December 26, 2004, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The tsunami hit 12 countries. An estimated 225,000 people were killed, and 1.6 million were left homeless. 65
MAJOR DISASTERS
Here are some other disasters the world has faced.
Aircraft Disasters
Date May 6, 1937 Aug. 12, 1985 Location Lakehurst, NJ Japan
Hindenburg disaster What Happened? German zeppelin (blimp) Hindenburg caught fire as it prepared to land. Deaths 36 520 582 Nearly 3,000 228
Boeing 747 jet collided with Mt. Osutaka. Japan’s worst single-aircraft disaster in history. March 27, 1977 Tenerife, Canary Two Boeing 747s collide on the runway of Los Rodeos airport. Islands Sept. 11, 2001 New York, NY; Two hijacked planes crashed into Arlington, VA; the World Trade Center, one into the Shanksville, PA Pentagon, one went down in a PA field. Airbus A330-200 crashed into the June 1, 2009 Atlantic Ocean (off the coast of Brazil) ocean.
Explosions and Fires
Date June 15, 1904 Location New York City What Happened? General Slocum, wooden ship carrying church members up the East River, caught fire. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory caught fire. Workers were trapped inside. Fire swept through the Coconut Grove nightclub; patrons panicked. Deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. A pesticide factory explosion spread toxic gas; worst industrial accident in history. Deaths 1,021 146 146
March 25, 1911 New York City Nov. 28, 1942 Boston, MA
Dec. 3, 1984
Bhopal, India
15,000
Rail Disasters
Date Jan. 16, 1944 March 2, 1944 June 6, 1981 Location León Prov., Spain Salerno, Italy Bihar, India What Happened? Train crashed in the Torro Tunnel. Passengers suffocated when train stalled in tunnel. Train plunged off of a bridge into the river; India’s deadliest rail disaster ever. Deaths 500 521 800
One of the most unusual disasters ever occurred in Boston on January 15, 1919. A giant steel vat holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses ruptured. Thirty-foot waves of the gooey substance flooded the streets, killing 21 people and injuring 150.
66
DISASTERS
Lusitania disaster Date April 14, 1912 May 7, 1915 Jan. 30, 1945 Location near Newfoundland Atlantic Ocean, near Ireland Baltic Sea
Ship Disasters
What Happened? Luxury liner Titanic collided with iceberg. British steamer Lusitania torpedoed and sunk by German submarine. Liner Wilhelm Gustloff carrying German refugees and soldiers sunk by Soviet sub. Highest death toll for a single ship. Explosions sank Russian submarine Kursk; multiple rescue attempts failed. Senegalese ferry capsized. Egyptian ferry returning from Saudi Arabia sank after fire broke out onboard. Deaths 1,503 1,198 6,000 7,000 118 1,863 1,000
Aug. 12, 2000 Sept. 26, 2002 Feb. 3, 2006
Barents Sea Atlantic Ocean near The Gambia Red Sea
Other Disasters
Date Aug. 1931 1984 April 1986 Location China Africa (chiefly Ethiopia) Chernobyl, USSR (now Ukraine) What Happened? Vast flooding on the Huang He River. Highest known death toll from a flood. Several years of severe drought caused one of the worst modern famines. Explosions at a nuclear power plant leaked radioactive material. 135,000 people were exposed to harmful levels of radiation. A severe summer heat wave swept across Europe. More than 14,000 died in France alone. Landslide on Leyte Island buries a village. Deaths 3,700,000 800,000 31
Summer 2003
Europe
35,000
Feb. 2006
The Philippines
1,000
One of the worst snowstorms in U.S. history happened March 1114, 1888, just a week before the first day of spring. Much of the northeastern U.S. was buried in up to four feet of snow, with towering snowdrifts up to 30 feet high! At least 400 people died in the “Great White Hurricane,” many of them in New York City. People were stranded by blocked streets, huge drifts, and powerless streetcars. There was no way to bring food or supplies into the city. 67
