The death toll in the Pakistan monsoon floods is now put at about 1,600. With perhaps 14 million people driven from their homes, and crops and animals being wiped out, it is rightly being seen as a major catastrophe.
However, this is not yet the deadliest monsoon flood in history. There have been at least ten over the last 40 years that have claimed more lives. The worst hit countries have been India and Bangladesh.
A monsoon flood in Bangladesh in 1974 is said to have killed nearly 29,000, though some of these may have perished in the famine that followed. It happened just two years after the country had won independence and less than four years after the deadliest cyclone in history had killed perhaps half a million of its people.
*The Croydon Guardian has written a piece on London’s Disasters. http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/8313593.Author_masters_London_s_disasters/
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