The worst natural disaster ever happened in 1931 when the Yellow River and the Yangtze burst their
banks in China, flooding an area nearly as big as England. Up to 3.75 million
people lost their lives in the flood itself, then in the famine and disease
that swept through the country in its wake. The second deadliest natural
disaster ever was another flood of the Yellow River in 1887, which cost up to
2.5 million lives.
In
fact, the Yellow River burst its banks an estimated 1,500 times over three
millennia, to be given the name ‘China’s Sorrow’. Another of its floods in 1938 (pictured) cost the lives
of up to 800,000 people, but this was a man-made flood, as the Chinese
Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, ordered dykes to be blown up to slow the
advance of the invading Japanese army.
Floods come
in many shapes and sizes, and China was also the scene of the world’s deadliest
dam burst, with the collapse in 1975 of a number of Gerry-built structures
erected as part of Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward, at the cost of up to
230,000 lives.
We
usually think of rain causing floods, but the culprit in Peru in 1941 was a
heat wave. It caused a huge lump of ice to fall off a mountain into Lake
Palcacocha, making it overflow and sending a torrent racing through towns and
villages, drowning 7,000 people.
*For the full story, see my new
book, Flood: Nature and Culture
(Reaktion Books) ISBN 978 1 78023 196 9. It also includes chapters on how so
many religions have stories of apocalyptic floods, how floods have been portrayed
in literature, art and films, how some of the most ambitious structures ever
built by humans have been erected to protect against flooding, and how climate
change may now be making humanity more vulnerable than ever to the waters.
** Here's a review of the book. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-35616955.html
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