History's most lethal storms

Doris has just reminded us how lethal storms can be, causing deaths in Wolverhampton, Swindon and London, but mercifully it was much less deadly than other tempests in our history.

As my latest book Storm: Nature and Culture reveals, the worst storm ever to hit the UK was the Great Storm of November 1703 which claimed about 125 lives on land and perhaps 8,000 around our coasts, where many vessels, especially Royal Navy ships, were sunk.

The deadliest storm of all was probably what became known as the Bhola Cyclone which also struck in November, this time in 1970. The world has seen many stronger storms, but this one was particularly lethal because it hit the Bay of Bengal where the land was densely populated and just a few feet above sea level.

Estimates of the number of people killed go as high as a million. The cyclone also played a significant role in history. The land it struck was then East Pakistan, which was already longing for independence. The dilatory response of West Pakistan to the disaster was the final straw, and after a bloody civil war, East Pakistan became the new country of Bangladesh.

Are storms getting worse?

Most scientists now believe the world is warming up, with 15 of the hottest 16 years on record all happening since 2001; 2014 and 2015 both setting records as the hottest ever, and 2016 likely to surpass them both. Global warming would be expected to bring more powerful storms because it means more water evaporates into the air, and warmer air can hold more vapour so when it does rain, the downpours are heavier.

My new book, Storm: Nature and Culture describes how the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which seeks a consensus from the views of thousands of scientists all over the world, predicts that downpours and tropical storms will indeed get more powerful.

Global warming makes sea levels rise, so when storms whip up the oceans, they become even more devastating. And every day, there are 200,000 more humans – more people to be hurt, and more property to be damaged. Britain’s worst ever storm was the Great Storm of 1703, which killed about 8,000 on land and sea. A study found that if it happened again today, 18 million homes would be at risk.

The IPCC has warned that rising seas and more powerful storms could make a number of major cities, such as Mumbai, uninhabitable.

Storm: Nature and Culture also explores the role of storms in religion, art, films and literature, examines how storms have changed the course of history, and tells the story of the worst storms of all time.

Of disasters, gods and spirits

The court case against four Western tourists who stripped off at the top of a Malaysian sacred mountain has been given added spice by claims from a local politician that their action caused an earthquake that killed 18 people. His rationale was that they had angered the spirits of Mount Kinabalu.

It is easy to mock, and other Malaysian politicians have distanced themselves from linking the natural disaster to the tourists’ behaviour, but we should remember that the need to find some divine retribution behind the suffering inflicted by disasters is deep-seated, and was common in Britain until relatively recently.

After we were struck by the worst storm in our history in 1703, Queen Anne declared it was because God felt a ‘heavy displeasure’ at our wickedness. Even though thousands were killed, especially around our coasts, it was no good feeling sorry for ourselves, she said. We had behaved so badly, we were lucky the storm was not even worse.

When cholera struck in 1832, the British government announced a series of days of fasting and humiliation during which the nation would confess its sins and beg for God’s forgiveness. It did not halt the disease, which raged for another year and killed about 60,000 people.

Japanese earthquakes

We have seen some astonishing television pictures of a raging tsunami, but we still have no real idea of how many people may have been killed in Friday’s earthquake in Japan. The town of Rikuzentakada is almost completely underwater, while at the port of Minamisanriku, around 10,000 people are missing, though the authorities did manage to evacuate about 7,500.

Japan is no stranger to earthquakes. Back in 1703, Tokyo – then known as Edo – was devastated in a quake that killed an estimated 150,000 people, and there was a similar death toll in the one that struck the city just before noon on September 1, 1923.

Tokyo has always been a city of close-packed houses in narrow alleys, and in 1923 they were mainly built of wood and paper. Many families were cooking on open stoves, and when these fell over, they started fires all over the city, which then combined into furious conflagrations, which claimed more victims than the earthquake itself.

When the rebuilding began, there were suggestions that Japan’s capital should be moved to a new safer site, but people decided they wanted to go on living where they always had.

*I was interviewed about the earthquake on the BBC’s Three Counties Radio, and you can hear the interview via this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWbgV42j4Uc

Another great survivor

The story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivor Tsutomu Yamaguchi in yesterday’s blog reminded me of another astonishing escape during the Great Storm of November 27, 1703 – probably the worst in recorded history to hit the United Kingdom.

Up to 8,000 people, many of them sailors in the Royal Navy, are thought to have drowned around Britain’s coasts. One naval ship destroyed was the Mary. The only member of its crew of 273 to survive was Thomas Atikins, who managed to cling to a floating piece of wreckage until a huge wave picked him up and flung him onto the deck of another man o’ war, the Stirling Castle.

As she was grounded, he was flung overboard, but fell into the only boat that managed to float free from the ship, and reached the shore unconscious and suffering from exposure, but alive. Of the Stirling Castle's crew of 349, just 70 survived.

For the full story of the Great Storm, see A Disastrous History of Britain.

Great Tokyo earthquakes

Today is traditionally a day for looking back, so that’s what I’m going to do – 306 years in fact, to December 31, 1703. On that day, Tokyo, then known as Edo, was hit by an earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people.

Worse, though, was the tsunami that followed it. This hit the Boso Pensinsula and Sagami Bay, and some put the total death toll as high as 150,000. If this is accurate, it would make it the most deadly tsunami in history after the Boxing Day disaster of 2004.

220 years later, Tokyo would be hit by another fearsome earthquake on September 1, 1923. As devastating as the quake itself were the fires that swept through the city’s packed wooden houses as kitchen cooking braziers were knocked over.

The fires raged for days, and Tokyo lost more than 300,000 buildings. Its port Yokohama, 18 miles away, also suffered dreadfully, with the loss of 60,000 buildings. Altogether, 150,000 people were killed and nearly 2 million made homeless.