Disasters Events

The magnitude of the earthquake was 6.9 on the Richter scale. This was the second large earthquake in the area in 1998 after another earthquake on February 4. Approximately 4,000-4,500 pe...

About 6 km before the location of the accident, the tyre broke, but did not cause a derailment yet. About 200 m before the bridge, the tyre was caught in the flange guide of a switch, whi...

Swissair Flight 111 (SR-111, SWR-111) was a Swissair McDonnell Douglas MD-11 on a scheduled airline flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, United States to Co...

On October 18, 1998 a pipeline explosion occurred in the community of Jesse, 290 kilometres southeast of Lagos, Nigeria. The cause of the blast has been debated. The Nigerian government s...

Hurricane Mitch was the most powerful hurricane of the 1998 Atlantic hurricane season, with maximum sustained winds of 180 mph (285 km/h). The storm was the thirteenth tropical storm, nin...

On the evening of October 29 1998, a fire developed in the premises of the Macedonian Association in Gothenburg Sweden. On the evening of the fire, it was estimated that the number of pe...

Thai Flight 261 left Bangkok at 17:40 for a 1:55min flight to Surat Thani. Weather in the Surat Thani area was poor with limited visibility and heavy rainfall. The Airbus was on it's thir...

In Chongqing alone 1,600 people have died as a result of shoddy construction. Forty people died after falling 460 feet when the steel-and-concrete Rainbow Bridge over the Qijang River nea...

In February 1999, a catastrophic avalanche at Galtür in Austria claimed 31 lives. Over the next six months, Horizon followed a team of scientists as they pieced together the extraordinary...

The Izmit earthquake occurred at 00:01:39 UTC (3:01 a.m. local time), and was centered at 40.74 N., 29.86 E., which places the epicenter about 11 kilometers, or seven miles, southeast of ...

The 1999 Athens earthquake, registering a moment magnitude of 6.0, occurred on September 7, 1999, at 2:56:50 pm local time and lasted approximately 15 seconds. The tremor was epicentered ...

A large and damaging earthquake occurred in the northwest region of Taiwan at 17:47 GMT on September 20, 1999 (01:47 AM on September 21 Taiwan Time). Preliminary location is in Nantou Cou...

October 29, 1999, saw cyclonic storms with winds of 200 km per hour ripping through India’s eastern coast. Orissa, like many times in the past, was at the receiving end of nature’s fury. ...

EgyptAir Flight 990 (MSR990) was a regularly-scheduled Los Angeles-New York-Cairo flight. On October 31, 1999, at around 01:50 EST, Flight 990 plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean, about 60 ...

In mid-December 1999, after several days of ever-increasing rains pouring over the Central Mountain Range and the piedmont within the span of 24 hours along the coastline for about 45 km....

The 2000 Mozambique flood was a natural disaster that occurred in February and March 2000. The catastrophic flooding was caused by heavy rainfall that lasted for five weeks and made many ...

S.E. Fireworks, a company that stores fireworks articles, is located in the middle of the working class housing estate of Mekkelholt in the northern Dutch city of Enschede. On 13 May 2000...

On July 14, 2000 at approximately 7:00 PM an F3 tornado tore through the Green Acres Campground at Pine Lake in central Alberta killing 12 people and critically injuring more than 100 oth...

It was a year ago that the Russian nuclear powered submarine, the Kursk, sank with all of its 118 crew. The cause of the accident has yet to be established and amidst the controversy w...

The tower caught fire on August 27, 2000, killing three people. In addition, television and radio signals were disrupted around Moscow. The fire broke out at a height of about 458 m (1,50...

The USS Cole bombing was a suicide attack against the United States Navy destroyer USS Cole on October 12, 2000, while it was harbored and refueled in the Yemen port of Aden. Seventeen Am...

On the morning of 11 November 2000, 167 men, women and children boarded a funicular train that should have taken them to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier. But 155 of them died in the blaze, i...

At 14:22:05 UTC, the 6.6 quake struck with the epicentre at 15 miles (30 km) E of San Salvador, El Salvador (13.67N 88.93W) at the depth of 10 km. At least 315 people were killed, 3,399 i...

The 116-year-old metal bridge at Entre-os-Rios linked the towns of Castelo de Paiva and Penafiel in Portugal. One Sunday evening, 4 March, a bus with locals on excursion and two cars were...

The 2001 Avjet Aspen crash occurred on March 29, 2001 when a chartered Avjet Corporation Gulfstream III business jet, registration N303GA, crashed into terrain while on instrument approac...

ON this day in 2001 fans of the Orlando Pirates and Kaiser Chiefs gathered excitedly for a match between the two rivals – the biggest derby game in South Africa – at the Ellis Park Stadiu...

Allison originated off the coast of Africa on May 21. For the next two weeks it moved across the Atlantic, into the Caribbean and then along the Mexican coast. By the morning of June 6, t...

At least 43 persons were killed and more than 230 injured when eight bogies of the Madras-bound Mangalore Mail derailed over a bridge with four of them plunging into the swollen Kadalundi...

The fire, which broke out at around 1 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2001, on a stairway between the third and fourth floors after an explosion, ripped through the building. Police believe the death...

American Airlines Flight 77 was the third flight hijacked as part of the September 11 attacks, and it was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon. The scheduled U.S. domestic flight from W...

This was one of those events where I remembered exactly where I was and what I was doing. I had arrived at my office at 541 N. Fairbanks in Chicago when my wife called to tell me that a p...

Four loaded barges crashed into the Queen Isabella Causeway (Texas' longest bridge) taking out a 240 foot section of the bridge. The Brown Water V tug and its barges crashed into one of ...

A huge explosion ripped through AZF (Azote de France) fertiliser factory in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Toulouse, southwest of France, at 10:15 am, last Friday 21 September 200...

On 18 October 2001, a small, unnamed 19.5m by 4m Indonesian fishing boat departed Bandar Lampung, Indonesia, with 421 passengers onboard. On the 19th, the boat sank during a storm in Indo...

"It's clear that the plane did come down very much in a straight level, which was horrible for that particular site, but minimized what could have happened had the plane glided across the ..." —Former New York Gov. George Pataki

The death toll from a Nigerian armory explosion topped 1,000 today. There were signs that a police mutiny was ending, but there was also ethnic rioting in a Lagos suburb. The search co...

Eleven seconds after the call on the emergency frequency, the second officer reported to the Tower controller that they were on the circle approach. At 11:20:17 the captain took over cont...

China Airlines Flight 611 was a Boeing 747 on a regular scheduled flight from Chiang Kai Shek International Airport in Taoyuan to Chek Lap Kok International Airport in Hong Kong on 25 May...

Tanzanian rescue crews labored on Tuesday to recover victims of a train crash that killed at least 200 people and authorities promised an inquiry amid worries the death toll could mount f...

The Kolka-Karmadon rock-ice slide occurred on the northern slope of the Kazbek massif in North Ossetia, Russia on September 20, 2002 following a partial collapse of the Kolka Glacier. It ...

State media said 120 people were injured in the fire which began at 1:15 p.m. local time (0615 GMT) on Tuesday. Initial reports indicated it may have been sparked by a short-circuit in th...

The oil spill from the tanker Prestige, which sank off Spain in November 2002, has been far worse than previously claimed, the Spanish government has disclosed. Environmentalists are now ...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a respiratory disease in humans which is caused by the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV). There has been one near pandemic to date, between the months of No...

The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, resul...

The E2 nightclub stampede occurred on February 17, 2003, at the E2 nightclub located above the Epitome Chicago restaurant in Chicago, Illinois, in which 21 people died and more than 50 we...

The Daegu subway fire of February 18, 2003 killed at least 198 people and injured at least 147. An arsonist set fire to a train stopped at the Jungangno Station of the Daegu Metropolitan ...

The 284 members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard and 18 crew members on the plane were confirmed dead -- making the crash Iran's worst ever and one of the highest death tolls in avia...

The Station nightclub fire occurred beginning at 11:07 PM EST, on Thursday, February 20, 2003, at The Station, a glam metal and rock n roll themed nightclub located in West Warwick, Rhode...

Neither Europeans, nor people around the world, can erase the memory of the thousands of people who lost their lives in the worst weather disaster to hit the region in centuries. From Fra...

Between August 3 and August 13, temperatures regularly exceeded 40 C (104 F), TF1 reported. Typically, the temperature in August in Paris is around 23 C (75 F). August is typically the...