Is this one famous or obscure? I know it's well known in Boston, I don't know if younger people around the country are familiar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoanut_Grove_fire

I hadn't forgotten the fire--I just never knew about the extent of the casualties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_R...lkway_collapse

My college roommate was in a mechanical engineering class a year or two after this. Somebody in the class was whining that an exam should have been graded on the curve.

The professor said, "They probably graded the people who designed the Kansas City Hyatt on the curve."

The KC hotel lobby is another one where I remember the event, but not the numbers.

As I read the post, I'm thinking, "Yeah, I remember that...lobby, dance contest, crowded catwalks, faulty design...HOW MANY PEOPLE GOT KILLED????"

Either that, or 300+ casualties meant nothing to me when I was a kid, but it shakes me today.

I was on the road the night it happened. Every time the news came on the radio the body count was higher. It was chilling.

Anyone ever hear of the Peshtigo Fire?

http://www.rootsweb.com/~wioconto/Fire.htm
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=889



A witness account:

I don't know what possessed me to think of sewage

A sewage reservoir burst next to a village in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing at least four people and injuring 20 in a torrent of putrid water and waste that buried their homes, officials said.

Two children, aged one and two, were among the dead in Gaza's small Bedouin Village when the sewage overflowed in what one resident called a man-made tsunami.

"WAVES LIKE MOUNTAINS"

This one isn't that exciting , but my mom has told me about being awakened by the explosion when she was a kid.

The Roseburg (Oregon) Blast


On 7 August 1959, at approximately 1:00 am, the Gerretsen Building Supply Company caught fire. Firefighters soon arrived at the building, located near Oak and Pine street, to extinguish the fire. Earlier in the evening, a truck driver for the Pacific Powder Company, George Rutherford, had parked his explosives truck in front of the building, a fact which went unnoticed until shortly before the truck exploded, destroying buildings in an eight-block radius and severely damaging 30 more blocks.

The truck was loaded with two tons of dynamite and 4½ tons of the blasting agent nitro carbo nitrate. Rutherford had parked the truck after arranging his delivery for the following morning, despite warnings given to the Pacific Powder Company two days earlier not to leave such trucks unattended or park them in "congested areas." Fourteen people died in the blast and fire and 125 were injured. Damage was estimated at ten to twelve million dollars; the Powder company was eventually made to pay $1.2 million dollars in civil damages, but was acquitted of criminal wrongdoing.

Roseburg's downtown was rebuilt, primarily by businesses using money collected from insurance claims. The city built a new bridge over the South Umpqua River on parcels affected by the disaster. Since the incident, it is commonly referred to as the "Roseburg Blast" or simply "The Blast." In 2005, SOPTV produced a documentary examining the Blast and the experiences of those who were involved or witnessed it, entitled The Roseburg Blast: A Catastrophe and Its Heroes.

Not really a disaster, but this invasion by mice practically destroyed this one farm in Australia. Pretty disgusting. Mice world record

Also, wtf shout-out to daughter trying to eat one. LOL

Edit: Also the Tacoma Bridge collapse is pretty interesting. Who would've thought that solid concrete and metal could bend so easily? Tacoma Bridge

Not a Particularly large one in terms of numbers but as it happened in a small mining town and most of the victims were young children it’s still well remembered in Britain. There’s a horrible irony that while their fathers were working down the pit in what would be assumed to be some degree of dangers the children were in school seemingly safe.

THE ABERFAN DISASTER

Hey, 116 school kids get killed, don't apologize for "small" numbers.

Your post is exactly why I started this thread. How is it possible that I never heard of a tragedy where 116 little kids got killed?

Hey, remember this thread?

I thought of it when a random Wiki link led me to one that happened practically right in my back yard, that I had never heard of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemberton_Mill

I once had a job that was right across the canal from this place, and I never knew anything about it.

At approximately 5:00 a.m. on a workday, workers in nearby factories watched with horror as the Pemberton Mill buckled and then collapsed with a mighty crash.

Dozens were killed instantly and more than six hundred workers, many of them women and children, were trapped in the twisted ruins. As the winter sun not yet having risen, rescuers built bonfires to illuminate their efforts revealing "faces crushed beyond recognition, open wounds in which the bones showed through a paste of dried blood, brick dust, and shredded clothing."

Around 9:30 a.m., with many people still trapped in the twisted wreck of the factory, someone accidentally knocked over an oil lantern. Flames raced across the cotton waste and splintered wood — some of it soaked with oil. A few men slit their own throats rather than be consumed by the approaching flames; one of these was rescued but died from his self-inflicted wound. As the fire grew, rescuers, physicians, families of the trapped victims, and spectators were all driven back by the conflagration.[6] The screams coming from the ruins were soon silenced, leaving rescuers to eventually discover only the burned, smoldering remains of “brick, mortar and human bones … promiscuously mingled”.

Further research reveals that many were uninjured in the collapse, but trapped by the rubble. While they waited patiently to be rescued, the whole thing went up in flames in a flash, killing everyone still trapped.

What a way to go.

As an aside that I hope doesn't hijack the thread, I found a link that reports that the roof came down first, then the top floor gave way as the roof hit it, and each successive floor followed this pattern. I'm told that WTC Conspiracy Theorists don't think a building can collapse this way without the help of a controlled implosion. I thought they may find this story interesting.

Sinking of the Steamboat Sultana

On the Mississippi, near Memphis, Tennesses, on April 27, 1865, at the end of the American Civil War

1300-1800 dead ("official" 1,547 , compared to 1,517 for the Titanic ), mostly Union soldiers survivors of the Confederate Prison Camps at Andersonville and Cahawba.

I need to reread this thread in its entirety later tonight, but that Sultana one is always fascinating to me. I need to fully investigate it sometime. I'm sure there are books and documentaries (or whatever that would be called in this case).

Not sure how well known this one is, but it's a large dam burst near Los Angeles in the 1920's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Dam

This was what I immediately thought of when I saw this thread.. I saw it in some documentary a few years ago.

This was the one I opened this thread to post about

Really good thread idea.

Great thread that I hope gets perma-bumped. I'm a disaster buff, but this thread uncovered a couple I didn't know about.

Speaking of spree killers, here's one that (I think) killed more in a single day/incident than any of the ones we know about in the US...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Ar...cre_(Australia)

Staying with Australia, here an interesting one:

FTA:

"There were a number of people trapped in the train for hours after the accident by part of the bridge crushing a limb or torso; many of these people were conscious and lucid, talking to rescuers, but died of crush syndrome soon after the crushing weight was removed from their bodies due to the sudden release of muscle myoglobins having built up in the limb, causing renal failure. This resulted in changes to rescue procedures for these kinds of accidents."

Crush syndrome is often incorrectly referred to as toxic shock syndrome.

1889 Johnstown Flood near Pgh PA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood

The total death toll for the disaster was 2,209 dead. 99 entire families had died, including 396 children. 124 women and 198 men were left without their spouses, 98 children lost both parents. 777 victims (1 of every 3 bodies found) were never identified and rest in the Plot of the Unknown in Grandview Cemetery.

Some 57 minutes after the South Fork Dam collapsed, the flood hit Johnstown. The inhabitants of Johnstown were caught by surprise as the wall of water and debris bore down on the village, traveling at 40 miles per hour (64 km/h) and reaching a height of 60 feet (18 m) in places. Some, realizing the danger, tried to escape by running towards high ground. But most people were hit by the surging floodwater. Many people were crushed by pieces of debris, and others became caught in barbed wire from the wire factory upstream. Those who sought safety in attics, or managed to stay afloat on pieces of floating debris, waited hours for help to arrive.

Dude, the Johnstown flood is about as obscure as the Titanic.

I had no idea it was known outside of PA

Anyone else that read this thread routinely watch Air Emergency and
Seconds to Disaster.

I had never heard of it...

In non-ocean, non Brit/American influenced areas Titanic might be news.

Hells yes, although according to (once again), Wikipedia, Seconds to Disaster isn't being made anymore, and there's quite a few more episodes of Air Emergency (it's not a NatGeo exclusive and is called different things in different countries) than they are showing on NatGeo USA for some reason, as the reruns play on (I've had it on Tivo season pass for years).

It's Mayday in Canada and Air Crash Investigation in the UK and Oz. Produced in Canada.

David McCullough's first book brought this disaster into popular culture.

It doesn't really fit in here, because it was the consequence of WWII, but it amazes me how little known the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is in Germany. It is the maritime incident with the biggest loss of lives in history. Most of the ~9000 people that were killed were civilians, even though the Gustloff was considered a military target, as it carried military personel as well.