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Old 31-12-2004, 00:48   #20
simon simon is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: England
Posts: 401

I learned in an email today that one of my colleagues and several members of his family are believed to have been killed by the tsunami in Sri Lanka.

Early British coverage was obsessed about what had happened to British people, but that changed as the scale of the disaster unfolded. But relatively few British people are believed to have died, whereas over 1,000 Swedes are feared to have died.

At over 130,000 dead so far, this earthquake is clearly the worst natural disaster since the cyclone that killed 138,000 people in Bangladesh in 1991. It's also on the same scale as the 143,000 people that died in the Tokyo earthquake of 1923. It's obviously going to overtake them in terms of numbers killed.

About 200,000 people died in the Gansu earthquake of 1920 and another 200,000 in the Tsinghai earthquake of 1927.

The two biggest natural disasters of the 20th century were the 1970 cyclone that killed 300,000 to 500,000 people in Bangladesh and the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China that officially killed 242,000 people and unofficially is estimated to have killed 650,000 to 750,000.

The worst natural disasters in recorded history are the 1887 Yellow River flood which killed about 900,000 people and the 1556 Shansi earthquake also in China which killed 830,000 people. An earthquake in 1201 in Egypt and Syria may have killed over a million people.

What's unique about this disaster is not the loss of life, but its geographical spread. And because so many visitors were caught up in it, it's affected people around the world.

Last edited by simon; 31-12-2004 at 02:05.
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