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There is a HUGE desert forming in the arable region of China... and it's happening RIGHT NOW.
Too bad your leaders and the media fail to inform the public of the devastation, hunger and economic collapse now facing China.
Guess they thing were babies and can't deal with reality... or maybe they don't want you to know the truth... or possibly they want us to not go into panic mode.... who knows why this isn't generally known.
San Francisco Earthquake, 1906
Dust Bowl, Great Plains, 1930's?
Loma Prieta Earthquake, 1989
Northridge Earthquake, 1994
Hurican Katrina, 2005
Other huricanes: Andrew, Hugo, Camille, Rita, etc
Xiena tornado, late 19th century
California Wildfires and/or mudslides pretty much every single year
Save Katrina, there is usually tremendous response from the local and federal governments. Maybe that's why you don't consider them to be on the same par, but they are. We tend to handle them very well.
It should also be noted that a great number of poorer countries are situated along some very active fault lines. Note: The meeting points of tectonic plates.
I remember that blizzard. The reason it was such a disaster and caused several people to die is because it was not predicted and nobody prepared for it. The weather people had said to expect just a normal snowfall which in Chicago means 2 to 4 inches. Then it snowed like 2 feet in a short time and people were caught out in it and without food. It was terrible. If folks had been properly warned as to what was coming they would have went home and got ready.
It's not that I don't know about natural disasters that have occurred in my lifetime. Since I grew up on the Gulf Coast, I am well aware of the hurricanes that have threatened us. Hurricane Celia (1970) was the one that I remember the most. Even so, I don't consider that to be of the same level of destruction of the ones that I have seen affect the third world. I just wanted to see what the responses would be from other ppl. How come we never hear about destruction in Europe for example?
I apologize if I seem harsh. Your title:Has there ever been a HUGE natural disaster in a 1st or 2nd world country? , led me to believe you asked a question without any research.
Your responce makes me believe you have not done much research.
Third world countries can get hit with a heavy rain and experience devastating destruction. (sarcasm) Point is, it doesn't take much to destoy tin huts and such.
Big hurricanes, massive flooding, wildfires, landslides, tornados volcano eruptions, etc. happen all over the world all the time.
Interesting thread, everyone. My Grandmother witnessed the Big Quake in San Francisco (1906) as a 16-year old; I heard the story repeatedly in childhood.
As many others have suggested, the fact that disasters seem to target 'Third World' places is not the fact that 'God loves the First World'...it's mostly a matter of infrastucture. We here in the 'affluent' parts of te world simply build things with a lot more safeguards than elsewhere, by custom, and by code. Quake-proof buildings ride out things that would reduced unreinforced concrete block structures to a mass grave. Fire codes make 'manageable', fires that would consume whole city blocks in the Third World..etc etc etc.
Want to see this for yourself? It's easy....try 'Google Earth' or a similar site. Now zero on on any 'Western' city...New York, Spokane, Honolulu, Paris, Sydney...etc. Notice the aerial view of the 'street grid'. LOTS of wide streets...PLENTY of access to all areas...WIDE intersections, and zoning that segregates residences from industries. Almost every single structure is approachable by vehicle, such as an ambulance or fire truck.
Now google a 'Third World' city....Manila, Mumbai, Lagos, or Port-au-Prince. Notice that in HUGE areas of these cities, shacks are set wall-to-wall, for endless blocks. It's like one solid "sea" of roofs. Sometimes there's a narrow footpath between structures; many times there's not. Many buildings are perched on inaccessible hillsides or in gullies. It's easy to imagine the TOTAL disaster of fighting af fire, or riding out a typhoon, in places where you couldn't possibly get a rescue vehicle within 1000 feet of your goal, even if you HAD one.
Pretty interesting, and a view you couldn't get from the ground. It provides ample evidence why disasters seem to strike in poor, crowded places...mostly, because there's little defense against them.
Now..another question. Why do tornadoes ALWAYS hit trailer parks?...
Ask the people of Greensburg, Ks about that trailer park thing. There were no trailer parks there till the FEMA village sprang up after their May 4, 2007 tornado. That one changed direction twice before heading straight north toward them. The only reason the loss of life was so small was that people took the National Weather Service warning to heart and took cover before it got there. 10 minutes of warning can mean a lot.
I hear that there is a way that we will have at least some minutes warning about earth quakes but the cost will be prohibitive outside the US and unless we get straightened out we can't afford it.
It is certainly the fact that we don't have to wait days to get started cleaning up after natural disasters because we are close to them not days away that makes the media miss out on that fact.
How soon we forget, indeed, Kat. The other day I heard some people discussing how overdue people along the New Madrid faultline are for a serious earthquake. I am sure you know where that is but few her probably do although many of us live very near it. It is along the Mississippi in Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. There have been several minor tremors in the area in recent past years and it may have its "big one" before California breaks off and sinks slowly into the Pacific.
Your source brought up that little hot spell we had in the US in 1980. I remember that one very well since in my part of Kansas we had over 100 temps every day in June and seldom have 100s any more at all. Saying June only talks about one month but we had many more 100s in July, just not every day.
Normal temps for us are talking about when the first 100 day will come along and it is always late June to early July.
I remember the dirty 30s in Kansas also and that was a terrible time without AC like we had in 1980.
1800s New Madrid earthquake changed the course of the Mississippi river, made the Mississippi river run in reverse for a while, moved whole lakes, and rang church bells in Boston and other areas of the east coast.
New York had a blizzard so bad that people were forced to dig in the snow for frozen dead birds for food. Many people who died weren't found until the next thaw.
Ask Galveston, TX about hurricanes.
Ask communities along the major rivers about flooding.
Is it that the natural disasters happen in only 3rd world countries or is that all that we ever hear about? The only 1st world catastrophe that I can think of is New Orleans and Katrina, although it looked very third worldish on media reports.
1927 Mississippi River flood comes to mind as a "natural" disaster. 1994 ice storm through Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi as a "natural" disaster also comes to mine.
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