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japan Tsunami
-On the evening of June 15, 1896, the northeast coast of Hondo, the main island of Japan, was struck by a great earthquake wave (tsunami), which was more destructive of life and property than any earthquake convulsion of this century in that empire
- A few survivors, who saw it advancing in the darkness, report its height as 80 to 100 feet. With a difference of but thirty minutes in time between the southern and northern points.
-Shallow water and outlying islands broke the force of the wave. -
earthquake fire-san francisco
-At 5:12 am a powerful earthquake centered just off the coast grabbed san francisco by the throat and neraly shook it to death.
-within an hour after earthquake shock of smoke in san francisco burning lurid tower visible hundred miles away.
-Like the second seismic shock wave,the quake sparked dozen of fires to life causing a second more powerful pulse of destruction. -
Big Burn
-The men who heroically fought the wildfire ripping through 3 million acres of Idaho and Montana, late in August 1910, were up against a formidable enemy.
- on Aug. 20, the forest exploded. A bizarre cold front with 75-mph winds came howling out of the west, feeding oxygen to hundreds of fires and merging them into one great inferno.
-As many as 4000 newly recruited firefighters camped in the woods, struggling to put them out. Hundreds more minor fires were simply left to burn. -
tri-state tornado
-The 1925 Tri-State Tornado rode a straight-line path for 3.5 hours across 219 miles of Missouri, southern Illinois and Indiana, making it the longest single tornado track anywhere in the world.
-While tornado forecasting was officially nonexistent, the weather bureau had been tracking a cold, low-pressure system that bent down from western Canada into Wyoming and all the way to the Oklahoma-Texas border before curving back towards southeastern Missouri.
-The tornado killed 37 of the town's 50 -
The new england hurrican
-on Sept. 21, 1938, as northeasterners buttoned their jackets from the chill of early fall, a hurricane brought the driving rain, battering salt spray and lethal winds of the tropics to landfall on Long Island, N.Y.
-The New England Hurricane of 1938 started out as an unremarkable tropical depression just off the west coast of Africa, south of the Cape Verde Islands.
-In 1938, it had been more than a century since such a powerful hurricane hit New England (in 1815). During normal summertime we
