Dark Clouds

Dark Clouds by Nikolas Noonan – Unsplash

10 of the Deadliest Natural Disasters that happened in the United Kingdom


 

The United Kingdom has a history of different types of disasters including incidences ranging from man-made disasters to natural disasters. Due to the geographical location of the UK, climate warming, rainfall intensity, and the rise in sea level, it is almost impossible to prevent incidences of natural disasters such as floods, storms, drought, heatwaves, and low temperatures from occurring.

Transportation accidents have also been given special attention over time. There have been catastrophic transportation accidents in the last decade including air crashes, sea accidents, and road crashes. Incidences of terrorism, massive fires, and oil explosions have also played an important role in the disaster environment of the UK. The following natural disasters are the deadliest of all time in the United States.

1. The Black Death

The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Afro-Eurasia from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the death of 75–200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.

Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas, but it can also take a secondary form where it is spread through person-to-person contact via aerosols causing septicaemic or pneumonic plagues. 

2. The Great Famine

Earthquake

Earthquake by Colin Lloyd – Unsplash

The Great Famine was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1849. During the Great Hunger, about 1 million people died and more than a million fled the country, causing the country’s population to fall by 20–25%, in some towns falling as much as 67% between 1841 and 1871. 

The proximate cause of the famine was a potato blight that infected potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, causing an additional 100,000 deaths outside Ireland and influencing much of the unrest in the widespread European Revolutions of 1848. 

3. Year Without a Summer 

The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C. Summer temperatures in Europe were the coldest on record between the years 1766 to 2000. This resulted in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.

Evidence suggests that the anomaly was predominantly a volcanic winter event caused by the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in April in the Dutch East Indies (known today as Indonesia. This eruption was the largest in at least 1,300 years after the hypothesized eruption causing the volcanic winter of 536 and was perhaps exacerbated by the 1814 eruption of Mayon in the Philippines. 

4. The Great Fire of London

Eruption of volcano

Eruption of a volcano by Marc Szeglat – Unsplash

The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of London from Sunday, 2 September to Thursday, 6 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief.

The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them very radical. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan which still exists today.

5. The Great Plague of London

The Great Plague of London, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. It happened within the centuries-long Second Pandemic, a period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics that originated in Central Asia in 1331 the first year of the Black Death, including related diseases such as pneumonic plague and septicemic plague, which lasted until 1750.

The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people—almost a quarter of London’s population in 18 months. The plague was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which is usually transmitted through the bite of a human flea or louse.

6. The Great storm of 1703 

Men pushing car through floods

Men pushing car through floods by Saikiran Kesari – Unsplash

The great storm of 1703 was a destructive extratropical cyclone that struck central and southern England on 26 November 1703. High winds caused 2,000 chimney stacks to collapse in London and damaged the New Forest, which lost 4,000 oaks. Ships were blown hundreds of miles off-course, and over 1,000 seamen died on the Goodwin Sands alone. 

News bulletins of casualties and damage were sold all over England – a novelty at that time. The Church of England declared that the storm was God’s vengeance for the sins of the nation. Daniel Defoe thought it was divine punishment for poor performance against Catholic armies in the War of the Spanish Succession.

7. The contaminated blood scandal 

The contaminated blood scandal in the United Kingdom arose when at least 3,891 people, most of whom suffered from haemophilia, became infected with hepatitis C of whom 1,243 were also infected with HIV, the virus that leads to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), as a result of receiving contaminated clotting factor products supplied by the National Health Service (NHS) in the 1970s and 1980s.

As of October 2017, there were at least 1,246 confirmed deaths in the UK of people who were killed by the use of contaminated factor VIII and factor IX clotting agents and the viruses they transmitted. Some have estimated that the total number of those who have died could be as high as 2,400 though exact figures are not known. 

8. The Great Smog of London

Earthquake and tsunami damage

Earthquake and tsunami damage by NOAA – Unsplash

The Great Smog of London was a severe air pollution event that affected London, England, in December 1952. A period of unusually cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants mostly arising from the use of coal to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 December 1952, then dispersed quickly when the weather changed.

Government medical reports in the weeks following the event estimated that up to 4,000 people had died as a direct result of the smog, and 100,000 more were made ill by the smog’s effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities may have been considerably greater, with estimates of between 10,000 and 12,000 deaths.

9. The 2003 European heatwave

The 2003 European heatwave led to what was, at the time, the hottest summer on record in Europe since at least 1540. France was hit especially hard. The heatwave led to health crises in several countries and combined with drought to create a crop shortfall in parts of Southern Europe. 

The peer-reviewed analysis places the European death toll at more than 70,000. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction estimated 72,000 deaths related to the event. The predominant heat was recorded in July and August, partly a result of the western European seasonal lag from the maritime influence of the Atlantic warm waters in combination with hot continental air and strong southerly winds.

10. Sweating sickness

Sweating sickness, also known as the sweats was a mysterious and contagious disease that struck England and later continental Europe in a series of epidemics beginning in 1485. The last outbreak occurred in 1551, after which the disease apparently vanished.

The onset of symptoms was sudden, with death often occurring within hours. Sweating sickness epidemics were unique compared to other disease outbreaks of the time: whereas other epidemics were typically urban and long-lasting, cases of sweating sickness spiked and receded very quickly, and heavily affected rural populations.

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