The 50 Most Famous Disaster Photographs

Image via Complex Original

1991 Mt. Pinatubo Eruption

Disaster: Volcano eruption

Photographer: Alberto Garcia

Year: 1991

Location: Mt. Pinatubo, Luzon, Philippines

Casualties: 800

This picture is straight out of a disaster movie, but don't be fooled, this isn't a Hollywood studio. It's a real vehicle running from the real eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. Eruptions went from small to large in over two weeks, culminating in several eruptions 13 or more miles high. The ash cloud left Luzon in total darkness and contributed to reducing the temperature of the entire Northern Hemisphere over the following years.

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The Good Friday Earthquake

Disaster: Earthquake/Avalanche

Photographer: USGS

Year: 1964

Location: Alaska, United States

Casualties: 143

The second largest recorded quake hit Alaska in 1964 at a magnitude of 9.2. Subsequent damage overturned the road, created power outages, and caused avalanches, which left a total of 143 dead. Aftershocks lasting over a year were powerful enough to sink fishing boats as far away as Louisiana.

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1920 Haiyuan Earthquake

Disaster: Earthquake

Year: 1920

Location: Haiyuan, China

Casualties: 236,000

The sheer amont of rubble in the photo shows how much damage was done to the region's structure alone; as for its people, this was the 2nd deadliest earthquake of the century and the 5th deadliest of all time. Aftershocks from the quake continued for 3 years.

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1976 Tangshan Earthquake

Disaster: Earthquake

Year: 1976

Location: Tangshan, China

Casualties: 250,000

The Chinese countryside was bent, dented, and up-heaved in the Great Tangshan earthquake of 1976. Its 7.8 magnitude isn't the largest recorded, but it was enough to take more lives than any other earthquake in the century, with almost a quarter million dead.

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2010 Kalapana Lava Disaster

Disaster: Lava

Photographer: Bruce Omori/EPA

Year: 2010

Location: Kalapana, Hawaii, United States

Lava has been slowly oozing through Kalapana, Hawaii, for about thirty years. Its residents choose to live there in full awareness that one day, their house will be engulfed in flames, like this one was in 2010. 

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The Cloquet Fire of 1918

Disaster: Wildfire

Year: 1918

Location: Cloquet, Minnesota, United States

Casualties: 453

The Cloquet fire of 1918 is the worst natural disaster in Minnesota history to date, killing 453 and injuring over 50,000 more (the town's population was only 9,000). It also caused $73 million in damages. In 1918 especially, this was an astronomical sum. It turned the region into a desolate wasteland, shown above, that better resembles an ancient ruin than a city that was standing only days prior. Eventually, the fire was blamed on flying sparks from trains igniting dry grass and wood along its tracks.

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Boston Molasses Spill

Disaster: Molasses flood

Year: 1919

Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Casualties: 21

In a bizarre twist of events, a storage tank holding over two million gallons of molasses broke and poured into the north end of Boston. The sticky ooze rose waist-deep in the streets. Rescuers walked in slow-motion to retrieve survivors, but it still crushed and smothered twenty-one victims. Take note that this is not your grandmother's molasses; the molasses stored in the tank, owned by the Purity Distilling Company, was used to make rum, ethanol, and ammunition. It was not rebuilt after the mishap.

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2010 Hungary Disaster

Disaster: Toxic

Photographer: AP/Bela Szandelszky

Year: 2010

Location: Hungary

Casualties: 10

Toxic red sludge blasted Hungary when a reservoir burst at an aluminum plant in 2010. The pressure was so strong that it overturned a car, moved it 100-feet, and lifted another vehicle onto a fence. People and animals were smothered and burned by the highly acidic and caustic waste.

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2010 Haiti Earthquake

Disaster: Earthquake

Year: 2010

Location: Haiti

Casualties: 316,000

The recent earthquake in Haiti caused catastrophic deaths and injuries, made a million citizens homeless, and left the country in shambles. The very poor suffered greatly, but not even the wealthy were spared, evidenced by the collapase of the National Palace, as if it had been made out of sugar cubes.

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The Great Smog

Disaster: Smog cloud

Year: 1952

Location: London, U.K.

Casualties: 12,000

The Great Smog was a period of severe air pollution that loomed over London. A specific series of weather patterns collected pollutants from coal burning and issued them back into the atmosphere. Because the city is typically gray and foggy, the poisonous clouds went unnoticed until thousands of people had already died. The haze was so thick that bus drivers had to walk in front of their vehicles so they wouldn't hit anything. I'm sure the tourists on board were not too happy that their view of Big Ben was obscured.

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1950 Alps Avalanches

Disaster: Winter of Terror

Year: 1950

Location: The Alps, Austria/Switzerland

Casualties: 265

The winter of 1950-1951 saw a record number of avalanches in the Swiss and Austrian Alps and became known as the Winter of Terror. On one extreme day, the Swiss town of Andermatt endured six avalanches and lost thirteen people in just one hour. The city of Vals, seen above, was buried.

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2010 Queensland Floods

Disaster: Flood

Photographer: Associated Press

Year: 2010

Location: Queensland, Australia

Casualties: 35

The floods that soaked Queensland, Australia, in 2010 have been described as "biblical." Almost the entire state was declared a disaster zone and its residents were forced to evacuate. This lonely wallaby was stranded on a haybail. Luckily, wallabies can swim.

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Cyclone Nargis

Disaster: Hurricane

Photographer: WFP/Eddie Gerald

Year: 2008

Location: Burma

Casualties: 138,000

That umbrella was top-tier protection against the second deadliest cyclone of all time.

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2007 Guatemala Sinkhole

Disaster: Sinkhole

Year:2007

Location: Guatemala City, Guatemala

Casualties: 3

Out of nowhere, a dozen homes in Guatemala City disappeared into a sinkhole thirty stories deep. The bodies of two teenagers and their father were found floating around in the sludge. The existence of sinkholes means that you are never safe, because no matter what, the earth can just open up and swallow you whole.

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2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

Disaster: Earthquake/Tsunami

Year: 2004

Location: Sumatra, Indonesia

Casualties: 250,000

The Indian Ocean tsunami, Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, and/or Boxing Day tsunami began with the 3rd-largest recorded earthquake by magnitude at 9.3. It is left to guess whether those people survived that wave behind them.

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The End of the World

Disaster: End of days

Year: 2012

Location: Everywhere

Casualties: Everyone

Ancient Mayans, Nostradamus, and radical Christians have all predicted 2012 as the end of days. By December 21st, the earth might collide with another planet or a black hole. It may reverse its polarity and cause epic storms and floods, or we may all burn in the hellfires of damnation (the righteous may or may not be lifted to heaven). In any case, it seems that photographs of the event will finally be irrelevant, as there will be no one left to see them. Get afraid, get prepared, or get down while you still can.

2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

Disaster: Tsunami/Earthquake

Photographer: Yomiuri Shimbun AFP/Getty Images

Year: 2011

Location: Tohoku, Japan

Casualties: 16,000

The 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake was the largest in Japan, and the accompanying tsunami ripped much of the island to shreds. Towns and cities were rearranged like children's blocks. The boat stacked on top of the house shows an incredible instance of the disruption.

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1998 Quebec Ice Storm

Disaster: Ice Storm

Year: 1998

Location: Quebec, Canada

Casualties: 35

Hard, unforgiving ice, not soft, powdery snow, battered Ontario, Quebec, and parts of New England in 1998. Electrical pylons were grotesquely bent and twisted in the storms, leaving millions without power for weeks.

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1938 Yellow River Flood

Disaster: Flood

Year: 1938

Location: Yellow River, China

Casualties: 500,000-900,000

Anything but a natural disaster, the Yellow River flood of 1938 has been called the largest act of environmental warfare ever. The Central Chinese government ordered and induced it by bombing dikes in the Yellow River as a strategy to keep Japanese troops from advancing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The tactic may have succeeded, but it took the lives of thousands of Chinese civilians, as well.

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1939 NYC Fire

Disaster: Fire

Photographer: Weegee

Year: 1939

Location: New York City, United States

Photographer Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, became famous for his disaster photography in New York City during the '30s and '40s. He built his portfolio of gritty urban scenes, particularly disasters, by listening in on a police radio and following their vehicles to emergency sites. He built a darkroom in his car so he could process his photos quickly and sell them to the media. As he became known for this process, crowds would gather at fires and wrecks to gawk at him as much as the emergency. This photo plainly shows a group of bystanders watching the photographer in action.

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2011 Sindh Floods

Disaster: Spiders

Photographer: Russell Watkins

Year: 2011

Location: Sindh, Pakistan

The 2011 floods in Pakistan drove creatures of all kinds up onto the ever-shrinking land masses. With nowhere else to go, millions of spiders made their homes in trees, covering them in webs like giant sticks of cotton candy.

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2011 Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Earthquake

Disaster: Earthquake

Photographer: Federico Grosso/Associated Press

Year: 2011

Location: Puyehue-Cordón Caulle, Chile

An earthquake on the Western coast of Chile caused an eruption from the long-dormant Puyehue volcano. Ash covered expansive areas of Chile and Argentina, creating a landscape that looks almost animated, as seen above. Within days the gigantic ash cloud had travelled as far as New Zealand.

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1991 Stampede at Mecca

Disaster: Stampede

Year: 1990

Location: Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Casualties: 1,426

The Hajj, the Islamic ritual pilgrimage to Mecca, has about 3,000,000 visitors to the city every year. As one might imagine, the crowds are dense and fervent. It is tragic but not uncommon for people to be crushed by their fellow worshippers in the tight crowds. One stampede in 1991 was the deadliest, passing through the Al-Ma'asim Tunnel. People panicked when the ventilation system went out, and 1,426 were trampled or suffocated in the hysteria.

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1971 North Vietnam Flood

Disaster: Flood

Photographer: B. Felton

Year: 1971

Location: Red River, North Vietnam

Casualties: 100,000

Because this epic flood occurred in the midst of the Vietnam War, few records or accounts were kept. However, damages to property and agriculture certainly exacerbated the existing devastation, additionally kiling 100,000 people.

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1989 San Francisco Earthquake

Disaster: Earthquake

Photographer: Otto Greule Jr.

Year: 1989

Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Casualties: 63

The Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants were matched up for the third game of the 1989 World Series, when one of America's worst earthquakes struck both of their hometowns. A section of the bridge that linked the cities also collapsed, and houses and buildings on both sides of the Bay were shaken so violently that they appeared melted. Media coverage of the baseball game meant that the quake was the first to be recorded on live television.

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Lake Nyos Outgassing

Disaster: Outgassing

Photographer: M.L. Tuttle, USGS

Year: 1986

Location: Lake Nyos, Cameroon

Casualties: 1,700

The deadly cloud of carbon dioxide that came over Cameroon in 1986 was undetectable until people and livestock began to fall dead around Lake Nyos. The lake sits atop a dormant volcano and emitted gasses built up over hundreds of years. The lake's once-blue water turned muddy red.

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The Armero Tragedy

Disaster: Volcano eruption

Photographer: Frank Fournier

Year: 1985

Location: Nevado Del Ruiz, Colombia

Casualties: 25,000

The Nevado Del Ruiz volcano's relatively small eruption in Colombia caused massive lahars (volcanic mudslides). Mud and debris traveled at highway speeds and flowed into the rivers, engulfing the town of Armero. This deeply disturbing image was taken of 13-year-old Omayra Sanchez, who died after being trapped in debris for 3 days. The shocking photo brought international attention and controversy to the event.

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1981 Winter Park Sinkhole

Disaster: Sinkhole

Year: 1981

Location: Winter Park, Florida, United States

The stuff of nightmares came true in Winter Park, Florida, when a friendly neighborhood corner simply gave way to a sink hole the size of a football field. It swallowed an entire two-story house, most of a car dealership, and a public pool. Investigators attempted to attribute the hole to instability caused by leaks from the pool, though the theory was never confirmed. The city has since turned the sinkhole into a man-made lake, Lake Rose.

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Mt. St. Helens Volano Eruption

Disaster: Volcano eruption

Photographer: USGS

Year: 1980

Location: Mt. St. Helens, Washington

Casualties: 57

The enormous Mt. St. Helens eruption spewed lava over 15 miles high in the air and spread ash over 11 of the United States. As far as 9 miles away from the mountain, the heat was intense enough to melt the dashboard of this truck into a strange, almost surrealist object.

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1948 Ashgabat Earthquake

Disaster: Earthquake

Year: 1948

Location: Ashgabat, Iran (Turkmen SSR)

Casualties: 110,000 - 176,000

Not much is known about the quake, nor are many photos available, as the Soviet Union censored such disasters in its records. What does remain shows a catastrophic scene. Imagine the earth splitting open in front of you, as in the picture above. It's been calculated that this earthquake is the 12th worst of all time. Casualties are estimated to be above 100,000, which was about 10% of the country's population at the time.

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1970 Mt. Huascaran Avalanche

Disaster: Avalanche

Year: 1970

Location: Mt. Huascaran, Peru

Casualties: 70,000

The epic 1970 avalanche that crashed down from the top of Mt. Huascaran in Peru occurred when huge areas of ice and snow were dislodged by the Ancash/Great Peruvian earthquake. The snow took the entire city of Yungay and its 20,000 residents in its clutches. Even the photo looks like a giant hand of ice smothering the city.

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1999 Vargas Floods

Disaster: Storm, floods, landslides

Photographer: Nicola Rocco

Year: 1999

Location: Vargas, Venezuela

Casualties: 20,000

Storms, floods, and landslides brought entire towns to their muddy burial under 10 feet of sludge. Whole houses were shoved out to sea in Venezuela.

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1960 Valdivia Earthquake

Disaster: Earthquake

Year: 1960

Location: Valdivia, Chile

Casualties: 2,200 - 6,000

Reaching a magnitude of 9.5 on the Richter scale, the Valdivia earthquake in 1960 was the largest to ever be recorded by a seismograph. It caused multiple tsunamis with waves over eighty feet high. One traveled more than 6,000 miles to wreak havoc on Hilo, Hawaii, as well. 

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1972 Iran Blizzard

Disaster: Blizzard

Year: 1972

Location: Iran

Casualties: 4,000

Little is known of what is believed to be the deadliest blizzard in history. It claimed the lives of entire villages, totaling 4,000 casualties under as much as 26 feet of snow.

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Superstorm

Disaster: Storm

Photographer: Getty Images

Year: 1993

Location: East Coast, United States

Casualties: 310

The Storm of the Century, or Superstorm, was a winter of record snows, winds, and waves along the East Coast. Over 200 people died in the snowstorms, 48 were lost at sea, and at least 18 houses dropped into the ocean on Long Island. This guy did not seem to grasp the gravity of the situation, shielding his head with only a pizza box, although desperate times do call for desperate measures.

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The Central China Flood

Disaster: Flood

Photographers: Charles and Anne Lindbergh

Year: 1931

Location: Central China

Casualties: 4,000,000

The Central China Flood is probably the deadliest natural disaster in history. The Yellow, Yangtze, and Huai rivers all flooded, resulting in up to 4 million deaths (in perspective, 4 million is the entire population of Los Angeles).

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The Bhola Cyclone

Disaster: Cyclone

Year: 1970

Location: Bangladesh

Casualties: 500,000

The Bhola cyclone over Bangladesh and India was both the deadliest cyclone ever and is still one of the worst recorded natural disasters. At first, the photo looks like a nice aerial view of a tropical island, until you notice the uprooted palm tree laying in the middle of the pond.

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Black Sunday Dust Storms

Disaster: Dust storms

Year: 1935

Location: Kansas, United States

Some twenty dust storms or "black blizzards" swept through the prairie lands of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas in just one day. Powerful winds carried ominous clouds of dust and soil all over the country, blocking the sun, and covering everything in up to six feet of black powder. That day, April 15, 1935, became known as Black Sunday. Because the sky turned dark midday, chickens on many farms thought it was night and went to sleep.

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The Great Kanto Earthquake

Disaster: Earthquake

Year: 1923

Location: Kanto, Japan

Casualties: 143,000

The Great Kanto earthquake rocked Japan one Saturday afternoon, causing thousands of terrible fatalities. People making lunch as the quake struck fell victim to huge fires when their stoves overturned. Others perished as they attempted to escape, their feet stuck in the melting tarmac. It also set off a long series of strange and terrible tragedies that further devastated a huge area of the island nation, including tsunamis, typhoons, and fire tornadoes — tornadoes with flaming columns. The photo above shows the gruesome damage after a fire whirl mercilessly plundered a refugee camp in Tokyo, killing almost 40,000 in one blow.

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Locust Swarm in Palestine

Disaster: Locust swarm

Photographer: The American Colony in Jerusalem

Year: 1915

Location: Palestine

Swarming locusts descended on Palestine for six months in 1915, devastating agriculture and causing food prices to soar. As part of a larger campaign to fight the invasion, Ottoman authorities asked photographers from the American Colony in Jerusalem to document the plague. The series of photos not only documented the disaster and its effects in the area, but resulted in a catalog of close-up portraits of the locusts for scientific study.

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Summer 2010 Heat Wave

Disaster: Heat wave

Year: 2010

Location: Northern Hemisphere

Casualties: 70,000

The summer of 2010 was the hottest on record all over the Northen Hemisphere. In some parts of Western Europe, it stayed a scorching 104 degrees through the night! The heat also caused fires all over. Smoke fills a usually-bustling tourist stret in Russia, leaving it desolate and apocalyptic. People wore masks to keep the smoke out of their lungs.

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Chandka Forest Elephant Rampage

Disaster: Elephant rampage

Year: 1972

Location: Chandka Forest, India

Casualties: 24

Harsh droughts and miserable heat waves hit India in 1972. Apart from the heat and hunger this caused residents, it also caused a herd of hungry, overheated, and enraged elephants to stampede through villages in the Chandka Forest. The maniacal beasts destroyed buildings and trampled 24 people to death.

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2010 Pakistan Flood

Disaster: Flood

Photographer: Reuters/Stringer

Year: 2010

Location: Singh, Pakistan

Casualties: 2,000

Had you asked this gentleman what he would bring with him on a desert island, he might not have answered "cows," but that's what he got when heavy monsoon rains flooded almost a fifth of Pakistan's land area in 2010. The old adage "water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink" found literal meaning as, during relief efforts, diseases like malaria, diarrhea, and cholera broke out due to a lack of clean drinking water.

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1912 NYC Fire

Disaster: Fire

Photographer: Irving Underhill

Year: 1912

Location: New York City, United States

Irving Underhill snapped this shot of firefighters hosing down a building that caught on fire in winter. The scorching fire and smoke meet the cold winter air and snow to create this eerie, overgrown effect.

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1991 Chittagong Cyclone

Disaster: Cyclone

Year: 1991

Location: Chittagong, Bangladesh

Casualties: 138,000

Just 20 years after the deadly Bhola Cyclone, Bangladesh was struck again. The shelters built during the previous disaster were useless to many residents, who didn't know where they were or didn't have time to get to them. Many were able to evacuate anyway, but still 138,000 people died. Two men in the photo climb the ruins that were once homes and businesses for 10 million displaced survivors.

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Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Disaster: Oil spill

Photographer: Tyrone Turner

Year: 2010

Location: Gulf Coast, United States

Though the disaster was man-made, the explosion of the ship Deepwater Horizon had severe impacts on nature in the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding areas. Water and wildlife were grossly contaminated as oily brown birds and oily brown waves came up on the shores of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida coastlines. It was the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. BP paid out nearly $5 billion for related damages.

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2008 Bangor Fire Tornado

Disaster: Fire tornado

Photographer: Simon Gray

Year: 2008

Location: Bangor, United Kingdom

"Fire tornado" sounds like something you made up when you were a kid playing with Transformers. However, these horrifying blazing tornadoes are all too real and are just as destructive as they sound. They are also called fire whirls or fire devils. They are rarely captured on film, so this hellish image of one from the UK is all the more special.

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Beebe Bird Rains

Disaster: Bird deaths

Year: 2011

Location: Beebe, Arkansas, United States

On New Year's Eve for two years in a row now, thousands of blackbirds have simply fallen from the sky over Beebe, Arkansas. The cause of this "bird rain" is unknown, though some biologists say that loud explosions spooked migrating birds and led them to fly aimlessly into buildings and trees. Some locals, however, see this bizarre, repeated occurrence as a sign of rapture.

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Hurricane Katrina

Disaster: Hurricane

Photographer: Mario Tama

Year: 2005

Location: Gulf Coast, United States

Casualties: 1,800

Seven years later, New Orleans is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, which displaced a huge portion of its residents. Its destruction was quick and thorough, ripping down many trees and buildings.

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The Titanic

Disaster: Shipwreck

Photographer: Ralph White

Year: 1912

Location: North Atlantic Ocean

Casualties: 1,517

2012 marks 100 years since the Titanic sank after striking an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on its voyage from England to New York. This somber photo was taken as a lifeboat approached the ship Carpathia, which rescued many survivors from the icy waters. In a sad ironic twist, the Carpathia also sank after being hit by a German U-boat in WWI.

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