Businesses were flooded along the Texas coast and lost all of their vital technology such as computers, telephones, and other office equipment. This caused a huge burden on many businesses and some businesses were totally destroyed, which left many workers unemployed. Many homes were flooded from the storm surge that got as high as twenty feet. In one city alone, 3,382 out of 3,400 homes were totally destroyed due to flooding. This causes thousands of people to become homeless and displaced.
The fires that were a direct result from the main shock and the aftershocks were just as damaging because of the uncontrollable burning from ruptured gas lines. Over 30 fires destroyed more than 25,000 homes on 490 city blocks. Water mains were broken due to the quake which gave the fire department few resources to work with. The Navy contributed to putting out fires by running water lines and providing water to the city’s fire department for their steam engines. International assistance was extremely beneficial because a lot of money was raised and donated to the city for reconstruction.
Approximately25 million people died. Many cities were wiped out including the medieval cities Lamen and Thurgau. The Black Plague killed many but it affected England the most. They lost one third of there population. The church lost man power and impoverishment through not being able to cultivate their vast tracts of land.
The Influenza pandemic of 1918, better known as the Spanish flu, was the worst pandemic recorded in history to date. It infected nearly 500 million people worldwide even reaching remote locations from the Pacific Islands to the Artic, and was responsible for the deaths of anywhere from 50-100 million people which was about 5% of the world’s population at the time. (Incorporated, 2013) While the origins of this deadly virus remain unknown, it was first observed in Europe, America, and parts of Asia in 1918 spreading quickly to every part of the globe. Some speculate that it originated from a soldier who was a cook for the army stationed at Fort Riley. The virus would have probably been contracted from pork and swine viruses.
One account mentioned a dead human arm, which stuck out of the trench wall, and all the soldiers shook the hand as they walked by. Another disillusionment factor was that the soldiers had to share their living space with rats and lice. Rats were said to get as big as cats and lice were ludicrously out of hand. Most likely the worst part of the trenches was the occasional assault of various toxic gases. These gases tortured its victims for anywhere from 48 hours to a full 5 weeks before killing them.
In other cases, the algae blooms from eutrophication turn out to be incredibly toxic species (National Academy of Sciences 696). One particularly nasty algae is Pfiesteria piscicida which emits toxins that break down the skin of fish, causing bleeding and sores and ending in mass fish death (Howarth 39). In August 2005, a dairy farm in Western New York experienced a manure lagoon collapse, which resulted in 3 million gallons of manure funneling into the nearby Black River, where it killed as many as 250,000 fish, brought all recreation to a halt, and forced the city of
About 42 percent of the amount of Agent Orange that we used was devoted to crop destruction; the products of hours of hard work were demolished within seconds. Agent Orange caused many people to starve to death. It has been reported, by the New York Times, that the herbicide destroyed 75 percent of the rice crops. Because people’s homes and crops were being destroyed, they were left homeless and hungry on the
From the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, a series of plagues had come through and killed many people. The first wave alone killed 25 million people, or one third of the Western European population. This series of devastating epidemics created fear, gave rise to spiritual panic, and brought about concerns over exploitation. Europeans did not understand the cause of the plague, which made them fearful. You can see the fear in a letter from the schoolmaster at Deventer in 1484.
The Black Plague was one of the worst natural disaster in history. About one third of the population in Europe died. ("Fredrick F. Cartwright, p. 42") Cities were hit hard. Financial business was disrupted as debtors died and their creditors found themselves without recourse.
The black plague is a huge event in history for its effects . This plague is a disease that has killed about ⅓ of the population in the 14th century. There was a 90% mortality rate of the people that were affected from the black plague. The symptoms of the black plague was that the person gets a very high fever, starts to vomit, causes muscular pains, bleeding in the lungs, and mental illusory. Victims only lived about 2 to 4 days after getting the deadly disease.