Talk:List of natural disasters by death toll

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At least one dissaster missing[edit]

I don't see 2008 Sichuan earthquake in the list "Deadliest natural disasters by year excluding epidemics and famines", even though its death toll has topped 80,000+. How reliable is this list ? Encyclopaedia (talk) 15:47, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

ok there is a lot of errors on this list, but that isn't one. Cyclone Nargis claimed around 138,000 lives, so it's deadlier PakistinianHurricane (talk) 16:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Covid pandemic is over in 2023? I don't think so[edit]

On 5 May 2023, more than three years into the pandemic, the WHO Emergency Committee on COVID-19 recommended to the Director-General, who accepted the recommendation, that given the disease was by now well established and ongoing, it no longer fit the definition of a PHEIC. This does not mean the pandemic itself is over, but the global emergency it caused is – for now. A review committee will be established to develop long-term, standing recommendations for countries on how to manage COVID-19 on an ongoing basis.

https://www.who.int/europe/emergencies/situations/covid-19 Roelgrif (talk) 12:19, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And:

https://themessenger.com/health/covid-pandemic-who-cdc-russia-world-health-organization — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roelgrif (talk • contribs) 01:19, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]


Compare this with HIV which is marked as ongoing, I don't think covid is that much different in this respect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roelgrif (talk • contribs) 12:20, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Errors[edit]

A lot of people are saying this, but there are several errors, mainly things I noticed in the deadliest disaster per year section. There are a lot of fairly minor errors, but here are some of the more important ones to correct, I think:

1. The 1913 Yunnan Earthquake has an article. It is referred to as the 1913 Eshan Earthquake in its article, but they are the same quake. 2. The 1917 Guatemalan Earthquakes do not belong on the list. Plain and simple, they spanned into 1918, which automatically means they don't count. 3. The 1919 Kelud Mudflow, which claimed 5,000 lives, is the real deadliest natural disaster of 1919 4. The 1935 Yangtze Flood, which claimed 145,000 lives, is the real deadliest natural disaster of 1935 5. The Khait Landslide, which claimed anywhere from 5,000 - 28,000 lives, is the real deadliest natural disaster of 1949. This is a strange one though, as it was caused by the 1949 Khait Earthquake, which, according to its article, only claimed 7,200 lives. I don't know which one would actually belong, but one of these should be in place of the 1949 Eastern Guatemalan Floods 6. The 1957 Sangchal Earthquake, which claimed 1,500 lives, is the real deadliest natural disaster of 1957 7. The 1966 Xingtai Earthquakes, which claimed 8,064 lives, are the real deadliest natural disaster of 1966 8. There is no source that says that the so called "Hanoi and Red River Delta Flood" exclusively occurred on August 1, 1971 9. The Armero Tragedy is the deadliest natural disaster of 1985. The 1985 Bangladesh Cyclone has no place on this list 10. The 2002 Hindu Kush Earthquakes, which claimed a total of 1,366 lives (166 on March 3, 1,200 on March 25), are the real deadliest natural disaster of 2002


I was originally going to say that Cyclone Idai (Might be ldai, I can't tell) should be removed from 2019, until I saw another topic mention how controversial heat waves are, so I guess that one can stay. There are more errors on this list, but those are the most important ones to correct, although I think the most pressing ones are number 1 and number 9. PakistinianHurricane (talk) 17:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Starting with number 5, as the event I know most about, having created the earthquake article, the numbers are not clear. Yablokov reports 28,000 according to "local survivors", whereas Evans et al. did a detailed analysis of probable population numbers before the earthquake to do a sense check on the reported casualties. They came up with a total of 7,200 for all landslide related fatalities. More recently Havenith et al. (2015) in their Tien Shan geohazards database give ">20,000 (Likely >50% killed by landslides)" in their Table 1, but in the text say that the landslides "are likely to have killed more than 10,000 people", which I suppose is consistent, if a little confusing. I'm not sure if any of this helps other than to illustrate the problem. Evans et al. noted that to get the higher figures, the villages in 1949 must have had higher population densities than they do now, which they consider unlikely. The earthquake article includes the full range and the landslide article also gives the lower number specifically for the Khait landslide from Evans et al., so the articles don't really contradict each other, it all depends which headline number you go for. Mikenorton (talk) 22:14, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 1 Fixed the article name in the table and linked it.
  • 2 I'm checking around with catalogues, but on what I've found, not a good candidate, agreed.
  • 3, 4, 6, 7 & 10 Agreed.
  • 8 Entries without their own article really need a supporting citation.
  • 9 There can only be one deadliest event - I've removed the Bangladesh cyclone. Mikenorton (talk) 22:49, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 2 - I've looked for a replacement for the 1917 Guatemala earthquakes and the only candidate that I've found is the 1917 Yunnan earthquake, which doesn't have its own article and isn't even in the List of earthquakes in China - this source has the details, although probably not quite enough to write an article, but sufficient to add it to the China list and the List of 20th-century earthquakes and this article. Mikenorton (talk) 21:46, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok an even bigger question, but what about the ones with ranges? what do I mean by that? well, the ones where the death toll is not certain. There's several on the list, a decent number, but one specific example is the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, which ranges from 6,000 - 8,000 (I think it's actually 12,000, will fix that). For some like it and the 1920 Haiyuan Earthquake and the 1931 China Floods, with other examples, this changes nothing. They still are the deadliest for their respective years, but there's a decent number more that I've found that depending on whether you go with the lowest or highest estimate, would or would not put it on the list. These are what I am referring to:
    1. For 1938, there's the 1938 New England Hurricane, which claimed anywhere from 682 - 800 lives. If we go off lowest, the 1938 Hanshin Flood is deadlier, with its 715. However if we go off of highest estimate, then it's the new deadliest
    2. For 1947, there's the 1947 Satipo Earthquake, which claimed anywhere from 233 - 2,233 lives, which puts Typhoon Kathleen's 1,077 right in the middle of the two estimates. I'm also mentioning how bizarre it is that here, the missing are not part of the dead (there's 853 for that one), when for the 1987 Ecuador Earthquakes, they are? Why is that?
    3. The 1960 Agadir Earthquake has 12,000 - 15,000, causing "Severe Cyclonic Storm Ten" with it's 14,174 to be sandwiched between it
    4. The 1972 Nicaragua Earthquake claimed 4,000 - 11,000 lives, compared to that year's Qir Earthquake having 5,374
    5. The 1974 Zhaotong Earthquake claimed 1,641 - 20,000, Hurricane Fifi-Orlene claimed 8,210
    6. While 1985 has been corrected, it's possible that there's still correcting to be done, as the 1985 Mexico City Earthquake claimed 5,000 - 45,000 compared to the Armero Tragedy's 23,000
    7. The Vargas Tragedy claimed 10,000 - 30,000, while the 1999 Izmit Earthquake claimed 18,373 (that one also has a slightly lower estimate, which I will add, although it's still higher than the lowest guess for the Vargas Tragedy)
    There's also some other stuff that I find odd about this list, but that I might ask about another day. I have said a lot, so for now, I'll just leave these here for questioning, as well as asking which of the two is deadlier, the possibility of not having Limnic Eruptions or Impact Events on here, and the possibility of adding Derecho events. PakistinianHurricane (talk) 22:46, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This has always been a problem. In a previous talk page response I referred to the 1703 Genroku earthquake which has "a lot of different casualty numbers from a variety of sources, although most are about 10,000, the higher figure of 100,000 seems likely to be a typo that has been copied from source to source. In the NOAA/NGDC database they use 5,233 although they mention one estimate of 200,000. The IISEE database gives 10,000. Other values that I've seen are 'more than 5,000', 37,000, 150,000, 100,000 and so on". So how to compare such an event with another that has a single casualty number? The highest numbers are not very likely so using 200,000 for that earthquake is not the answer, but I struggle to say what is. Mikenorton (talk) 13:23, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

General confusion[edit]

Ok so I have (mostly) fixed up the deadliest natural disaster per year section, but the rest of this article is equally messy. To start off with (and this is the main issue), but it never states anywhere whether it's ranked by lowest or highest estimates, and sometimes it seems to go by both. And that right there creates numerous issues:

First off, the avalanches list. I'm going to, for now, ignore the fact that many of the entries on that list do not appear on the (should be) much more comprehensive avalanches by death toll list. What I'm instead focusing on is the fact that the ranks are all messed up, depending on whether or not we're going by lowest or highest. Well ok for this list it seems to be the lowest, and the only complication that makes is with the White Friday Avalanches, which have a lowest of 2,000, which probably would not even put them on that list.

Right, earthquakes. So for now, I'm going to ignore the fact that the 1920 Haiyuan Earthquake death toll has been misnomered (like it always is), as fixing that would only add to the confusion right now.

I may have to explain this more, but no matter which order we go off of, the list is wrong.

If it's going off of lowest estimates, it looks like this, and I also believe that, going by lowest, some other entries would belong instead. I'm also guessing this is why the 1556 Earthquake is excluded, at least from that list. However this ranking of lowest estimates only includes the ten already featured (I also didn't bother formatting it in the exact same way, it hardly matters for this example)

1303 Hongdong Earthquake, 270,000 115 Antioch Earthquake, 260,000 1920 Haiyuan Earthquake, 258,707 - 273,407 (I need to fix this one) 526 Antioch Earthquake, 250,000 - 300,000 1976 Tangshan Earthquake, 242,769*- 655,000 1139 Ganja Earthquake, 230,000 - 300,000 1138 Aleppo Earthquake, 230,000 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami, 227,898 856 Damghan Earthquake, 200,000 2010 Haiti Earthquake, 100,000 - 316,000 1780 Tabriz Earthquake, 40,000 - 200,000

Now this hardly makes sense, does it? especially since there's the list that ranks the ten deadliest based off of highest estimates. However as I've already mentioned, this ranking (with some possible other additions) would match that of the avalanches, which are also ranked by lowest.

However now, if we go by highest, that one would look like this:

1976 Tanghsan Earthquake, 242,419(correct number)-655,000 2010 Haiti Earthquake, 100,000 - 316,000 526 Antioch Earthquake, 250,000 - 300,000 1139 Ganja Earthquake, 230,000 - 300,000 1920 Haiyuan Earthquake, 258,707 - 273,407 1303 Hongdong Earthquake, 270,000 115 Antioch Earthquake, 260,000 1138 Aleppo Earthquake, 230,000 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami, 227,898 856 Damghan Earthquake, 200,000 1780 Tabriz Earthquake, 40,000 - 200,000

I think what's really confusing me here is that the current list seems to be a weird combination of both. I'm just trying to figure out which way it should be.

The epidemics, famines and floods are all fine. Really, the only thing confusing me is that some of the entries for the floods are kind of suspicious to me. Heat waves, impact events and limnic eruptions are all good, although I'm not too sure if the latter two should even be here. For tornadoes, I feel like some other ones might belong on the list instead. The main one that comes to my mind right now is the 1974 Super Outbreak, with 319 deaths over the Natchez Tornado's 317. I feel like there might be some issues with the tropical cyclones list, but I can't fully figure them out. I think there may just be a few entries missing.

Now the tsunamis, unfortunately, are having the same issue as the earthquakes. However this one's also much harder to figure out, as, like with the avalanches, the death tolls are harder to determine due to many of them being associated with an earthquake. The wildfires are fine too, the only one that's confusing me is the 1825 Miramichi fire. that one may need to be fixed. and lastly, the winter storms are fine.

Ok maybe I exaggerated it a bit. Seemingly, the only ones with major issue are the earthquakes and tsunamis, but there is some other general confusion. I'm also going to mention how their individual articles have lots of other various entries that kind of confuse some of this.

Frankly, I just need to know if those lists are ranked by highest or lowest estimated death tolls. Once I know which is true, I can go from there. Also it's confusing me that some of them state the actual date(s) of the event, while others only state the year. Can we perhaps make that more consistent? PakistinianHurricane (talk) 19:15, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Major update[edit]

I don't have a whole lot to say here surprisingly. I am just declaring now that I am making a beyond major update to this article and numerous others, and that it may accidentally mess stuff up. Essentially, I am just trying to make this whole thing more consistent, as the inconsistencies here are beginning to drive me crazy. My sources for all of my corrections are the articles themselves, which may have wrong information, so I'm sorry if that happens. I was just saying it now, to give the people in charge or whatever some warning. PakistinianHurricane (talk) 16:25, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Should 1556 earthquake be on this list?[edit]

@Dilbaggg before you start accussing me of personally attacking you and then sending me a threat to my talk page, understand that I have about the same intentions as you to build and improve Wikipedia.

In the discussion regarding the earthquake's death toll on the article's talk page, Mikenorton and Lovewhatyoudo agreed to clarify the direct deaths as a result of the earthquake and the remaining estimates of those who migrated or died from plagues or famine.

The latter editor highlighted three sources by the CEA [1] [2] [3]; one clarifies that the direct deaths was only just over 100,000 while majority of the then cited 830,000 deaths/losses were not a direct result of the earthquake. On this bases which no editors have contested and both of them have agreed upon, the 1556 earthquake doesn't qualify to be on the list.

Would you like to add on further to dispute this claim? Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 10:19, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have the right to warn you because of your personal attack saying "I caused problematic edit" in edit summary which is WP:ASPERSIONS see WP:NPA, warning someone is not called threat, I even used the warning icon which is allowed in Wikipedia and the earthquake was removed without proper consensus it existed before like tis old edit [4], so as it was removed without conesnus it can be added back but it is to remove it that which requires consensus. And this list is based on the highest estimated death toll, every single entry on the list has dispute and contradiction, no one gives accurate figure this list ranks the 10 deadliest ones according to the highest death toll stated for them, other entry in the list lke the 1839 Inidan cyclone also has many sources disputing claims, attriobuting deaths to other causes but they are still in the list because we take intoi account what was the highest death toll figure stated for that specific disaster and for 1556 earthquake it was indeed 830000 the highest death toll given despite all contradictory claims (as with other ones). Anyway I am busy now as I said in your talk page but will help you fix it later, best wishes take care @Dora the Axe-plorer Dilbaggg (talk) 11:05, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As per WP:BRD, your edits would've caused controversy and that is problametic. Instead of a discussion you revert my restoration of the previous stable version and wrote unnecessary comments irrelevant to the interest of improving this list. My comments in the recent edits refer to your changes, not you personally so I don't see why are you dragging personal attacks into this. So accusing me would've constitude a threat as well, especially without proper basis.
In the first revert, I explained very clear you should have a discussion first before reintroducing. Your response was to revert; any reasonable person can be in my shoes and interpret your behavior was to be purely disruptive, hence the comments in my next revert. Then you proceed to tell me "I have edited this article way longer than you" ... yeah, that's not personally directing some kind of threat/attack at me. You cannot warn me then play victim while doing the exact same thing. I will push this out there as long as you are going to do that.
Wikipedia is an active project and things chane, you can't expect the list to remain stagnant; that being said I expected an editor to reinroduce that entry. To make myself extremely clear, I opened this new section to discuss about the inclusion of 1556 Shaanxi earthquake. I am aware that this list has a multitude of issues that have to be addressed and reintroducing the 1556 entry wouldn't be helpful considering the article's distinction of direct deaths. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 11:29, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok I do apologies for bring up I edited longer than you but thats because you mistakenly thought the entry was new, no it was actually old, and still it is not right to not WP:AGF and claim I did disruptive editing because I reintroduced something that always existed, and as I said, every entry has disputed death toll, like 1839 cyclone in India many claim a lot of deaths were from external factors, but still the highest figure 300,000 is what has been taken, same should be for 1556 earthquake highest figure attributed is 830,000 maybe a lot of deaths are for other reasons still many WP:RS say it is the highest death toll from iot, the other reason deaths applies to everything here, so why is 1556 earthquake solely targeted? Other disasters also have disputed figures attributing death tolls to other reasons like the 1976 earthquake (many sources say that only about a 100,000 died from the earthquake directly others were for different reason, its not an exclusive problem of 1556 one but everyone, we only count the highest foigure as with 1976 thats why "by highest estimated") but only the highest death toll counts and every WP:RS ranks 1556 earthquake highest, the highest death toll irrespective of the reason is 830,000 anyway you said you will wait for it to be reentered am cool with it, am currently busy sadly and wish you the best and yes we have the common interest of improving Wikipedia. Dilbaggg (talk) 11:41, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your explanation here. I will apologise as I interpreted your intentions as bad faith. Agreed the problem with this list is not exclusive to earthquakes. I haven't been working on this list long enough to know where is the best place to start ... now that we're disagreeing on Earthquakes, I'll have to look through that and see what improvements can be made. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 11:47, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok and sorry for any misconduct from my part, also whatever you do, be they direct or indirect, this list includes "the highest estimated death toll" for all disatsers and vast majority WP:RS ranks 1556 earthuake as the deadliest earthquake, 830000 may be inflated, may not be direct but its the highest figure attributed to it by most WP:RS. Dilbaggg (talk) 11:56, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus from the wider editing community is required to make a distinction and eventually decide how to approach the list. A Chinese journal and the China Earthquake Administration source has made the distinction between direct and indirect deaths/migration. They cannot be discredited. I would consider these sources which has scrutinised the death toll over a casual mention of 830K by a "reliable source". Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 12:03, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe my last comment for today, really need to go but I will say one thing please consider "highest estimated death toll" , distinctions and disputes exist for all disasters since dawn of time but we are naming by their highest death toll disregarding disputes just for this list which is a list by "highest estimated" death toll. Dilbaggg (talk) 12:11, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion will always be here, it's not running anywhere Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 12:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't particularly want to repeat everything that I said in the previous discussion on this topic. I'll just stick to saying that you do not have consensus for your proposed change. If you would like to open a formal WP:RFC, then fair enough, we'll see what the wider community thinks. Mikenorton (talk) 11:50, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Was a consensus reached on previous discussion? Just 2 or 3 editors are insufficient. So yes a formal consensus should have been reached before removing it, sadly am kinda busy atm but hope it gets fixed in future. Dilbaggg (talk) 11:58, 10 April 2024 (UTC) v[reply]
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