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1935 Yangtze Flood vs. 1916 Matheson fire -...
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1935 Yangtze Flood vs 1916 Matheson fire

1935 Yangtze Flood
1916 Matheson fire
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1935 Yangtze Flood

Total costsN/A
Deaths 145000

Informations

The 1935 Yangtze flood struck China during a decade of flooding, famine and social turmoil. It is considered to be the fifth deadliest flood in recorded history, with a death toll of 145,000 and displacement of millions. As a result of the flood, millions of survivors were faced with hardship due to displacement, injury, loss of property as well as food shortages and famine.Four years earlier in 1931, after three years of drought, both the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers experienced significant flooding. Known as the 1931 China Floods, they were considered to be the worst non-pandemic disaster of the century because of the millions of deaths they led to indirectly. With the 1935 floods following on so soon from the 1931 floods, flood relief infrastructure, which included drainage reservoirs and floodwater channels, was soon overwhelmed.The Yangtze River flooding primarily affected the provinces of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, all of which are located in the middle to lower reaches of the river.

Source: Wikipedia
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1916 Matheson fire

Total costsN/A
Deaths 223

Informations

The great Matheson Fire was a deadly forest fire that passed through the region surrounding the communities of Black River-Matheson and Iroquois Falls, Ontario, Canada, on July 29, 1916. As was common practice at the time, settlers cleared land using the slash-and-burn method. That summer, there was little rain, and the forests and underbrush burned easily. In the days leading up to July 29, several smaller fires that had been purposely set merged into a single large firestorm. It was huge; at times its front measured 64 kilometres (40 mi) across. The fire moved uncontrollably upon the towns of Porquis Junction, Iroquois Falls, Kelso, Nushka, Matheson, and Ramore, destroying them completely and causing extensive damage to Homer and Monteith. A separate fire burned in and around Cochrane. In all, the fires burned an area of approximately 2,000 square kilometres (490,000 acres). Because of forest fire smoke that had covered the region for several weeks and the absence of a forest fire monitoring service, there was almost no warning that the conflagration was upon the communities. Some people escaped on the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (now the Ontario Northland Railway), while others were saved by wading into the nearby Black River or one of the small lakes in the area. 223 people were killed according to the official estimate.The Matheson Fire led to the creation of the Forest Protection Branch of the Department of Lands, Forests, and Mines (now known as the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry) and the Forest Fires Prevention Act in Ontario.The great fires are the subject of the books Killer in the Bush by Michael Barnes, and Il pleuvait des oiseaux by Jocelyne Saucier.

Source: Wikipedia

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