1987 Black Dragon Fire | |
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| Total costs | N/A |
| Deaths | 191 |
The Black Dragon fire, also known as the 1987 Daxing'anling wildfire (Chinese: 大兴安岭特大森林火灾) or the May 6 fire (Chinese: 5·6大火) was a major wildfire that began in the northeast Daxing'anling Prefecture, Heilongjiang, People's Republic of China on May 6, 1987. It also spread into the Soviet Union. The burning lasted almost a month, when it was finally stopped on June 2, 1987. The fire covered about 10,000 km2 (2,500,000 acres) of which 6,500 km2 (2,500 sq mi) was forest; it destroyed 7.3 million hectares (18 million acres) of forest, including one-sixth of China's entire timber reserves. About 266 people were wounded and 211 died in the fire leaving 50,000 homeless. It was one of the largest wildfires ever to occur, and the largest to strike China in over 300 years.
Source: Wikipedia 1257 Mount Samalas | |
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| Total costs | N/A |
| Deaths | 20000 |
In 1257, a catastrophic eruption occurred at the Samalas volcano on the Indonesian island of Lombok. The event had a probable Volcanic Explosivity Index of 7, making it one of the largest volcanic eruptions during the current Holocene epoch. It created eruption columns reaching tens of kilometres into the atmosphere and pyroclastic flows that buried much of Lombok and crossed the sea to reach the neighbouring island of Sumbawa. The flows destroyed human habitations, including the city of Pamatan, which was the capital of a kingdom on Lombok. Ash from the eruption fell as far as 340 kilometres (210 mi) away in Java; the volcano deposited more than 10 cubic kilometres (2.4 cu mi) of rocks and ash. The eruption was witnessed by people who recorded it on the Babad Lombok, a document written on palm leaves. It left behind a large caldera that contains Lake Segara Anak. Later volcanic activity created more volcanic centres in the caldera, including the Barujari cone, which remains active. The aerosols injected into the atmosphere reduced the solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, causing a volcanic winter and cooling the atmosphere for several years. This led to famines and crop failures in Europe and elsewhere, although the exact scale of the temperature anomalies and their consequences is still debated. The eruption may have helped trigger the Little Ice Age, a centuries-long cold period during the last thousand years. Before the site of the eruption was known, an examination of ice cores around the world had found a large spike in sulfate deposition around 1257, providing strong evidence of a large volcanic eruption having occurred somewhere in the world. In 2013, scientists linked the historical records about Mount Samalas to these spikes.
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