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 1772 Mount Papandayan | |
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| Total costs | N/A |
| Deaths | 2957 |
Mount Papandayan is a complex stratovolcano, located in Garut Regency, to the southeast of the city of Bandung in West Java, Indonesia. It is about 15 km to the southwest of the town of Garut. At the summit, there are four large craters which contain active fumarole fields. An eruption in 1772 caused the northeast flank to collapse producing a catastrophic debris avalanche that destroyed 40 villages and killed nearly 3,000 people. The eruption truncated the volcano into a broad shape with two peaks and a flat area 1.1 km wide with Alun-Alun crater in the middle, making the mountain appear as a twin volcano; one of the peaks is called Papandayan and the other Mount Puntang.Since 1772, only small phreatic eruptions were recorded before an explosive eruption that began in November 2002. More recently, the volcano has been quite active. On 13 August 2011 the volcano's early warning status was lifted from Level II, 'Vigilant' (Indonesian: Waspada) to Level III, 'Alert' (Siaga) following the swarm of long-period events, the increase of volcano tectonic earthquake rate, and an extremely high percentage (100%) of measured carbon dioxide gas in the ground at the summit crater. People, including tourists, were urged to remain at least 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) from the yellow craters on the 2,665-meter (8,743-foot) Mount Papandayan. On Friday 2 September 2011, the Indonesian Volcanology and Geophysical Disaster Mitigation Center reported that numerous shallow volcanic earthquakes had been recorded along with other indications of volcanic activity. A spokesperson for the Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency noted that if Mt Papandayan erupted, over 170,000 people living in five nearby subdistricts (kecamatan) and in twenty villages could be affected. Of the people likely to be affected, it was expected that perhaps as many as 11,500 people might need to be evacuated.
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