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Ahead of its landfall, a 35-foot (10.6 m) storm surge washed over the low-lying islands bordering the Bay of Bengal, causing widespread flooding. According to NOAA's Hurricane Research Division (opens in new tab), the storm's strongest wind speeds measured 130 mph (205 kph), making it the equivalent of a Category 4 major hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale. This tropical cyclone hit what is now Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) on Nov. (Image credit: Larry Burrows/Getty Images) Villagers walk through a field of dead cattle and search for rice and other grains to salvage, near Sonapur, East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), in the aftermath of the massive cyclone and accompanying tidal wave that slammed the area in November 1970. These disparities reflect the difficulty of counting deaths even in the modern era, not to mention the political wrangling that goes on over 'official' numbers. A 2010 study published in the journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival (opens in new tab) put the number at around 160,000 deaths, while the USGS claimed even lower numbers - around 100,000. Death toll estimates were all over the place initially, the government of Haiti estimated fatalities stood at 230,000 people, but in January 2011, officials revised that figure to 316,000. As many as 3 million people were affected by the quake. Haiti's standing as one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and its limited history of large earthquakes left it extremely vulnerable to damages and loss of life. 12, 2010, ranks as one of the three deadliest quakes of all time.

The catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti just northwest of Port-au-Prince on Jan. (Image credit: ERIKA SANTELICES/Getty Images) 14, 2010, after the devastating 7.0 earthquake that hit the country two days earlier. Rescuers carry a corpse just dug out from the rubble in Port-au-Prince, Jan. This storm is also believed to have killed an estimated 300,000 people. Tying the Coringa cyclone as the sixth deadliest natural disaster is the 1881 typhoon that hit the port city of Haiphong in northeastern Vietnam on October 8. About 20,000 ships and vessels were destroyed, along with the lives of an estimated 300,000 people. The hurricane's wind speeds and category are not known, as is the case for many storms that took place before the 20th century. 25, 1839, whipping up a storm surge of 40 feet (12 m), according to NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory Hurricane Research Division (opens in new tab). The Coringa cyclone made landfall at the port city of Coringa on India's Bay of Bengal on Nov. Here, village people try to repair the broken dam after the landfall of cyclone Amphan in Satkhira, a town on the Bay of Bengal, in spring 2020. People living on the Bay of Bengal are no stranger to natural disaster. The region's high deposits of loess soils (porous, silty sediment that's very unstable) triggered massive landslides which were responsible for over 30,000 of these deaths, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Landslides (opens in new tab). The USGS (opens in new tab) reported total casualties of 200,000, but according to a 2010 study (opens in new tab) by Chinese seismologists, the death toll could have been as high as 273,400. There are also discrepancies in the number of lives lost. It was reportedly a 7.8 on the Richter scale, however, China today claims it was of magnitude 8.5. 16, 1920, also rocked the neighboring Gansu and Shaanxi Provinces. The earthquake, which struck north central China's Haiyuan County on Dec. 'The Haiyuan earthquake was the largest quake recorded in China in the 20th century with the highest magnitude and intensity,' Deng Qidong, a geologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said during a seminar (opens in new tab) in 2010.

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Malalas attributed the disaster to the wrath of God and reported that fires destroyed everything in Antioch that the earthquake did not.Īccording to a 2007 paper in The Medieval History Journal (opens in new tab), the death toll was higher than it would have been at other times of the year because the city was full of tourists celebrating Ascension Day - the Christian feast that commemorates Jesus' ascension into heaven. Contemporary chronicler John Malalas wrote at the time that about 250,000 people died when the temblor hit the Byzantine Empire city (now Turkey and Syria) in May, 526. (Image credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Īs with all disasters occurring millenia ago, a precise death toll for the Antioch earthquake is hard to come by. 1890 drawing of the 'Approach to Antioch,' a center of early Christianity.