What is the worst disaster to ever strike where you live?

[Leftnt Sharpe]

In recent memory: The police turning a blind eye to the large numbers of underage girls being effectively used as sex slaves, by gangs of (mostly) Muslim men.

Historically: I hear the Black Death was pretty bad.

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

Breivik shooting up Utøya and blowing up the government building...

 

[Joseph Harrison]

The Boston Marathon bombings, the Blizzard of '78 and I guess Hurricane Sandy.

 

[-Dragmire-]

1998 ice storm took out power for 2 weeks and caused quite a bit of damage/deaths. Everything outside looked pretty at least...

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

In my area, we go through the regular floods and tornado bits. The recent one in Oklahoma isn't too far away, but the Joplin Missouri tornado was within my home state.

Historically, I'm going with the earthquake of 1811. It apparently was severe enough that the Mississippi River flowed in reverse for about half-an-hour and the shockwaves were felt several states away. (It should be admitted that much of the distance the shockwave was able to go is because much of the central United States sits on limestone which is a marvelous conductor of compression waves.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811%E2%80%931812_New_Madrid_earthquakes

Captcha: watch out
What are you trying to tell me Cap!?!?

 

[triggrhappy94]

The big San Fran earthquake actually hit my town a lot harder.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I'm from Lethbridge, Ab, Canada and far as I know, it's the infamous flood of '95. Not a big deal as pretty much the entirety of the flood was isolated in the river bottom (think narrow valley), but half the city was cut off from the other half.

 

[Drago-Morph]

I live in Worcester, Massachussets, and back in the 50's we had one of the worst tornadoes in U.S. history; tore a path of destruction through a bunch of cities.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Someone on my street veered off the road to dodge a deer and knocked out the power for about six hours. The deer and my neighbor were fine.

Then there was this. A train that was full of potentially hazardous chemicals derailed, because it was speeding Unstoppable style.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2007/10/train_wrecks_in_painesville.html

Happened almost six years ago, school was cancelled. I went to McDonalds for lunch with my parents and sister and the news reporters were talking about Clinton.

Whatever.

 

[Lilani]

I live within about half an hour of Joplin, Missouri where they had that big tornado a few years ago. Slightly less recently, Missouri was affected by the most powerful known earthquake in US history, at the New Madrid fault. It was so powerful, it made parts of the Mississippi river flowed backwards. There weren't many deaths because there weren't many people living back then (it was sometime in the 1800s, like 1860 I think) and buildings weren't that tall, but now there's a lot of people and building so the next time something like that strikes it'll be pretty bad. And I hear that fault line is due, apparently it has big quakes about every 150 years. So yay for that.

 

[TallanKhan]

I live in the southeast of the UK and other than an "earthquake" that only managed to topple a couple of chimney pots and set off a dozen car alarms a few years back nothing destructive has happened in my town since it was bombed during the second world war.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

The worst EVER ?
Well I'm living in Greece and from what I know the worst disaster ever nationwide was the explosion of the Thera volcano in ancient times. Historians and geologists said that not only it created a tsunami that destroyed the Minoan Empire,but that its smoke also reached Egypt and was considered one of the "Wounds of the Pharao" or something.

Santorini Island Complex. Santorini is the name for a total of 3 land masses. These land masses are made of solid lava. The circular shape of the two islands form the caldera of the Thera volcano,while most of its mass remains under the sea.


More localy,in Athens,the worst disaster has to be German Occupation.
Nazis took over of Greece's farms and stole the food and send it back to Germany to feed Germans,and they let Greeks on their own fate without food. People living in the country where growing hidden vestibles,but in a large city like Athens was,there was no room for crops,hidden or obvious. So Athenians started dying from starvation. People would collapse and die as they would walk on the street,inside public transport,everywhere.If you lived in Athens at that time you would see dead people in every corner of the street,every day,all dying by starvation. Total number of Greek people that died from starvation was multiple times more than the number of Greeks who actually died fighting the Axis.

"Mother of Occupation" Memorial statue,depicting what the sculptist saw one day during the occupation. The mother had died from starvation,but her living child was still breastfeeding from its mother's corpse.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

My worst was a 100 degree heat wave.

You mean fahreneits ? That equals to 37 Celcius!
LOL that's so usual for every summer where I live.
The hottest heatwave I lived though,was an extreme 48 Celcius! o_0 (114.8F)
That day tv channels where suggesting people to not get outside their homes if its not absolutely necessary and always carry a bottle of water with them.