Disastrous events in your city's history

[davidals]

Another weather incident in Huntsville that has to be mentioned is the April 3rd, 1974 tornado event where two massive tornadoes followed almost an indentical path within 2 hours of each other and devastated the metro area. My family lived in the area at the time and my dad had a car sitting on his desk at work. Truly a once in a lifetime tornado outbreak (April 3, 1974) that may never be duplicated in any of our lifetimes.

You weather buffs in the Carolinas might want to google the March 28, 1984 tornado outbreak there which was easily one of the worst tornado outbreaks in Carolinas history.

[Tayfromcarolina]

Raleigh, NC has had more than it's fair share of disastrous events.

Hurricane Hazel Oct 1954 Winds gusted over 90 miles in Raleigh and hour in these intense hurricane that raced up the eastern seaboard. Wind gusts over 100 were recorded even as the storm entered Pennsylvania, and New York.

November 28, 1989 Tornado resulted in 2 fatalities and over 150 serious injuries. Was rated a rare F-4 tornado that cut a swath through North Raleigh and northeast through parts of Wake Forest.

Hurricane Fran Sept 5, 6 1996

Which struck at night, Resulted in almost complete power failure in the city. And the worst flooding in the history of the city as 10"-a foot of rain fell in one night. Wind gusts over 80 mph. Topples whole forest of trees including many historical trees downtown. And the City's largest mall "Crabtree Valley" was flooded.

January 26, 2000 Snow Storm

Dumped 2 feet of Snow on the City of Raleigh and Breaking Snowfall Records for many areas of the State of North Carolina. Snow fell as fast as 4" and hour at the height of the Storm. Raleigh Durham International Airport was closed a full 2 days. (First and Only time)

[Blazer85]

Birmingham, AL

The Cholera Epidemic of 1873

- The population at the start of 1873 was around 4,000 (remember, Birmingham was very very young at this point), but by 1875, the population had dropped to 1,200. Fortunately, the city was able to overcome the epidemic and by 1885, the population had exploded to around 25,000.

[tombarnes]

It's relatively minor as disasters go, but the Knickerbocker Theater crash in 1922 killed 98 people including my great grandparents. Most Washingtonians aren't old enough to remember the incident, but it was a roof collapse caused by a heavy snowfall. The snowstorm has since been known as the Knickerbocker Storm.

Wikipedia- Knickerbocker Storm

[Cadeho]

In addition to the remnants of Hurricane Gaston (it was upgraded after it was gone based on info) in 2004, the Civil War's Evacuation Fire, and Benedict Arnold's fire, there was also an Indian massacre in 1622 at the settlement south of the city known as Henricus, a devastating flood by the James River and Shockoe Creek in 1771 that nearly wiped out the town of Richmond (also the highest the river's ever risen), other big floods were caused by Hurricanes Camille (1969) and Agnes (1972), the Bread Riot at the end of the Civil War, the Church Hill C&O Tunnel collapse in 1925, killed several workers and buried a train, a tornado in 1951 that carved a path from Byrd Park through downtown to Jackson Ward, in 1961 there was a giant explosion along Main St caused by a tanker boat which ignited gas tanks near the river and destroyed a few blocks in the neighborhood of Fulton, and Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

[Trae]

Tropical Storm Allison and the Hurricane Rita evacuation.

[Mr Downtown]

Well disastrous events in Greensboro's history? ... July 23, 1972 ...... Thats the day I was born over at Moses Cone Hospital...

But luckily, Greensboro has been able to recover quite nicely

[WTx1]

April 10th 1979 Wichita Falls, Tx

1700 injured, 53 killed, 20,000 homes destroyed.

F4 tornado over a mile wide.

[Alabadrock]

Well, there was that one time that the Union forces burned down the city of Decatur, AL. Apparently, they didn't like the fact that Decatur-Morgan County supported the Union? I'm still confused by it.

[Plasticman]

Good God, New Orleans is a pretty resilient city to have withstood all of that; the only one I was familiar with was, of course, Katrina.

[Plasticman]

I'm surprised nobody from Memphis has posted the yellow fever outbreak in the 1870s which wiped out a major portion of the population and caused even more residents to move away. I've seen some estimates that say were it not for this outbreak, Memphis would be several times bigger city than it is today, possibly Dallas or Atlanta sized.

Here is a quote from an article on the epidemic.

With the horrors of the 1873 epidemic fresh on their minds, roughly 25,000 residents fled the city within two weeks. The fever raged in Memphis until mid-October, infecting over 17,000 and killing 5,150. Over 90 percent of whites who remained contracted yellow fever, and roughly 70 percent of these died. Long thought to be immune to the disease, blacks contracted the fever in large numbers as well in 1878, although only 7 percent of infected blacks died. While there is still no consensus among experts explaining this racial disparity in mortality rates, it is likely that repeated exposure to yellow fever over many generations in West Africa provided many blacks with a higher resistance to the disease.

[watnow1425]

I don't think we would have been bigger then Dallas or Atlanta but who knows. I did some math and without the epidemic and the 70's the city's population would be 2,633,561 in 2007. Hitting one million in 1970 and two million in 2000. It would really be around 1 million in city and 3 million in the metro. So Memphis would have been like Seattle, Minneapolis, San Diego, and St Louis.

[NCB]

I agree New Orleans is resilient. But the similarities between Betsy and Katrina beg the question of why after Betsy didn't New Orleans see the potential for a Katrina type disaster and react accordingly? I mean even with 1960s technology, it would seem to me the civil engineers could have seen the writing on the wall. You have a city with areas below sea level, Betsy's surge topped the levees and flooded parts of the city, therefore a worse or even equal storm surge could cause even worse damage, thus we should modify the levees to withstand a much higher surge. You New Orleans residents could enlighten me. Maybe something was done but it wasn't enough?

[Plasticman]

Keep in mind that the majority of the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina was due to levees being breached, not overtopped. After Betsy, the Army Corps of Engineers' Hurricane Protection Program was started, and new, taller, and stronger levees were built that would resist a fast, Cat. 3 hurricane. The biggest problem during Betsy was the height of the levees, and so taller levees were constructed. It wasn't a situation like Katrina where the levees just weren't strong enough to handle the surge.

Now, however, the new levees in New Orleans are even taller, and stronger. The whole system is supposed to be up to pre-Katrina standards, but pretty much everyone here has their doubts. Over time, as even more levees, flood gates, flood walls, pumping stations, etc. are built, those doubts will go down. Right now, however, it's just sort of hit or miss. You know they can't fix the whole flood control system in a day, so some parts of the system are better than they've ever been, and other parts need quite a bit of work.

[Mith242]

http://www.gofayetteville.com/fayhistory.htm

Basically Fayetteville, NC was in the path a Sherman & got caught up in the war. I believe he burn it down because downtown fayetteville history shows that the downtown was twice the size of what it is today.

[Memphis Love]

Memphis had the yellow fever epidemic almost completely wipe it out.

[Alabadrock]

Fayetteville, Arkansas was burned by Union troops as well. Only one public building survived the fire. Even though support was somewhat strong for the Union in my corner of the state they were still worried about it 'falling into Confederate hands'.

[Okie]

Oh you know...what's a little terrorism, tornadoes, and urban renewal for a city as resilient as OKC.