I can not believe this fool kept filming through this as the people outside were literally washed away. This is the 2004 Tsunami from a restaurant in phuket. This is insane, This guy is actually talking into his camcorder as people are getting washed away by the flood waters. Just crazy shit. Check out this video, the beginning is a bit distorted but somehow he gets better focus when the shit hits the fan.

amateur video footage of a tsunami - 2004 tsunami disaster. Shot from walkway above the Penang Beach shore, long shot of ocean before three men are caught in battering waves. You can hear how the mood changes from hey thats cool to oh shit run for it and the camera goes off.

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This is such a horrible natural disaster, cyclone kills thousands and many, many still missing, 20 thousand plus are confirmed dead with over 40 thousand people missing and millions left homeless.For anyone who does not know what a cyclone is… its a hurricane that spins in the opposite direction. The difference between a cyclone and a hurricane is the direction in which the winds spin.

From the International Herald Tribune - The death toll from a powerful cyclone that struck Myanmar over the weekend rose to 22,500 on Tuesday, and foreign governments and aid organizations began mobilizing for a major relief operation.

The number was the latest in a steadily escalating official toll since Cyclone Nargis struck early Saturday, devastating much of the fertile Irrawaddy Delta and the nation’s major city, Yangon. At a news conference in Yangon, the minister for relief and resettlement, Maung Maung Swe, said 41,000 people were still missing from the cyclone, which triggered a surge of water inland from the sea.

“More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself,” the minister said, in the first official description of the destruction.

“The wave was up to 12 feet high,” or 3.6 meters, “and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages. They did not have anywhere to flee.”

A spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program said that as many as one million people might have lost their homes and that some villages had been almost totally destroyed. Read the rest of this entry »

Enjoy this music video! I had a whole bunch of clips of Natural disasters and Ready to Fall in my little editing program so I could share with my peeps.

A great story on Natrual Disasters! Floods, Hurricanes, Tsunamis, Tornados, Sand Storms, Fires, and alot more!

Lately there is a political conspiracy to smear, slander and defame McCain. As the evidence clearly shows it would be absurd to try to blame McCain. With the political primaries there has been a figurative political assassination attempt to slander McCain by saying an insinuating that McCain murdered his crewmen by deliberately causing this mishap. The facts and evidence clearly shows that McCain was a victim and not responsible for this mishap. The real experts agree, the only “experts” that disagree are clearly politically motivated since the self-proclaimed “experts” bashing McCain didn’t pop up until the election started heating up.

I find it despicable that these hateful political activists resort to slandering McCain a military veteran POW in good standing.

I have mixed feelings about McCain’s politics. Regardless on how you feel about his politics you should respect the man for volunteering to go into harm’s way to serve the military and his country and for being a POW and suffering torture that most people couldn’t fathom.

I think these political activists that are spamming their slander should spend eternity in hell. I really wish someone with some legal expertise would find some way to file charges and prosecute them while they still are alive.

As far as I know is the first time this video has been made readily available on the Internet to the GP when I posted this on Youtube.

I think there is an old documentary VHS tape that might have this footage. And I have seen a few documentaries on cable TV that has SOME of this footage.

This tape is old and damaged. The video is poor but audio/narration is good. There is some better video out there but I think they have more film cut out.Some clipped and edited differently. This is just a short clip with some scenes often not shown.

A ZUNI rocket was fired accidentally from an aircraft being readied for a mission on July 29, 1967. The rocket screamed across the flight deck, struck another aircraft and ignited a fuel fire. The initial fire could have been contained, but 90 seconds after the fire started a bomb detonated, killing or seriously wounding most of the fire fighters.

The detonation ruptured the flight deck, and burning fuel spilled into the lower levels of the ship. Bombs, warheads, and rocket motors exploded with varying egress of intensity in the fire, killing 134 and wounding 161 men. Twenty-one aircraft were destroyed!

After this incident, the Navy established a flag level committee to pursue improvements to the systems used to control flight deck fuel fires. An ordnance safety program was also initiated to characterize flight deck fuel fires and study ways to delay the “cook-off” times of munitions. As a result; insulation is now applied to some bomb casings, delaying “cook-off” times 5 to 10 minutes in a fuel fire, but does not diminish the violence of its explosive reaction.

Here are pics from a sand storm that kicked up sand up to 30 feet high. The stacked sand bags in this picture may not really help with this problem… but hey, these guys will have plenty of sand left to make more sand bags for future disasters.

I believe these pictures are taken in the middle East and it is on a military base, but I am not sure. I lost the original story. If anyone knows where this is, please tell.

I gotta wonder if the photographer lived, somehow I doubt that he lived through that giant tidal wave. This picture was supposedly found in a camera after the Tsunami in I believe Sumatra. I can’t believe someone stood there to get this picture.

#1. Bangladesh Cyclones

The sheer population density of Bangladesh — 2,639 people per square mile — guarantees that any natural disaster in that South Asian nation will take a severe human toll. When Cyclone Sidr struck southern Bangladesh on Nov. 15, it was no different.

Packing winds of over 100 mph, the storm took out power lines and trees, and pulverized mud-and-thatch homes. The death toll was over 1,000, with more than half a million people forced to flee their homes. But by Bangladesh’s sad standards, Sidr was nothing — a cyclone in 1991 killed an astounding 140,000 people.

#2. Southeast U.S. Droughts

Water experts like to call drought the Rodney Dangerfield of natural disasters: It gets no respect. But the long dry that gripped much of the American Southeast this year is making everyone take notice. Normally verdant, Georgia and several neighboring states are suffering through their worst dry spell in recorded history. At one point the city of Atlanta, one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the U.S., had just three months of water left. As the drought worsened, it triggered a nasty legal fight between Florida, Georgia and Alabama over declining water supplies. The chief legacy of the 2007 drought will be this: It could well be water, not energy or oil, which finally constrains American growth.

#3. Mexico Floods

A natural disaster in a rich country like the United States can be an inconvenience. In an

impoverished nation like Mexico, it is a human catastrophe. Massive floods that struck the southern Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas in late October and November left vast stretches of land completely submerged — an estimated 80% of Tabasco was under water at one point, and as many as one million residents were affected by the floods. Mexican President Felipe Calderon put it simply: “This is one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the country.”

#4. Hurricane Felix

The U.S. got off lightly in the hurricane season of 2007, but not every country was so lucky. A Category 5 storm — the highest possible rating — Hurricane Felix slammed into Nicaragua on Sept.4 with winds that ranged up to 160 mph. The storm also hit Honduras and grazed the Caribbean islands. Altogether Felix killed 101 people, and pulverized the impoverished coastal communities of Nicaragua. One bright side — the storm hit heavily forested areas, which blunted the force of the winds.

#5. Indonesian Mud Volcano

It wasn’t exactly an act of God — the blame should go to a poorly run natural gas drilling project — but the out-of-control mud flows near the Indonesian city of Surabaya certainly resembled something out of a disaster movie. The problem started in late May, when hot mud broke into a well that had been drilled without proper protective casing. When the company tried to stop up the mud with cement plugs, it eventually flowed to the surface and burst through the ground in a series of foul geysers. By October the mud was flowing at rate of about 170,000 cubic feet a day, utterly submerging neighboring villages and factories, and leaving over 10,000 people homeless.

#6. South Asia Floods

Subject to the monsoon rains, home to billions, South Asia is forever teetering between too little water and too much of it. This summer it was the latter. A series of abnormal monsoon rains in northern India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh in July and August eventually led to what UNICEF called “the worst flood in living memory.” By mid-August some 30 million people across the region had been displaced, and more than 2,000 would die in the floods. Damages were estimated to be at least $120 million, which was less a measure of the severity of the floods than the utter poverty of affected areas.

#7. North Korea Floods

Life in North Korea is one long, man-made disaster, and the full magnitude of human suffering that goes on north of the DMZ may never be known. But the world received a glimpse of the precarious state of the hermit kingdom in August, when wide-scale flooding afflicted the southern part of the country. Details are patchwork, but more than 400 people were believed killed, and the damage was extensive enough that the Mass Games, Pyongyang’s yearly and freaky athletic showcase, were postponed. Even worse than the immediate damage was the destruction wrought on the starving country’s farmland — the World Food Programme estimated that 450,000 tons of grain production was lost.

#8. Earthquake in Peru

2007 was a light year for earthquakes, but not in Peru. An 8.0 magnitude temblor hit the central coast of the South American nation on Aug. 15, leaving more than 500 people dead and 1,366 injured, and more than 50,000 homes destroyed. Much of the worst damage occurred in the city of Pisco, which was 80% destroyed. As many as 430 people died, including over 100 who were killed when a cathedral they were praying in collapsed.

#9. Greece Forest Fires

This was the summer that Greece burned. Through June, July and August, vicious heat waves, with temperatures exceeding 105°F, and lengthy droughts turned the country into a tinderbox. The worst fires occurred in August, when a series of sudden firestorms in Peloponnese, Attica and Euboea left nearly 70 people dead. Residents in Olympia, site of the ancient Olympics, had to be evacuated, along with citizens throughout the south of the country. Altogether the infernos burned nearly half a million acres.

#10. China Floods

Floods used to be a regular and catastrophic fact of life in wet southern China, where the mighty Yangtze River regularly burst its bounds in the spring. Anti-flood preparations and economic growth have helped limit the worst damage in recent years, but water won’t be denied. This June days of drenching rain led to floods and landslides throughout southern China, including the prosperous manufacturing province of Guangdong. More than 60 people were killed and half a million were forced to flee their homes; economic damage was estimated at nearly $400 million.

Looking around I found quite a few different lists of what people consider the top disasters of the year. The year in question is 2007 of course with the new year just a few days away now.

Here we go with more top disasters of the year from a French perspective, this list was compiled and published by Agence France-Presse

NewsEdge Insight: 12/18/2007

Disasters in 2007 - floods, fires and hurricanes

Some of the biggest disasters of 2007:

- In November, a cyclone kills around 3,300 people and leaves hundreds of thousands homeless and in desperate need of supplies in Bangladesh. A military-led relief effort, aided by a fleet of US helicopters, is hampered by huge logistical hurdles after many roads are washed away by a tidal wave or blocked by fallen trees.

- More than 3,200 people are killed and 25 million of others marooned and displaced in the worst floods in decades across South Asia between June and September. Heavy monsoon rains and snow melt have caused the flooding in Nepal, India and Bangladesh, with losses estimated at nearly one billion dollars, and populations facing famine and water-borne disease.

- In Peru, an earthquake kills at least 540 people in August, leaving more than 1,000 injured and more than 176,000 people homeless. A total of 35,000 homes are destroyed in the quake, which measures 7.7 on the Richter scale. Most of the destruction is in the town of Pisco, a port city south-east of Lima which is 85 percent destroyed.

- In Eastern China 172 miners die in a flooded mine after heavy rains cause a nearby river to burst its banks on August 18, flooding a coal mine near the city of Xintai. In Siberia a gas explosion in the remote Ulyanovskaya coal mine kills 110 people on March 19, in Russia’s worst mine disaster since the collapse of the former Soviet Union. On November 18 at least 100 miners are killed in a coal mine blast in Ukraine, and December 5 sees another underground blast in China, which kills over 100 workers.

- A July heatwave claims hundreds of lives in Europe, with up to 500 dying in Hungary alone. Deaths are also recorded across southern Europe, including in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Croatia. In southern Italy a wildfire burns two people alive in their car and suffocates another two when it spreads to a beach nearby.

- An Indonesian Adam Air Boeing 737-400 airliner disappears on New Year’s Day over the sea with 102 people on board. In July an Airbus 320 plane belonging to Tam airlines crashes in Sao Paulo, killing 199 people in Brazil’s worst ever air disaster. In September the crash of a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 plane belonging to One-Two-Go kills 90 people out of 130 passengers and crew on the holiday island of Phuket, Thailand, while landing.

- At least 67 people are killed and over 800 homes destroyed and 500 damaged in a 12-day fire inferno which rages across southern Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula from August 24 to September 3. The fires destroy more than 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of forest and farmland including most of the olive groves essential to the local economy. Also heavily affected is the Aegean island of Euboea.

- Hurricane Dean slams into Mexico killing around 30 people in August, after a rampage across the Caribbean. In early September it is followed by Hurricane Felix, which kills at least 100 in Nicaragua and Honduras. Floods and landslides triggered by Tropical Storm Noel than kill at least 122 people in the Caribbean in late October.

- A bridge being built across Vietnam’s Hau river collapses on September 26, killing 54 people and leaving dozens injured. In July, 13 motorists die when a major road bridge falls into the Mississippi River in the US state of Minnesota, while in August at least 64 workers die when a river bridge in central China collapses as they are completing its construction.

- Sixty-four African would-be migrants, including three children, drown in the Gulf of Aden while making the perilous trip from Somalia to Yemen in November. In late July 50 African migrants are presumed dead after their boat capsizes in heavy seas in the Atlantic Ocean as they seek to reach Spain’s Canary Islands. They are among well over 1,000 migrants who have lost their lives while trying to reach Europe by sea this year, according to an Italian monitoring group.