Talk:List of disasters in the United States by death toll

1896 Tornado?

Not that I want to question the content, but it says that the 1896's tornado caused $ 3 billons in damage? In 1896 dollars... seems a bit excessive and unlikely? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.103.184.76 (talk) 14:12, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

merge

• Merge with other article G Clark 19:02, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Don't merge

This list is obviously in early development. and would presumably include lots of disasters that are not natural, so how can it be merged in. ie natural disast list would be a subset of this. See List of United Kingdom disasters by death toll for comparison (obviously the model on which this list has been started). mervyn 11:38, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm agreeing with Mervyn here - it's fledgling, and when complete will be much better. Daemon8666 14:41, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

perhaps two separate ones: natural and non-natural, and possibly a merged one in addition, but this should not be merged as it would leave nowhere to put non natural disasters.

I'm merging the two into a sortable table, so people can separate the manmade from the natural disasters if they would like, but can also easily compare them. -- Beland 02:38, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Chicago fire

---Umm, what about the Great Chicago Fire? From great chicago fire page: After the fire, 125 bodies were recovered. Final estimates of the fatalities ranged from 200-300, considered a small number for such a large fire. In later years, other disasters in the city would claim more lives: 571 died in the Iroquois Theater fire in 1903; and, in 1915, 835 died in the sinking of the Eastland excursion boat in the Chicago River. Yet the Great Chicago Fire remains Chicago's most well-known disaster, for the magnitude of the destruction and the city's subsequent recovery and growth.

shouldn't some of these be in here?

Added. -- Beland 02:03, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

9/11

2,749 died in World Trade Center on 9/11/2001

Added. -- Beland 02:03, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Titanic

Did the Titanic sink in the US? If not, why is it here? Frunobulax (talk) 17:54, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

• Agreed. The Titanic reference should be removed. It was a UK Flag vessel that sank in international waters. A lot of Americans died on it, but the article's title is "List of disasters in the United States" Sephalon1 (talk) 03:45, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
• @Sephalon1: I agree as well. I'll just go ahead and remove it. United States Man (talk) 00:42, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually, another criteria that I just discovered in the lead is that it just has to involve U.S. citizens, which the Titanic did. United States Man (talk) 01:41, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

In that case, shouldn't the number of fatalities in this list reflect only the fatalities who were US nationals? --rogerd (talk) 17:09, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Titanic may have been a UK flagged ship, but she was owned by IMM, an American company owned by JP Morgan. Lusitania is listed here, but she was 100% British owned as a Cunarder. Titanic has more claim to being a US Ship than any Cunard ship. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.123.146.226 (talk) 20:34, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Sortable table

The table sorting is mostly automatic, but there's more documentation available at Help:Sorting if anyone needs it. -- Beland 01:59, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Inclusion of "War" or not

Before this List is expanded further there should be a debate about whether acts of war are to be included in a list of disasters? I suggest not -- mainly because "war" is a different order of event from what is commonly thought of as "disaster". Also, disaster usually refers to a distinct event, rather than a series of events grouped over years. Am interested to read other thoughts on this. --mervyn 12:13, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Some related lists use the phrase "wars and disasters", which is fine if you don't consider war to be a disaster because it is usually intentional on at least one side. I do think it's useful to put both in the same table, to make it easy to compare across causes. -- Beland 22:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem would be, where do you make the distinction between certain actions, such as terrorism, and an "act of war"? The Bombing of Pearl Harbor is most definitely considered an act of war, we can all agree on that - but what about 9/11? The USS Cole Bombing? The Embassy bombings in 1998? Or really any terrorist act post-9/11, considering it's all part of a global war against terror? Until we can more accurately narrow down a definition for "act of war", I vote to maintain the status quo. Jade Phoenix Pence (talk) 18:03, 3 October 2017 (UTC)Jade Phoenix Pence

The disaster is the list

horrible. the title of the article is, in part "by death toll". but it's not ordered at all. the inclusion of war (which is debateable) is in the middle of the list. so, are we to understand that 'millions' is less than 'thousands'? absurd. also, there are no references, besides reference to other wikipedia articles. that's not terribly encyclopedic, particularly when some of those article have zero references of their own. Anastrophe 06:30, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Organized but table gone

I have organized the data by type and fatalities, but I don't know how to make charts so it is all lumped up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.15.131.246 (talk) 01:34, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Fatalities

The fatalities column in this article states how many people died in the disaster overall (e.g. World War I, shows millions of casualties, when the vast majority of these will not have anything to to with the USA), I think the problem needs to be rectified, so that the fatalities list only includes people who have died in the USA, or USA citizens who have died in a disaster abroad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.207.135.211 (talk) 15:45, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorted into order

I've now sorted the article into descending order of number of deaths given in the table, assuming for the purposes of sorting that the number of deaths was small but nonzero if not given. This should give better results for the inital presentation of the list, in particular for browsers with Javascript turned off. -- The Anome (talk) 01:12, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Note: in particular, the French and Indian War has been sorted right down the list because no death toll was given in the list. Can somone please add a citable figure for the death toll, and sort it into its right place in death toll order? -- The Anome (talk) 01:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

A few tips...

Firstly, you might just want to list the United States death toll, this is after all an article about disasters in the United States or outside involving US residents. Secondly, a mass murder or school shooting are not classified as "Terrorism" and terrorism itself is not a disaster, the correct wording should be "Terrorist attack". A fair bit of work needs to be done. Nick carson (talk) 07:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

sorting capabilities

When I try to sort the events by death toll (for lowest first), it puts them into alphabetical order, not numerical. Does anyone know how to fix that? Googlemeister (talk) 17:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

death toll minimum

There should be some type of minimum death toll for it to be counted on this list. In my opinion, if no one died, it's not really a national disaster. Thoughts? Griffinofwales (talk) 21:06, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the inclusion of some with low death tolls are based on historical significance (Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster, Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster), huge economic impact (1997 Red River flood), or high injury count (Phillips explosion of 2000). I think those are fair criteria for the category. That being said, I've deleted a few that don't fit any of those, which to me are no worse than a bad car wreck. Ψν^Psi_nu 10:19, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Occurrences outside the US

I really don't think that events that happened outside the US belong here; they aren't, strictly speaking, US disasters. I'd make an (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) exception for the USS Maine and the RMS Titanic, since they were distinctly US "properties" and virtually if not all on board were US citizens. The rest are incidental, mostly very recent in timing (Haiti, 2004 tsunami) and create a slippery slope - where do you draw the line on deaths that happen elsewhere? A train accident in Europe that happens to have 20 US citizens on it... do you then have to include that?

I've taken out ones that fit that category, but if you can make a good argument otherwise, I'm game. Ψν^Psi_nu 10:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

How can anyone claim this is accurate?

This list has no sources given for the list ordering. And it is clearly missing numerous entries, as for Hurricane Floyd which is mysteriously absent. You're telling me these are the only US disasters that have had 0 or more fatalities? What about the car wreck in my town the other day? This article needs some serious overhaul and actual research done, or it should not exist. — jdorje (talk) 16:12, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The Spanish Flu needs to be included.

Other similar lists include the Spanish Flu, and so should this one. There are numerous sources that list the US death toll from it. I'm not savvy enough to edit the chart myself, but I will post the ref.

According to the US Govt. at least 675,000 Americans died. http://1918.pandemicflu.gov/the_pandemic/index.htm

67.82.203.34 (talk) 22:26, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Tornado vs. tornado outbreak

Several of the events on this listed as tornadoes were outbreaks rather than individual tornadoes, such as the April 25–28, 2011 tornado outbreak. Should this article distinguish between outbreaks and single tornadoes with high death tolls? TornadoLGS (talk) 21:55, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I think it should. I was looking at it the other day and thought that it made no sense. It is very misleading to the reader whether the toll was from a single tornado or the entire outbreak. United States Man (talk) 05:18, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay then. Done. TornadoLGS (talk) 05:24, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Good job, and good thinking, that needed to be done. United States Man (talk) 05:27, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

RfC:Should Direct Deaths or both Direct and Indirect Deaths be listed for Hurricane Sandy

I have started this RfC to receive feedback on whether or not both Direct and Indirect Deaths should be listed for 2012's Hurricane Sandy. It is worth noting that just below Sandy's entry, the 2011 Joplin tornado has only Direct Deaths listed. United States Man (talk) 03:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it should be listed with the direct death toll, and have the indirect deaths mentioned in the comments section,considering most hurricane articles list direct and indirect death separately where it is possible. TornadoLGS (talk) 04:27, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

• Agree with Tornado (although he does sound slightly biased...!!! lol) Basket _Feudalist 16:18, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

1947 Woodward tornado

The tornado leveled the town of Woodward, Oklahoma not Woodward, Texashttp://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=events-19470409 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.115.10.50 (talk) 23:04, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Massachusetts Missing

While I always question the value of such lists as there - the Beacon St fire of 2014, which killed 2 Boston firefighters is listed. but the Hotel Vendome fire which killed 9 BFD FFs is not; likewise, the 1916 trolley disaster which killed 46 is not, though the Molasses Flood is. Irish Melkite (talk) 10:02, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Title

"by death toll" is inaccurate, as it can be sorted multiple ways and death toll is merely one of those - while that might have been the initial basis for listing, it is no longer the sole one (and for many, will not be the one of most interest, as I suspect location would be a popular choice. Irish Melkite (talk) 10:07, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

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Jonestown

Jonestown should not be on this list, since it occurred in a foreign country. 137.125.142.65 (talk) 00:39, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

"This list of United States disasters by death toll is a list of notable disasters which occurred either in the United States, at diplomatic missions of the United States, or incidents outside of the United States in which a number of U.S. citizens were killed."Undescribed (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Native Americans

Just wondering. Shouldn't this article also mention massacres of Native American civilians like Camp Grant or Colfax etc.? Aaton77 (talk) 10:16, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Recent additions reverted

Every incident that causes a death isn’t a disaster. (While a definition outside Wikipedia is, of course, better, let’s use this one for convenience.) Qwirkle (talk) 15:47, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Heat wave of 1936

I'm not sure what the inclusion criteria are here, but one might want to consider adding the great 1936 North American heat wave, which has been blamed for approximately 5,000 deaths (due in part to the lack of air conditioning in most homes and businesses as of 1936). Dragons flight (talk) 08:23, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Added. -- Beland (talk) 20:25, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Better organization of sections

Instead of grouping lists by number of deaths, why not do it by type of disaster and then include only the top ten death tolls in each? It would be useful to know what kinds of disasters can wreak havoc in the United States. 9March2019 (talk) 03:53, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

COVID19

So, we've had a number of people who apparently don't know how to read come in and add the current coronavirus pandemic even though the lead states that epidemics are not included. Is there any way we can curb these? TornadoLGS (talk) 03:59, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Request to clarify

I was one of those users who added coronavirus to this page. Can you clarify why epidemics are not included beyond it says so on the page? This is clearly a disaster. If Jonestown and 9/11, non-natural disasters are included, why would coronavirus not be included? Clearly with the addition to this page by several people, folks think this is a disaster. Even the Surgeon_General_of_the_United_States recently stated "This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment and our 9/11 moment only it's not going to be localized, it's going to be happening all over the country." Librarianbs (talk)

I don't disagree that it's a disaster. I did a look through the history. I found that the statement was first included as "Epidemics are not yet included at all," to cite the list not being comprehensive and was later shortened to its current form. But for some reason other epidemics, such as the Spanish Flu, have been kept off. If we include COVID-19, we have to include other epidemics, too. I'm going to start another discussion below about this. TornadoLGS (talk) 00:29, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Should epidemics be included?

A few times I have removed attempts at adding the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic since it is stated in the lead that epidemics are not included. I had been under the impression that there was a decision to exclude them for some reason, but that does not seem apparent from the history. There has been a push to add COVID-19 to the list, but shouldn't be added unless other epidemics are included as well. Should we open this list up to epidemics? TornadoLGS (talk) 01:01, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your consideration and this discussion. Clearly I vote yes, and would be happy to add the details, citing sources of course, for other epidemics. Librarianbs (talk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.109.231.204 (talk) 15:01, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I believe a possible reason for exclusion is that the figures for epidemics are historically vague and unreliable. But then, do you include season flu deaths every year? Take away the news hype and there isn't much difference in which disease people die from. I personally don't care one way or the other, but all epidemics/pandemics should be included if so. United States Man (talk) 17:17, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I certainly think epidemics/pandemics that are as fiscally and humanly impacting as Covid-19 and the Spanish Flu are relevant to the list on this page. Yes, people die from the seasonal flu, but seasonal flu typically does not shut down the economy, nor does it make it into the history books. This will be a covered in future history classes, and possibly future economic classes. There is no vaccine as of now, and there is no known medicine to tame it. As the page is editable, if others feel like there should be other epidemics/pandemics should be included, they are easily added. Librarianbs (talk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.109.231.204 (talk) 14:55, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

There is a separate article on epidemics. Just put a link to them. As it is, this is very misleading having only one listed. 68.228.89.175 (talk) 01:09, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

There are also separate articles on tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes. 95.141.24.25 (talk) 19:18, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

I vote yes, at least conditionally. Flus etc. aren't considered disasters, same as heart attacks, cancer, etc. aren't. A disaster is a sudden event, such as an accident or a natural catastrophe, that causes great damage or loss of life. How we treat this page should be based on how we define what a disaster actually is for this purpose.

COVID-19, for example, suddenly ripped through the country at breakneck speed, and has caused over 50,000 deaths to date. It has shut down the economy, and is costing the country trillions. So yes, I define it as a disaster.

Arguments against it being on this list, imo, are that it's worldwide, not local to America (which I don't see as being an issue, since others on the list are also non-local), or that it's ongoing, or not an event with a specific date of occurrence.

I don't think we necessarily need to include every epidemic though, since they aren't usually this sudden, seemingly acting across a greater span of time as a norm.Mousenight (talk) 05:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

I would be in favor of adding epidemics, including covid 19, Spanish flu, swine flu, "yellow fever", etc. I would also be in favor or adding wars. Alternatively, is there a "loss of life" list specific to the usa we could link to? 104.156.98.135 (talk) 00:44, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

I would not be in favor of including pandemics or epidemics. We already have List of epidemics and List of battles and other violent events by death toll. We don't need them combined into a list of "events" by death toll. It would be too long and cumbersome. Useight (talk) 01:26, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

I would be in favour of including pandemics or epidemics just as they are all included on the List of disasters in Australia by death toll. There is no valid reason for their exclusion. - Shiftchange (talk) 04:41, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

How was this even a debate? The Wikipedia article on Pandemic is literally classified under "disasters." 95.141.24.25 (talk) 19:14, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Like United States military casualties of war, this page only counts U.S. deaths, whereas list of epidemics doesn't distinguish U.S. from non-U.S. deaths, making it hard to compare numbers. Given the number of editors who have already tried to add epidemic stats to the list, the need for comparable numbers, and the level of support in the discussion above, I've started adding epidemic stats to the list. So far I think I've got all with 100,000 or more U.S. deaths. Some influenza seasons are very noteworthy and have their own Wikipedia articles, and these should definitely be included. As we get into lower numbers of deaths, for consistency we can either show years whether or not they have an article, or below some threshold just roll up long-running pandemics like this into a cumulative disaster (which would avoid having 100+ rows for flu, the numbers for earlier years being increasingly uncertain). -- Beland (talk) 20:50, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Tornado vs. tornado outbreak, redux

Am currently working on expanding the list with tornado outbreaks from using List of North American tornadoes and tornado outbreaks. I noticed that right now this list currently mostly only contains single tornadoes with high numbers of fatalities (e.g. 2013 Moore tornado is listed as 24 deaths), and yet the 2011 Super Outbreak is counted as a single disaster with 348 deaths rather than individual tornadoes which each killed no more than 72 people, and even includes 24 non-tornadic deaths. As a compromise, my idea would be to count all deaths caused by the system in the US and clarify if any are non-tornadic in nature, and also list in the "notes" column any tornadoes which, on their own, would qualify for the list. Thoughts? Ionmars10 (talk) 22:05, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Air pollution pandemic is more important than Aids & Covid overall

The air pollution pandemic kills millions worldwide every year. 2603:9001:9202:78BF:ED7F:B274:1CB6:3A93 (talk) 21:56, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Deadliest Tornadoes in the Americas (U.S./Canada/Mexico/etc.)

I've been researching this through Wikipedia, Grazulis, AMS articles, and NWS websites (among others) and am about to publish my article. (Of note, researching the towns to create proper links for everything is extremely time-consuming.) And I've announced this in three different major weather-related Talk types of pages, and I still see folks adding more tornado information on this page. I'd rather my 6+ weeks of research didn't become irrelevant or, worse, deleted.

Maybe we can make this page non-meteorological in nature and refer folks elsewhere for those? Wasn't someone working on pages with death tolls caused by hurricane and/or flooding? If not, maybe we can work on those pages as well? I'd obviously be happy to create a deadliest hurricane page once I finish posting these tornado-related pages. Dym75 (talk) 19:16, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

There should be a section for the Opiate Epidemic

About a million people died of it, and there's no section for it. 2600:6C67:8C00:5A61:6DBB:1679:52AF:DD89 (talk) 14:27, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Should we remove pandemics and epidemics from the list?

I don't think they're disasters as they don't really have an effect on debris nor buildings. 120.28.224.32 (talk) 14:08, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't know. 120.28.230.88 (talk) 12:50, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Giant Powder Company

Currently listed as 49 deaths from 1892 explosion but neither our article nor a quick scan of Newspapers.com support that. It seems like was more like 6-9 casualties. Not sure if it's a hoax or a mistake or if I'm misunderstanding something. jengod (talk) 03:34, 27 July 2024 (UTC)