Top Ten Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions

Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
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Largest Recorded Earthquakes 

Source: K. Abe, Magnitudes and Moments of Earthquakes, in Global Earth Physics, A Handbook of Physical Constants, American Geophysical Union Reference Shelf Volume 1, p. 206-213. Seismic moment magnitudes determined by recalculation from seismic records for events prior to 2004.

The December 2004 Sumatra event is the first Magnitude 9.0 event since the general adoption of the seismic moment magnitude scale; the old Richter Scale is no longer applied to such events.

Greatest Killer Earthquakes

Source: Catalog of Significant Earthquakes, USGS

Even for modern events, casualty totals are hard to get accurately (see Note 3). Ancient events are often wild guesses. Authors may make mistakes as to location and date when copying records from other sources. This list includes all events with more than 100,000 deaths in the best available global summary of major earthquakes. 

Remarks

1. Although not widely known, this is the largest event in the catalog
2. Most listings cite this event as the greatest killer earthquake
3. The death toll in this event was later dropped to 240,000 with no explanation. Most authors uncritically cite the lower figure.
4. Some authors suggest the accounts may refer to a typhoon rather than an earthquake. This is probably the largest disaster whose exact nature is uncertain.
5. Many of the casualties in this event died in the subsequent firestorm.
6. Listed as affecting both northern Syria and Constantinople (Istanbul). Either this was a truly huge event or some of the locations are garbled.
7. Could this be a garbled account of the event of the same year in the Levant (Note 1)?
8. These are similar enough in date and location to be the same event
9. Actually due to the great Krakatoa eruption and tsunami.
10. Almost all deaths due to tsunami. Greatest tsunami disaster in history. Massive casualties and damage in Sumatra, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. Damage and fatalities as far away as Africa.

Largest Known Holocene Volcanic Eruptions 

Ejecta refers to cubic kilometers of ash erupted. All figures are estimates. Since 10,000 B.C., at least seven other eruptions are known to have vented more than 10 cubic km of ash. Laki, 1783 is also included as the largest historic lava flow. Dates of first six events are from radiocarbon dates and are approximate.

Much larger events are recorded in the geologic past but we cannot claim a complete record. A few examples:

• 70,000 years ago, Toba, Indonesia. About 500 cubic kilometers of ash.
• 700,000 years ago, Long Valley, California. About 500 cubic kilometers of ash.
• 700,000, 1.4 million and 2.1 million, Yellowstone, Wyoming. About 500 cubic kilometers of ash.
• Miocene: huge ash eruption, probably centered in the Snake River volcanic center; wind-blown ash suffocated and buried animals in Nebraska
• 15 million years ago: Columbia Plateau flood basalts.
• 240 million years ago: Siberian flood basalt eruptions. Suspected by some as the cause of the Permian mass extinction.
• Ordovician (450 million years ago): Vast ash falls blanketed all of eastern North America and Scandinavia, which at that time were close together. The probable source was somewhere southeast of present Alabama. Single ash beds can be traced from Alabama, where they are meters thick, to Minnesota, where the thickness is a few centimeters.

Source, T. Simkin and others, 1984, Volcanoes of the World, Stroudsburg, PA, Hutchinson Ross, 232p.

Greatest Killer Volcanic Eruptions

Note the absence of reference to lava flows, which rarely result in fatalities. Even the great Laki fissure flow of 1783 produced casualties mostly by ecological disruption. Before the advent of telecommunications and air transport, ecological disruption was the major cause of loss of life in eruptions, with building collapse due to shaking and ash fall probably next most important.

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Created 24 April 2002, Last Update 27 September 2005

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