Natural disasters affect the lives of people in torturous ways. It almost always costs the lives of innocent bystanders. Costs of the cleanup can be in the billions of dollars. It is disturbing to realize the damage and destruction that nature is capable of releasing on humans at any moment. Both the eruption of Mount St. Helens and The Great Mississippi River Flood are different in many ways, but the same in that they both affected people negatively. On the day of May 18th, 1980, the stratovolcano, Mt. Saint Helens, erupted. This cone-shaped volcano was an impressive 5 on the explosivity index, massive compared to the low ratings of most shield volcanoes. It caused more than 200 homes, 185 miles of road and 15 miles of railways to become damaged. The ash of …show more content…
It was caused by several months of heavy rain in the Mississippi Valley. The first levee to break was in Illinois on April 16th, this caused a chain-effect of floods. The scale of the flood caused unthinkable damage to the Mississippi River Valley and even surrounding states such as Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, and Kentucky. More than 23,000 square miles were submerged in water and in some places, it was more than 9 meters high. 250 people died in this tragic disaster, an estimated 700,000 people were displaced, and over 130,000 homes were lost. The estimated damage repair costs were 350 million dollars, the equivalent of 5 billion dollars today. Both Mount St. Helens and The Great Mississippi Flood were cataclysmic, the violent nature of both catastrophes caused so many lives to be lost. The Mississippi River Flood was even more so of a disaster, though. The Mississippi River Flood was a horrendous calamity that affected more people and caused more deaths than Mount St. Helens overall. The cost of repairs was almost $4 billion dollars more, the immense desolation of the Great Mississippi Flood is
Floods can be a very dangerous natural disaster because a flood has the power to move cars, buildings, and cause massive damage to life and property. Even the small floods that are only 30 centimetres or so can do massive damage to houses and if the
The major physical legacy of the Great Mississippi Flood - an elaborate system of lower Mississippi River flood control measures that have confined larger floods - was recently in the news. Fast-forward to March 17, 1997, when the Army Corps of Engineers began diverting water around New Orleans for only the eighth time since 1927.
How is the Mississippi controlled ? How & why used ? Benefits Problems Levees Mounds of earth are built parallel to the river, along its banks. These contain the rising river in flood times and protect buildings along the valley on the flood plain behind. · Known & successful technology which follows nature (rivers deposit silt to build natural levees anyway) · Protect settlements ·
Mississippi was also managed in New Orleans to limit flooding. This was done through levies that were at first naturally built by the river’s mud flows during floods. Later the levies were built higher and higher to keep the flooding Mississippi into the New Orleans area. But the levies were often ineffective in managing, or led to, more flooding. Kelman explains this when they write “With the development in the Mississippi Valley ongoing and artificial banks confining more runoff inside the channel, the river set new high-water marks” (Pg 702).
In March 18, 1880 Mount St. Helens there was a catastrophic eruption that caused a huge volume of ash; the ash plume would be over central Colorado within 16 hours. After years of dedicated monitoring (knowing where to volcano is, unlike an earthquake not knowing exactly where this geological even is exactly) there was been increasing accuracy in forecasting eruptions.
Since the days of Lewis and Clark men have dreamed of harnessing the "Father of Waters" in the interests of commerce and development. The long struggle which ensued required incredible ingenuity and determination on the part of engineers as well as enormous capital investment. The Mississippi River Commission, established in 1897, was the first federal program designed specifically to meet these requirements, and early systems, instituted by the Army Corps of Engineers, saw much success. Technological advancements in the fields of transportation, flood control, and natural resource management were needed and, eventually, emerged to provide the level of control possible today. This report will discuss the technological transformation of the upper Mississippi river and the motivation behind it from the middle 1800's.
Natural disasters don’t just come to the earth without leaving something behind, they always have to leave memories behind. These two natural disasters had great impact on the areas they occurred. The Great Flood of 1993 and Hurricane Mitch, were both highly disastrous events. Hurricane Mitch occurred in Berlin, Honduras, and Nicaragua. A lot of people were left dead, missing or homeless after this disaster occurred. The Great Flood of 1993 also caused a lot of damage. After the flood, houses were left destroyed and farms almost completely gone, Both natural disasters had great effects on the environment, but Hurricane Mitch caused more serious long-term problems.
The total value of damage and losses caused by earthquake is estimated at US$7.8 billion — US$4.3 billion represents physical damage and US$3.5 billion are economic losses — some 120 percent of the 2009 gross domestic product (GDP) of Haiti
... US stretching to Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The flood had a property damage that exceeded $2 billion dollars and also a total of 37 people who died, despite the many warnings received. This epic event was considered as the 100 year flood that western and middle Tennessee had been expecting since the last widespread flood occurrence. The Cumberland River which is a major waterway that crosses through north-central Tennessee accumulated so much rain, that it resulted in a crest increase in Nashville at 51.86 feet, 12 feet above the flood stage. The heaviest rainfall occurred across Davison, Williamson, Dickson, Hickman, Benton, Perry and Humphrey’s counties, which translated into an average of 14 to 15 inches of rain, which are equivalent to 420 billion gallons of water in just two days. The 2010 Nashville epic flood event broke the record set for rainfall in 1979.
Hurricane Katrina a catastrophe that changed lives of many peoples, people were left without food and water for days. That storm itself did a great damage lead to the massive flooding,
The category 3 storm changed the lives of the residence who lived there forever. The storm in combination with the fault of the man-made flood protection walls (levee’s) resulted in the death of at least 1,300 people (1). With nearly half the victims over the age of 74, deaths were caused by; drowning, injury/ trauma and heart conditions (2). Hurricane Katrina was one of the most costliest storms to land on American soil, costing around US$135 billion in damages (3). Although the number of deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina are not as high as other natural disasters, Katrina displaced a massive amount of people from their homes, around 85% of the population were displaced directly after the storm hit (6). Being one of the most devastating natural disasters to hit the United States, Hurricane Katrina impacted not only the residence of New Orleans by also many of the surrounding
Through the path of history, there have been several major events that influenced thousands of lives and were significant in forming the world today. One of the largest and deadliest events that occurred in history was a disaster not anybody could control or be held accountable for. This was Hurricane Katrina. On the early Monday morning of August 29th, 2005, a Category 5 rating Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States with winds up to 175 miles per hour and a storm surge of 20 feet high. Hurricane Katrina was one of the greatest and most destructive natural disasters recorded to make landfall in the United States. The natural causes of the hurricane, poorly structured levees, disaster inside the Superdome, and the
With 30 feet of water covering the land, 18,268,780 acres were destroyed (Economic). 4,413,600 acres of this was agricultural land. In this part of the country, farming and agriculture was a big deal, so when some of the land and animals were lost the economy suffered. After the flood and disaster relief organizations came, it was estimated that only 20% of the farm land could be used that year (The Mississippi). With a loss of land and no need for companies, people lost their jobs. Since people lost their jobs, families began to struggle. 85% of land owners and farmers had no source of income, but still had to provide for their family, pay taxes, and pay the mortgage payment (The Mississippi).
The eruption on Mount Saint Helens has a specific cause and comes with many effects. A multifold of people would say that the “mountain looked like the site of an atomic blast” (Bredeson 30). That is a very accurate depiction as it took great power to inflict as much damage as it did. The reason for this impressive amount of force is that when magma is built up with pressure and an earthquake hits, the pressure gets magnified and the volcano explodes (Lewis). This is exactly what happened inside Mount Saint Helens. Furthermore, it has been revealed that “The earthquake that triggered the explosion was a 5.2 on the Richter scale” (Gunn 559). The earthquake to the magma can be compared as a match to gasoline. Even though the earthquake was not huge, the scale of the eruption was much greater than that of the earthquake (Gunn 560). The earthquake was only the trigger that allowed for more devastating things to occur. Thirteen hundred feet of the volcano were lost in the explosion followed by landslides, mudslides, and lava flows...
1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens and the 1991 eruption Mt. Pinatubo. (Ball, J. n.d.).