Cities and disaster
The
devastation that Hurricane Katrina wreaked on New Orleans in 2005 and
the 100th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake serve as reminders
that, throughout history, various cities have been singled out to suffer
terrible disasters from which they looked unlikely to endure.
According to Simon Winchester, author of A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the great California earthquake of 1906, the largest cities survived because they …
exist for reasons that go far beyond the accumulation of buildings that is their outward manifestation. Their presence ... is invariably due to some combination of geography and of climate, together with some vague and indefinable organic reason that persuades mankind to settle there.
But although such cities may survive, these urban catastrophes can have consequences that last far into the future.
On this website, we examine seven historical calamities – how they happened (including CGI dramatisations of the San Francisco earthquake), their cost in terms of deaths and damage, and their legacies. We also provide opportunities to investigate the disasters further.
View
CGI footage of the San Francisco earthquake
(requires Windows
Media Player)
