Europe's worst natural disasters in history

Weathering the storm

For thousands of years, the great civilisations and nations of Europe have had to endure regular attacks from a lethal foe: Mother Nature. From earthquakes and eruptions to fire and floods, the continent's deadliest natural disasters have killed hundreds of thousands of people at a time. Some of them even changed the course of history.

Click through this gallery to discover the worst natural disasters in European history...

c.1600 BC: Minoan Eruption

The Minoan civilisation arose in the Aegean Sea around 3100 BC and thrived for 1,500 years, but its downfall was sparked by a volcano on the island of Santorini. An explosive eruption buried the nearby islands in a layer of pumice and ash so thick that the town of Akrotiri, pictured here, was only discovered by archaeologists in the 19th century.

The Minoans probably had enough warning to escape the suffocating ash, and over the next few decades they were gradually subsumed into the city-states of mainland Greece.

AD 64: Great Fire of Rome

Although Rome was the centre of a vast empire by AD 64, most of its inhabitants still lived in wooden houses. When fire broke out near the Circus Maximus, it soon spread into a citywide inferno.

Emperor Nero was visiting the coast when it began, but that didn’t stop rumours that he deliberately started the fire so he could rebuild Rome as he wanted. Whether the Great Fire was arson or an accident, it did major damage to Nero’s reputation and led to his assassination.

AD 79: Eruption of Mount Vesuvius

Within 15 years of Rome burning, the Italian towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were wiped off the map. Residents there had taken advantage of the region’s fertile farmland, not realising that the nutrition-packed soil was a result of ancient volcanic eruptions.

Mount Vesuvius returned to life one summer’s day, and pyroclastic flows of hot gas and ash surged down the mountain. They ploughed into Pompeii and Herculaneum, preserving the doomed towns for centuries and even capturing the last poses of the unfortunate victims who were suffocated.

165: Antonine Plague

Starting in the middle of the 2nd century, a mysterious new disease began killing citizens of the Roman Empire in their millions. Though named the Antonine Plague, it’s more likely that the epidemic was the first wave of smallpox infections in Europe.

Whatever the disease was, the epidemic may have killed up to ten million people – a quarter of the empire’s population – and likely created instability that began the Roman Empire’s gradual decline and fall.

365: Crete Earthquake

Residents on the Mediterranean island of Crete were knocked off their feet when an undersea earthquake lifted the entire island, leaving it 30 feet (9m) higher than before. Almost every building was flattened, including these ones at Phalasarna that have subsequently been excavated by archaeologists.

The tremors also triggered a tsunami that swamped coastal settlements in North Africa and Turkey. According to chronicles from the time, ships were left perched on houses and many thousands of people were killed. 

541: Plague of Justinian

563: Tauredunum Event

The shore of Lake Geneva may look peaceful today, but things were far different back in 563. According to two different chroniclers, a landslide at Taurendunum caused a tidal wave to sweep along the lake, swamping smaller villages and even breaching Geneva’s city walls.

Scientists recently found the large block of sediment that fell into the water and triggered the event. They calculated that it sparked a tsunami 43 feet (13m) high that may have killed thousands.

1287: St Lucia’s Flood

On St Lucia’s Day in December 1287, a low-pressure storm coincided with a high tide, causing the North Sea to swamp coastal areas. Up to 80,000 people died, and it left a lasting impression on the Netherlands.

Sandy dunes and natural breakwaters were washed away to make freshwater Lake Almere into a sea bay known as the Zuiderzee that stretched into the heart of the country, as this map from 1658 shows. West-Frisia was separated from the rest of Friesland by a nine-mile (14km) channel, allowing Count Floris V of Holland to conquer it.

1347: Black Death

Dockworkers in Messina, Italy were confronted with a horrifying sight when a 12-ship fleet from the Black Sea moored up in October 1347. Most sailors aboard were dead. Those still alive were covered in hideous black boils that leaked blood and pus.

They were the first European victims of a new wave of the bubonic plague, although 14th-century sufferers called it the Black Death. Over the next five years, more than 20 million people – one-third of Europe’s population – would die.

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1665: Great Plague of London

The Black Death never really left Europe – it just went into hibernation. Cases of bubonic plague began to increase again three centuries later in London, Europe’s biggest city. In 1665, it exploded into a full-blown epidemic.

The outbreak reached a peak in September when more than 7,000 died in a single week. The sick were forced to quarantine in their homes for 40 days, by which time most had died. Every night, porters removed dead bodies and buried them in mass plague pits. Londoners prayed for respite – but it didn’t come in the manner they hoped. 

1666: Great Fire of London

The Great Plague burned out, quite literally, after London went up in flames. The Great Fire started in a bakery on Pudding Lane and spread quickly thanks to the capital’s closely packed wooden houses, a dry summer and wind that boosted the flames.

As Londoners spent five days battling the fire, 13,200 houses and 87 churches were razed to the ground. Few people died, but one of the victims was an unfortunate Frenchman who was suspected of arson and hanged a month after the blaze was extinguished.

1669: Eruption of Mount Etna

When Sicily’s Mount Etna began rumbling in March 1669, residents of nearby towns and villages persuaded themselves it was nothing to worry about. They were wrong.

Three days later, noxious fumes and gases began spewing from the crater. A few brave but foolhardy Sicilians tried to divert the lava flow by digging trenches, but all they achieved was to direct it towards Catania. Nearly 17,000 people in Catania died, with the lava making short work of the city's walls and buildings.

1717: Christmas Flood

On Christmas Day in 1717, a storm whipped the North Sea into a frenzy. At high tide, it cascaded into the low-lying Netherlands and drowned entire coastal settlements. Entire coastal settlements on the coast were drowned.

The seawater flooded the cities of Amsterdam, Haarlem and the worst affected of all, Groningen. Those left homeless also had to face freezing temperatures brought on by Arctic winds. By the time the storm was done, over 13,000 were dead at what was supposed to be a time of celebration.

1755: Lisbon Earthquake

Around one in 10 of the Portuguese population lived in Lisbon when three different tremors rocked the city in 1755. Many were killed when the churches they were observing All Saints Day in collapsed.

A tsunami flooded the parts of the city that nestled the coast. Fires broke out all over the city, and even the Royal Palace burned down, although Dom Jose I was safe in the countryside at the time. The king was left with such bad claustrophobia that he preferred to spend his time in a palatial tent, even after his royal residence was rebuilt.

1783: Laki Eruption

Icelanders are used to volcanic activity, but the June 1783 eruption of the Laki fissure near Klaustur, pictured here, was something they’d never seen before. Over eight months, 3.7 quadrillion gallons of lava poured out from 135 cracks and craters.

Toxic ash settled all over the island, ruining crops and poisoning livestock. The resulting famine killed a fifth of Iceland’s population, and the ash was carried in the atmosphere all around the world. 

1816: Year Without Summer

The summer of 1816 was unseasonably cold, with poor harvests and widespread flooding. It was the result of Mount Tambora in Indonesia spewing 24 cubic miles (100 cubic km) of volcanic gas and dust into the atmosphere, reducing the amount of sunlight reaching Earth and lowering temperatures around the globe.

The UK was hit by frequent storms and snow fell in the Midlands as late as May. In Hungary, snow was tinged brown by the ash. Typhus epidemics struck Italy and Switzerland. As this painting by German artist Caspar David Friedrich shows, the sky was dull and overcast for weeks at a time.

1839: Night of the Big Wind

Ireland was ill-prepared for a hurricane that battered the country overnight, first hitting the west coast around 9 o’clock in the evening, just as people were going to bed and leaving their hearths burning low. Thatched roofs stood no chance against wind that’s thought to have topped out at 100 miles per hour (161km/h).

When the storm hit Dublin, a quarter of the city’s houses are thought to have suffered damage. Ships were driven aground or lost at sea. Only a few hundred people are thought to have died, although Ireland had worse to come.

1845: The Great Hunger

Only six years after the Big Wind battered Ireland, a second natural disaster struck – and this one killed a million. It began when a mould attacked potato plants, ruining half of the crop in 1845, and three-quarters of the yield over the next seven years.

Since the potato was a staple food in Ireland, it plunged the country into a famine. Aside from the million who starved to death, another two million emigrated, with most landing in Britain or North America and giving birth to the Irish diaspora.

1847: Great Fire of Bucharest

The crowded streets and narrow alleys of Bucharest meant that firefighters struggled to reach a blaze that broke out when a child fired a homemade pistol at a pile of hay.

By the time they got there, the house fire was out of control. It burned for three days and destroyed much of the city centre, only going out when it reached the wider-spaced yards of the suburbs. More than 2,000 buildings were destroyed and 15 people lost their lives. Pictured here are ceramics and porcelain, discovered in August 2007, left behind by people fleeing the fire of 1847.

1872: Baltic Sea Flood

This barn at Niendorf near Hamburg, Germany was destroyed when a hurricane ripped through the Baltic Sea in November, whipping the waves into a frenzy and causing the sea level to rise 10 feet (3m) higher than normal.

Countless coastal communities surrounding the Baltic were left underwater and some 300 people lost their lives. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein took the brunt, with 15,000 people left homeless.

1908: Messina Earthquake and Tsunami

On 28 December, at just after five in the morning, an earthquake rocked Italy and almost completely levelled the city of Messina. The devastation didn’t end when the tremors stopped.

Since the epicentre was located in the Messina Strait that separated Sicily from mainland Italy, the earthquake triggered a tsunami and 40-foot-high (12m) waves crashed down along the coast. Reggio Calabria took the brunt of the water’s power. More than 80,000 people died, most in the two destroyed cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria. 

1952: Great Smog of London

The winter of 1952 was a cold one, meaning that Londoners burned more coal than usual, but prolonged high pressure trapped the resulting smoke close to the ground. The result was a thick, greenish fog – or pea-souper, as Londoners called them – that blanketed the city for four days.

Sporting fixtures like this FA Cup tie were called off as players struggled to see. Several people died in traffic accidents, and 4,000 more Londoners died than usual that month thanks to the ill effects of breathing in bad air.

1953: North Sea Flood

The night of 31 January 1953 saw a spring high tide coincide with a winter storm, and the North Sea gushed over rudimentary coastal defences along the British, Dutch and Belgian coasts. More than 2,000 people died and 200,000 hectares were flooded.

Kruiningen in the Netherlands, pictured here, was underwater for six months before the tide finally receded. The scale of the damage prompted the British and Dutch governments to invest in better defences and warning systems to protect those living along the vulnerable coast. 

1959: Malpasset Dam Disaster

The Malpasset Dam opened in 1954 and provided much-needed water for the growing resorts of the French Riviera. Unfortunately, its architects didn’t realise that they’d built the dam over a tectonic fault.

Over the next five years, minute changes in the Earth’s geology increased the pressure on the structure. On 2 December 1959, it burst. Water cascaded down the valley, deluging the village of Frejus. The area was inaccessible to the emergency services, and 421 people died. 

1980: Irpinia Earthquake

Southern Italy was rocked by a violent earthquake on the early evening of 23 November 1980. The 6.9 magnitude tremors destroyed houses, buckled train lines and led to landslides.

Four-fifths of houses in Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi were destroyed, including an orphanage which crumbled at the cost of 27 lives. Sixty-six children were killed when a church roof collapsed in Balvano. In total, around 2,500 people were killed. 

1999: Storms Lothar and Martin

The end of the 20th century saw two cyclones hit Europe in the space of two days. Storm Lothar made landfall in Normandy on 26 December and battered north France and Germany. The next day, Storm Martin crossed the coast in southern France and left a trail of destruction through Switzerland and Italy.

In total, 140 people lost their lives in the two storms. This boardwalk near Baiersbronn, Germany was built through a flattened forest and gives walkers a glimpse of nature’s power.

2003: French Heatwave

Europe turned tropical in the summer of 2003, when a prolonged area of high pressure led to soaring temperatures. It was particularly severe in France, where thermometers didn’t dip below 37°C (99°F) for a week.

The elderly and the very young were especially susceptible to the heat, and there were 15,000 excess deaths. Elsewhere in Europe, glaciers shrank in the Alps, forest fires burned in Portugal and the River Danube fell to its lowest level in 100 years. 

2017: Portuguese Wildfires

After a hot spell dried the forests of central Portugal, disaster struck in June 2017 when lightning sparked four wildfires that quickly escalated out of control. Worried residents tried to evacuate, but 66 people died.

Many of them were trapped in their cars on the N-236 as parched eucalyptus trees on either side of the road went up in flames. 

2021: Bernd Floods

The summer of 2021 saw Central Europe plagued by Bernd, a slow-moving area of low pressure that triggered record rainfall and burst riverbanks across the continent. Flooding was widespread in Germany’s Rhineland-Palatinate and Belgium’s third-largest city, Liege, pictured here.

Around 250 people died and the cost of repairing the damage caused added up to €46 billion (£38m/$47m). 

2023: Turkish Earthquake

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake rudely awakened inhabitants of Turkey and Syria on 6 February 2023 when a minute of intense shaking caused more than 850,000 buildings to crumble. In Adiyaman province, four in 10 buildings collapsed. In Hatay province, the important port of Iskenderun suffered significant damage, pictured here.

Over the next few hours, two aftershocks severely impacted the rescue effort. Eight million people were directly impacted by the earthquake and 55,000 people lost their lives. 

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