2001 Disasters

January 2001 Disasters

• Jan. 13, San Miguel, El Salvador: Magnitude 7.6 earthquake set off some 185 landslides across El Salvador; at least 844 died and nearly 100,000 houses were destroyed.
• Jan. 26, Bhuj, India: Magnitude 7.7 earthquake rocked the western Indian state of Gujarat, killing nearly 19,000 people and leaving 600,000 homeless. The total cost of the disaster was set at an estimated $1.3 billion.

February 2001 Disasters

• Feb. 9, nr. Pearl Harbor, Hawaii: U.S. submarine Greeneville collided with the Ehime Maru, a Japanese fishing boat, which quickly sank. Twenty-six of the people aboard were rescued; nine others, including four students, were presumed dead.
• Feb. 13, San Salvador, El Salvador: Magnitude 6.1 earthquake left 276 dead. As a result of the 2 earthquakes (the other occurred Jan. 13), 1.2 million people were left homeless in El Salvador.
• Feb. 21, Mozambique: Floods left 41 people dead and 77,400 homeless.
• Feb. 24, Pontotoc, Miss.: Tornado struck the northern part of the state, carving a 23-mile path of destruction through Pontotoc County and leaving five people dead. The twister was part of a larger storm system that caused blizzard conditions in the northern Plains and Midwest and heavy rains and flooding in the nation's mid-section.
• Feb. 28, nr. Great Heck, North Yorkshire, England: Ten people were killed and 70 injured when a high-speed London-bound passenger train hit a car stalled on the track and then collided with a freight train moving in the opposite direction.
• Feb. 28, Olympia, Wash.: Magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck northwest Washington State, injuring some 325 people and damaging bridges and buildings. Overall damage was estimated at $2 billion.

March 2001 Disasters

• March 4, Castelo de Paiva, Portugal: Bridge over the Douro River collapsed, plunging a bus and 2 cars into the water. At least 70 people were presumed dead.
• March 5, Mina, Saudi Arabia: Thirty-five Muslim pilgrims were crushed to death during the symbolic stoning of the devil ritual at the annual hajj pilgrimage.
• March 6, Fang Lin, Jiangxi, China: An explosion at a village elementary school killed 41 people, most of them children. According to state media, the blast occurred when a deranged man walked into the school and detonated 2 bags of explosives. Victims' families, however, blamed school officials, who, they claimed, forced the children to make fireworks to help support the school.
• March 15, southern Atlantic Ocean, off Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil: The world's largest offshore oil rig was rocked by a series of explosions that left 11 people dead. The rig, which was owned by the state oil giant Petrobras, listed for five days before it sank. The oil spill was reported as relatively minimal.
• March 16, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China: A series of explosions destroyed four residential buildings, killing 108 people.
• March 26, Machakos, Kenya: A fire in a secondary-school dormitory killed 58 boys and seriously injured 28.

April 2001 Disasters

• April 2, Bering Sea: Seattle-based fishing trawler, the Arctic Rose, disappeared in rough seas about 200 mi northeast of St. Paul Island, one of the Pribilof Islands. All 15 crew members perished in one of the worst accidents in the history of the Pacific Northwest fishing industry.
• April 11, Johannesburg, South Africa: Forty-three people were killed and 160 injured during a stampede at a soccer match at Ellis Park stadium.

May 2001 Disasters

• May 9, Accra, Ghana: At least 120 people were killed in a stampede at a soccer match. It was Africa's worst soccer-related disaster ever, and the third in a month.

June 2001 Disasters

• May–June, Utah: Hordes of crickets and grasshoppers infested more than 1.5 million acres in 18 of the state's 29 counties, causing some $25 million in crop damage.
• June 6, Bangladesh: Severe flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains inundated several villages and left some 100,000 Bangladeshis stranded.
• June 8–15, Gulf Coast to southern New England: Tropical Storm Allison caused severe flooding, especially around Houston, where 20,000 residents were evacuated from their homes. Rainfall totals reached 40 in. in parts of Tex. and La. Storm-related fatalities included 23 in Tex., 1 in La., 1 in Miss., 8 in Fla., 7 in Penn., and 1 in Va.
• June 11–12, nr. Quito, Ecuador: At least 38 people died and thousands were evacuated from their homes after torrential rains flooded rivers and triggered landslides.
• June 22, Cochin, Kerala, India: At least 57 people died and hundreds more were injured when the Mangalore–Chennai mail train derailed and plunged off an aging bridge into the Kadalundi River.
• June 23, nr. Arequipa and Moquegua, Peru: A 7.9-magnitude earthquake killed 70 people, injured 1,200 others, and left 20,500 homeless.
• June 23–24, Taiwan and Fujian province, China: Typhoon Chebi killed 9 people in Taiwan and 73 people in Fujian province in southeast China. A total of 109 fishing boats and four yachts sank in the Pescadores, off Taiwan's western coast. Damages to crops in Taiwan were estimated at $13.3 million.

July 2001 Disasters

• southern W.Va. and southwest Va.: Torrential downpours during July caused flooding and mudslides that swept away homes and bridges and killed 2 people. Damages were estimated at more than $200 million.
• July 3, nr.Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia: Russian Tupolev-154 passenger plane crashed and burst into flames, killing all 145 people aboard.
• July 6, northern Philippines, Taiwan, southern China: Typhoon Utor, one of the worst storms to hit the area in years, left more than 160 dead (121 in the Philippines, 46 in China, and 1 in Taiwan). High winds and landslides leveled houses and knocked out roads and bridges. Damages were estimated at $286 million in China and $11.2 million in the Philippines.
• July 18, Baltimore, Md.: Train derailment and fire in downtown tunnel closed several city blocks, blocked highways, and damaged fiber-optic cables, disrupting Internet service nationwide.
• July 30–31, Taiwan and southern China: Typhoon Toraji slammed central Taiwan, causing flash floods and mudslides. At least 61 people were killed. Damages were estimated at $20 million.

August 2001 Disasters

• Aug. 1, Nias Island, off western Sumatra, Indonesia: Flooding and landslides caused by heavy rains swept away entire villages and killed at least 31 people.
• Aug. 16, nr. Katpadi, Tamil Nadu, India: Explosion ripped through a government-owned dynamite factory, killing 20 people.
• Aug. 18, Quezon City, Philippines: Hotel fire killed 72 people, including some members of an evangelical Christian group from the United States who were attending a conference. It was the deadliest hotel fire ever in the Philippines.

September 2001 Disasters

• Sept. 1, Tokyo, Japan: Fire in a crowded gambling club killed 44 people. It was the worst incident of its kind in Tokyo since 1982, when 33 people were killed in a hotel fire.
• Sept. 11, New York City and Arlington, Va.: Hijackers crashed 2 commercial jets from Boston into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, causing the collapse of both towers and other nearby buildings. A short time later, 2 more hijacked U.S. planes crashed, one into the Pentagon and the other into a field near Shanksville, Pa. All 266 people aboard the planes were killed; total dead and missing numbered 2,992, including the 19 hijackers. The names of the hijackers, four of whom have been connected to terrorist Osama bin Laden, were released in mid-September.
• Sept. 17–18, Taiwan: Typhoon Nari caused 79 deaths.
• Sept. 21, Toulouse, France: Explosion at one of France's largest petrochemical plants left 29 people dead, at least 10 missing, and more than 2,500 injured. The blast caused earth tremors measuring 3.4 in magnitude and damaged an estimated 20,000 buildings, some as far as 3 mi away.
• Sept. 23, Brookwood, Ala.: 2 gas explosions at the Blue Creek No. 5 mine, the nation's deepest vertical shaft coal mine, killed 13 miners. It was the deadliest U.S. mine disaster since 1984, when a fire killed 27 coal miners near Orangeville, Utah.
• Sept. 24, Maryland and Virginia: Tornado tore a path of destruction from Culpeper, Va., to Laurel, Md., leaving three dead and causing millions of dollars of damage.

October 2001 Disasters

• Oct. 4, Black Sea, off the coast of Russia: Siberian Airlines jet en route from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Novosibirsk in Siberia exploded and plunged into the Black Sea. All 76 aboard, including scores of Jewish holiday celebrants, were killed. According to American officials, the plane was brought down by antiaircraft missiles fired by the Ukrainian military during a training exercise, a theory Ukrainian and Russian officials disputed.
• Oct. 4–7, central Alaska: Some 285,600 gallons of crude oil spilled from the trans-Alaska pipeline, contaminating the area around the pipeline about 70 mi north of Fairbanks. The oil leaked through a bullet hole, which was made by a gun fired by a drunken resident of a nearby town.
• Oct. 8, Milan, Italy: Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) jet bound for Copenhagen hit a Cessna aircraft during takeoff in a heavy fog at Milan's Linate airport. The SAS MD-87 then spun out of control and hit 2 airport buildings before crashing into a baggage handling hangar and bursting into flames. All 104 passengers and 6 crew aboard the airliner, as well as the four people in the smaller plane and four airport workers, were killed in what is one of Italy's worst air disasters.
• Oct. 8, near Big Creek village, Belize: Hurricane Iris roared onto the coast of southern Belize, killing an estimated 25 people. The dead included 17 Americans from a diving club in Richmond, Va., whose boat capsized during the storm.
• early October, central and southern United States: A record 83 tornadoes swept through portions of the U.S. in the first half of October, the highest number of twisters ever recorded for that time period. The states most affected were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. The previous record for the first 2 weeks of October was 47 confirmed tornadoes, set in 1998.
• Oct. 24, St. Gotthard Tunnel, Switzerland: 2 trucks collided near the tunnel's southern entrance and burst into flames, causing dense black smoke to billow from the tunnel. At least 11 people died as a result, but tens more were missing. The fire continued to rage for 2 days. The accident was Switzerland's worst road tunnel crash.

November 2001 Disasters

• Nov. 4–5, Cuba: Hurricane Michelle destroyed tens of thousands of homes and caused widespread agricultural damage; five people died. Before striking Cuba, Hurricane Michelle wiped out homes, roads, and bridges and killed 12 people in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Jamaica.
• Nov. 8–9, central and southern Philippines: Tropical storm Lingling triggered floods and landslides that left some 350 people dead or missing.
• Nov. 10–12, Algiers, Algeria: Heavy rains caused the worst flooding in 2 decades; official death toll stood at 651 (701 nationwide) as of Nov. 15 but was expected to rise.
• Nov. 11–12, central Vietnam: Tropical storm Lingling continued to wreak havoc, with torrential rains and gusting winds that destroyed 15,000 homes and left 20 people dead. The storm caused an estimated $25 million in damage.
• Nov. 12, Queens, N.Y.: American Airlines Airbus A-300 bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, crashed into residential neighborhood minutes after taking off from JFK International Airport. All 260 people aboard and 5 on the ground were killed. Co-pilot error and poorly designed rudder system blamed for crash.
• Nov. 15–16, central and southern Texas: Massive downpours and heavy winds caused extensive flooding that damaged hundreds of homes and killed 10 people. Rising waters not only wrecked homes but also caused severe sewage spills in the area.
• Nov. 22, Irra, western Colombia: At least 67 people died, including 6 children, following a landslide at a huge open-pit gold mine.
• Nov. 24, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama: Fierce thunderstorms, which spawned a series of tornadoes, ripped through the area, killing at least 11 people.
• Nov. 24, Zurich, Switzerland: Swiss Crossair RJ-100 jet crashed in poor weather conditions on approach to Zurich International Airport, killing 24 of the 33 people aboard.

December 2001 Disasters

• Dec. 23–31, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil: Flooding and landslides caused by heavy rains killed 60–70 people, mainly in the mountain resort city of Petropolis near Rio de Janeiro on Christmas Eve. Downpours on New Year's Eve destroyed part of the historic town of Goias Velho, a United Nations World Heritage Site.
• Dec. 29, Lima, Peru: Nearly 300 people died in a massive fire that started after someone set off a firecracker, apparently to test it, in a crowded downtown street. The firecracker set off other fireworks nearby, causing a series of explosions. The blaze covered a four-block area; many of the dead were small children.