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Deadliest earthquakes[13] Rank Name Date Location Fatalities Magnitude Notes 1 "Shaanxi" January 23, 1556 Shaanxi, China 820,000–830,000 (est.)[14] 8.0 (est.) Estimated death toll in Shaanxi, China. 2 "Haiyuan" December 16, 1920 Ningxia–Gansu, China 273,400[15][16] 7.8 Major fractures, landslides. 3 "Tangshan" July 28, 1976 Hebei, China 242,769[17][18] 7.8 4 "Antioch" May 21, 526 Antioch, Turkey (then Byzantine Empire) 240,000[19] 7.0 (est.)[20] Procopius (II.14.6), sources based on John of Ephesus. 5 "Indian Ocean" December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean, Sumatra, Indonesia 230,210+[21][22] 9.1–9.3 Deaths from earthquake and resulting tsunami. 6 "Aleppo" October 11, 1138 Aleppo, Syria 230,000 Unknown The figure of 230,000 dead is based on a historical conflation of this earthquake with earthquakes in November 1137 on the Jazira plain and the large seismic event of September 30, 1139 in the Azerbaijani city of Ganja. The first mention of a 230,000 death toll was by Ibn Taghribirdi in the fifteenth century.[23] 7 "Haiti" January 12, 2010 Haiti Estimates vary from 316,000 (unsubstituted Haitian government claim) to 222,570 (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimate)[24] to 158,000 (report published in the Medicine, Conflict and Survival) to between 85,000 and 46,000 (unpublished LTL Strategies report commissioned by USAID).[25][26] 7.0 8 "Damghan" December 22, 856 Damghan, Iran 200,000 (est.) 7.9 (est.) 9 "Ardabil" March 22, 893 Ardabil, Iran 150,000 (est.) Unknown Reports probably relate to the 893 Dvin earthquake, due to misreading of the Arabic word for Dvin, 'Dabil' as 'Ardabil'.[27] This is regarded as a 'fake earthquake'.[28] 10 "Messina" December 28, 1908 Messina, Italy 123,000[29] 7.1 On December 28, 1908 from about 5:20 to 5:21 am an earthquake of 7.1 on the moment magnitude scale occurred centered on Messina, a city in Sicily, Italy. Reggio Calabria on the Italian mainland also suffered heavy damage. The ground shook for some 30 to 40 seconds, and the destruction was felt within a 300 km radius. Moments after the earthquake, a 40 feet (12 m) tsunami struck nearby coasts causing even more devastation. 93% of structures in Messina were destroyed and some 70,000 residents were killed. Rescuers searched through the rubble for weeks, and whole families were still being pulled out alive days later, but thousands remained buried there. Buildings in the area had not been constructed for earthquake resistance, having heavy roofs and vulnerable foundations. 11 "Ashgabat" October 6, 1948 Ashgabat, Turkmen SSR (modern-day Turkmenistan) 110,000[30] 7.3 12 "Great Kantō" September 1, 1923 Kantō region, Japan 105,385[31] 7.9 An earthquake which struck the Kantō plain on the Japanese main island of Honshū at 11:58 on the morning of September 1, 1923. Varied accounts hold that the duration of the earthquake was between 4 and 10 minutes. The quake had an epicenter deep beneath Izu Ōshima Island in Sagami Bay. It devastated Tokyo, the port city of Yokohama, surrounding prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Shizuoka, and caused widespread damage throughout the Kantō region.[32] The power and intensity of the earthquake is easy to underestimate, but the 1923 earthquake managed to move the 93-ton Great Buddha statue at Kamakura. The statue slid forward almost two feet.[33] Casualty estimates range from about 100,000 to 142,800 deaths, the latter figure including approximately 40,000 who went missing and were presumed dead. 13 "Genroku" December 31, 1703 Edo, Japan 2,300, with an offshore tsunami that it may have caused killing as many as 10,000 people[34] 8.2[35] 14 "Lisbon" November 1, 1755 Lisbon, Portugal Estimates range from 15,000–40,000[36] to 40,000-60,000 people of Lisbon's population of ~275,000,[37] to 90,000 (one-third of Lisbon's population of 270,000) (Braun and Radner 2005)[38] 8.5–9.0 (est.) "A watershed event in the Western world" that annihilated the Portuguese capital.[39] Many deaths were from a resulting tsunami, falling buildings, and fires.[36][37] |
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