Is the Haitian earthquake the largest and most devastating natural disaster in the western hemisphere in known history?
Largest and most devastating in terms of what? Destruction of structures? Area of destruction? Number of human deaths?
It’s unlikely. If you took the guesstimate by one Haitian senator and assume 500,000 people are dead, it might be the second most deadly earthquake. And it could crack the top five most deadly natural disasters. (Assuming all of these estimates are accurate.) But the Red Cross is now estimating the true figure is more like 45,000 or 50,000. Still a lot of people but not one of the ten most deadly earthquakes, and maybe a fifth the number of people killed by the Asian tsunami in 2004, for example.
We don’t know anything yet about the death toll.
On the island of Martinique in 1902, Mount Pelée erupted, killing 30,121 people in the town of Saint Pierre. There were two survivors.
If this list is accurate then no (based on estimates I’ve been reading today of 40-50,000 dead in Haiti):
Examples include 1970 Peru quake with 66,000 listed dead and the 1908 Italy quake with 123,000 dead.
If you accept famine and diseases as natural disasters then no earthquake/flood/storm comes close to being the deadliest event.
Note that the OP specified the Western hemisphere so many historical disasters like the Tangshan earthquake in China, the Bangladesh cyclones/floods and the recent tsunami aren’t included.
Guess I need to repeat the question,
Is the Haitian earthquake the largest and most devastating natural disaster in the
WESTERN HEMISPHERE in known history?
In the western hemisphere, it’s way up there; Mexico City 1985 killed about 10,100 people. By far the worst natural disasters happen in Asia and Africa. I assume you’re leaving out epidemics like the Spanish flu, AIDS, and smallpox?
Jeez, people, get with the question, please.
…or not.
But, yes, I am leaving out disease, slavery, segregation, toxins, American Indian elimination, Iraq occupation, Bush…the ‘other’ list could go on.
See my first post which answers your exact question with specific examples. I raised famine and disease because some people consider them “natural disasters” and some don’t. Either way, based on the info we’ve got now for casualties, the Haiti earthquake is not the deadliest natural disaster in the recorded history of the Western hemisphere. We won’t know for a long time the economic cost but I have a feeling it won’t be as bad as some other large events like Hurricane Andrew and the 1994 Northridge earthquake (many tens of billions of dollars each), for example. Haiti was already a mighty poor place.
Yes, but you haven’t defined your terms. The New Madrid earthquake was much more powerful, but caused less loss of life. So…devastating to what?
Answered in #5: 1970: A 7.9 earthquake and resulting landslides killed about 66,000 in Northern Peru. If Haiti exceeds this (which is entirely possible), then it might be #1.
The western hemisphere has less recorded history than the eastern, has been densely populated for a shorter time, has less land mass to begin with, and a far lower population; it’s not surprising that the list is skimpy.
The Lisbon Earthquake and resulting tsunami in 1755 destroyed pretty much the entire capital city of Portugal. However there are no accurate death figures - Wiki gives it “between 10,000 and 100,000”, which makes it comparable.
You could look at Vesuvius’s destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum too, which is “in known history” too - though the death toll would probably have been smaller.
…and it was still not powerful enough to shift Italy into the western hemisphere 
What about the Toba eruption, which resulted in the world’s human population being reduced to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs ?
I suppose that the Chicxulub event was pretty devastating, and it did occur in the Western Hemisphere (more or less.) However, it can’t really be said to have occurred in “human history”.
I think that’s in the wrong hemisphere (2.6845°N 98.8756°E)
Starts at the Bosphorus in my book, dear boy.
I really don’t know how you measure the most devastating. Human deathsmay simply be a signal of greater population.
They talk about historical prices in “todays dollars”; perhaps a similar sort of calculation would apply to death tolls in historical disasters…a death toll of 10000 in 1400 could very well be the equivalent of 100000 in todays population numbers.
How bad was the death and damage caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake?
How much property damage was caused by the 1989 one?
Mount St. Helens, 1980? Not in a populated area, but the ash spread very wide, was that damaging or merely inconvenient?
Alaska, 1964? The death toll wasn’t all that high, but Anchorage was a modern enough mini-metropolis that the property damage from a 9.2 quake is higher than in Haiti…or was it, before oil was discovered in Alaska?