Has any place had the misfortune of 2 unrelated natural disasters at the same time. For eg a hurricane and an earthquake. Or a hurricane and a volcano etc.
I wouldnt include the Indonesian earthquake and Tsunami as they are associated disasters.
Typhoon Yunya hit the Philippines as Mount Pinatubo was erupting.
Disastrous volcanic eruptions are rather rare, so probably not. (ETA: Well that was an embarassing ninjaing …) But just googling “hurricane and earthquake” brings up a couple of events, like this:
Hurrican and quake hit Central America
Haiti is so prone to hurricanes that you feel like calling that normal weather. They got hurricanes causing death and destruction in the same area a week apart.
Basically, you’d need to limit the event to being at least as bad as a one in 20 year for that area.
Well I’m not sure if the following fits my own definition… perhaps the earthquake and cyclone is normal enough. Vanuatu …
It might be said the volcano is caused by the earthquake too … like earthquake causes a tsunami, the volcanic eruption is also a follow up to that.
It seems to me that most natural disasters can be classified as either geological or meteorological, and that two events in the same category are likely to be related, but two events in different categories are probably unrelated. I suppose you could also make a third category for impactors from space, but those (at least, the ones big enough to count as “disasters”) are rare enough that you’re not likely to find any matches with them.
Which category would we put wildfires in?
If it’s a natural disaster, and not human-caused, then it’s meteorological, since natural wildfires are caused by lightning and propagated by particular weather conditions.
If this was a disaster movie, I would have the volcano at La Palma, Canary Islands collapse yesterday.
I’d still call them meteorological, but on a longer timescale: While the lightning strike might have been the proximate cause, the real root is generally years of drought beforehand. Given a dry enough forest, there are lots of things that can cause a fire.
Only one of these disasters was natural, but the Halifax Explosion was exacerbated by a gigantic blizzard immediately following the explosion. The explosion, the largest man-made explosion before atomic weapons, had destroyed a lot of housing and essential services; the blizzard then hampered rescue operations and movement into the area. It was a classic one-two punch.
Not simultaneous, but you have to feel sorry for the people in central Florida, who got hit by three hurricanes in 6 weeks in 2004.
And while they were related, we can’t forget the “Hell and high water” disaster in Grand Forks, ND during the 1997 flood.
