Some accidents entail not only human casualties and great material damage, but also strong changes in climate, flora and fauna. In this article, we will talk about the ten largest environmental disasters in the world, which led not only to great human losses, but also to monstrous consequences for nature.

Ecological catastrophes are called, which not only take the lives of people, but also lead to rather deplorable consequences for the environment. As a rule, such catastrophes are the result of human activity. After all, the development of modern technologies, in particular in the energy sector, provides not only tangible material benefits, but also, if used ineptly, can lead to monstrous consequences.

Oil release due to the accident on the tanker "Prestige"

The monohull tanker Prestige, which sailed under the Bahamian flag and was originally designed to transport crude oil, was built at the Hitachi shipyard and put into operation on March 1, 1976.

When the tanker was passing through the Bay of Biscay on November 13, 2002, it got into a severe storm off the coast of Galicia. Due to the damage received, a crack appeared thirty-five meters long, which led to the leakage of fuel oil in the amount of 1000 tons per day.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that the Spanish coastal authorities refused to call the ship to the nearest port. Instead, an attempt was made to tow the tanker to one of the ports of Portugal, but the local authorities also refused. As a result, the ship was towed out to sea.

The final sinking of the ship occurred on 19 November. It simply split into two parts and its remains sank to the bottom, to a depth of about 3700 meters. Due to the fact that the damage could not be repaired and the oil could not be pumped, more than 70 million liters of oil spilled into the sea. The resulting spot stretched for thousands of kilometers along the coastline, causing irreparable damage to flora and fauna.

This oil spill was the most serious environmental disaster on the coast of Europe. The damage from the incident was estimated at four billion euros, and three hundred thousand volunteers had to be involved to eliminate its consequences.

Wreck of the tanker Exxon Valdez

The oil tanker Exxon Valdez left the terminal at Valdez, Alaska on March 23, 1989 at 9:12 pm, heading for Long Beach, California, through the Prince Wilhelm Sound. The tanker was fully loaded with oil. The pilot led him through the Valdez, and after that he handed over control of the ship to the captain, who had been drinking alcohol that evening.

In order to avoid a collision with icebergs, Captain Joseph Jeffrey Hayzvuld deviated from the chosen course, which he notified the coast guard. Having received the appropriate permission, the captain changed course and left the cabin at 23 o'clock, transferring control of the ship to his third mate and sailor, who had already defended one watch without receiving the six hours of rest due to it. At that time, the ship was directly controlled by an autopilot, which led the ship through the navigation system.

Before leaving the wheelhouse, the captain left instructions to his assistant to turn at the moment when the ship was abeam the island two minutes above. Despite the fact that the assistant gave the appropriate order to the helmsman, it was either voiced late,

or done with delay. This resulted in the ship colliding with Blythe Reef on 24 March 00:28.

This resulted in 40 million liters of oil leaking into the sea, although some environmentalists claim the actual leak was much higher. 2400 kilometers of the coast were affected, which makes this incident one of the worst environmental disasters.

Bhopal disaster

The Bhopal incident is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in the world due to the fact that it led to the death of eighteen thousand people and huge damage to the environment.

The Bhopal chemical plant was built by a subsidiary of the Union Carbide Corporation. Initially, the enterprise was intended for the production of pesticides to be used in agriculture. It was planned that the plant would import part of the chemicals, however, in order to compete with similar enterprises, it was decided to move to a more complex and dangerous production, which made it possible to do without foreign raw materials.

In July 1984, it was planned to sell the company, because due to crop failures, the demand for its products has seriously decreased. Due to insufficient funding, work continued on equipment that did not meet safety standards.

At the time of the disaster, the plant was producing Sevin insecticide, popular at that time, which appears as a result of the reaction of methyl isocyanate with alpha-naphthol in carbon tetrachloride. Methyl isocyanate was stored in three tanks with a total capacity of approximately 180,000 liters of liquid, which were partially dug into the ground.

The cause of the accident was a sharp release of methyl isocyanate vapor, which heated above the boiling point, due to which the emergency valve ruptured. Because of this, forty-two tons of toxic fumes were released, forming a cloud that covered an area with a radius of two kilometers from the plant, and in particular covered the railway station and residential areas.

Due to untimely informing the population and lack of medical staff, about five thousand people died on the first day. Another thirteen thousand died within a few years, due to the consequences of the release of toxic fumes into the atmosphere.

Accident and fire at the chemical factory "SANDOZ"

On November 1, 1986, one of the worst environmental disasters in the world occurred, which led to monstrous consequences for wildlife. The chemical plant, located near the Swiss city of Basel, on the banks of the Rhine River, was engaged in the production of various agricultural chemicals. Because of the fire, about thirty tons of mercury and pesticides were dumped into the river.

As a result of chemicals entering the water, the Rhine turned red, and people living on the coast were forbidden to leave their homes. In some German cities, water pipes had to be closed and only the water that was brought in tanks was used. In addition, about half a million fish and representatives of the river fauna died, and some species also completely died out. The program aimed at making the waters of the Rhine suitable for bathing runs until 2020.

London smog 1952

In early December 1952, a cold fog descended on London, which is why the townspeople began to actively use coal for space heating. Because in Britain

after the war, low-quality coal was used, which contained a lot of sulfur; during combustion, a lot of smoke was formed, which included sulfur dioxide. Also, a certain contribution to air pollution was made by motor vehicles, which only recently began to be actively used in London, as well as the work of several coal-fired power plants. Also, polluted air from the industrial regions of Europe was brought by the wind that blew from the English Channel.

Since fogs are not uncommon in London, the reaction of the townspeople to what was happening was quite calm. But the consequences of this incident were quite sad. According to statistics, more than one hundred thousand people received respiratory diseases, of which about twelve thousand died.

This incident is considered one of the worst cases of air pollution and led to major changes in attitudes towards environmental research, the impact of clean air on human health. To date, this incident is considered one of the largest disasters in England.

Flixborough chemical plant disaster

The Nipro plant, located in the city of Flixboro, was engaged in the production of ammonium. Its storage facilities contained up to two thousand tons of cyclohexane, more than three thousand tons of cyclohexanone, about four thousand tons of caprolactam, two and a half thousand tons of phenol and other chemicals.

Ball tanks and other technological containers were not filled enough, which seriously increased the risk of explosion. In addition, many flammable materials were in factory settings at elevated temperatures and pressures. In particular, the production plant for the oxidation of cyclohexane contained approximately five hundred tons of flammable liquid.

In addition, due to the rapid growth in production, the fire protection system quickly lost its effectiveness. Production engineers partly deviated from the technological regulations and began to ignore safety standards under pressure from management.

On June 1, 1974 at 16:53 a powerful explosion rocked the plant. The flames engulfed the production facilities, and the shock wave passed through the surrounding villages and towns, tearing roofs off houses, breaking windows, injuring people, which led to the death of 55 people. The power of the explosion was approximately equal to the action of a 45-ton charge of TNT.

In addition, a large cloud of poisonous gases appeared due to the explosion, which led to the need to evacuate residents of settlements located near the plant.

The total damage from the disaster amounted to 36 million pounds sterling, which is the heaviest blow to the English industry.

The death of the Aral Sea

The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the most famous environmental disasters that have occurred in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Initially, this reservoir was considered the fourth largest lake in the world.

Due to improper design of agricultural canals that have taken water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers that have fed the Aral Sea since the 1960s, the lake has receded from the shore, exposing the bottom covered with pesticides, chemicals and salt. This led to the rapid evaporation of water. In particular, between 1960 and 2007, the Aral Sea lost a thousand cubic kilometers of water, and its size is less than 10% of its original size.

Of the 178 species of vertebrates that lived in the Aral Sea, only 38 survived.

Piper Alpha oil platform fire

The disaster that occurred on July 6, 1988 on the Piper Alpha platform, which was used to extract oil and gas, is considered the largest in the history of mining. Due to the fact that the actions of the personnel were insufficiently thought out and indecisive, 167 people out of 226 who were on the platform at that moment died in the fire. In addition, due to the fact that the supply of hydrocarbons through the pipes could not be stopped immediately, the fire was maintained for a long time and only became stronger.

The insured loss due to this disaster is $3.4 billion, and this does not take into account a number of environmental problems caused by this incident.

The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

The tragedy that occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is known to any person living in the territory of the countries of the former USSR. The consequences of this incident still make themselves felt, and, without any doubt, this is one of the biggest environmental disasters in the world.

On April 26, 1986, an explosion occurred in the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, as a result of which the reactor was completely destroyed, and a powerful release of radioactive substances was produced into the environment. In the first three months after the accident, 31 people died. Over the next fifteen years, between 60 and 80 people died due to the effects of radiation exposure.

Due to the release of radioactive substances, more than one hundred and fifteen thousand people had to be evacuated from the thirty-kilometer zone around the station. More than 600,000 people took part in the liquidation of the consequences and significant resources were expended. Part of the territory around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is still considered unsuitable for permanent residence.

Accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant

On March 11, 2011, the world's largest environmental disaster occurred. The strongest earthquake and tsunami damaged the power supply system and backup diesel generators of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, which disabled the cooling systems and caused the melting of the reactor core in power units 1, 2 and 3. As a result, due to the formation of hydrogen, an explosion occurred that did not damage the reactor vessel, but its outer shell was destroyed.

The radiation level quickly began to rise, and due to the leakage of the shell of some fuel rods, radioactive cesium leaked.

In sea water in the thirty-kilometer zone of the station on March 23, an excess of the norm of iodine-131 and the amount of cesium-137, which was significantly below the permissible norm, were found. Over time, the radioactivity of the water increased and on March 31 it exceeded the norm by 4385 times. And this is not surprising, because during the accident, tons of contaminated water were thrown into the sea.

Every year, dozens of terrible man-made disasters occur in the world, which cause significant harm to the world ecology. Today I invite you to read about a few of them in the continuation of the post.

Petrobrice is the Brazilian state oil company. The company headquarters is located in Rio de Janeiro. In July 2000, in Brazil, a disaster at an oil refinery spilled more than a million gallons of oil (about 3,180 tons) into the Iguazu River. For comparison, 50 tons of crude oil recently spilled near a resort island in Thailand.
The resulting stain moved downstream, threatening to poison the drinking water for several cities at once. The liquidators of the accident built several protective barriers, but they managed to stop the oil only at the fifth. One part of the oil was collected from the surface of the water, the other went through specially constructed diversion channels.
Petrobrice paid a $56 million fine to the state budget and $30 million to the state budget.

On September 21, 2001, an explosion occurred at the AZF chemical plant in Toulouse, France, the consequences of which are considered one of the largest man-made disasters. Exploded 300 tons of ammonium nitrate (salt of nitric acid), which were in the warehouse of finished products. According to the official version, the management of the plant is to blame, which did not ensure the safe storage of an explosive substance.
The consequences of the disaster were gigantic: 30 people died, the total number of wounded was more than 300, thousands of houses and buildings were destroyed or damaged, including almost 80 schools, 2 universities, 185 kindergartens, 40,000 people were left without a roof over their heads, more than 130 enterprises have actually ceased their activities. The total amount of damage is 3 billion euros.

On November 13, 2002, off the coast of Spain, the oil tanker Prestige fell into a severe storm, in the holds of which there were more than 77,000 tons of fuel oil. As a result of the storm, a crack about 50 meters long formed in the ship's hull. On November 19, the tanker broke in half and sank. As a result of the disaster, 63,000 tons of fuel oil fell into the sea.

Cleaning the sea and coasts from fuel oil cost 12 billion dollars, the full damage to the ecosystem cannot be estimated.

On August 26, 2004, a fuel truck carrying 32,000 liters of fuel fell off a 100-meter-high Wiehltal bridge near Cologne in western Germany. After the fall, the tanker exploded. The culprit of the accident was a sports car that skidded on a slippery road, which caused the fuel tanker to skid.
This accident is considered one of the most costly man-made disasters in history - temporary repairs to the bridge cost $40 million, and full reconstruction - $318 million.

On March 19, 2007, a methane explosion at the Ulyanovsk mine in the Kemerovo region killed 110 people. Following the first explosion, four more explosions followed in 5-7 seconds, which caused extensive collapses in the workings in several places at once. The chief engineer and almost all the management of the mine died. This accident is the largest in Russian coal mining over the past 75 years.

On August 17, 2009, a man-made disaster occurred at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, located on the Yenisei River. This happened during the repair of one of the HPP's hydroelectric units. As a result of the accident, the 3rd and 4th water conduits were destroyed, the wall was destroyed and the engine room was flooded. 9 out of 10 hydraulic turbines were completely out of order, the hydroelectric power station was stopped.
Due to the accident, the power supply to the Siberian regions was disrupted, including the limited supply of electricity in Tomsk, and several Siberian aluminum smelters were cut off. As a result of the disaster, 75 people died and 13 were injured.

Damage from the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP exceeded 7.3 billion rubles, including environmental damage. The other day in Khakassia, a trial began on the case of a man-made disaster at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station in 2009.

October 4, 2010 in the west of Hungary there was a major environmental disaster. At a large aluminum smelter, an explosion destroyed the dam of a reservoir of toxic waste - the so-called red mud. About 1.1 million cubic meters of caustic substance flooded the cities of Kolontar and Decever, 160 kilometers west of Budapest, with a 3-meter stream.

Red mud is a residue that forms during the production of alumina. When it comes into contact with the skin, it acts on it like an alkali. As a result of the disaster, 10 people died, about 150 received various injuries and burns.

April 22, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of the US state of Louisiana, after an explosion that killed 11 people, and a 36-hour fire, the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform sank.

The oil leak was stopped only on August 4, 2010. About 5 million barrels of crude oil spilled into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The platform on which the accident occurred belonged to a Swiss company, and at the time of the man-made disaster, the platform was operated by British Petroleum.

On March 11, 2011, in the northeast of Japan, at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, after a strong earthquake, the largest accident in the last 25 years after the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant occurred. Following earthquakes of magnitude 9.0, a huge tsunami wave came to the coast, which damaged 4 of the 6 reactors of the nuclear power plant and disabled the cooling system, which led to a series of hydrogen explosions, melting the core.

The total emissions of iodine-131 and cesium-137 after the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant amounted to 900,000 terabecquerels, which does not exceed 20% of the emissions after the Chernobyl accident in 1986, which then amounted to 5.2 million terabecquerels.
Experts estimated the total damage from the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant at $74 billion. The complete elimination of the accident, including the dismantling of the reactors, will take about 40 years.

NPP "Fukushima-1"

On July 11, 2011, an explosion occurred at a naval base near Limassol in Cyprus, which claimed 13 lives and brought the island nation to the brink of an economic crisis, destroying the island's largest power plant.
Investigators accused the president of the republic, Dimitris Christofias, of negligently handling the problem of storing ammunition confiscated in 2009 from the Monchegorsk ship on suspicion of smuggling weapons to Iran. In fact, the ammunition was stored right on the ground on the territory of the naval base and detonated due to the high temperature.

Destroyed Mari power plant in Cyprus

Vadim Karelin

It is believed that environmental law in the world appeared in the XIII century. The first act was an edict by King Edward forbidding the use of coal for heating dwellings in London. The first surviving environmental document is considered to be a stone stele 1.6 m high, found in China and dating back to 1549. 700 hieroglyphs carved on it prohibit deforestation and urge citizens to plant forests in deserted areas. The decree engraved on the stele states that anyone who disobeys the order not to cut down forests will be exiled to remote places of the empire.

The first legislative acts in Russia on environmental law were the decrees of Peter I on the protection of forests and animals.

In the nineteenth century Almost every self-respecting state paid attention to nature protection. Man still managed to balance on the edge, beyond which - the irreplaceable. In the twentieth century We have successfully crossed that line. Second half of the twentieth century. historians are likely to call it a period of ecological catastrophes. Judge for yourself.

September 29, 1957
A container with radioactive waste exploded on the territory of the Mayak plutonium plant near Chelyabinsk. The area of ​​the contaminated territory was 23,000 km2. It is estimated that more than 8,000 people died from radiation sickness. About 3,000 people still live in the danger zone. The accident made this area the dirtiest place on the planet.

December 2, 1984
The catastrophe at a chemical plant in Bhopal (India) that occurred on the night of December 2-3 became one of the largest man-made accidents of the 20th century. As a result of the accident, 3,000 people died, about 20,000 were blinded, and 200,000 people had serious brain damage, paralysis, etc. An area 5 km long and 2 km wide was infected. The disaster also caused incalculable damage to the environment. The fields and roads were littered with dead animals and birds. The toxic gas completely destroyed crops within a radius of 100 miles (167 km). For a long time, the affected remained barren.

April 26, 1986
Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Explosion at the fourth power unit. As a result of the explosion, 50 million curies of various radionuclides were released into the environment, 70% of these substances went to Belarus. According to official figures, 31 people died immediately, about 2,000 died later. The total number of infected people is estimated by Greenpeace at 1,700,000 people.

March 25, 1989
The 987-foot oil tanker Walde ran aground in Prince William Sound off the coast of Alaska, spilling over 30,000 tons of oil into the water. More than 2400 km of the coast suffered from pollution. Oil spilled from a punctured tanker, polluting one of the most pristine and clean ecosystems in the world. According to the Guinness Book of Records, this is an environmental disaster with oil pollution causing the most damage to the coast.

1991
During the first Iraqi war, before retreating from Kuwait, the Iraqis set fire to most of the oil wells in Kuwait. As a result of the Iraqi attack on Kuwait in 1991 and the subsequent Operation Desert Storm, 732 oil wells were set on fire in Kuwait. It took almost a year to extinguish them, the total cost was about $ 2 billion. Specialists from 16 countries, including the USSR, fought the fire. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered the pumping of crude oil produced in the Persian Gulf from the Sea Island terminal in Kuwait and seven large oil tankers. According to preliminary estimates, 816,000 tons (40 times more than from the Prestige tanker) of oil were poured into the sea.

Add to this the practically dried-up Aral Sea, acid rains, deforestation of tropical forests and reservoirs, growing ozone holes, and we will see that in 50 years mankind has managed to do with the Planet what was not possible in the entire previous history. The question that is asked by every person for whom the concept of "world" is wider than his apartment or cottage: "Why are we so methodically destroying the world in which we live?"

Many books have been devoted to trying to answer it. From them we can learn about the imperfection of environmental law, the predatory destruction of nature for the sake of commercial interests, and Russia's stubborn unwillingness to sign the Kyoto Protocol2. Common to all these books is the position of a man, proudly, "from top to bottom" looking at the world in which he lives, and seeing in it only the source of his own prosperity. G.T. Miller of St. Andrew's Presbyterian College:

1. Man is the source of all values ​​(anthropocentrism).
2. Nature exists for our use.
3. Our first goals are the production and consumption of material goods.
4. Material and energy resources are limitless, because human ingenuity will always provide them.
5. The production and distribution of material goods must increase, because everyone has the right to live according to a certain standard of living.
6. We do not need to adapt to the natural environment, because we ourselves can adapt it to meet our needs through science and technology.
7. The main function of society is to help individuals and corporations in the development of the environment to increase wealth and power.
8. The ideal of personality is an independent individual who avoids trouble for his own benefit.

This is, in fact, the "creed" of our modern materialistic society, and there is nothing to be surprised that the "amateur individual", "avoiding trouble for his own benefit", continues and will continue to "master" the "environment".

When will it stop? Two possibilities appear. The "environment" is not infinite, and the limit of its exploitation may come, but I really don't want to imagine this moment. Another possibility is to take, as banal as it sounds, a step towards nature. This step "down" a person must take in his mind; man and nature must be on an equal footing, on the same level. Not on paper, but with mother's milk, a person must absorb that he is not a "king", but a part of Nature. Damaging nature will then be analogous to self-mutilation and will be no less unnatural. This path seems much more desirable, but it requires the revival of many forgotten knowledge about Man and his place in the world around him. And this is a completely different conversation.

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The problem of catastrophes is very popular in scientific literature and mass media.

Term - natural disasters - is used for two different concepts, in some sense overlapping. Catastrophe in literal translation means - a turn, a restructuring. This value corresponds to the most general idea of ​​catastrophes in natural science, where the evolution of the Earth is seen as a series of different catastrophes that cause a change in geological processes and types of living organisms.

Interest in the catastrophic events of the past is fueled by the fact that an inevitable part of any forecast is the analysis of the past. The older the catastrophe, the more difficult it is to recognize its traces. Lack of information always breeds fantasies. Some researchers explain the same steep milestones and turns in the history of the Earth by cosmic causes - meteorite falls, changes in solar activity, the seasons of the galactic year, others - by the cyclical processes taking place in the bowels of the planet.

Second concept - natural disasters refers only to extreme natural phenomena and processes resulting in loss of life. In this understanding - natural disasters opposed - technogenic disasters, i.e. those caused directly by human activity.

Floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tornadoes - every year these and other catastrophic events claim the lives of people and bring destruction to many parts of the Earth. For many centuries, scientists have been trying to capture the patterns of occurrence of such cataclysms, their cyclicality, to find ways to predict and prevent catastrophic natural phenomena. The successes of science are not the same for disasters caused by various natural phenomena. Natural disasters are usually classified by the number of victims and destruction, as well as by natural phenomena (Appendices of Table 1).

Some natural disasters occur almost instantly, such as earthquakes. Others, such as droughts, may be spread over several years. The terrible drought of the 20s of the last century in Ukraine and Russia, which claimed millions of lives, remained in the memory of people. Not only for this catastrophe, but also for many others, especially ancient ones, the figures of victims given by various authors differ significantly.

Natural disasters in the generally accepted sense have always been one of the elements of global ecodynamics. Natural disasters and various natural cataclysms in the past occurred in accordance with the development of natural natural trends, and since the 19th century, anthropogenic factors began to influence their dynamics. The deployment of engineering activities in the 20th century and the formation of a complex socio-economic structure of the world not only dramatically increased the proportion of anthropogenic natural disasters, but also changed the characteristics of the environment, giving them dynamics in the direction of worsening the habitat of living beings, including humans. According to Schneider estimates, in the historical past, climatic seasonal variations were characterized by high stability. The seasonal shift for 344 years since 1651 did not exceed one day per century. Since 1940, a pronounced anomaly in the seasonal shift has emerged in the northern hemisphere. For example, in the US, the winter of 1994 was characterized by record low temperatures in the eastern states, and in July of this year a heat record was set in the southwest of the country, when the temperature reached 48.8°C. The heat in the summer of 1994 in India killed thousands of people. On the contrary, the second half of 1991 was characterized by lower temperatures, apparently due to the eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines in June 1991, when huge masses of ash were thrown into the atmosphere. In general, along with the processes of climate destabilization, an increase in the number of catastrophic phenomena is observed. The above tables give some idea of ​​the dynamics of the number of natural disasters and related disasters.

Every year, the number of natural disasters in the world increases, on average, by about 20 percent. Such a disappointing conclusion was made by experts of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society. The past year was no exception, beating all previous years in terms of the number of natural disasters, according to the annual report of the organization. (Appendix Fig. 1)

In 2006, according to the document, there were 427 natural disasters in the world, which means an increase of 70 percent over the past 3 years. Most of all, the organization's specialists are concerned about the sharp increase in the number of deaths as a result of earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods. Over the past 10 years, the death rate in disasters has increased from 600 thousand to 1.2 million people per year, and the number of victims has increased from 230 to 270 million (Appendix Table 2)

The purpose of this essay is to systematize, accumulate and consolidate knowledge about natural disasters.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

1. investigate the causes of disasters, such as: earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, , , , , , , ;

2. consider their implications.

Earthquakes are underground shocks and vibrations of the Earth's surface caused by natural causes (mainly tectonic processes). In some places on the Earth, earthquakes occur frequently and sometimes reach great strength, breaking the integrity of the soil, destroying buildings and causing loss of life. The number of earthquakes recorded annually on the globe is in the hundreds of thousands. However, the vast majority of them are weak, and only a small proportion reaches the degree of catastrophe.

Until the 20th century known, for example, are such catastrophic earthquakes as the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, the Vernensky earthquake in 1887, which destroyed the city of Verny (now Alma-Ata), the earthquake in Greece in 1870-73, etc.

By its intensity, i.e. according to the manifestation on the surface of the Earth, earthquakes are divided, according to the international seismic scale MSK-64, into 12 gradations - points.

The area of ​​occurrence of an underground impact - the focus of an earthquake - is a certain volume in the thickness of the Earth, within which the process of releasing energy accumulated for a long time takes place. In a geological sense, a focus is a gap or a group of gaps along which an almost instantaneous movement of masses occurs. In the center of the focus, a point is conventionally distinguished, called the hypocenter. The projection of the hypocenter onto the Earth's surface is called the epicenter. Around it is the region of the greatest destruction - the pleistoseist region. Lines connecting points with the same vibration intensity (in points) are called isoseists. (Appendix Table 3)

Some of the most devastating earthquakes of the 20th - early 21st centuries:

Earthquake in Russia (Koryakia) in 2006. April 21, 2006 at 12:25 local time in the Koryak Highlands, on the Kamchatka Peninsula, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale occurred. The epicenter was located 70 kilometers east of the village of Tilichiki. The first push was followed by a second force of 6.2 on the Richter scale. The epicenter of the second earthquake was also located in the Koryak Highlands, about 70 kilometers east of the village of Tilichiki.

In total, three settlements were in the disaster zone - Korf, Oosora and the most heavily affected village of Tilichiki, where the fluctuations amounted to 5.5 points. A school, a kindergarten, residential buildings, heating mains and electrical networks were partially destroyed, cracks began to appear on the runway of the local airfield. Boilers were stopped due to the destruction of chimneys. Diesel power plants were shut down, the villages of Korf and Tilichiki were de-energized. 31 people were injured, but none of the nearly twelve thousand inhabitants of Koryakia who were in the area of ​​the earthquake died. In the villages of Korf and Osoora, social facilities and housing stock were damaged.

During April 22-23, 2006, about 60 more earthquakes occurred in Koryakia, which occurred with a frequency of 15 minutes. Most of the tremors reached strengths of up to five on the Richter scale. Earthquakes continued to destroy houses already damaged earlier. A state of emergency was introduced on the territory of the autonomy.

On May 30, 2006, a new tremor was recorded, the strength of which reached 5 points on the Richter scale. The closest to the epicenter of the earthquake was again the village of Tilichki. Continued earthquakes and thawing of the soil could lead to further destruction of the housing stock, which stood after the first strong earthquake on April 21.