The Jan. 2, 2005 New York Times Week in Review article "The Vulnerable Become More Vulnerable", stats show 20 million deaths in the last century with Drought 50%, Floods: 34%, Windstorms 6%, Earthquakes: 9%, Volcanos: 0.5%, and Landslides 0.3% .

Bird Flu
From Jan. 2004 - Feb 2006 a total of 100 deaths from the H5N1 avian flu virus have been reported in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and China. H7 is also fatal to birds but not a threat bo Humans. Humans catch the disease through close contact with live infected birds. As of the beginning of 2006 infected birds had been found in the UK, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, France, Slovenia, India, Iran and Egypt.

Alpine Meadows, CA 1982
An avalanche, releasing from the Buttress, Pond and Poma Rocks slide paths, swept down into the base area and parking lot of the ski area killing 12 people. The avalanche hit the Summit Chairlift Terminal building, the main ski lodge, several small buildings, and two chairlifts, and it buried the parking lot under 10 to 20 feet of snow. It had been snowing for 4-1/2 days and had snowed six to seven feet throughout the area. The area was closed due to avalanche danger and only a few employees were in the area. Alpine is classified as a Class "A" avalanche area and annually records the largest number of avalanches of any ski area in the United States. Story .

Racial Violence 1882-1968
Over history democide, (The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.) is the second leading cause of un-natural death following pandemics such as the bubonic plague. It exceeds the death toll from wars. Racial or Ethnic hatred is the cause of much of this.

Incidents include the Holocaust (6 M), Mongol extermination of Chinese (2-35 Million in 1113-40), Native americans who died from disease and war (1-10 M), Armenians killed by Turks during WWI (1.5 M), Tibetans killed in Mao's Cultural Revolution (1 M), Tutsis killed by Hutus in Rwanda (800,000), Violence against blacks in America (5,000+) and Apartheid in South Africa (10-14K), Arab-Israeli Wars (100,000+) plus many others.

US Racial Violence
Slave Trade
1700-1865: 15-20 Million died in Africa before getting on a ship, in transport or in the first "seasoning" phase of slave labor. See references at Matthew White's site,

Lynchings
From Negro Holocaust
According to the Tuskegee Institute figures, between the years 1882 and 1951, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States: 3,437 Negro and 1,293 white. The largest number of lynchings occurred in 1892. Of the 230 persons lynched that year, 161 were Negroes and sixty-nine whites. Beginning in 1923 lynch ings began to grow markedly fewer, and in the late 1930s and 1940s trailed off and became rarer.

There are three major sources of lynching statistics. None cover the complete history of lynching in America. Prior to 1882, no reliable statistics of lynchings were recorded. In that year, the Chicago Tribune first began to take systematic account of lynchings. Shortly thereafter, in 1892, Tuskegee Institute began to make a systematic collection and tabulation of lynching statistics. Beginning in 1912, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People kept an independent record of lynchings.

A special study by Arthur Raper of nearly one hundred lynchings convinced him that approximately one-third of the victims were falsely accused.

Race Riots
* 1910 An unknown number of deaths resulted from race riots following Jack Johnson's defeat of Jim Jeffries in a heavyweight title fight in Reno.
* 1919, called "The Red Summer" - 100+ died It started in Chicago; primarily a struggle over public space after a massive influx of black migrants (probably over 20,000) from the South in the years during and after the First World War.. In the two years preceeding the riot, twenty seven blacks were murdered by whites for moving into predominantly white neighborhoods. Other cities with riots included Washington, D.C.; Elaine, Arkansas; Charleston, South Carolina; Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee; Longview, Texas; and Omaha, Nebraska plus overseas. (Stories at: Northwestern, Yale)
* 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma's Black business district is destroyed by white mob violence. 21 whites and, according to some accounts, upward of 300 Blacks are dead.
* 1965-68 - 195 killed. See: Chronology of Race Riots in America Stats
* 1992 - 52 killed in violence following the verdict in the trial of police who brutally beat Rodney King in Los Angeles.

Assinations:
Medgar Evers, NAACP leader (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King (1968)

Turkish genocide of Armenians 1915-17
1.1 to 1.8 Million Armenians (50-75%) were killed by Turkish troups in Ottoman lands. The Armenians' status as a religious minority, and their reputation for higher levels of education and wealth than many other groups in the Ottoman Empire, made them the target of popular hatred and envy.
Story at gendercide.org

Chernoble 1986
Chernoble, Ukrainian. Human error resulted in melt down of the reactor core of a nuclear power plant and a powerful explosion of steam took place. This was closely followed by a massive second explosion of hydrogen, which started a huge graphite fire (in the reactor moderators) and blew 100 million curies of radioactivity into the environment. 31 rescue workers who fought the fire at Chernobyl died, 28 of them from radiation poisoning.

See: www.unscear.org/chernobyl.html

In later years 14 additional deaths, attributable to a variety of medical conditions, have occurred. (www.unscear.org/pdffiles/kievconlus.pdf)

Jack Collins states: "Epidemiological research among the local population, and among the "liquidators" who worked in the cleanup effort have only found one significant health anomoly: an increase in the rate of (primarily non-fatal) thyroid cancers in children. There have been about 100 extra deaths of this sort."

Alan Harmony reports at the Athens Forum that 81,000 more people died in the contanimated areas in the 9 years after the accident (126,000 deaths compared to what would normally be 45,000) He quotes the Ukrainian Health Ministry.

On January 13 one of the lines was cleared and it was decided to run a few priority trains across the summit. One of these trains was the flagship of the Overland Route, the streamliner City of San Francisco. It bacame snowbound when it hit an avalanche near Yuba Pass which had covered the tracks. It took 3 days to reach and rescue the passengers who endured the ordeal under conditions of no power, no heat, and low food supplies. One engineer was killed when his rescue snowplow was hit by an avalanche.
Book.

According to a Jan. 2005 article in The Independent, quoted at libertypost.org: "An illustrated handbook re-printed by Mexican authorities gives migrants tips on how to cross America's southern border illegally. Officials in Mexico and the US say increased Border Patrol activities have prompted people to take riskier routes through deserts and over mountains.
According to the above article 400 died in 2002 a 10% increase over 2001. In 2003 and 2004 125 people have died in the Arizona desert.
A 2002 article at wsw.org reports that:
"According to the Mexican government, the number of mostly Mexican, Central and South American migrants who have perished along the border is fast approaching 2,000 since the Border Patrol changed its strategy seven years ago." ... "On March 14, 2002, four young men from Chiapas in southernmost Mexico, ages 19 and 20, were found dead floating in the rough currents of the All-American Canal, 35 yards from the US border." ... "In 2002 more than 90 undocumented immigrants have died on or near the Tohono O'odham Nation tribal lands that extend from southern Arizona into the Mexican state of Sonora, where during the August temperatures reach 130 degrees F." ... " The average in California has been 145-150 deaths per year since 1994." ... "Five undocumented immigrants were killed and sixteen others seriously injured when a smuggler, who was driving a tightly packed van, tried to evade a checkpoint on Interstate 8 near Calexico, California and struck four oncoming cars. The crash also killed a middle-aged motorist from Albuquerque."

Immigrants from other countries are also coming to Mexico to cross into the US
Other incidents:
18 found dead in railroad car in 1987.
14 Mexican immigrants, ages 16 to 35, died May 23 and 24 of dehydration and exposure in an area dubbed "Devil's Path." in the Arizona Desert in 2001.
19 found dead in a truck in 2003.
See Also: Failed Immigration Enforcement Strategy Is Causing More Migrant Deaths at migrantwatch.org
Devious Paths at CBSnews.com

Cuba:
From 2,000 - 20,000 boat people have drowned in boating accidents while trying to seek asylum in the US since Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. See Matthew White's data.
In 1994, overwhelmed by the flood of Cuban boat people and worried about the steady loss of life at sea, the United States agreed to take at least 20,000 Cubans a year. In exchange, and to deter risky seafaring, the United States agreed that Cubans who are intercepted (or rescued) at sea will be returned to Cuba. In 1998, the Coast Guard interdicted more than 900 Cubans and returned them to Cuba.

Hati:
From 1,000 - 5,000 boat people drowned fleeing the coup from 1991-94.

Santa Domingo:
In Jan. 2000 16 died when a 40-foot wooden boat capsized while trying to illegally reach Puerto Rico.

China:
In the late winter of 1993 310 refugees fled China's coastal Fujian province, agreeing to pay $30,000 to a New York-based Chinese smuggling ring. During the 16,000-mile trip aboard the freighter Golden Venture, they were forced to stay in the cramped below-deck cargo hold, shared one bathroom, ate two daily meals of rice and peanuts, and were given only small amounts of drinking water. On June 6, 1993, the Golden Venture ran aground off the coast of Queens, New York. Ten of the Chinese either drowned or died of hypothermia while trying to swim 200 yards to shore.
In 2005 Chen Chui Ping (Sister Ping), one of the most powerful and successful alien smugglers of our times, went on trial. She financed the notorious Fuk Ching gang in Chinatown, who organized the venture.
In another incident a shipload of more than 100 Chinese immigrants that Sister Ping organized and financed in 1998 ran into stormy waters as it was unloading its human cargo off the shore of Guatemala. One motor boat carrying immigrants to shore capsized and 14 people drowned.

In Jan. 2000 customs investigators in Seattle found 18 stowaways in a container on a vessel from Hong Kong. Three were dead and seven required hospitalization.
In a two-and-a-half week period in 2000, 136 Chinese on eight ships were seized at ports in California, Washington state and Vancouver, British Columbia. Smugglers charged up to $60,000 for each person smuggled.

In 2003, 3,999 stowaways were seized and 774 human traffickers were captured in China acording to the Public Security Ministry..

Illegal Immigration to other countries:
The Association for Human Rights in Andalucia claimed that 289 would-be immigrants died off Spain and Morocco in 2004.

58 Chinese migrants found dead in the back of a lorry in Dover, England in 2000.

See www.eurasylum.org/stowaway/news/stownews.html

Return to Disasters and Accidents