Deadliest Earthquakes On Record
| Rank | Name | Date | Location | Fatalities | Magnitude | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Shaanxi" | 01556-01-23January 23, 1556 | Shaanxi, China | 820,000–830,000 (est.) | 8.0 (est.) | Estimated death toll in Shaanxi, China. |
| 2 | "Haiti" | 02010-01-12January 12, 2010 | Haiti | 316,000 (Haitian sources) 50,000–92,000 (non-Haitian sources) |
7.0 | Estimate June 2010. |
| 3 | "Tangshan" | 01976-07-28July 28, 1976 | Hebei, China | 242,769 | 7.0 | |
| 4 | "Antioch" | 00526-05-21May 21, 526 | Antioch, Turkey (then Byzantine Empire) | 240,000 | 7.0 (est.) | Procopius (II.14.6), sources based on John of Ephesus. |
| 5 | "Gansu" | 01920-12-16December 16, 1920 | Ningxia–Gansu, China | 235,502 | 7.8 | Major fractures, landslides. |
| 6 | "Indian Ocean" | 02004-12-26December 26, 2004 | Indian Ocean, Sumatra, Indonesia | 230,210+ | 9.1–9.3 | Deaths from earthquake and resulting tsunami. |
| 7 | "Aleppo" | 01138-10-11October 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. |
| 8 | "Damghan" | 00856-12-22December 22, 856 | Damghan, Iran | 200,000 (est.) | 7.9 (est.) | |
| 9 | "Ardabil" | 00893-03-22March 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'. This is regarded as a 'fake earthquake'. |
| 10 | "Great Kantō" | 01923-09-01September 1, 1923 | Kantō region, Japan | 142,800 | 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. 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. 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. |
| 11 | "Messina" | 01908-12-28December 28, 1908 | Messina, Italy | 123,000 | 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. 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. |
| 12 | "Ashgabat" | 01948-10-06October 6, 1948 | Ashgabat, Turkmenistan | 110,000 | 7.3 | |
| 13 | "Genroku" | 01703-12-31December 31, 1703 | Edo, Japan | 108,800 | Unknown | This earthquake shook Edo and killed an estimated 2,300 people. The earthquake is thought to have been an interplate earthquake whose focal region extended from Sagami Bay to the tip of the Bōsō Peninsula as well as the area along the Sagami Trough in the open sea southeast of the Boso Peninsula. This earthquake then resulted in a tsunami which hit the coastal areas of the Boso Peninsula and Sagami Bay. This caused more than 6,500 deaths, particularly on the Boso Peninsula. The Habu Pond on Izu Ōshima collapsed and it rushed into the sea. The tsunami was reported to have caused more than 100,000 fatalities. |
| 14 | "Lisbon" | 01755-11-01November 1, 1755 | Lisbon, Portugal | 10,000–100,000 | 8.5–9.0 (est.) | Includes several thousands of deaths in Morocco and Spain |
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