Collections: Learning from past disasters

The Japan earthquake and tsunami prompted extensive damage, including the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The morning of December 26, 2004 saw the worst disaster in Indonesia’s history. A magnitude (M) 9.1 submarine earthquake occurred along the Indian Ocean subduction zone triggering a massive tsunami.

In July 2011, widespread drought in the Horn of Africa instigated a severe food crisis, affecting millions of people.

Hurricane Florence triggered intense destruction in the American states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, with losses of several billion dollars.

Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States and is widely remembered as one of the country's most consequential disasters.

Hurricane Maria was a deadly Category 5 hurricane that devastated the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly Dominica, Saint Croix, and Puerto Rico. It is regarded as the worst natural disaster in recorded history to affect those islands.

Hurricane Mitch is widely remembered as one of the most destructive hurricanes to strike Central America, in no small part because it caused widespread homelessness in Honduras.

In September 2014, intense flooding in India's Jammu and Kashmir, as well as Azad Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Punjab in Pakistan, killed hundreds, caused tens of thousands of people to be evacuated, and affected over 2,000 villages.