you never know when disaster is going to
strike
but sometimes cameras capture the drama
and devastation
welcome to watchmojo.com and today we're
counting down our picks for the top 10
most dramatic footage of natural
disasters
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for this list we're looking at the most
extraordinary footage of adverse
natural events caught on camera number
10.
the great miami tornado tornadoes seemed
to love
wide open spaces but in may 1997
an f1 tornado decided to march right
into miami
as if realizing its mistake the twister
tripped lightly through downtown
bumped into a cruise ship jumped over
most of biscayne bay
flipped a car and then vanished the
damage was small
but the apocalyptic images of a tornado
looming amidst skyscrapers grabbed
international headlines the noise was
something like
i never i never had something like that
of course tornadoes don't actually
prefer
farmland there's just more rural area in
the world than urban
and the footage of the great miami
tornado was a dramatic reminder that
even tornadoes sometimes visit the big
city
number nine debris flow in grenier
switzerland
in august 2018 the sleepy alpine village
grenier in
amazon switzerland received an
unexpected and decidedly
unwelcome visitor it began as a rumble
and was
at first confined to a narrow canal but
as shocked onlookers watched and filmed
the river of black mud overwhelmed the
channel and
rampaged through the town over roads and
into cars and houses the disaster came
after intense rainfall from a sudden
storm
which had caused a river higher up the
mountain to burst its banks
there were no reported casualties but a
heck of a lot of mess
number 8. mount ontake eruption when we
think volcanoes
we think fire and brimstone rivers of
lava and a rain of
hot hell from above pyroclastic flows
however which are currents of gas and
volcanic debris are often much deadlier
rushing downhill at average speeds of 62
miles per hour
and sometimes up to seven times faster
than that
in september 2014 as hikers strolled up
mount otake on the japanese island
honshu
a cloud of steam and ash suddenly
exploded from the summit and
unfurled across the sky the on-rushing
flow was captured by a documentary crew
and by a hiker as he scrambled for cover
63 people lost their lives
the hiker here was one of the lucky ones
number 7 loma prieta earthquake on
tuesday afternoon october 17
1989 thousands of baseball fans waited
with baited breath in san francisco's
candlestick park
for game three of the world series while
others watched from home on tv
what they got was something else it was
the first
live broadcast of a major earthquake on
national television
a slip in the san andreas fault
triggered a short but powerful
earthquake of magnitude 6.9 on the
richter scale
sending the bay area into chaos and
leaving 63 dead and thousands injured
security cameras and camcorders captured
the moment when the banal
suddenly became the unimaginable as
shoppers dodged
shelves and students were jostled in
their classrooms
number six the chelyabinsk meteor a
catastrophe from space is probably the
last kind of disaster you expect
but meteors enter our atmosphere more
often than we'd like to dwell on
right dinosaurs in 1908 an explosion
attributed to a meteorite
over the stony tunguska river in russia
flattened 770 square miles of woodland
more recently on the morning of february
15 2013
russia was visited from space again this
time over chelyabinsk obelisk in the url
region
multiple dash cams caught a searing
white light trailing fire across the sky
before it exploded in mid-air shattering
windows
and injuring at least 1500 people and
then
all hell broke loose
dizzying explosions shattering windows
knocking these office workers to the
ground
number five the indian ocean tsunami
propelled by a powerful undersea
earthquake
the indian ocean tsunami devastated the
coastlines of 14 countries
it was one of the worst natural
disasters in recorded history
with a horrific estimated death toll of
230 thousand
in parts of indonesia thailand and
malaysia the sea
first receded enticing people to run out
onto the exposed sand and reefs
but massive tsunamis up to 100 feet high
soon followed at some beaches the first
wave seemed harmless
but as they grew in strength they
inundated homes
hotels and streets home recordings from
the tragedy shocked the world
showing people riding waves of debris or
floating adrift
in drowned cities number four the
california wildfires
in the second half of 2017 the worst
wildfires on record
raged through california destroying
almost 10 000 structures
and taking the lives of 47 people first
responders caught
stunning footage of the tubs and atlas
fires as they drove through the inferno
and fought the flames
but some of the most memorable and
frightening footage was taken by a
driver
on the interstate 405. as december's
skirball fire consumed the sepulveda
pass in bel air
the entire hillside seemed to be one
glowing coal
like a hellish mountain the fire burned
through 422 acres before
it was contained number three everest
avalanche
in the wake of the april 2015 gorkha
earthquake
footage from around nepal showed temples
toppled and homes reduced to rubble
almost 9 000 people lost their lives in
the tragedy
meanwhile on the roof of the world even
the mountains shook from the quake
sending an avalanche down from the peak
of pumuri near everest
hikers at south base camp heard the
rumble and felt the ground tremble first
before a massive blast of snow swept
over them
the survivors emerged into a white world
of torn tents and buried equipment
with at least 19 people killed in the
terrible disaster
number 2 the mount saint helens eruption
the weeks-long build-up of washington
state's infamous stratovolcano in 1980
was slow and spectacular blue flame
burned in the strato volcano's craters
and lightning generated by static
electricity
arced through ash clouds the ground
shook
and steam hissed from the summit but
this was all just a prelude to the
morning of may 18th
in one unbelievable moment the north
flank slid away
triggering a massive vei-5 eruption that
tragically killed more than 50 people
the entire mountainside seems to
disintegrate and pour away like liquid
in the largest landslide ever recorded
and the most disastrous eruption
in american history number one the
tohoku
earthquake and tsunami footage of the
tohoku tsunami revealed scenes
of unparalleled devastation waves
barreled over houses
and entire towns disappeared while boats
and flaming debris were carried far
inland
sweeping over northeast japan the
tsunami took the lives of sixteen
thousand
and destroyed countless homes from above
its dramatic unstoppable advance had the
horrifying quality of a nightmare
on the ground people ran up hillsides to
escape
as streets became rushing waterways
these apocalyptic scenes shocked the
world
the result of an earthquake so powerful
it shifted the planet on its axis
new technology left an enormous amount
of visual evidence for study in years to
come
and can perhaps help us better
understand the power of earthquakes and
tsunamis
and prevent loss of life in the future
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