Floods are the most common and widespread of all the natural disasters. They are the number one killer, with 80 percent of deaths occuring when the drivers of vehicles attempt to navigate flood water, not realizing that (a) the underlying surface has been undermined by the force of the floodwater, and (b) as little as 2 feet of water can float vehicles as large as a bus, which can then be swept away. An astonishing 95 percent of people killed by flash floods, is when in panic, they attempt to outrun the waters instead of climbing to high ground.

31st May 1889 - Known to the locals as the 'Millionaires Club', the exclusive South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club owned a 700 acre property which included Lake Conemaugh, purported to be the largest man made lake in the country. The waters of which were contained by the largest earth dam in the United States. The dam, standing 450 feet above the level of Johnstown, had been built before the club purchased the property, was widely considered to be of poor construction, and the fact that little or no, maintenance was done to the fabric of the dam, was to be a source of bitter resentment by the people in the area, bearing in mind that the members of this club, quite happy to enjoy the fishing rights, were loathe to contribute to the upkeep of the dam. The members included business moguls such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Frick, and Andrew Mellon, all of whom had personal fortunes amounting to millions of dollars. Their failure to provide the funds for proper maintenance of the dam was to ultimately cause the death of thousands of men, women, and children, and the destruction of many towns, and countless buildings.

Johnstown was founded in 1794. A Steel Company town, with a population of 30,000, mainly German and Welsh steelworkers. It stood in a deep valley below the heavily wooded Allegheny Mountains. It was built on the flood-plain at the intersection of the Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek rivers, 60 miles east of Pittsburg. The banks of these rivers had been narrowed over the years to accommodate the expansion of the town, unwittingly increasing the flood risk at times of heavy rain.

On the morning of Thursday 31st, a young engineer, John Parke, worried about the integrity of the dam, following two days of extremely heavy rain, decided to carry out a check up of the dam. He was alarmed to discover that the water level in the dam had increased by two feet overnight. The South Fork Creek, at the far end of the lake was three feet above its normal level, and the power of its flow was snapping off the branches of overhanging trees.

On Friday morning, after a further eight inches of rain had poured into the lake, Parke and a group of workers from the club, desperately attempted to relieve the pressure on the dam by clearing away the debris that had washed down from the mountainside, and was blocking the dam's spillway. When he saw cracks developing in the dam wall, Parke jumped on his horse and galloped to the nearest of half a dozen small towns strung along the Little Conemaugh River, standing between the dam and Johnstown 14 miles away. He warned them to head for the high ground, as he feared the dam was about to fail. He then dashed to the South Fork signal tower of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and asked the operator to warn Johnstown about the dam. What he did not know was that the floods from the Overfull Rivers had washed out the telegraph lines. He galloped back to the dam just in time to see the breach growing wider by the minute. At 3:10pm the 72ft high 300yard wide dam suddenly disappeared, and 20.5billion litres (4.5 billion gallons) of water surged towards Johnstown, 14 miles away, with a roar that could be heard for miles. As the huge 60 feet high mass of water roared down the valley, it carried away the five small towns. The flood water entered the furnaces of the large Gautier Wire Works, causing them to explode with such force that the roof was blown clean off, and the workmen could be seen tossed in the air.

In Woodvale, all its 250 buildings were demolished, and one-third of its 1,000 inhabitants were washed away. One eyewitness said "I thought a mountain had torn itself loose and was being carried towards us". Another said "It was a seething turbulent wall of water, whose crest seemed mountain high, filling the entire valley and carrying everything before it, as cornstalks before a gale".
By the time it reached Johnstown, the wave was a seething 60ft high wall of destruction, containing houses, schools, factories, railway wagons, bridges, 200.000 lbs of barbed wire, animals, and people.
The first person in Johnstown to witness the arrival of the avalanche, Mr Horace Rose described it as "A great mass of timber, trees, roofs, and debris of all sorts, rapidly advancing towards me, wrecking and carrying everything before it".

The flood killed an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people, destroyed five small towns, houses, factories, and other buildings too numerous to mention.

All of the survivors laid the blame for the catastrophe at the door of the "Millionaires Club". But despite the well known poor condition of the dam, and the lack of maintenance carried out by the Southfork Fishing and Hunting Club, no successful legal action was able to be brought against them.

It was to be five years before Johnstown was returned to some semblance of normality.

Netherlands

31st. January 1953 - Storms with gale force winds of over 160 km/h (100 mph) swept over the North Sea, generating giant waves that caused flooding and damage all along the coasts of Germany, Belgium, North France, and the Netherlands. They also ravaged the British coast with some of the worst gales on record. Just off the Northern Ireland coast, the ferry "Princess Victoria" was swamped with the loss of 130 lives.
The Netherlands was to suffer the worst damage, mainly due to the low-lying nature of the land, with over 60 percent of the Dutch people living on land reclaimed from the sea, which lay below sea level protected by a system of Dykes.
The great stone dykes built to protect the land and people, were breached when a combination of an abnormally high spring tide and the storm force winds, gave it the height and power to breach the enormous dykes. As one, 100 dykes failed, flooding over 2,020 sq km (780 sq ml) with 133 towns and villages under water. Over 47,000 houses were destroyed or damaged, over ¼ million livestock and poultry lost.
Nearly 2,000 people were drowned, 72,000 people had to be rescued from rooftops, trees, and any high ground they could find, and food, water, and medical supplies had to be provided to 250,000 others. More than 2,000 boats and 150 planes were involved in the rescue attempts. On Overflakkee alone seven helicopters of the US 34th Engineer Combat Group flew non-stop from the morning until light failed that night, and rescued over 450 survivors from rooftops, trees, and other high structures. In total, the crews of the British, Belgium, and American helicopters, rescued over 2,450 people from certain death, either from drowning or exposure.
In the village of Gravendeel 600 people had made for the windmill built into the Mill Dyke hoping to find refuge. However, several miles to either side other dykes had collapsed, and released the raging sea which raced to each other, merging at Mill Dyke with such force, that a 200 foot high wall of water washed the dyke and all the people away. At Overflakkee, an island in South Holland, 51 men, women, and children, had climbed to the top of a dyke, with the men forming a protective circle around the women and children. A huge wave broke right over their heads, but miraculously left them all still kneeling and untouched. Just as they started to sing a hymn of praise, the receding wave washed away the dyke drowning them all. One success story was in Colijnsplaat where the Dyke master, fearing the worst had already called for sandbags and beams to reinforce the dykes. Despite this effort, the strong seas started to loosen one of the brick buttresses, but 40 men stood with their shoulders against the wall supporting it for two agonising hours, drenched in freezing sea water pouring over the top of the wall, until more beams could be wedged into position. This heroic act saved the sea wall, and no doubt the lives of hundreds of men, women, and children.
Following this catastrophe, in 1958 a scheme called the "Delta Project" was started, sealing off the delta's large inlets with dams. The project costing $5 billion was finished in 1985 and covered 30 km (18.5 ml) of coastline. A 9 km (5.6 ml) storm-surge barrier was incorporated into the scheme, with 62 massive steel gates that can be closed when there is a threat of flooding.

9th October 1963 - In the Italian Alps, a massive landslide resulted in over 150 million tons of rock and soil plunging into the reservoir. The water displaced by this huge landslide, sent a gigantic wave over 230 feet high down the narrow Piave River valley, destroying everything in it's path, and drowning 2,500 people.

September 1978 - Devastating floods were caused throughout Northern India, by the worst monsoons seen for many years. over 13 million acres of crops were washed away. Over 15,000 people died.

4th August 1988 - Having suffered a long draught and serious Locust damage, floods were the last thing that the Sudan needed. Two days of torrential rain caused the Nile to overflow, with one of it's worst floods in the 20th century. 39 people died, and 1.5 million were made homeless.

September 1988 - Extremely heavy monsoons flooded practically all of this poor country, almost 2,000 people died of drowning or subsequent diseases. 25 million were made homeless.

Everyone lives in a flood zone. You don't need to live near water to be flooded. Floods are caused by storms, melting snow, hurricanes, and water backup due to inadequate or overloaded drainage systems, dam failure, etc.