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Floods, Earthquakes, and Volcanoes: History’s Most Consequential Natural Catastrophes

Khalid Elhassan December 22, 2024 15 min

Catastrophe - The Thera Eruption — The Thera Eruption. Sci Tech Daily

17. Local Architecture Boosted the Lethality of This Catastrophe

Catastrophe - Yaodong, or cave city, in Shaanxi — Yaodong cave city in Shaanxi. Wikimedia

The loss of life from the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake was extremely high because of local architecture and housing. Most of the region’s population took advantage of the soft loess soil, and built their homes out of earth shelters known as yaodongs – a form of artificial cave carved out of hillsides. On the positive side, such houses are cool in the summer and warm in the winter. However, they had the disadvantage of being particularly vulnerable to seismic activity. When the 1556 earthquake struck, they collapsed, with not only the weight of a roof falling upon the inhabitants, but an entire hillside falling on and burying whole communities. When it was over, around 830,000 had been killed, and millions more were injured and/or rendered homeless.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.