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Historic Disasters That Were Way Worse Than People Think

Khalid Elhassan April 6, 2020 33 min

Yellow River - 1887 Yellow River flood — 1887 Yellow River Flood. Hakai Magazine

36. Recovery and Toll

Aftermath of the 1887 Yellow River Flood – note the submerged lands to either side behind the river’s dikes. Alchetron

When the waters finally receded, survivors were left with a floodplain heaped with loess mud up to eight feet deep. As it dried out, the region looked more like the Sahara Desert, rather than the green and fertile agricultural plain it had been just a few days earlier. China in 1887 was ruled by a hapless and wholly inept imperial government on its last legs. It lacked both the organizational skills and resources for the massive rescue, recovery, and rebuilding effort called for.

Nonetheless, the farmers were familiar with the routines of dike repair. They came together by the hundreds of thousands, using whatever tools they could lay their hands on, and their bare hands when tools were unavailable, to repair the dikes before the next rainy season. It was not until early 1889 that the dikes were finally closed. By then, between drowning, diseases, and famine, the Yellow River flood had killed over 900,000 people.

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.