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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

32. The Horror of Krakatoa

The 1883 Krakatoa disaster is one of the best attested major volcanic eruptions of modern times. It took place on Krakatoa Island, in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies – today’s Indonesia. Krakatoa, which had three linked volcanic peaks, began erupting on the afternoon of August 26^th, 1883, and peaked the following morning. When it stopped, most of Krakatoa Island and its surrounding archipelago had disappeared, collapsing into a caldera. Minor seismic activity continued for months afterward, before the volcano finally fell silent.

While the intensity of the eruption was surprising, the eruption itself was not: there had been plenty of warnings. Krakatoa had experienced intense seismic activity for years, with earthquakes felt as far away as Australia. Starting in May, 1883, three months before the dramatic explosion, the volcano began venting steam. It spewed ash columns up to 20,000 feet into the air, and gave off explosions that were heard in Jakarta, 100 miles away.

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.