Countries Where the Most People Have Died in Natural Disasters

Known as Cyclone Nargis, the storm made landfall in Myanmar in May 2008, remaining over the country for two days. The cyclone left 138,366 dead and affected more than 2.4 million people.

Destructive landslides followed the 1970 Peruvian earthquake, killing more than 66,000. The town of Yungay was swamped when a wall of ice was dislodged from the country’s highest mountain, Mount Huascarán. The earthquake was measured at a magnitude of 7.9.

The October 1998 tropical cyclone that hit this Central American country was also named Hurricane Mitch. At its peak, the storm reached Category 5 status, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with winds reaching 180 miles per hour. The resulting mud slides, floods, and winds destroyed the country’s infrastructure, crops, and major population centers.

Northwest Bangladesh is prone to frequent droughts. Dependent on rainfall for drinking water and crop production, severe droughts in these areas often lead to famine. The Bengal famine of 1943 in which over a million people died (estimates go as high as 3 million) was partly brought on by crop failure due to drought, though policy reasons are mostly blamed today. The Bengal region at the time was under British rule and included present-day Bangladesh.

Between 2010 and 2012, a devastating drought hit Somalia, killing 260,000 people, half of whom were children under age 5, the UN reported. Fighting between rival groups in the country exacerbated the crisis.