Talk:List of natural disasters by death toll

message: A lot of people are saying this, but there are several errors, mainly things I noticed in the deadliest disaster per year section. There are a lot of fairly minor errors, but here are some of the more important ones to correct, I think: 
1. The 1913 Yunnan Earthquake has an article. It is referred to as the 1913 Eshan Earthquake in its article, but they are the same quake. 
2. The 1917 Guatemalan Earthquakes do not belong on the list. Plain and simple, they spanned into 1918, which automatically means they don't count. 
3. The 1919 Kelud Mudflow, which claimed 5,000 lives, is the real deadliest natural disaster of 1919 
4. The 1935 Yangtze Flood, which claimed 145,000 lives, is the real deadliest natural disaster of 1935 
5. The Khait Landslide, which claimed anywhere from 5,000 - 28,000 lives, is the real deadliest natural disaster of 1949. This is a strange one though, as it was caused by the 1949 Khait Earthquake, which, according to its article, only claimed 7,200 lives. I don't know which one would actually belong, but one of these should be in place of the 1949 Eastern Guatemalan Floods 
6. The 1957 Sangchal Earthquake, which claimed 1,500 lives, is the real deadliest natural disaster of 1957 
7. The 1966 Xingtai Earthquakes, which claimed 8,064 lives, are the real deadliest natural disaster of 1966 
8. There is no source that says that the so called "Hanoi and Red River Delta Flood" exclusively occurred on August 1, 1971 
9. The Armero Tragedy is the deadliest natural disaster of 1985. The 1985 Bangladesh Cyclone has no place on this list 
10. The 2002 Hindu Kush Earthquakes, which claimed a total of 1,366 lives (166 on March 3, 1,200 on March 25), are the real deadliest natural disaster of 2002 
I was originally going to say that Cyclone Idai (Might be ldai, I can't tell) should be removed from 2019, until I saw another topic mention how controversial heat waves are, so I guess that one can stay. There are more errors on this list, but those are the most important ones to correct, although I think the most pressing ones are number 1 and number 9. PakistinianHurricane (talk) 17:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Starting with number 5, as the event I know most about, having created the earthquake article, the numbers are not clear. Yablokov reports 28,000 according to "local survivors", whereas Evans et al. did a detailed analysis of probable population numbers before the earthquake to do a sense check on the reported casualties. They came up with a total of 7,200 for all landslide related fatalities. More recently Havenith et al. (2015) in their Tien Shan geohazards database give ">20,000 (Likely >50% killed by landslides)" in their Table 1, but in the text say that the landslides "are likely to have killed more than 10,000 people", which I suppose is consistent, if a little confusing. I'm not sure if any of this helps other than to illustrate the problem. Evans et al. noted that to get the higher figures, the villages in 1949 must have had higher population densities than they do now, which they consider unlikely. The earthquake article includes the full range and the landslide article also gives the lower number specifically for the Khait landslide from Evans et al., so the articles don't really contradict each other, it all depends which headline number you go for. Mikenorton (talk) 22:14, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: This has always been a problem. In a previous talk page response I referred to the 1703 Genroku earthquake which has "a lot of different casualty numbers from a variety of sources, although most are about 10,000, the higher figure of 100,000 seems likely to be a typo that has been copied from source to source. In the NOAA/NGDC database they use 5,233 although they mention one estimate of 200,000. The IISEE database gives 10,000. Other values that I've seen are 'more than 5,000', 37,000, 150,000, 100,000 and so on". So how to compare such an event with another that has a single casualty number? The highest numbers are not very likely so using 200,000 for that earthquake is not the answer, but I struggle to say what is. Mikenorton (talk) 13:23, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Errors  

message: Ok so I have (mostly) fixed up the deadliest natural disaster per year section, but the rest of this article is equally messy. To start off with (and this is the main issue), but it never states anywhere whether it's ranked by lowest or highest estimates, and sometimes it seems to go by both. And that right there creates numerous issues: 
First off, the avalanches list. I'm going to, for now, ignore the fact that many of the entries on that list do not appear on the (should be) much more comprehensive avalanches by death toll list. What I'm instead focusing on is the fact that the ranks are all messed up, depending on whether or not we're going by lowest or highest. Well ok for this list it seems to be the lowest, and the only complication that makes is with the White Friday Avalanches, which have a lowest of 2,000, which probably would not even put them on that list. 
Right, earthquakes. So for now, I'm going to ignore the fact that the 1920 Haiyuan Earthquake death toll has been misnomered (like it always is), as fixing that would only add to the confusion right now. 
I may have to explain this more, but no matter which order we go off of, the list is wrong. 
If it's going off of lowest estimates, it looks like this, and I also believe that, going by lowest, some other entries would belong instead. I'm also guessing this is why the 1556 Earthquake is excluded, at least from that list. However this ranking of lowest estimates only includes the ten already featured (I also didn't bother formatting it in the exact same way, it hardly matters for this example) 
1303 Hongdong Earthquake, 270,000 
115 Antioch Earthquake, 260,000 
1920 Haiyuan Earthquake, 258,707 - 273,407 (I need to fix this one) 
526 Antioch Earthquake, 250,000 - 300,000 
1976 Tangshan Earthquake, 242,769*- 655,000 
1139 Ganja Earthquake, 230,000 - 300,000 
1138 Aleppo Earthquake, 230,000 
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami, 227,898 
856 Damghan Earthquake, 200,000 
2010 Haiti Earthquake, 100,000 - 316,000 
1780 Tabriz Earthquake, 40,000 - 200,000 
Now this hardly makes sense, does it? especially since there's the list that ranks the ten deadliest based off of highest estimates. However as I've already mentioned, this ranking (with some possible other additions) would match that of the avalanches, which are also ranked by lowest. 
However now, if we go by highest, that one would look like this: 
1976 Tanghsan Earthquake, 242,419(correct number)-655,000 
2010 Haiti Earthquake, 100,000 - 316,000 
526 Antioch Earthquake, 250,000 - 300,000 
1139 Ganja Earthquake, 230,000 - 300,000 
1920 Haiyuan Earthquake, 258,707 - 273,407 
1303 Hongdong Earthquake, 270,000 
115 Antioch Earthquake, 260,000 
1138 Aleppo Earthquake, 230,000 
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami, 227,898 
856 Damghan Earthquake, 200,000 
1780 Tabriz Earthquake, 40,000 - 200,000 
I think what's really confusing me here is that the current list seems to be a weird combination of both. I'm just trying to figure out which way it should be. 
The epidemics, famines and floods are all fine. Really, the only thing confusing me is that some of the entries for the floods are kind of suspicious to me. Heat waves, impact events and limnic eruptions are all good, although I'm not too sure if the latter two should even be here. For tornadoes, I feel like some other ones might belong on the list instead. The main one that comes to my mind right now is the 1974 Super Outbreak, with 319 deaths over the Natchez Tornado's 317. I feel like there might be some issues with the tropical cyclones list, but I can't fully figure them out. I think there may just be a few entries missing. 
Now the tsunamis, unfortunately, are having the same issue as the earthquakes. However this one's also much harder to figure out, as, like with the avalanches, the death tolls are harder to determine due to many of them being associated with an earthquake. The wildfires are fine too, the only one that's confusing me is the 1825 Miramichi fire. that one may need to be fixed. and lastly, the winter storms are fine. 
Ok maybe I exaggerated it a bit. Seemingly, the only ones with major issue are the earthquakes and tsunamis, but there is some other general confusion. I'm also going to mention how their individual articles have lots of other various entries that kind of confuse some of this. 
Frankly, I just need to know if those lists are ranked by highest or lowest estimated death tolls. Once I know which is true, I can go from there. Also it's confusing me that some of them state the actual date(s) of the event, while others only state the year. Can we perhaps make that more consistent? PakistinianHurricane (talk) 19:15, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  General confusion  

message: I don't have a whole lot to say here surprisingly. I am just declaring now that I am making a beyond major update to this article and numerous others, and that it may accidentally mess stuff up. Essentially, I am just trying to make this whole thing more consistent, as the inconsistencies here are beginning to drive me crazy. My sources for all of my corrections are the articles themselves, which may have wrong information, so I'm sorry if that happens. I was just saying it now, to give the people in charge or whatever some warning. PakistinianHurricane (talk) 16:25, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major update  

message: All figures of the Papuan landslide are based solely on estimates. The confirmed death toll as per the article is only 11 according to Al Jazeera citing local officials. There is no proper determination for the death toll other than X number of people are believed to be dead. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 18:22, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should [[2024 Enga landslide]] appear in 21st century table?