Comparison Of Mount St. Helens And The Great Mississippi River Flood

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Natural disasters affect the lives of people in torturous ways. It almost always costs the lives of innocent bystanders. Costs of the cleanup can be in the billions of dollars. It is disturbing to realize the damage and destruction that nature is capable of releasing on humans at any moment. Both the eruption of Mount St. Helens and The Great Mississippi River Flood are different in many ways, but the same in that they both affected people negatively.
On the day of May 18th, 1980, the stratovolcano, Mt. Saint Helens, erupted. This cone-shaped volcano was an impressive 5 on the explosivity index, massive compared to the low ratings of most shield volcanoes. It caused more than 200 homes, 185 miles of road and 15 miles of railways to become damaged. The ash of …show more content…

It was caused by several months of heavy rain in the Mississippi Valley. The first levee to break was in Illinois on April 16th, this caused a chain-effect of floods. The scale of the flood caused unthinkable damage to the Mississippi River Valley and even surrounding states such as Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, and Kentucky. More than 23,000 square miles were submerged in water and in some places, it was more than 9
meters high. 250 people died in this tragic disaster, an estimated 700,000 people were displaced, and over 130,000 homes were lost. The estimated damage repair costs were 350 million dollars, the equivalent of 5 billion dollars today.
Both Mount St. Helens and The Great Mississippi Flood were cataclysmic, the violent nature of both catastrophes caused so many lives to be lost. The Mississippi River Flood was even more so of a disaster, though. The Mississippi River Flood was a horrendous calamity that affected more people and caused more deaths than Mount St. Helens overall. The cost of repairs was almost $4 billion dollars more, the immense desolation of the Great Mississippi Flood is

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