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Sunday, June 07, 2015

What was the worst environmental disaster in the United States?

Question: What was the worst environmental disaster in the United States?

Many accidents and events have done serious environmental damage in the United States, but have you ever wondered which was the worst?

Answer: If you guessed the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, the 2008 coalash spill in Tennessee or the Love Canal toxic dump disaster that came to light in the 1970s, you're decades too late in every case.

Scientists and historians generally agree that the Dust Bowl—created by the drought, erosion and dust storms, or "black blizzards," of the so-called Dirty Thirties—was the worst and most prolonged environmental disaster in American history.

The dust storms started at about the same time that the Great Depression really began to grip the country, and continued to sweep across the Southern Plains—western Kansas, eastern Colorado and New Mexico, and the panhandle regions of Texas and Oklahoma—until the late 1930s. In some areas, the storms didn't relent until 1940.


Decades later, the land is still not completely restored, once thriving farms are still abandoned, and new dangers are again putting the Great Plains environment in serious jeopardy.

Causes and Effects of the Dust Bowl
In the summer of 1931, the rain stopped coming and a drought that would last for most of the decade descended on the region. Crops withered and died. Farmers who had plowed under the native prairie grass that held the soil in place saw tons of topsoil, which had taken thousands of years to accumulate, rise into the air and blow away in minutes.

On the Southern Plains, the sky turned lethal. Livestock went blind and suffocated, their stomachs full of fine sand. Farmers, unable to see through the blowing sand, tied themselves to guide ropes to go from the house to the barn. Families wore respiratory masks handed out by Red Cross workers, cleaned their homes each morning with shovels as well as brooms, and draped wet sheets over doors and windows to help filter the dust. Still, children and adults inhaled sand, coughed up dirt, and died of a new epidemic called "dust pneumonia."

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18 comments:

Anonymous said...

The cause of the Dust Bowl was a combination of two factors; global warming and George W. Bush. If you don't believe me ask Barak Obama; he's the smartest man in the world.

Anonymous said...

1st - Electing Obama,
2nd - Electing Obama for a second term

Anonymous said...

California is getting ready for the same type of dust storm.
History does repeat itself.

Anonymous said...

The creation of the EPA was the worst environmental disaster in America.

Anonymous said...

I'm young. But I remember reading in school about a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania that went up. Three mile island I wanna say.

Steve said...

Hillary Clinton's birth...

Anonymous said...

I agree with 5:19 EPA

Anonymous said...

5:47 Maybe you should really learn history and compare Chernobyl to 3MI.

Anonymous said...

7;12 Maybe you should take a refresher in world geography.
I believe Chernobyl is in Russia and not USA. Read the headline
carefully next time.

Anonymous said...

Ty for standing up against the troll bully of sbynews. I am young and merely remember a quick mention of it. I'd love to learn history of America. But what we learn is garbage. Thank god my uncle was an old school teacher with text books. Only way I learn true American anything.

Anonymous said...

8:22PM
Let me give you something, as you are on the right path.
Jim Marrs: has done some great research into 'true' American history and, the global power structure. He presents some controversial and exotic subject matter at times but, exposes vetted and unarguable fact. From the Egyptian artifacts uncovered in the Grand Canyon to the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission to why what happened on Jekyll Island Georgia in 1910 affects you. And, it goes on and on.
Learn well our past for you will need it's lessons to live.

Anonymous said...

TMI was so bad that the other reactor is still operational 35 years after the "meltdown". Tin foil hats for sale or rent for all who need them. FYI 9/11 was more of an ecological disaster than TMI. More follow on deaths from the effects from the fall of the towers in 14 years than follow on deaths from the "meltdown" of TMI in 35 years.

8:22 Those who fail to learn real history are condemned to repeat the mistakes of false history.

Anonymous said...

The dust bowl was caused by farming corn and wheat in grasslands. It took centuries to grow those grasslands and stupid greedy people plowed it up!

Anonymous said...

The worst disaster is yet to come when renewable energy projects are declared environmental disasters that wreck havoc on public health and safety. These debacles have cost taxpayers and electric ratepayers dearly while fat ass politicians and developers pocket the dollars.

Anonymous said...

10:41 PM doesn't sound very intelligent.

Anonymous said...

The current adminstration!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I'm looking it up after I'm done here ty again.

Anonymous said...

I know this. Tell it to whoever is in charge of teaching us or choosing the curriculum.