List of mass evacuations

The list of mass evacuations includes emergency evacuations of a large number of people in a short period of time. An emergency evacuation is the movement of persons from a dangerous place due to the threat or occurrence of a disastrous event whether from natural or man made causes or as the result of war.

Ancient times

* 480 BC – The Greek officer of state and navy commander Themistocles ordered the evacuation of Athens as a strategic countermeasure to the approaching Persian army, leading to 100,000 inhabitants being displaced in the late summer.

20th century

* April 20, 1906 – The fire that resulted from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake lead to the sea evacuation from the city of 20,000 refugees. [cite web | title =Timeline of the San Francisco Earthquake | publisher =The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco | url =http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist10/06timeline.html | accessdate =2007-10-25 ]
* September 1939 – The evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II, at the outset of World War II, London and major British cities were evacuated with 1.5 million displacements in the first three days of the official evacuation. The final number of evacuees reached a total of 3.75 million.
* October 1941 – A mass evacuation of Moscow was ordered in the face of the threat of the attacking German Wehrmacht. 2 million inhabitants were displaced from the city within two weeks.
* November 1979 – As a result of the 1979 Mississauga train derailment, the city of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada was evacuated following a chlorine leak after a freight train derailed. 218,000 were displaced.
* April 1986 – The Chernobyl disaster involved an evacuation of an estimated 335,000 people following a nuclear meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union). [cite web | title =Geographical location and extent of radioactive contamination | work =Chernobyl.info | publisher =Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation | url =http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?navID=2 | accessdate =2007-10-25 ]
* February 1995 – At least 200,000 people are evacuated in the Netherlands due to flooding. [cite news | last =Cowell | first =Alan | title = Dutch Rivers Are Receding, But Danger to Dikes Persists | publisher ="The New York Times" | date =February 3, 1995 | url =http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE4D6133CF930A35751C0A963958260 | accessdate =2008-06-02 ]
*July - August 1998 – Nearly 14 million people were evacuated because of massive flooding and landslides in north and central China, and 5.6 million houses were destroyed. An additional 300,000 people were evacuated on August 7 in preparation for a possible breech of the dikes along the Yangtze River. [cite news | title =Officials stage mass evacuations in China's deadly floods | publisher =Associated Press | date =August 7, 1998 | url =http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9808/07/china.floods.01/index.html | accessdate =2007-10-25 ]
*1999 – The Kosovo War led to 800,000 refugees, not all of them urban residents, leaving Kosovo and being accommodated for up to three months in other parts of Europe.
*September 1999 – The size of Hurricane Floyd, its intensity, and its track prompted public officials to launch one of the largest evacuations in U.S. history with an estimated 3 million people fleeing the storm. [cite web | title =Hurricane Floyd - A Night To Remember, A Day Of Evacuation Frustration To Forget | publisher =Federal Emergency Management Agency | date =November 18, 2003 | url =http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=8389 | accessdate =2007-10-25 ]

21st century

* April 2001 – 77,000 inhabitants (around 2/3 of the population) of Vicenza, Italy were evacuated for several hours so that an unexploded bomb, originally dropped in World War II, could be safely disarmed. [cite news | title =Thousands Evacuated From Italian City to Detonate WWII Bomb | publisher ="People's Daily" | date =April 30, 2001 | url =http://english.people.com.cn/english/200104/30/eng20010430_69000.html | accessdate =2007-10-25 ]
* January 2002 – 300,000 residents of the city of Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo were evacuated in three days due to the eruption of the Mount Nyiragongo. [cite web | title =Volcano Risk Reduction: A Case Study from Goma (DRC) | publisher =United Nations Development Programme | month =December | year =2004 | url =http://www.undp.org/cpr/disred/documents/publications/casestudy/goma.pdf | format =PDF | accessdate =2007-10-25 ]
*August 2002 – The 2002 European floods led to the evacuation of 50,000 residents of Prague, Czech Republic, on 13 August, with a total of 200,000 Czechs during the second week of August. [cite news | title =Prague battles flood waters | publisher =BBC News | date =August 14, 2002 | url =http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2192288.stm | accessdate =2007-10-25 ] Elsewhere in Europe more than 120,000 people were evacuated in the German city of Dresden, 36,000 in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, and 1,500 in Hungary. [cite web | title =EADRCC Situation Report No. 2 on the Flood/CZECH Republic | publisher =Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre | url =http://www.nato.int/eadrcc/floods_czech_republic/report_2002_111.pdf | format =PDF | accessdate =2007-10-25 ]
*July 2005 – 20,000 people were evacuated from the city of Birmingham in the United Kingdom after a security alert due to a bomb scare. [cite news | title =British police order evac of central Birmingham district | publisher =USA Today | date =July 10, 2005 | url =http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-07-09-birmingham-evac_x.htm | accessdate =2008-06-01 ]
*August 2005 – Hurricane Katrina led to a mass evacuation of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States, with approximately 80% of the city's population of 484,000 evacuating before the storm struck.
*September 22, 2005 – Texas Department of Transportation says 2.4 million evacuated from Houston, Texas for Hurricane Rita.
*October 2007 – More than 1.4 million people were evacuated in the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian in anticipation of Typhoon Krosa. [cite news | last =Yanping | first =Li | title =China Evacuates 1.4 Million People as Typhoon Krosa Hits Coast | publisher =Bloomberg L.P. | date =October 24, 2007 | url =http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=ac5j8tBcaZ9w&refer=asia | accessdate =2007-10-25 ]
*October 2007 – California wildfires forced more than 800,000 people in Southern California to evacuate, making it the largest evacuation in California history [cite news | last =Brennan | first =Peter J. | coauthors =Demian McLean | title =California Fires Rout Almost 1 Million People, Kill 5 | publisher =Bloomberg L.P. | date =October 24, 2007 | url =http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a96ks3dv.3Fo&refer=us | accessdate =2007-10-25 ] and the largest evacuation for fire in United States history. [http://sosdfireblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/map-shows-massive-evacuation-area.html]
*May 2008 – 2008 Sichuan earthquake: Approximately 200,000 people are evacuated in Beichuan County, China because of flooding fears after a landslide created dam became unstable. [cite news | title =China plans mass exodus from quake zone | publisher =CNN | date =May 29, 2008 | url =http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/30/china.earthquake/ | accessdate =2008-06-01 ]
*August 2008 – At least 1.9 million people evacuate coastal Louisiana, including New Orleans, for Hurricane Gustav. [cite news|url=http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2008/08/11_million_people_evacuate_sou.html|title=1.9 million people evacuate south Louisiana|last=Anderson|first=Ed|date=2008-08-31|publisher=The Times-Picayune|accessdate=2008-09-01] In western Cuba at least 300,000 people were evacuated for Hurricane Gustav. [cite web|author=Will Weissert|publisher=BlueRidgeNow|date=2008-08-30|accessdate=2008-09-01|title=Gustav now Category 4, winds of 145 mph|url=http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20080830/news/808300290]

References