Punk’s Reviews > Oregon Disasters: True Stories of Tragedy and Survival > Status Update

Disaster #11: The Willamette River Flood, 1964. By the end of the flood, every river in Oregon was above flood stage.

Disaster #12: The Brookings-Harbor Rescues, 1972. A sudden storm and a muddled description of the boats and individuals caught out in it.

Disaster #9: The Columbus Day Storm, 1962. More a hurricane than a storm. My dad still talks about this.

Disaster #10: Tsunami, 1964. Just a mild tsunami, as tsunami go.

Disaster #7: Three Blizzards, 1950. A rambling weather report.

Disaster #8: The Roseburg Blast, 1959. A devastating explosion that wiped out 12 blocks of downtown Roseburg, killed 14, and injured 125. All due to a series of very poor decisions made by a truck driver delivering 2 tons of dynamite.

Disaster #5: The Tillamook Burn, 1933. Terrible fires burned for nearly three weeks and destroyed 311,000 acres of old-growth forest, fires most likely caused by logging activities. Involved what sounds like a fire tornado that spat out burning trees. No thank you.

Disaster #6: The Vanport Flood, 1948. Nothing new here except it's more upfront about how little Portland wanted a bunch of black people to move in.

Disaster #4: The Mazamas on Coe Glacier, 1922. The first recorded recreational mountain-climbing fatality in the U.S. was on Mount Hood in 1896, and since then more than 130 people have died climbing or hiking or getting lost on Mount Hood. That's at least one a year.

This incident could have been much worse, but only one person died, with several others wounded. Calling this a disaster is a stretch.

Disaster #3: The Astoria Fire, 1922. Astoria was pretty much made of wood, even the asphalt streets downtown were up on wooden pilings. (Why?) In 1883, a fire destroyed the waterfront, the people rebuilt, and then it caught fire again in 1922, destroying 28 blocks, but only one lost life.

Disaster #2: The Wreck of the Mimi, 1913. A German square-rigger sailing ship runs aground in Nehalem Bay. A storm develops during efforts to free it, the ship capsizes, and seventeen sailors die.

If only they'd listened to Captain Robert Farley of (what would later become) the Coast Guard, when he said now wasn't a good time for that.