Collections: Learning from past disasters

Hurricane Maria was a deadly Category 5 hurricane that devastated the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly Dominica, Saint Croix, and Puerto Rico. It is regarded as the worst natural disaster in recorded history to affect those islands.

On 19 September, a powerful earthquake struck Puebla, Morelos and the Greater Mexico City area. The event happened only hours after a disaster drill in commemoration of an earthquake that rocked Mexico City exactly 32 years before.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global outbreak of coronavirus, an infectious disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus.

Hurricane Mitch is widely remembered as one of the most destructive hurricanes to strike Central America, in no small part because it caused widespread homelessness in Honduras.

The Gorkha Earthquake in Nepal occurred on 25 April 2015 and had a magnitude of 7.6.

Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall near Beira City, Mozambique on 14 March 2019, bringing strong winds and severe flooding in Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Madagascar.

In September 2014, intense flooding in India's Jammu and Kashmir, as well as Azad Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Punjab in Pakistan, killed hundreds, caused tens of thousands of people to be evacuated, and affected over 2,000 villages.

A strong earthquake in Canterbury, New Zealand, triggered a series of aftershocks, including an earthquake that resulted in multiple deaths in Christchurch.