The Costliest Man-Made Disasters, And The Strangest

Risk Management Magazine takes a look in the rear-view mirror to tally up the most expensive disasters in history that have been caused by human activity. The relatively recent Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill is ranked at number two, with an estimated price tag of $42 billion, but it’s dwarfed by number one, an event that took place less than 30 years ago, cost more than five times that, killed 30 people on the spot and thousands more over a period of years, but which much of the world has largely forgotten. As for the list of “the weirdest,”  no estimated price tag is given, but each of their costs would be astronomical  by any measure. They include the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an estimated 3.5 million tons of trash, largely plastic, floating in an area the size of Texas; “The Gates of Hell” in Turkmenistan, the remnant of a collapsed natural gas field that is still burning more than 40 years after it was accidentally formed as the result of a Soviet drilling operation; and the disappearing Aral Sea in Kazakstan.