0The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California's

[11]
history, and the most expensive natural disaster in the world in 2018 in terms of
[12][13][3]
insured losses.
[14]
Named after Camp Creek Road, its place of origin, the fire started on Thursday,
November 8, 2018, in Northern California's Butte County. Ignited by a faulty electric
transmission line, the fire originated above several communities and an east wind
drove the fire downhill through developed areas. After exhibiting extreme fire spread,
fireline intensity, and spotting behaviors through the rural community of Concow, an
[15][16][17][18]
urban firestorm formed in the foothill town of Paradise. Drought was a
factor: Paradise, which typically sees five inches of autumn rain by November 12,
had only received one-seventh of an inch by that date in 2018. With the arrival of the
first winter rainstorm of the season, the fire reached 100 percent containment after
[19][20][21]
seventeen days on November 25.
The fire caused at least 85 civilian fatalities, with one person still missing as of
[8]
August 2, 2019, and injured 12 civilians and five firefighters. It covered an area of
2
153,336 acres (620.5 km ; 239.6 sq mi), and destroyed more than 18,000 structures,
[6]
with most of the destruction occurring within the first four hours. The towns of
Paradise and Concow were almost completely destroyed, each losing about 95% of
their structures. The towns of Magalia and Butte Creek Canyon were also largely
[22]
destroyed. By January 2019, the total damage was estimated at $16.5 billion;
[a][3][23]
one-quarter of the damage, $4 billion, was not insured. The Camp Fire also
[5]
cost over $150 million in fire suppression costs, bringing the total cost of the fire to
$16.65 billion.
The same month, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), the utility company
responsible for the faulty power line, filed for bankruptcy, citing expected wildfire
[2]
liabilities of $30 billion. On December 6, 2019, the utility made a settlement offer of
$13.5 billion for the wildfire victims; the offer covered several devastating fires
[24][25]
caused by the utility, including the Camp Fire. On June 16, 2020, the utility
[26]
pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter.
The Camp Fire is the deadliest wildfire in the United States since the Cloquet fire in
1918, and ranks number 13 on the list of the world's deadliest wildfires; it is the
[27]
sixth-deadliest U.S. wildfire overall.
Jilin chemical plant
explosions
The Jilin chemical plant explosions were a series of explosions which occurred on
November 13, 2005, in the No.102 Petrochemical Plant in Jilin City, Jilin Province,
China, over the period of an hour. The explosions killed six, injured dozens, and
caused the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents.

Explosions[edit]
The cause of the blasts was initially determined two days after the blast: the accident
site is a nitration unit for aniline equipment. T-102 tower was jammed up and was not
[1]
handled properly, hence the blasts. The blasts were so powerful that they
shattered windows at least 100 to 200 meters away; at least 70 people were injured
[2]
and six were killed. The fires were finally put out early in the morning of November
14. Over 10,000 people were evacuated from the area, including local residents and
students at the north campus of Beihua University and Jilin Institute of Chemical
[3]
Technology, for fear of further explosions and contamination with harmful
chemicals. The CNPC, which owns the company in charge of the factory, Jilin
Petrochemical Corporation, asked senior officials to investigate the cause of the
[4]
incidents. The explosions were not thought to be related to terrorism, and the
company told a press conference that they had occurred as a result of a chemical
[citation needed]
blockage that had gone unfixed.
The municipal government asked hotels and restaurants in the city to provide rooms
for the evacuated people. Taxi companies also aided in the evacuation.

Water pollution

The explosion severely polluted the Songhua River, with an estimated 100 tons of
[5]
pollutants containing benzene and nitrobenzene entering into the river. Exposure
to benzene reduces red blood cell count and is linked to leukemia.
An 80 km long toxic slick drifted down the Amur River, and the benzene level
recorded was at one point 108 times above national safety levels. The slick passed
first on the Songhua River through several counties and cities of Jilin province,
including Songyuan; it then entered the province of Heilongjiang, with Harbin, capital
of Heilongjiang province and one of China's largest cities, being one of the first
places to be affected. After traversing the eastern half of Heilongjiang including the
city of Jiamusi, the slick converged into the Amur River at the mouth of the Songhua
on the border between China and Russia. It passed by the Jewish Autonomous
Oblast in Russia, then entered the Russian region of Khabarovsk Krai in the Russian
Far East, passing through the cities of Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur before
exiting into the Strait of Tartary, itself a bridge between the Sea of Okhotsk and the
Sea of Japan portions of the Pacific Ocean.

Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at
the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in
[1][2]
the north of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. It is the worst nuclear
[3]
disaster in history both in cost and casualties. It is one of only two nuclear energy
accidents rated at seven—the maximum severity—on the International Nuclear
Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.
The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the
environment, involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion
[4][5]
Soviet rubles—roughly US$68 billion in 2019, adjusted for inflation.
The accident occurred during a safety test on the steam turbine of an RBMK-type
nuclear reactor. During a planned decrease of reactor power in preparation for the
test, the power output unexpectedly dropped to near-zero. The operators were
unable to restore the power level specified by the test program, which put the reactor
in an unstable condition. This risk was not made evident in the operating instructions,
so the operators proceeded with the test. Upon test completion, the operators
triggered a reactor shutdown. But a combination of operator negligence and critical
design flaws had made the reactor primed to explode. Instead of shutting down, an
uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction began, releasing enormous amounts of
[6]: 33 
energy.
The core melted down and two or more explosions ruptured the reactor core and
destroyed the reactor building. This was immediately followed by an open-air reactor
core fire. It released considerable airborne radioactive contamination for about nine
days that precipitated onto parts of the USSR and Western Europe, before finally
 [7][8]
ending on 4 May 1986. Some 70% of fallout landed in Belarus, 16 kilometres
[9]
(9.9 mi) away. The fire released about the same amount of contamination as the
[4]
initial explosion. As a result of rising ambient radiation levels off-site, a
10-kilometre (6.2 mi) radius exclusion zone was created 36 hours after the ac
cident. About 49,000 people were evacuated from the area, primarily from Pripyat.
The exclusion zone was later increased to 30 kilometres (19 mi) when a further
68,000 people were evacuated from the wider area, and later it became the
2
Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covering an area of approximately 2,600 km (1,000 sq
[10]
mi).
The reactor explosion killed two engineers and severely burned two more. A massive
emergency operation to put out the fire, stabilize the reactor, and clean up the
ejected nuclear core began. During the immediate emergency response 134 station
staff and firemen were hospitalized with acute radiation syndrome due to absorbing
high doses of ionizing radiation. Of these 134 people, 28 died in the days to months
afterward and approximately 14 suspected radiation-induced cancer deaths followed
[11][12]
within the next 10 years.
Chernobyl's health effects to the general population are uncertain. An excess of 15
[13][14]
childhood thyroid cancer deaths were documented as of 2011. A United
Nations committee found that to date fewer than 100 deaths have resulted from the
[15]
fallout. Determining the total eventual number of exposure related deaths is
uncertain based on the linear no-threshold model, a contested statistical
[16][17]
model. Model predictions of the eventual total death toll in the coming decades
vary. The most robust studies predict 4,000 fatalities when solely assessing the three
most contaminated former Soviet states, to about 9,000 to 16,000 fatalities when
[18]
assessing the whole of Europe.
The USSR built the protective Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant sarcophagus by
December 1986. It reduced the spread of radioactive contamination from the
wreckage and protected it from weathering. It also provided radiological protection
for the crews of the undamaged reactors at the site, which were restarted in late
1986 and 1987. Due to the continued deterioration of the sarcophagus, it was further
enclosed in 2017 by the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement. This larger enclosure
allows the removal of both the sarcophagus and the reactor debris, while containing
[19]
the radioactive hazard. Nuclear clean-up is scheduled for completion in 2065.