List of mass evacuations

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Evacuees fleeing Hurricane Rita in Texas, United States

This 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.

1st century

• 60-61 - Boudica's uprising results in the mass evacuation of numerous Roman settlements in Britain.
• 79 – Eruption of Mount Vesuvius causes evacuation of Pompeii and surrounding areas.

5th century

• 410 – Sack of Rome by Visigoths under Alaric I. Many Romans were either taken captive and sold into slavery or later fled the devastated city.

13th century

• 1237–1293 – Mongol invasion of Europe: Many thousands in eastern Europe are displaced or flee before each of several Mongol expeditions.

14th century

• 1351 – Peak of the Black Death, which led to mass evacuations in numerous cities, ports, and villages in Asia, Europe, and Egypt.

19th Century

• 1836 - The Fall of the Alamo results in a mass evacuation of American, Mexican, Tejano, and Texian persons in what is known as the Runaway Scrape.

20th century

U.S. military dependents board USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) in the aftermath of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

• April 20, 1906 - The resultant fire of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake leads to evacuation by sea of 20,000 refugees.^[1]
• Between March 1937 and October 1938, nearly 3,000 children were evacuated from Spain to the Soviet Union. Most of the children were from the Basque Country, Asturias, and Cantabria. On June 12, 1937 over 1,500 children and 75 tutors (teachers, doctors, and nurses) left the Port of Santurtzi in the Basque province of Bizkaia on board the ship "Habana." Similarly, nearly 4,000 children were evacuated to the United Kingdom, also on the "Habana", with the HMS Hood as an escort. They became, and are still known as, "los niños de la guerra" ("the war children") or the "Gernika Generation" (as regards Basques).
• 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 displaced in the first three days of the official evacuation. The final number of evacuees reached 3.75 million.
• 1939–1940 and June 1944 – The entire population of Finnish Karelia, 522,000 people, was evacuated during the Winter War. Some 260,000 of these returned home during the Continuation War, but were evacuated again in June 1944.
• May–June 1940 - Operation Dynamo was implemented, with around 439,000 British and French troops evacuated from Dunkirk, France.^[2]
• 20–23 June 1940 - 24,600 people, a third of the population, are evacuated from the Channel Islands to England and Scotland ahead of the German invasion.
• October 1940 – 1945 - Evacuations of children in Germany during World War II
• October 1941 - A mass evacuation of Moscow was ordered in the face of the threat of the war estimated 1.5 million to 3 million German Wehrmacht. Two million inhabitants were displaced within two weeks.
• Autumn 1944-Spring 1945 - Evacuation of East Prussia (1.8 million people) and Pomerania (various estimates range between 3 and 7 million; see Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II)
• June 1944–August 1945 - Evacuations of civilians in Japan during World War II
• 1945-1951 - Istrian exodus From the end of World War II through 1953, according to various data, between 250,000 and 350,000 people emigrated from these regions
• May 1950 - One hundred thousand people were evacuated from Winnipeg, Canada during the devastating Red River flood of 1950.^[3]
• Between December 10 and 24, 1950, over 100,000 UN troops who were cut off by the Chinese intervention forces in Northern Korea, along with an even larger number of civilian refugees, were evacuated from the North Korean port of Hungnam during the Korean War.
• July–August 1971 - 18 million people migrated from Bangladesh (then known as East Pakistan) to India to escape the military forces of Pakistan (then known as West Pakistan). This was the largest and bloodiest exodus in human history, with 1 million dead.
• 26–31 December 1974 – As a result of Cyclone Tracy destroying over 85 percent of the city, more than 60,000 people from Darwin, Australia are evacuated from the area, leaving just 10,000 people (mainly adult males) to begin the massive cleanup.
• July 1974 - The complete, spontaneous evacuation in a few hours of Varosha before the advancing Turkish army; the population feared a massacre.
• 1975 – Operation Frequent Wind: thousands of South Vietnamese and the last remaining Americans evacuate Saigon, capital of South Vietnam, before the invading Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army overrun the city.
• July to October 1975 - After the end of the Portuguese colonial war, one million Portuguese civilians were flown from former Portuguese colonies in Africa, mainly Angola and Mozambique, back to Portugal. Thousands of flights were organized by the Portuguese government, using hundreds of commercial airplanes.
• 1975–1979 – Cambodia: After the Khmer Rouge take over the capital of Phnom Penh, all civilians are forced to evacuate the cities for the countryside, in order to create a new Communist society; 2–3 million displaced.
• 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).^[4]
• 13 August to 11 October 1990 - During the 1990 airlift of Indians from Kuwait Air India entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the most people evacuated by a civil airliner. Over 170,000 people were evacuated from Amman to Mumbai– a distance of 4,117 km- via 488 flights operated by Indian Airlines. The operation was carried out during the Persian Gulf War to evacuate Indian expatriates from Kuwait and Iraq.^[5]
• 24–25 May 1991 - Operation Solomon, covert Israeli military operation to take 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
• June 1991 - Operation Fiery Vigil was the evacuation of roughly 20,000 non-essential military and United States Department of Defense civilian personnel and their dependents from Clark Air Base and U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay back to CONUS during the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.
• February 1995 - At least 200,000 people are evacuated in the Netherlands due to flooding.^[6]
• April 1997 - Nearly 50,000 residents of Grand Forks, North Dakota were evacuated due to flooding from the Red River of the North, which overtopped levees.^[7]
• 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 anticipation of a possible breach of dikes along the Yangtze River.^[8]
• 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 the second largest evacuation in U.S. history, with an estimated 3 million people fleeing the storm.^[9]

21st century

Evacuees at evacuation site Mira Mesa High School

• 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.^[10]
• September 11, 2001 - Evacuations from high-rise buildings across the United States. This included 3200+ survivors of the World Trade Center disaster and inhabitants of downtown Manhattan, New York City. Numerous other evacuations of high-rises in Chicago, Illinois included the Sears Tower and the Thompson Building. The evacuation of New York included the largest sea evacuation in recorded history, with over 500,000 being evacuated in 9 hours by hundreds of boats.^[2]
• 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.^[11]
• 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.^[12] 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.^[13]
• 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.^[14]
• August 2005 - Hurricane Katrina led to a mass evacuation of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, with approximately 80% of the city's population of 484,000 evacuating before the storm struck.
• September 22, 2005 - More than 3 million evacuated in Texas and Louisiana, including 2.4 million from Houston, Texas, due to the approach of Hurricane Rita. This is the largest evacuation in U.S. history, and the third-largest peacetime evacuation in modern times.
• October 2007 - More than 1.4 million people were evacuated in the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian in anticipation of Typhoon Krosa.^[15]
• October 2007 - California wildfires forced more than 900,000 people in Southern California to evacuate, making it the largest evacuation in California's history^[16] and the largest evacuation for fire in United States history.^[17]
• 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.^[18]
• August 2008 - At least 1.9 million people evacuate coastal Louisiana, including New Orleans, for Hurricane Gustav.^[19] In western Cuba, at least 300,000 people were evacuated.^[20]
• March 2011 - Following the 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents, between 170,000 and 200,000 people are evacuated within a 50-mile radius of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in fear of large casualties due to radiation poisoning.^[21]
• August 2011 - A mass evacuation stretching from North Carolina to New York is ordered because of Hurricane Irene and its size.^[22]
• June 2013 - Nearly 1,000,000 people evacuated in 12 days from Uttarakhand, India due to a flash flood and landslide. This operation was completed by the Indian Air Force, ITBP, NDRF, and local authorities. Helicopters were widely used because road networks were severely damaged.
• October 2013 - Nearly 850,000 people were evacuated in 3 days from the coastal areas of Odisha (more than 750,000) and Andhra Pradesh (nearly 90,000) in the face of Cyclone Phailin. This operation was completed by the Indian Air Force, ITBP, NDRF, and local authorities.
• December 2014 - Nearly 1,000,000 people were evacuated in the eastern Philippines before typhoon Hagupit.^[23]
• April 2015 - Operation Maitri (India) was carried out by India to evacuate stranded Indian citizens and foreigners from Nepal during the Nepal earthquake of magnitude 8.8.
• April 2015 - Operation Raahat (India) was carried out by India to evacuate stranded Indian citizens from Yemen. A total of 4640 Indian citizens and 960 foreign nationals were rescued.^[24]
• May 2016 - Approximately 88,000 people were evacuated from Fort McMurray (Canada) due to a wildfire that grew out of control quickly. This was the largest evacuation in the Province of Alberta's history. Evacuees went north to Oil Sands camps, and communities to the south. ^[25]

References

1. "Timeline of the San Francisco Earthquake". The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18lsxFcDrjo
3. "A City Submerged – Winnipeg and the Flood of 1950 – CBC Archives". CBC. Retrieved 2009-02-22.
4. "Geographical location and extent of radioactive contamination". Chernobyl.info. Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
5. "Air India, History of Air India, Air India Flight Services, Air India International, Passenger Operations, Awards in Air India". Thisismyindia.com. Retrieved 10 June 2010.
6. Cowell, Alan (February 3, 1995). "Dutch Rivers Are Receding, But Danger to Dikes Persists". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-06-02.
7. Shelby, A. Red River Rising: The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press/Borealis Books, 2003.
8. "Officials stage mass evacuations in China's deadly floods". Associated Press. August 7, 1998. Archived from the original on 2008-03-29. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
9. "Hurricane Floyd - A Night To Remember, A Day Of Evacuation Frustration To Forget". Federal Emergency Management Agency. November 18, 2003. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
10. "Thousands Evacuated From Italian City to Detonate WWII Bomb". People's Daily. April 30, 2001. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
11. "Volcano Risk Reduction: A Case Study from Goma (DRC)" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. December 2004. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
12. "Prague battles flood waters". BBC News. August 14, 2002. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
13. "EADRCC Situation Report No. 2 on the Flood/CZECH Republic" (PDF). Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
14. "British police order evac of central Birmingham district". USA Today. July 10, 2005. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
15. Yanping, Li (October 24, 2007). "China Evacuates 1.4 Million People as Typhoon Krosa Hits Coast". Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
16. Brennan, Peter J.; Demian McLean (October 24, 2007). "California Fires Rout Almost 1 Million People, Kill 5". Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
17. http://sosdfireblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/map-shows-massive-evacuation-area.html
18. "China plans mass exodus from quake zone". CNN. May 29, 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
19. Anderson, Ed (2008-08-31). "1.9 million people evacuate south Louisiana". The Times-Picayune. Retrieved 2008-09-01.
20. Will Weissert (2008-08-30). "Gustav now Category 4, winds of 145 mph". BlueRidgeNow. Retrieved 2008-09-01.
21. McCurry, Justin (March 16, 2011). "Radiation spike forces evacuations at Fukushima nuclear power station". London: guardian.co.uk home. Retrieved 2011-03-19.
22. Severson, Kim; Barry, Dan; Robertson, Campbell (August 27, 2011). "Damage and Flooding Scar Atlantic Seaboard". New york times.
23. http://news.yahoo.com/typhoon-hagupit-triggers-massive-evacuation-philippines-021318742.html
24. "India evacuates 4,640 nationals, 960 others from Yemen". www.oneindia.com. 2015-04-10. Retrieved 2015-04-11.
25. "Wildfire rages in Fort McMurray as evacuees settle in Edmonton". www.CBC.ca. 2016-05-04. Retrieved 2015-05-04.