Japan historik earthquakes tsunami and volcanoes :

The Japanese archipelago is located in an area where several continental and oceanic plates meet. This is the cause of frequent earthquakes and the presence of many volcanoes and hot springs across Japan. If earthquakes occur below or close to the ocean, they may trigger tidal waves (tsunami).
Historic earthquakes
Many parts of the country have experienced devastating earthquakes and tidal waves in the past. The Great Kanto Earthquake, the worst in Japanese history, hit the Kanto plain around Tokyo in 1923 and resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people.
In January 1995 a strong earthquake hit the city of Kobe and surroundings. Known as the Southern Hyogo Earthquake or Great Hanshin Earthquake, it killed 6,000 and injured 415,000 people. 100,000 homes were completely destroyed and 185,000 were severely damaged.
Earthquake measurement
The Japanese "shindo" scale for measuring earthquakes is more commonly used in Japan than the Richter scale to describe earthquakes. Shindo refers to the intensity of an earthquake at a given location, i.e. what people actually feel at a given location, while the Richter scale measures the magnitude of an earthquake, i.e. the energy an earthquake releases at the epicenter.
The shindo scale ranges from shindo one, a slight earthquake felt only by people who are not moving, to shindo seven, a severe earthquake. Shindo two to four are still minor earthquakes that do not cause damage, while objects start to fall at shindo five, and heavier damage occurs at shindo six and seven.
During and after an earthquake
Falling objects, toppling furniture and panic present the greatest dangers during an earthquake. Try to protect yourself under a table or doorway. Do not run outside, and try to remain as calm as possible. If you are in the streets, try to find protection from glass and other objects that may fall from surrounding buildings.
After a strong earthquake, turn off ovens, stoves and the main gas valve. Then listen to the radio or television for news. In coastal areas beware of possible tidal waves (tsunami) while in mountainous areas beware of possible land slides.
Japan is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, with 108 active volcanoes, according to National Geographic. Japan rests on the Ring of Fire, which is "a series of volcanoes and fault lines that roughly circle the Pacific Ocean."
The United States has seen some activity underground recently as well. In Seattle, Wash., a magnitude 4.5 earthquake shook the area, but no damage was reported. Alaska, meanwhile, is paying attention to its Mount Redoubt volcano, which is showing signs of a possible eruption.
Scientific American wrote, "The so-called ring of fire edging the Pacific is known to be highly active. So it's no surprise that said ring is jolting Seattle residents awake and putting denizens of Anchorage on notice of an imminent eruption from the redoubtable Mount Redoubt."

Tokyo:World Health Organisation Report

 World Health Organisation said on Monday that radiation in food after an earthquake damaged Japanese nuclear plant was more serious than previously thought, eclipsing signs of progress in a battle to avert a catastrophic meltdown in the reactors.
Engineers managed to rig power cables to all six reactors at the Fukushima complex, 240 km north of Tokyo, and started a water pump at one of them to reverse the overheating that has triggered the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.
Some workers were later evacuated from one of the most badly damaged reactors when gray smoke rose from the site. There was no immediate explanation for the smoke, but authorities had said earlier that pressure was building up at the No. 3 reactor.
The amount of smoke later receded and Japan’s nuclear safety agency said there was no significant change in radiation levels at the site.
The March 11 earthquake and tsunami left more than 21,000 people dead or missing and will cost an already beleaguered economy some $250 billion, making it the world’s costliest ever natural disaster.
However, he said there was no evidence of contaminated food from Fukushima reaching other countries.
Tap water
Japan’s health ministry has urged some residents near the plant to stop drinking tap water after high levels of radioactive iodine were detected.
Cases of contaminated vegetables and milk have already stoked anxiety despite assurances from officials that the levels are not dangerous. The government has prohibited the sale of raw milk from Fukushima prefecture and spinach from a nearby area.
There were no major reports of contaminated food in Tokyo, a city of about 13 million people. City officials however said higher-than-standard levels of iodine were found in an edible form of chrysanthemum.
Japan is a net importer of food, but has substantial exports – mainly fruit, vegetables, dairy products and seafood – with its biggest markets in Hong Kong, China and the United States.
The prospects of a nuclear power plant meltdown in the world’s third-biggest economy and its key position in global supply chains rattled investors worldwide last week and prompted rare joint currency intervention by the G7 group of rich nations to stabilise markets.
Tokyo’s markets were closed for a holiday on Monday. The Nikkei index shed 10 per cent last week, wiping $350 billion off market capitalisation, and at one point had lost as much as 20 per cent in value.
In a much-needed boost for the battered market, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said the earthquake and tsunami were an “enormous blow” but should not prompt the selling of Japanese shares. Instead, he called events a “buying opportunity”.
Situation critical at plant
At Fukushima, 300 engineers have worked around the clock inside an evacuation zone to contain the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986.

FUKUSHIMA:The world bank report

The World Bank said in report Monday that Japan may need five years to rebuild from the catastrophic disasters, which caused up to $235 billion in damage, saying the cost to private insurers will be up to $33 billion and that the government will spend $12 billion on reconstruction in the current national budget and much more later.
 The toll of Japan’s triple disaster came into clearer focus Monday after police estimates showed more than 18,000 people died, the World Bank said rebuilding may cost $235 billion and more cases of radiation-tainted vegetables and tap water turned up.
Japanese officials reported progress over the weekend in their battle to gain control over a nuclear complex that began leaking radiation after suffering quake and tsunami damage, though the crisis was far from over, with a dangerous new surge in pressure reported in one of the plant’s six reactors.
The announcement by Japan’s Health Ministry late Sunday that tests had detected excess amounts of radioactive elements on canola and chrysanthemum greens marked a low moment in a day that had been peppered with bits of positive news: First, a teenager and his grandmother were found alive nine days after being trapped in their earthquake-shattered home. Then, the operator of the overheated nuclear plant said two of the six reactor units were safely cooled down.
The safety of food and water was of particular concern. The government halted shipments of spinach from one area and raw milk from another near the nuclear plant after tests found iodine exceeded safety limits. Tokyo’s tap water, where iodine turned up Friday, now has cesium. Rain and dust are also tainted.
Early Monday , the Health Ministry advised Iitate, a village of 6,000 people about 30 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima plant, not to drink tap water due to elevated levels of iodine. Ministry spokesman Takayuki Matsuda said iodine three times the normal level was detected there — about one twenty-sixth of the level of a chest X-ray in one liter of water.
In all cases, the government said the radiation levels were too small to pose an immediate health risk.
All six of the nuclear complex’s reactor units saw trouble after the disasters knocked out cooling systems. In a small advance, the plant’s operator declared Units 5 and 6 — the least troublesome — under control after their nuclear fuel storage pools cooled to safe levels. Progress was made to reconnect two other units to the electric grid and in pumping seawater to cool another reactor and replenish it and a sixth reactor’s storage pools.
Police in other parts of the disaster area declined to provide estimates, but confirmed about 3,400 deaths. Nationwide, official figures show the disasters killing more than 8,600 people, and leaving more than 13,200 people missing, but those two lists may have some overlap.
TOKYO:
 The official death toll from Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami has risen to 8,133 with 12,272 still missing.
Police earlier said they feared more than 15,000 people had died in one prefecture alone, Miyagi, in the March 11 disaster.
Some of the missing may have been out of the region at the time of the disaster. In addition, the massive power of the tsunami likely sucked many people out to sea. If the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami is any guide, most of those bodies will not be found.

Japan's nuclear crisis escalates further

 SENDAI: Japan's nuclear crisis escalated Tuesday as two more blasts and a fire rocked a quake-stricken atomic power plant, sending radiation up to dangerous levels.
Radiation around the Fukushima No.1 plant on the eastern coast had "risen considerably", Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, and his chief spokesman announced the level was now high enough to endanger human health.
In Tokyo, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) to the southwest, authorities also said that higher than normal radiation levels had been detected in the capital, the world's biggest urban area, but not at harmful levels.
Kan warned people living up to 10 kilometres (six miles) beyond a 20 km (12-mile) exclusion zone around the nuclear plant to stay indoors.
The fire, which was later reportedly extinguished, was burning in the plant's number-four reactor, he said, meaning that four out of six reactors at the facility are now in trouble.
The official death toll has risen to 2,414, police said Tuesday, but officials say at least 10,000 are likely to have perished.
The crisis at the ageing Fukushima plant has escalated daily after Friday's quake and tsunami which knocked out cooling systems.
On Saturday an explosion blew apart the building surrounding the plant's number-one reactor. On Monday, a blast hit the number-three reactor, injuring 11 people and sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.
Early on Tuesday a blast hit the number-two reactor. That was followed shortly after by a hydrogen explosion which started a fire at the number-four reactor.
Hashimoto said supermarkets are open but shelves are completely empty. "Many children are sick in this cold weather but pharmacies are closed. Emergency relief goods have not reached evacuation centres in the city.
Everyone is anxious and wants to get out of town. But there is no more petrol. We are afraid of using a car as we may run out of petrol."
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tokyo had asked for expert assistance in the aftermath of the quake which US seismologists are now measuring at 9.0-magnitude, revised up from 8.9.
But the IAEA's Japanese chief Yukiya Amano moved to calm global fears that the situation could escalate to rival the world's worst nuclear crisis at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986.
Officials have already evacuated 210,000 people in the exclusion zone around the crippled plant.
At one shelter, a young woman holding her baby told public broadcaster NHK: "I didn't want this baby to be exposed to radiation. I wanted to avoid that, no matter what."
Further north in the region of Miyagi, which took the full brunt of Friday's terrifying wall of water, rescue teams searching through the shattered debris of towns and villages have found 2,000 bodies.
And the Miyagi police chief has said he is certain more than 10,000 people perished in his prefecture.
Millions have been left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food and hundreds of thousands more are homeless and facing harsh conditions with sub-zero temperatures overnight, and snow and rain forecast.
Tokyo stocks, which were punished Monday when the markets reopened, sending indexes around the world sliding, plummeted another 12 percent by early afternoon on Tuesday.
Leading risk analysis firm AIR Worldwide said the quake alone would exact an economic toll estimated at between $14.5 billion and $34.6 billion (10 billion to 25 billion euros) -- even leaving aside the effects of the tsunami.

Japan:Tokyo,Osaka earthquake,tsunami update

TOKYO: Japan instructed local authorities to start screening food for radioactivity after accidents at an earthquake-hit nuclear power plant sparked fears of wider contamination.
It is the first time Japan has set radiation limits on domestically produced food, a health ministry official said.
The limits are in line with an anti-disaster programme prepared in advance by the government's atomic power safety commission, said the official.
Limits vary depending on the type of foodstuff but have been set in consultation with internationally accepted levels and average intake in the Japanese diet.
Radioactivity leaked into the air after explosions at the Fukushima No.1 plant, where last week's quake and tsunami knocked out the reactor cooling systems.
Several Asian nations have said they will screen food imported from Japan for radiation while the European Union has called for similar checks.

OSAKA:

A 5.9 magnitude earthquake rattled Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture south of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant on Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued.
The USGS said the quake struck at 6.56 pm (0956 GMT) and was centred 98 kilometres (61 miles) south of Fukushima and 142 kilometres from Tokyo.
The quake shook buildings in Tokyo, but no damage was immediately reported, public broadcaster NHK said, adding that flights at the capital’s Narita Airport were briefly suspended for safety checks before resuming.
The quake struck at a depth of 24.7 kilometres (15.3 miles).
Japan’s meteorological agency measured the quake at a magnitude of 6.1.

TOKYO:

 The number of people confirmed as dead or listed as missing by Japan’s national police agency topped 18,000 on Saturday, eight days after the massive earthquake and tsunami struck.
Hopes of finding many more survivors amid the rubble have diminished amid a cold snap that has hit Japan’s northeast, covering much of the disaster area in snow earlier this week.
The death toll has surpassed that of the 7.2-magnitude quake that struck the western Japanese port city of Kobe in 1995, killing 6,434 people.
The March 11 quake is now Japan’s deadliest natural disaster since the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which killed more than 142,000 people.
The latest police figures for people missing do not include local reports from along the tsunami-hit coast of vast numbers of people unaccounted for.
The mayor of the coastal town of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture said Wednesday that the number of missing there was likely to hit 10,000, Kyodo News reported.
On Saturday, public broadcaster NHK said that around 10,000 people were unaccounted for in the port town of Minamisanriku in the same prefecture.

 

Japan's nuclear crisis

 SENDAI: Japan's nuclear crisis escalated Tuesday as two more blasts and a fire rocked a quake-stricken atomic power plant, sending radiation up to dangerous levels.
Radiation around the Fukushima No.1 plant on the eastern coast had "risen considerably", Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, and his chief spokesman announced the level was now high enough to endanger human health.
In Tokyo, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) to the southwest, authorities also said that higher than normal radiation levels had been detected in the capital, the world's biggest urban area, but not at harmful levels.
Kan warned people living up to 10 kilometres (six miles) beyond a 20 km (12-mile) exclusion zone around the nuclear plant to stay indoors.
The fire, which was later reportedly extinguished, was burning in the plant's number-four reactor, he said, meaning that four out of six reactors at the facility are now in trouble.
The official death toll has risen to 2,414, police said Tuesday, but officials say at least 10,000 are likely to have perished.
The crisis at the ageing Fukushima plant has escalated daily after Friday's quake and tsunami which knocked out cooling systems.
On Saturday an explosion blew apart the building surrounding the plant's number-one reactor. On Monday, a blast hit the number-three reactor, injuring 11 people and sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.
Early on Tuesday a blast hit the number-two reactor. That was followed shortly after by a hydrogen explosion which started a fire at the number-four reactor.
Hashimoto said supermarkets are open but shelves are completely empty. "Many children are sick in this cold weather but pharmacies are closed. Emergency relief goods have not reached evacuation centres in the city.
Everyone is anxious and wants to get out of town. But there is no more petrol. We are afraid of using a car as we may run out of petrol."
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tokyo had asked for expert assistance in the aftermath of the quake which US seismologists are now measuring at 9.0-magnitude, revised up from 8.9.

But the IAEA's Japanese chief Yukiya Amano moved to calm global fears that the situation could escalate to rival the world's worst nuclear crisis at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986.
Officials have already evacuated 210,000 people in the exclusion zone around the crippled plant.
At one shelter, a young woman holding her baby told public broadcaster NHK: "I didn't want this baby to be exposed to radiation. I wanted to avoid that, no matter what."
Further north in the region of Miyagi, which took the full brunt of Friday's terrifying wall of water, rescue teams searching through the shattered debris of towns and villages have found 2,000 bodies.
And the Miyagi police chief has said he is certain more than 10,000 people perished in his prefecture.
Millions have been left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food and hundreds of thousands more are homeless and facing harsh conditions with sub-zero temperatures overnight, and snow and rain forecast.
Tokyo stocks, which were punished Monday when the markets reopened, sending indexes around the world sliding, plummeted another 12 percent by early afternoon on Tuesday.
Leading risk analysis firm AIR Worldwide said the quake alone would exact an economic toll estimated at between $14.5 billion and $34.6 billion (10 billion to 25 billion euros) -- even leaving aside the effects of the tsunami.

After the earthquake and tsunami Blast in"Nuclear" plant japan

Fukushima: A hydrogen explosion rocked the earthquake-stricken nuclear plant in Japan where authorities have been working desperately to avert a meltdown, compounding a nuclear catastrophe caused by Friday’s massive quake and tsunami.
The core container was intact, Jiji news agency said, quoting the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), but the local government warned those still in the 20-kilometre evacuation zone to stay indoors. Kyodo news agency quoted Tepco as saying workers were injured in latest explosion.
Edano, citing information from the plant operator TEPCO, said the reactor container was likely undamaged and there was a low possibility of major radiation.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said the blast, at the number 3 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, was believed to be caused by hydrogen.
A hydrogen explosion had hit the number 1 reactor at the same plant on Saturday, a day after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the northeast coast.
Authorities have declared an evacuation zone within a 20 km (12 mile) radius of the plant and evacuated 210,000 people.
"We have strongly advised all the people still within the evacuation area to go inside nearby facilities," said nuclear safety agency spokesman Ryo Miyake.
Some 746 people -- patients, elderly people and care workers at three hospitals and nursing homes -- remained within the 20 km area Monday.

Death toll “above 10,000”

Broadcaster NHK, quoting a police official, said more than 10,000 people may have been killed as the wall of water triggered by Friday’s 8.9-magnitude quake surged across the coastline, reducing whole towns to rubble. It was the biggest to have hit the quake-prone country since it started keeping records 140 years ago
Kyodo said 80,000 people had been evacuated from a 20-kilometre radius around the stricken nuclear plant, joining more than 450,000 other evacuees from quake and tsunami-hit areas in the northeast of the main island Honshu.
Almost two million households were without power in the freezing north, the government said. There were about 1.4 million without running water.
Nuclear crisis

The most urgent crisis centres on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, where authorities said they had been forced to vent radioactive steam into the air to relieve reactor pressure.
The complex was rocked by a first explosion on Saturday, which blew the roof off a reactor building. The government had said further blasts would not necessarily damage the reactor vessels.
Operator Tepco said on Monday it had reported a rise in radiation levels at the complex to the government. On Sunday the level had risen slightly above what one is exposed to for a stomach X-ray, the company said.
Authorities had been pouring sea water in two of the reactors at the complex to cool them down.
Nuclear experts said it was probably the first time in the industry’s 57-year history that sea water has been used in this way, a sign of how close Japan may be to a major accident.
“Injection of sea water into a core is an extreme measure,” Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is not according to the book.”
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said there might have been a partial meltdown of the fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor, where Saturday’s blast took place, and there was a risk of an explosion at the building housing the No. 3 reactor, but that it was unlikely to affect the reactor core container.
A Japanese official said 22 people have been confirmed to have suffered radiation contamination and up to 190 may have been exposed. Workers in protective clothing used handheld scanners to check people arriving at evacuation centres.

Economic impact
The earthquake has forced many firms to suspend production and shares in some of Japan’s biggest companies tumbled on Monday, with Toyota Corp dropping around seven per cent. Shares in Australian-listed uranium miners also dived.
Already saddled with debts twice the size of its $5 trillion economy and threatened with credit downgrades, the government is discussing a temporary tax rise to fund relief work.
Analysts expect the economy to suffer a hit in the short-term, then get a boost from reconstruction activity.
“When we talk about natural disasters, we tend to see an initial sharp drop in production…then you tend to have a V-shaped rebound. But initially everyone underestimates the damage,” said Michala Marcussen, head of global economics at Societe Generale.
Ratings agency Moody’s said on Sunday the fiscal impact of the earthquake would be temporary and have a limited play on whether it would downgrade Japan’s sovereign debt.
Risk modelling company AIR Worldwide said insured losses from the earthquake could reach nearly $35 billion.
The Bank of Japan has said it would pump cash into the banking system to prevent the disaster from destabilising markets.
It is also expected to signal its readiness to ease monetary policy further if the damage threatens a fragile economic recovery.
Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said authorities were closely watching the yen after the currency initially rallied on expectations of repatriations by insurers and others. The currency later reversed course in volatile trading.
The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century. It surpassed the Great Kanto quake of September 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area.
The 1995 Kobe quake killed 6,000 and caused $100 billion in damage, the most expensive natural disaster in history. Economic damage from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was estimated at about $10 billion.

POWERFULL EARTH QUAKE AND TSUNAMI JAPAN

TOKYO: A massive 8.9 magnitude quake hit northeast Japan on Friday, causing many injuries, fires and a four-metre (13-ft) tsunami along parts of the country's coastline.
There were several strong aftershocks and a warning of a 10-metre tsunami following the quake, which also caused buildings to shake violently in the capital Tokyo.
Public broadcaster NHK showed flames and black smoke billowing from a building in Odaiba, a Tokyo suburb, and bullet trains to the north of the country were halted.
Black smoke was also pouring out of an industrial area in Yokohama's Isogo area.  An overpass, location unknown, appeared to have collapsed into the water.
Passengers on a subway line in Tokyo screamed and grabbed other passengers' hands. The shaking was so bad it was hard to stand.
Hundreds of office workers and shoppers spilled into Hitotsugi street, a shopping street in Akasaka in downtown Tokyo.
Household goods ranging from toilet paper to clingfilm were flung into the street from outdoor shelves in front of a drugstore.
Crowds gathered in front of televisions in a shop next to the drugstore for details. After the shaking from the first quake subsided.
The U.S. Geological Survey earlier verified a magnitude of 7.9 at a depth of 15.1 miles and located the quake 81 miles east of Sendai, on the main island of Honshu. It later upgraded it to 8.8.
A police car drove down Hitotsugi Street, lights flashing, announcing through a bullhorn that there was still a danger of shaking.
The Tokyo stock market extended its losses after the quake was announced. The central bank said it would do everything to ensure financial stability.
Japan's northeast Pacific coast, called Sanriku, has suffered from quakes and tsunamis in the past and a 7.2 quake struck on Wednesday. In 1933, a magnitude 8.1 quake in the area killed more than 3,000 people. Last year fishing facilities were damaged after by a tsunami caused by a strong tremor in Chile.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
Meanwhile, officials of fishermen's unions in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures said they began conducting on-the-spot examinations to check the extent of damage inflicted by the Wednesday quake on their members' farming facilities like those for oysters and scallops.
The Thursday morning quake brought the number of quakes felt in Japan since Wednesday to more than 30.

Brazil flood update

Days after floodwaters and surging waves of mud killed more than 440 people, grief was palpable in this lush area now scarred red and brown where waterlogged soil had pushed downhill, knocking away anything in its path.
But the accounts of loss were leavened by one high-drama rescue.
“I thought I was going to die,” said Ilair Pereira de Souza, a 53-year-old woman who had a miraculous escape when neighbors on a nearby balcony threw her a rope.

“Help me, help me,” she pleaded, in scenes replayed throughout the day on Brazilian television.

She grabbed for the rope, and disappeared underneath the muddy waters, before reappearing, clinging to the slim lifeline, but without her dog Beethoven, which she had been clutching in her arms
“If I had tried to save him, I would have died. The poor thing. He stayed for a moment looking me in the eyes, and then he was swept away.” In Teresopolis, one mountain town devastated by the mudslides, the atmosphere was mournful as the extent of the disaster became apparent.

Nearby, a long line had formed of families waiting to collect bodies of kin, while around them workers wearing masks to shield from the stench staffed the reception and accompanied those  toys and pathetic piles of possessions that represented all they had left.
“I need to know how she is,” Rodrigues wailed.
Edmar Da Rosa, a 44-year-old laborer whose face was badly lacerated, looked lost and unable to comprehend the deaths of family members.
He said a retaining wall fell on part of his house that he shared with his wife, three children and a grandson.
“My wife died. My grandson ended up dying. And the others are hurt,” he said.
A few meters (feet) away, 59-year-old Joao de Lima clutched a doll with desolation written on his face. “I lost my four daughters and everything I had,” he said softly.

MAJOR EARTHQUAKE,FLOODS IN CHINA HISTORY

China, 1290
Earthquake takes at least 100,000 people.

China, 1556
Earthquake in Shansi, China kills about 830,000

China, 1642
Flooding takes about 300,000 lives.

China, 1556
The second deadliest earthquake was in the Chinese province of Shaanzi on February 2, 1556. It killed 830,000 people.

China, 1876 - 1879
The deadliest drought in recorded history was in China between 1876 and 1879. Rivers were dry, so most crops and livestock died. There was no food production in a 1-million km2 area of 9 provinces. The drought caused the death of an estimated nine million people.
China, 1887
The worst flood in "modern history" happened in China in 1887. The Yellow River overflowed, causing the death of about 900,000 people. (Some reports say it was a million that parished.)
China, 1911
Yangtze River flood - approx: 100,000 deaths.

China, 1920
In the north China there was a drought that caused 20 million victims and took at least 500,00 lives.
China, Gansu - 1920
Gansu, China is hit with an earthquake measuring 8.6 and kills around 200,000 people.
China, 1927
An earthquake 7.9 - hit Nanshan City and took about 200,000 people.

China, 1931
A flood on the Changjiang River took at least 145,000 people (other estimates go over a million, but we have not confirmed that).
China, 1932
Another earthquake, this one northwest Gansu Province, killed about 70,000 people.

China, 1935
Another Yellow River flood "caused 27 counties inundated and 3.4 million victims".  How many actual lives were killed we don't know. If you have facts, let us hear from you
China, 1933
Another Changjiang River flood takes the lives of at least 140,000 people.
China, 1939
A flood takes about 200,000 lives.

China, 1942 - 1943
A drought in the Henan province took the lives of more than a million people.

China, 1958 - 61
As many as 20 million people died in this famine. *

China, Tangshan - 1976
The worst earthquake damage in modern times was in northeast China in 1976. It was July 28 when a massive quake, measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale, shook the industrial mining city of Tangshan. Officially 255,000 people died, and another 164,000 were severely injured. But others (unofficial, but perhaps more accurate?) estimate that about 655,000 perished. Some ninety per cent of the buildings were destroyed. It took at least ten years and massive investment to rebuild the city.