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User:Kitography

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Kitography (talk | contribs) at 03:43, 3 January 2024 (Added updates made to the 1993 page on south asia floods). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Hi! I'm Kitography, I like to fact-check random facts. Citations are a good thing for the world.

Partially Confirmed: 3,084 died in 1993 South Asian monsoon flood

The Mystery

As of writing this, this appears on the List of deadliest floods without linking to an article; it got there copied from the page on Flood[1]. The entry was added to the page Flood as part of a much larger edit on 22nd of Nov, 2008 by Poetaris[2]. This entry in particular was not cited.

I've asked on Poetaris' talk page where that information came from[3]. In doing so, I found out that the user has been blocked by user YellowMonkey, who seems to have left Wikipedia[4]. This message from YellowMonkey claims that this user was a Wikipedia:Sock farming. I'm therefore not expecting a response.

An early entry in the Flood edit which introduced this fact did have a citation: "http://www.nbc10.com/news/4030540/detail.html+Worst+Natural+Disasters+In+History". Unfortunately that particular link no longer leads to the article, and was not archived by the Wayback Machine[5]. However, a similar link was referenced in an old Reddit post[6]. That page, by NBC10, was archived by the Wayback Machine. That similar article does not list any 1993 incident[7].

At the time this information was added, citations already existing on the page were twelve references, twelve external links, and two options for further reading. Two in particular looked very relevant.

  • Further reading: "O'Connor, Jim E. and John E. Costa. (2004). The World's Largest Floods, Past and Present: Their Causes and Magnitudes [Circular 1254]. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey." looked promising, but the article only has two tables listing floods (on page 3 and 10), neither of which includes any flood that occurred in 1993[8].
  • Reference "Southasianfloods.org" looked relevant. Unfortunately, it currently links to a page titled "South Asian Foods" with a footer stating it was Copyright 2021.[9] Checking a much earlier version of the site, this did used to link to a page with an list of floods[10]. That webpage reads: "The archives are sourced from the 'NASA-supported Dartmouth Flood Observatory' provided at www.dartmouth.edu/artsci/geog/floods/ " - that is already listed as a source.

Following up on the source of southasianfloods.org, I found the list of floods compiled by Dartmouth they referenced still exists, and says 3,083 people died in the event with identification tag "1993-037" (the monsoon flood).[11] That is one person off from the death toll claimed in the list of floods, which implies this isn't "the" reference used (or perhaps a typo?), but it looks like a reputable source.

Correcting the Record

To update this reference, I looked at the live website hosting the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, which is active, but does not seem to have the detailed notes (or any notes) about floods from before the year 2000, and seems to be looking a very restricted number of deaths (just India, and just a week of the flood period has 232 deaths, I guess) on line 778 of it's hard-to-read text-table. [12] Failing to find a source with the full information available from the archived link, I've updated the reference to be to that link, and the number of deaths to match.[13]

In doing this, I found an article which seems to reference the same flood, titled 1993 India floods. From the citation I found from the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, it lists that of the 3083 deaths, 1050 were from India, less than the 1800 from Nepal.[11] That makes the tile India floods seem inappropriate, so I've asked on the talk page to rename it (or whether I should make a bigger page)[14].

This claim was referenced by 1993#Date unknown but the dates are very much known, so I've moved it to the official start according to the reference for death count used, and deleted that section, but added other sources that could support the "over four thousand" claim originally listed.[15]

  1. ^ "List of deadliest floods". 2009-01-10.
  2. ^ "Flood: Difference between revisions".
  3. ^ "User talk:Poetaris".
  4. ^ "Search for Admin Action Log".
  5. ^ "Search on for NBC10 URL on Wayback Machine". 2024-01-02.
  6. ^ "r/reddit.com: Worst Natural Disasters In History". 2007-09-11.
  7. ^ "Worst Natural Disasters In History". Archived from the original on 2007-01-28.
  8. ^ "The World's Largest Floods, Past and Present: Their Causes and Magnitudes" (PDF).
  9. ^ "South Asian Foods". Archived from the original on 2023-11-20.
  10. ^ "Floods in the HKH countries: Archives". Archived from the original on 2003-08-11.
  11. ^ a b "1993 Global Register of Extreme Flood Events". Archived from the original on 2003-10-18.
  12. ^ "Global Active Archive of Large Flood Events".
  13. ^ "List of deadliest floods: Difference between revisions".
  14. ^ "Talk:1993 India floods". 2024-01-02.
  15. ^ "1993: Difference between revisions".
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