Pictures of the year 2009: disasters – earthquake, flood, fire, tsunami and plane crashes
A satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe shows tsunami waves crashing over American Samoa’s Tafuna International Airport in Pago Pago
Picture: REUTERS
A car is embedded into a wall in the town of Pago Pago after a tsunami hit American Samoa
Picture: AP
A view of Santa Maria Paganica church in the Abruzzo capital L’Aquila, after it was damaged further by aftershocks
Picture: AFP/GETTY
Firemen touch a marble statue of the Madonna after removing it from the top of the church in Paganica, near L’Aquila. Some 40,000 people lost their homes in the earthquake which hit the Abruzzo region
Picture: REUTERS
A man walks past a vehicle partly crushed by a collapsed building in the Sumatran city of Padang after a 7.6-magnitude quake hit Indonesia
Picture: AFP/GETTY
The La Democracia bridge over the Ulua river, built by the French in 1963, which has collapsed after a powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake rocked Honduras
Picture: AFP/GETTYAFP/GETTY
An undersea volcano erupting off the coast of Tonga
Picture: GETTY IMAGES
This image provided by NASA shows the Mayon volcano in the Philippines, captured by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. A small plume of ash and/or steam is blowing west from the summit
Picture: NASA
Clouds are seen hovering over the Manam Volcano, just off the coast of mainland Papua New Guinea, in this photo taken by the Advanced Land Imager onboard NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite
Picture: NASA
The Hotel Chin shuai lies collapsed in floodwater during typhoon Morakot in Chihpen, in southeastern Taiwan’s Taitung county
Picture: AFP/GETTY
Family members use an improvised raft to carry a dead relative during a funeral procession on a flooded street caused by Typhoon Ketsana, in Taytay Rizal, Philippines
Picture: REUTERS
A Six Flags of Georgia roller coaster rises out of the flood waters of the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta
Picture: EPA
A dog stands on a wall of sandbags near a flooded outbuilding as the Red River continues to rise, in Fargo, North Dakota
Picture: AP
Cows and vehicles are stranded on a piece of land surrounded by flood water in Jeram Perdas, Malaysia
Picture: REUTERS
A man on a partially submerged bus waits to be evacuated on a highway in Istanbul. At least 23 people were killed when floods swept the Turkish capital
Picture: REUTERS
Forensics teams search through the burnt out ruins of a house in Marysville, north of Melbourne, Australia
Picture: EPA
A dead kangaroo lies beside a burnt-out section of the Hume Highway near Seymour, some 100 kilometres north of Melbourne on February 9, 2009 as raging Australian wildfires left at least 131 people dead
Picture: afp/getty images
The melted metal from a vehicle that burned during the Station Fire is pictured in the Tujunga area of Los Angeles, California
Picture: REUTERS
A crowd watch as the under-construction Mandarin Oriental Hotel explodes after it caught on fire in Beijing
Picture: REUTERS
People look at a partially-constructed building which caught alight in Foshan, south China’s Guangdong province
Picture: AP
The Lotus Riverside project, an apartment block that collapsed, lies on the ground in Shanghai
Picture: BLOOMBERG
A policeman looks at the site of a collapsed viaduct in Zhuzhou, Hunan province, China. About 200 metres of the viaduct, supported by eight pillars, collapsed, killing four people
Picture: REUTERS
Brazilian Navy divers recover a huge part of the rudder of the Air France A330 aircraft lost in midflight over the Atlantic ocean
Picture: GETTY
Firefighters arrive at the site of a crashed FedEx cargo plane at Narita international airport in Chiba, Japan
Picture: REUTERS
Airline passengers wait to be rescued on the wings of a US Airways Airbus 320 jetliner that safely ditched in the frigid waters of the Hudson River in New York, after a flock of birds knocked out both its engines
Picture: AP
A twin-engine Piper Chieftain sits in the shallows after making an emergency landing shortly after taking off from Darwin Airport. The pilot and five passengers waded 200 metres safely to shore
Picture: AFP/GETTY
An airport worker takes a picture of a cargo container lodged in an aeroplane engine in this photo taken by a passenger at Los Angeles International Airport
Picture: REUTERS
Damaged trucks piled up after an accident which killed nine people and injured 30 others, on a highway in Hefei, China
Picture: GETTY
A motorist had a lucky escape when his van careered off a mountain road. In a scene straight out of The Italian Job, Daniel Lyons was left hanging in mid-air after his vehicle plunged down the rock face in Colorado and dangled on a precipice
Picture: WENN
A car is seen on the roof of a sports club home in Stadtprozelten, Germany. The drunken driver landed his car on the roof after a 30m long ‘flight’. He was taken to hospital with severe injuries
Picture: EPA
Michelle and Kevin McCarthy returned to their home in Santa Rosa, California to find it destroyed when a 90ft, 50-ton, crane toppled over crashing into their house and cutting it virtually in half
Picture: KPA / Zuma / Rex Features
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/pictures-of-the-year/6872613/Pictures-of-the-year-2009-disasters—earthquake-flood-fire-tsunami-and-plane-crashes.html