What is the first major disaster you remember

[Shmoigel]

The first one I clearly remember was the King’s Cross fire in 87 and Lockerbie in 88

Tell me yours

Oh wow, me too... I was only 4, but I remember a few weeks later, the "fireweeds" growing out of the road where cars had been set alight and cracked the tarmac!

I don’t remember Dunblane itself but I do remember my school replacing all the fences around the site and new locked gates going up. I distinctly remember asking my mum why they were putting new fences up when they had painted the old ones just a short time before. She told me it was the rules had changed and it was to keep us safe and me somehow knowing it was to do with a bad man. It was only years later that I understood the significance of it.
I remember Diana’s funeral and watching the hearse traveling up the motorway and everyone lining the road.

I remember 9/11

I was on a night out in London the night of the Kings Cross fire. I was 16. I had no idea about it, was nowhere near there. When I got home my parents were up and waiting for me which was really unusual. Mum had such a go at me - they had no idea where I was, and were so worried that I might have been involved. I'd actually had a great night, and it really stayed with me that while I having fun there were so many people at the same time experiencing such horror. I'll never forget that night.

Two planes crashing in Tenerife in the 70s.

Brixton riots, Zeebruge ferry disaster, big storm and King's Cross.

Same.

1971 - Clarkston Explosion ( disaster ) only relevant probably to those that lived in the Southside of Glasgow / East Renfrewshire.

A gas explosion took out 10 shops and the car park above. 22 people died.

Smaller than the disasters already mentioned, but one that has stayed in my mind. My parents frequently shopped there on a Monday. The explosion was on a Thursday.

I was 18 and at college when the Falklands war started. One of the girls in my class was engaged to a guy who was in the army and she said that her fiance might be sent there. Someone said 'Where are the Falklands?'. Someone replied 'I think they're off the coast of Scotland'. Oh the ignorance of youth 😂 I think they were getting them confused with the Orkney islands.

I also remember the Hungerford massacre. At the time my parents were looking to move to the general Reading area and Hungerford was a possibility. For months after I had nightmares that I was being pursued by a masked man with a gun.

I think it must have been the Battersea park funfair disaster,in 1972. I was 9. It frightened me off going on rollercoasters for life.

Same

Aberfan for me too. I remember coming home from school and finding my mum crying in the kitchen.

JFK assassination,

Probably the Herald of Free Enterprise for me. I was 13.
I can remember newsworthy events before then of course but I think that's the first major disaster. Or maybe the Fastnet Yacht Race that I think was around the same time.

Zeebrugge. Enniskillen Remembrance Day bombings.

The day of the Clapham rail crash I was working in London, just out of university, and I remember a woman arrived late to work, with blood on her skirt. I think she was in shock and just carried on into work. I don't think the blood was hers. And she was sent home. I just looked it up - 35 people died.

Aberfan, as an 8 year old child. Lived in Cardiff at the time and can still see the images of men chain handing down buckets of slack that had been dug out trying to find survivors, on the TV that evening. And months later, driving to my grandmother's house further north, my mother pointing out the cemetery we could see glimpses of from the car.

Dunblane, I was 5 and lived about an hour from there. I remember my mum reading the front page of the newspaper and getting upset.

Diana, I was 8 and watching TV when a news banner came up saying to switch over to the news which my dad saw and changed the channel.

9/11, I was 12 and on the school bus home and remember our bus driver saying there had been a disaster in America and had the news on the radio. I ran home to watch the news myself and thought my dad was going to have to go to war.

I remember a big storm at the end of the 80s because my Dad, who has paralytic fear of heights, decided to go on the roof and of course got stuck there. My mum was so angry with him.

I remember going into school after Dunblane and trying to work out where I would hide if a shooter came in, and then the same again after the Columbine High School Shootings.

I remember Diana dying, and obviously 9/11 because it was on a live feed after I got home, and my dad and I watched one of the towers come down.

There was also a train disaster at Potters Bar which really affected my parents for some reason.

Challenge shuttle

The La Mon bomb in 1978. The newspaper had a picture of a charred corpse that my dad tried to hide from me. I distinctly remember Hillsborough as I was working a split shift at a restaurant and we had sneaked off to the pub in the break when it came on television, so we watched it unfold in total horror. We drank way too much and went back to work pissed. The boss let us off in the circumstances, everyone was just so distressed at what they had watched.

Diana was a shocker too. I was living in London and my husband woke me up to tell me the news. We helped our friends move house on the day of the funeral, the atmosphere was bizarre and the roads strangely quiet. My mum asked me to go to Kensington Palace as an old lady she knew wanted me to lay flowers for her! It really was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had, so many people wailing and crying like they knew her, and so many flowers and makeshift shrines.

I have a vague memory or a pit disaster, we lived in Yorkshire so it might have only been on the local news. I remember stretchers and women (wives and mothers I assume) rushing forward to see who it was that had been pulled out.

I'm not sure it counts as a disaster, it does for the victims and their families I'm sure, Bloody Sunday.

I must have been upset by some news coverage because I can remember my mum sitting me on her knee with the news on and explaining that the priest (we didn't know his name at the time) was a brave man and that the hanky meant he wasn't taking part.

I can only think my mum did that if I'd seen or heard something.

In the 1980s there seemed to be so many, those already mentioned but also the Marchioness, Challenger, Lockerbie, the fire on a BA flight at Manchester airport, Dan Air flying in to a mountain in Tenerife.

My first memory is of watching children in Ethiopia during a famine on an old fuzzy black and white TV.
i was born in 1964 and wasn’t at school .. but I remember crying . It had a huge impact on me .
There have been disasters since and I have lived through several earthquakes and have lost a sister as a result.

Aberfan, I was about 8, the DC were about the same age as me