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

Hilsborough, I grew up near Sheffield it was just devastating.

Bloody Sunday,

because it was bloody disgusting!

Piper Alpha

@LunaTheCat were you not in the UK?

The Moorgate tube crash in 1975

9/11 😓

The Manchester bomb in 96. I was 11 and we live in Greater Manchester. My dad’s office was really damaged in it but as it was a Saturday he thankfully wasn’t in it at them time.

I think it’s the Zeebrugge ferry sinking. It mainly stuck in my mind as a girl and her family at primary school had just missed it and so luckily for them they weren’t on it.

I remember watching Hillsborough as well and I wonder now why it took so long for them to cut the broadcast.

Ibrox stadium disaster in 1971 - 66 people killed in a crush. I was very young (7) and the first time I remember the shock of so many people dying in one place for no obvious reason other than sheer number of people. It made me scared of crowded places ever since which I try to avoid even now decades later.

Dunblane and Manchester bombings in 1996 (I was 8).

And then the nail bomber in 1999.

Summerland was the first I really remember - i was old enough to watch the news and grasp what was happening. Also the Ethiopian famine , as a previous poster said.

The Moorgate Tube Crash

The Zeebrugge ferry disaster, followed by Lockerbie.

Also Aberfan.

Hillsborough, I was 9 and at my grandma’s house with my mum and sisters and by the time we’d got home an hour later it was clear the scale of the disaster. I remembered my dad just looking sickened watching the reports when we got back.

Dunblane I was 8
I remember doing drills at school after it

The first thing I remember seeing on the news was Princess Diana dying. I was only about 6 and didnt really understand, but I remember my Granny being really upset by it. The first disaster I remember is 9/11.

And me

7/7 London attacks - born in 97

The disappearance of Genette Tate in 1978. She was 13 years old and delivering newspapers on her bicycle in her village in Devon. The case has never been solved, her father died a few years ago having been unable to discover what happened. No body has ever been found, she remains a missing person.

I also remember The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the IRA and random bomb threats being sent to schools in England. I remember having to spend the day sat at the far end of our school field making daisy chains when I was about 6 or 7, when a threat was received at our tiny village school.

the Bradford City football stadium fire (unless you count the falklands as a disaster)

We are the same age. This was probably my first disaster memory, my sister and dad had actually ridden that ride not that long before (maybe the year before). I was always scared of rollercoasters so didn’t go on but can still remember watching them.

The loss of the Penlee lifeboat in 1981. An appalling tragedy in which an entire RNLI crew, who all came from the tiny village of Mousehole near Penzance, were killed while attempting to rescue the crew of a ship adrift in a horrendous storm. Almost every family in the village lost a husband, father or son.

The sinking of the Estonia for me (though I had to look up the incident just now, I didn't remember the name, just the hundreds of people dying on a ferry). I would have been almost seven.

It sticks in my mind because in RE lesson we were told to write a prayer to God for the victims. I really struggled writing it, and then had the opposite of a Damascene moment when I realised that was because I didn't believe in God. My parents were atheist but didn't force it on us - I'd encountered God in Brownies and school and there was just an assumption that he was real and everyone believed in him. And this made me realise I didn't - so oddly, this disaster is a real core memory for me.

After that, the Dunblane massacre.

Dunblane in 1996 - I was 9 at the time. Like a PP I remember gates and fences going up shortly afterwards.

I also remember being in a golf lesson when my instructor said about 9/11. At the time I didn't think much of it until I got home and it was all over the news.

I grew up near Lockerbie - my brother was due to be born on that day (arrived a few days later). If mum had gone into labour there would have been no medical staff to help because everyone had been called in to help with the clean up.