The following is an excerpt from the new book Disaster Profiteers: How Natural Disasters Make the Rich Richer and the Poor Even Poorer by John C. Mutter (St. Martin’s Press, 2015):

Disaster seen as an opportunity for engineering social change is not a new idea. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 occurred simultaneously with a typhoon, the only occurrence of such a double disaster on record. The earthquake, and more so the subsequent fires, destroyed 45 percent of Tokyo and 90 percent of Yokohama, killing well over 100,000 people. (As always, estimates vary.) The fires no doubt killed more people than the quake itself as the quake occurred around midday, when many people were cooking outdoors on open fires. Descriptions of the conflagration sound like scenes from a fiery hell. Some 38,000 people were incinerated together when they sought refuge in a huge former army clothing warehouse; it was instantly engulfed in the inferno of a massive fire tornado created by the typhoon winds and the roaring fires.

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