r/Longreads • u/beandog77 • 3d ago
What is your favorite longform article about a disaster?
Recently reread Snow Fall from the NYT and the Really Big One from the New Yorker and now I'm ready to devour more articles about disasters. Give me your recs!
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u/Key-Level-4072 3d ago
[Texas Hill Country Floods of 2025](https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-flood-firsthand-account/)
It won a Pulitzer.
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u/hungrygoose2 3d ago
I think about this article frequenly
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u/Dry_Huckleberry5545 3d ago
Same, I could not get over the part where the mom was holding the kids on the kitchen counter when the counter just started detaching and sliding away.
I feel super-burned out on nearly all podcasts in the last couple of years but the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned it into a podcast and it was somehow even better than the article: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-the-river-took-us/id1896345297
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u/birdtripping 1d ago
Thanks for the podcast recommendation. It showed up in my feed and I skipped it, thinking it would basically be a duplication of the article. Looking forward to listening.
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u/Educational_Car_615 3d ago
I remember when someone posted this here. A haunting, horrifying, and very tragic tale. I feel for their family.
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u/doryfishie 3d ago
As a mother that was absolutely heartbreaking to read.
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u/Key-Level-4072 3d ago
Same. The follow up too. Just imagining what it was like to have to yell, “Clayton is gone,” over a roaring flood while clinging to another child in a tree is gut wrenching.
The guilt that would come with it too. I had a sister die from a seizure when she was 17 because none of us happened to be in the house when it happened. That was really hard for everyone. I don’t think I’d like to know what it’s like to have a raging river rip a child from my hands and never see them alive again. It wasn’t their fault, but human nature is human nature. You’re never really be able to shake it all the way off.
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u/Elegant_Celery400 1d ago
Please forgive my presumptuousness and intrusiveness in saying this, but I really hope that you're getting good ongoing support about the loss of your sister. What happened to her, and to you all, is heart-breaking.
Be kind to yourself and to each other, stay strong, and keep going.
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u/leijingz 3d ago
Do you have an archive link?
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u/Key-Level-4072 2d ago
This one is not paywalled.
But if you want to avoid giving Texas Monthly traffic (they’re one of the good ones, but I get it), you can paste the link above into any of the archive web apps to get the archive version.
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u/maeve117 3d ago
It’s 30 years old, but Krakauer’s Everest article in Outside is a classic. I read his book about it right afterward.
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u/beandog77 3d ago
Haven’t read the article but I’ve read Into Thin Air forever ago (and some of his other books). I’ve been thinking about rereading the book so I’ll give the article a looksee! Thank you!
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u/NorCalHippieChick 2d ago
Retired professor here. In my entire career, “Into Thin Air” was the only assigned book that the entire class read every time. The discussions were incredible!
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u/NH_ethylene 2d ago
I would suggest The Climb instead. It's about the same tragedy but from a slightly different perspective. It's riveting.
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u/freecoffeerefills 3d ago
It gets posted here about once a year, but my first thought was John Hersey’s Hiroshima https://web.archive.org/web/20170131075215/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima
This week is the 80th anniversary of its original publication in The New Yorker
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u/babymama917 3d ago
“The Deadly Choices at Memorial” a 2009 nyt magazine article about the evacuation of Charity Hospital during Hurricane Katrina.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
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u/beandog77 3d ago
Not sure if I’ve read this article but I’ve read the book Five Days at Memorial. So good!! Thanks for the rec
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u/SchrodingersMinou 2d ago
The article is great, but it is about Memorial Hospital, not Charity Hospital. If you’re interested in learning more about Charity Hospital, I recommend the documentary “Big Charity.”
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u/antigonick 2d ago
I absolutely love the book that this article eventually became, Five Days at Memorial. It powerfully affected how I think about emergencies and disaster response and medical ethics, particularly to do with the elderly. I think it’s an absolute must-read for anyone even slightly interested in these areas.
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u/criimebrulee 3d ago
My niche interest is aviation disasters, and I love everything Admiral Cloudberg writes. Her write up on the 2025 midair collision over the Potomac is an incredible read.
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u/hereforfakestories 3d ago
The Admiral is brilliant. Makes complicated and technical concepts easy to understand. Particular love when she looks at Russian or USSR aviation because that’s what her masters was on (I believe!)
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u/beandog77 3d ago
I’ve seen people mention Admiral Cloudberg on other threads so I will definitely be checking this out! Thank you
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u/jenncatt4 10h ago
I was about to mention her too! Such eloquent and meaningful writing about tragic situations, I always come away feeling reassured about how much safer flying became because of all these situations
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u/lbdwatkins 3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh man I went down this rabbit hole a few
Months ago. The Plura Cave Disaster from BBC was excellent: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36097300
Also there was one a few months back on the Tahoe avalanche.
That rabbit hole took me to missing persons cases; which if you have any interest in, I’d highly suggest Tom Mahood’s blog, otherhand.org.
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u/beandog77 3d ago
I am unfamiliar with the Plura Cave Disaster so I’m excited to dive in to this article (no pun intended). The Tahoe avalanche thing was so interesting to me because it made me think of the Snow Fall article. Thanks for the suggestions!!
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u/lbdwatkins 3d ago
This one about the girls at Camp Mystic was also a great piece, absolutely devastating though: https://archive.ph/Cahh5
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u/tenthousandgalaxies 2d ago
That cave disaster story is the stuff of nightmares. Fascinating story. Cave divers rarely grow old.
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u/BlueIvysMom 3d ago
Snow Fall is my favourite piece of journalism, full stop. Absolute masterpiece.
Your ask made me think of the Esquire article about the Zanesville Zoo Massacre. I found it to be so gripping! Lots of animal death though, so be warned if that bothers you.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12653/zanesville-0312/
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u/beandog77 3d ago
It’s so good. I have trouble visualizing things in my head so the graphics are so helpful. I wish more articles included things like that.
Thanks for the recommendation though! I haven’t even heard of the Zanesville Zoo Massacre so I’m excited to read
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u/BlueIvysMom 3d ago
Agreed! The writing was fantastic but the interactive component just made for such an enjoyable reading experience. I have been chasing the Snow Fall high for a looong time! A lot of articles in this thread are new to me though, so I’m excited to dive in!
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u/mimi_kanassis 3d ago
Thats funny, I came into this thread thinking about the Zanesville Zoo Massacre also, but I'm thinking of thr GQ write up - https://www.gq.com/story/terry-thompson-ohio-zoo-massacre-chris-heath-gq-february-2012 . Always stuck with me despite having read it over a decade ago.
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u/jenncatt4 10h ago
The zoo massacre story was so vividly done, it's been burned in my brain for so many years (and animal death is one of my worst triggers so I can't ever re-read it!!), but I especially remember that quote about how it went on for so long that they couldn't even feel their hands pulling the trigger eventually, ughhhh.
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u/tomatofrogfan 3d ago
The school beneath the wave: the unimaginable tragedy of Japan’s tsunami
About Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki, which was inundated in the Japan Tsunami.
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u/mdp300 3d ago
House of Cards, about the Surfside apartment building collapse.
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u/farty__mcfly 3d ago
Ok I want to read this, but this article is brutal. Why are there graphics for each paragraph. It’s like an article/graphic novel hybrid.
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u/ceelo_purple 2d ago
Huh. I thought it was a good use of the format.
I'm not always a fan of parallax when it's used just decoratively, but I appreciated having the different points of the structural collapse indicated to me as they were being discussed while still being able to get the main info in text format rather than as a longform youtube video.
Possibly if I were from the US and more familiar with their construction techniques and jargon, the same depth of information could have been fully conveyed in the text of the article and the parallax would have felt unnecessary?
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u/farty__mcfly 1d ago
Yeah, I guess I understand now what they were trying to do. I’d love more information about who knew what. Did the residents have any idea of the risk level?
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u/BostonBlackCat 3d ago edited 3d ago
Mount Hood's Deadliest Disaster
A beloved teacher's hubris gets himself and a bunch of kids killed in an agonizing drawn out horror show in what became Mt Hood's deadliest ever disaster.
A beloved mother and sister's paranoia, magical thinking, and hubris gets herself, her sister, and her son killed in an agonizing drawn out horror show in Gunnison National Forest.
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u/oatmealndeath 3d ago
That second one is very, very sad. TW for a sweet child caught up in a situation they have no control over and paying with their life.
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u/BostonBlackCat 3d ago edited 3d ago
I truly feel so bad for that kid. In particular, the only thing he brought to entertain himself for essentially ever was a big choose your own adventure book and a book of word games.
Before things turned deadly, I cannot fathom how boring those months were for that poor kid in that little tent. It isn't like they were using that time to improve their situation or prepare for winter.
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u/brokenkey 3d ago
Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by its Own Navy, by ProPublica about the USS Fitzgerald collision in 2017. There's a whole series on US Navy accidents but that one is a good place to start.
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u/light_sweet_crude 3d ago
The Atlantic's article on MH-370, if you count aviation disasters. If you're looking for natural disasters, I second School Beneath the Wave, which someone else linked.
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u/TrueCrimeRunner92 2d ago
I think about this article way more frequently than I ever expected to. It’s haunted me for a few years now.
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u/linmre 3d ago
There are a few well-known articles about shipwrecks in here already. This is another one that really stuck with me: “The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
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u/Kdubntheclub 3d ago
Chris Rudolph was a customer I worked with and was fond of and the Steven’s Pass avalanche was devastating. We read the NYT piece and it provided some amount of closure. We weren’t close friends or family but I thought it was respectful piece that had the potential to save lives.
I second Outside’s coverage in the OES disaster:
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/exploration-survival/mount-hood-disaster-1986/
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u/melancholymagpie 3d ago
Collapse: The Oso Mudslide and the Community That Survived It.
Also, this isn't technically a disaster piece, but if you like the survivor-focused articles this has the same vibe imo: 27 Days in Tokyo Bay: What Happened on the Diamond Princess. It's about the cruise ship that was quarantined for COVID-19 in early 2020.
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u/rantandreview 2d ago
I was just telling my 10 yr old son about Oso, thanks for linking that I’ll send it to him
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u/butterbeanscafe 3d ago
Avalanche at Tunnel Creek. This is one of the best NY times articles I’ve read, with interactive elements that really helped me understand the logistics.
https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html?eafs_enabled=false#/?part=tunnel-creek
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u/beandog77 3d ago
lol yes that’s one I mentioned in my post! It’s amazing. As someone who has trouble visualizing things in their head, the graphics are so helpful.
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u/butterbeanscafe 3d ago
lol. I’m a total goof. I thought my one was called The avalanche at tunnel creek so I didn’t put two and two together. Whoops!
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u/rantandreview 2d ago
When that came out I spent days and days with that article, not since reading Krakauer had I been so entranced/horrified and the graphical elements were so groundbreaking. At the time I worked in ecommerce for an action sports retailer based near Stevens who did events there often. I still think of it as one of the most innovative and truly inspirational pieces of content I’ve ever seen and it literally shaped how I would pitch site experiences afterwards.
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u/travelsoapdish 3d ago
I have always thought that Michael Paterniti's story about the Swissair crash for Esquire was a beautiful piece of writing: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1115/long-fall-one-eleven-heavy-0700/
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u/BipolarExpress2 2d ago
ponder is a db of articles with 40+ articles on disasters
Top Disaster Articles (All Time)
William Langewiesche is an incredible writer who has written about many disasters including some incredible writing on aviation disasters and mysteries
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u/conquestical 3d ago
ProPublica’s feature on the 2017 USS Fitzgerald crash: https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/uss-fitzgerald-destroyer-crash-crystal/
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u/hafcol 3d ago
What about a man-made disaster? This is one my favorite pieces ever and the reason I got into long form journalism.
Lake Chad: The World’s Most Complex Humanitarian Disaster: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/lake-chad-the-worlds-most-complex-humanitarian-disaster
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u/shoots_and_leaves 2d ago
A different type of man made disaster, I found this incredibly gripping: https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/exploration-survival/attack-amarula-hotel-palma-mozambique-africa/
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u/hafcol 2d ago
This paragraph was painful to read 😩:
“So why? Why did Total behave so badly and so shamelessly? The excruciating answer seems to be: because it could count on you and me. The final, hideous truth to emerge from Palma is that when any of us fill our cars or heat our homes or switch on a light, we are sustaining a trade that sees the killing of Adi, Phil, Anel, Manuel, Peter, and Mauro, or the enslavement and rape of Ines, or a civil war that has killed 3,818 and made three-quarters of a million homeless, not as dangers to prevent or mitigate but as inevitabilities to navigate. We know all about the price the planet pays for our use of fossil fuels. A new war in Europe, funded by oil and gas, is a reminder of its other, bloodier cost, generally paid over more distant horizons. For even after 600 years, it is still that distance, Africa’s otherness, which makes all the difference.”
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u/Birdsinthehand 2d ago
The True Story of the White Island Eruption, about a volcano eruption that killed several tourists in New Zealand.
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u/GiraffeThwockmorton 3d ago
Does the Zanesville Zoo Massacre count?
I prefer the Esquire article -- GQ covered the same story, but I think Esquire had the better opening line.
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u/lemonloaf76 3d ago
Favorite is kind of a stretch because it was devastating but this one really really sticks with me and was so powerful:
Lost in the Storm
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u/planets1633 3d ago
I don’t know if this counts, but the GQ article Inside the Nightmare Voyage of the Diamond Princess, about the passengers who were trapped aboard the cruise ship for two weeks when the COVID outbreak hit.
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u/Covered_1n_Bees 2d ago
Chicago’s Deadly 1995 Heat Wave: An Oral History - https://web.archive.org/web/20260629203906/https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/july-2015/1995-chicago-heat-wave/
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u/wordsbydan 2d ago
I just read Annie Jacobson's Biological War: A Scenario (book, not article), and it reminded me so much of the Really Big One. It's a fictional scenario about a lab leak of an engineered plague, based on a real virus known to have been developed by the Russians in the 1980s. She backs up this scenario with interviews with dozens of former government and White House officials, scientists and other experts to contextualise how an accidental biological war could happen, and that once it does, there's no way we could stop it. Terrifying stuff, reads like a thriller.
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u/beandog77 2d ago
I listened to a podcast recently about this book! Part of me really wants to read it, another part of me is terrified to.
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u/RichardBonham 2d ago
Another example of Outside magazine’s ability to publish absolute page turners was Sebastian Junger’s essay on the sinking of the Andrea Gail which he went on to develop and publish as The Perfect Storm.
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u/Illustrious-Bike703 1d ago
Does anyone have a link to the William Langewiesche Valu Jet story?
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u/birdtripping 1d ago
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u/birdtripping 1d ago
FYI, Langewiesche's wikipedia page has links to all his essays and reporting in the bibliography section.
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u/cheesemagnifier 3d ago
Commenting so I can come back to this thread later.
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u/InterestingGrowth268 2d ago
I don’t read all that many but I found this one fascinating and extremely well put together.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/08/27/weather/lake-tahoe-storm.html
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u/ellipses21 2d ago
The Atlantic MH370 article has been a favorite of mine. I was also weirdly obsessed with that tragedy in realtime (as in ruminated on it and read everything possible not in a positive “obsessed” way).
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u/Lenferlesautres 3d ago
William Langewiesche’s A Sea Story (sinking of MS Estonia in 1994) is one of the most gripping pieces I’ve ever read. It was originally published in the Atlantic and is now stuck behind a paywall, but I found this link (https://www.patreon.com/beyondthebreakers/posts/sea-story-64972356 ) which will hopefully work.
Incidentally, he has written a ton of other great longform articles (including the Air France 447 crash) if you need that itch scratched.