The Deadliest Building Collapses of All Time

People aren’t perfect. Mistakes happen. Sometimes a mistake can cause an inconvenience and some mistakes have more severe consequences. If an architect, engineer, or builder makes a mistake those consequences can be deadly. Unfortunately, there have been a number of devastating structure collapses throughout history that have claimed a huge number of lives. Some were due to the negligence or incompetence of those who built it and some had other causes such as natural disasters or terrorism. This map and visualization from ForneyVault reveals the 30 deadliest building failures in history. Check it out here:

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The map above cleverly visualizes each building collapse using 3-D bars on a grid world map; the height of each bar represents the death toll. Towering above the rest is the deadliest building collapse in history which took place in 27 C.E. in ancient Rome when a poorly constructed amphitheater collapsed, killing 20,000 people. Next up took place in 1809 when 4,000 people perished after a floating bridge collapsed in Portugal.

The most recent on the list is another sad tale of negligence by those who built the structure. In 2016 in Taiwan, a residential building collapsed after an earthquake, 116 people were killed. At first, it seemed like it was a natural collapse resulting from the earthquake but it became apparent after searching the rubble that cooking oil cans had been used as structural materials and that the concrete had been mixed with other materials, rendering the building unsafe.

We were surprised to see that the infamous Surfside condominum collapse which took place near Miami in 2021 does not make the list with its 98 fatalities as the 30th and final building collapse incident on the list involved 111 deaths.