--- title: Times and Seasons description: Issues of 1842 to 1843. authors: - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints editors: - Ebenezer Robinson - Don Carlos Smith - Smith, Joseph, Jr. - Taylor, John collections: - periodicals tags: - newspaper - times-and-seasons - nauvoo - nineteenth-century periodical: Times and Seasons volume: 4 number: 15 published: 1843-06-15 publisher: E. Robinson and D. C. Smith; later John Taylor publisher_place: Commerce and Nauvoo, Illinois language: en type: article reference: "“Calamities of the Year,” *Times and Seasons* 4, no. 15 (June 15, 1843): 239." printed_title: CALAMITIES OF THE YEAR. source: url: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-06-15_4_15 transcription: Text from the Centerplace.org transcription (https://www.centerplace.org/history/ts/v4n15.htm), with its page breaks; this Internet Archive scan is the reference copy (its OCR was used only as a witness for OCR repair) identifier: per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-06-15_4_15 start_page: 239 end_page: 239 curator_note: A Mormon newspaper published by the church in Nauvoo; included for historical study. Inclusion does not imply endorsement. rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1843 (Nauvoo, Illinois); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States source: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-06-15_4_15 publication_year: 1843 --- # Calamities of the Year The past year has been distinguished by providential calamities. In some instances, the elements seem to have been commissioned to perform the work of destruction to an awful extent, and unprecedented severity. Three of the greatest calamities that have occurred within a century, happened within a short period of one hundred hours. The terrible fire at Hamburg, which destroyed 2,000 houses, and nearly $20,000,000 of property, in the fairest portion of the city, was followed in less than two days by the earthquake at St. Domingo. In this earthquake the towns of Cape Haytian and Santiago, sixty miles apart, were entirely destroyed, and not less than 7,500 of the inhabitants perished. On the very next day while St. Domingo was yet rocking with shocks of the earthquake, and the ruins of Hamburg were not three days old, a train of cars filled with passengers on the railroad from Paris to Versailles, were thrown from the track, and set on fire by the engine. Before the passengers, who were locked in could be removed, seventy of them perished in the flames. More recently the city of Liverpool has suffered by fire to an extent only surpassed by the fire at Hamburg.-In this country, the cities of Portland, New York, Charleston and Columbia have suffered severely from the same cause. At one period of several weeks during the year, it was estimated that the loss of steamboats on the western waters, averaged one a day. In connexion [connection] with six of the boats, two hundred lives were lost. If to all this we add the loss of life at sea, which has been usually great the past year, we must regard it as a year of calamities.