1957 May 22nd. Tornado: the Ruskin-Heights Tornado swept a 71-mile path through an area south of the city; 44 people died, 531 were injured

1959 August 18th. Fire at a Conoco Station on Southwest Boulevard: an oil tank caught fire and subsequently exploded; five firefighters and a worker died

1977 September 12th. Flooding: heavy rainfall in the evening led to a major flooding of the usually modest Bush Creek stream; the Plaza shopping area and nearby residential homes were damaged; property damage exceeded US $ 100 million and 25 people died

1978 January 28th. Fire in the Coates House Hotel; 28 people died

1981 July 17th. Structural Collapse at the Crowne Center Hyatt Hotel: during an evening tea dance around 7pm the second and fourth floor skywalks tore loose from their suspension and collapsed into the crowd in the hotel lobby; 114 people died. Builders had changed the design as dictated by the architects. This caused additional stress on the vertical rods that supported the walkways and the National Bureau of Standards reported in February of 1982: "the walkways…had only minimal capacity to resist their own weight and had virtually no capacity to resist additional loads imposed by people."

1988 November 29th. Explosion: a construction trailer at a highway construction site in the southeastern part of town caught fire; unbeknown to responding fire crews the trailer contained 25,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate that subsequently exploded. The blast killed 6 firefighters.

1989 December 22nd. Extreme Cold: a temperature of -23 degree Fahrenheit (= -30degree Celsius) was measured

1998 October 4th. Flooding: heavy rainfall caused areawide flooding; 11 people died, seven of them while crossing the flooded Prospect bridge over Brush Creek