disaster 
[noun]
[de ramp, de ram-pen]
Today I spent 7 hours in my car due to snowfall, and yes, that was a disaster!
Examples:
– “Het vertrek van de topspeler was een ramp voor de voetbalclub.”
(“The departure of the top(-class) player was a disaster for the football/soccer club.”)
– “De uitbraak van cholera in Haïti is een humanitaire ramp.”
(“The outbreak of cholera in Haiti is a humanitarian disaster/crisis.”)
– “Wat een ramp! Er gaan geen treinen meer naar huis!”
(“What a disaster! All trains home have been cancelled!”)
– “Tegenwoordig heb je overal skateparken. Wij hadden vroeger niet eens een ramp. Dat was pas een ramp!”
(“Nowadays there are skateparks everywhere. When I was young we didn’t even have a (skateboard) ramp. Now that was a disaster!” Literally: “Nowadays one has skateparks everywhere. We did not even use to have…” Note that there is also a skateboard trick called “disaster” 😉 )
Related words:
– Natuurramp: natural disaster [noun] [de natuurramp, de natuurrampen].
– Catastrofe: catastrophy [noun] [de catastrofe, de catastrofes].
– Verwoesting: devastation [noun] [de verwoesting, de verwoestingen].
– Rampzalig: disastrous [adjective/adverb].
Example:
– “Ik vind ‘onfortuinlijk’ een understatement; ik zou deze ontwikkeling als ‘rampzalig’ willen betitelen.”
(“I believe that ‘unfortunate’ is an understatement; I would like to describe this development as ‘disastrous’. “Betitelen” is like giving something a ‘label/title’.”)
– Desastreus: disastrous [adjective/adverb]. This is the slighly posher version of ‘rampzalig’.
– Nood: emergency [noun] [de nood, de noden].
The Dutch verb for “to heat” or “to warm” is “verwarmen”. A word you may know is “verwarming”: heating (in your house for example). The adjective ‘heartwarming’ can be created in Dutch by combining the noun “hart” and the adjective “verwarmend”, the latter is created from the verb by adding -d (whereas in English you would add -ing).