Looting means emptying
Plundering is a rough way of taking what is valuable from a house or a city. Plundering occurs mainly in war zones or during social unrest (natural disaster, a riot, an attack). It is often a combination of factors that causes looting: the failure of communication facilities, the fact that police (and army) are engaged in other tasks, overall unrest that causes people to opjutten each other. Plundering is actually the stealing (and often also wrecking) of property, in large numbers during a troubled period.