What's the worst natural disaster you've ever been through?

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Tiger Edge

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Seeing as today is the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew coming through my town and blowing everything to smithereens, I've wondered what else we've experienced on this board.
Sandstorms? Tornadoes? Earthquakes? Landslides? Avalanches?

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A category five hurricane that struck hardest in a town called Homestead about 15 or so miles away from where I lived then.
My dad drove us around our neighborhood right after the storm and there wasn't a tree left standing. The roof of a strip mall was on the road (it was a metal roof, weird).
We had no power for two weeks, either. Fun.
Nothing too serious happened to myself or my family, but I still remember that night vividly. We had a "hurricane drill" where my parents put my brother and I into the bathroom cabinets under the sink and they sat with their backs to the doors holding them down and keeping us inside. I laughed through it because I was only a kid, but once I got older I realized that the roof could have easily blown off and we would have been forced to stay in that dark space not knowing what was happening to our parents outside.

Your stories, please! :D
 
I've experienced a number of major So CA earthquakes from the late 1960's until recently but thankfully have never suffered the misfortune like the others in our community...

In the early 1970's, my first wife and I traveled to Arkansas during tornado season and experienced several runs for the storm cellar; its the same season that nearby Jonesboro blew away...wanna say 1973 or 1974...
 
I live in Philadelphia, so thankfully we usually only get the tail end of hurricanes, and practically no tornadoes, no earthquakes. The Blizzard of 96 happened on my birthday in 96 and snowed us in for quite a while.

The worst that I can think would happen to my family now is a long power outage, due to my brother's diabetic medication needing to stay refrigerated.
 
May 18, 1980, Yakima, Washington. 8:32 a.m. The Mt. St. Helens volcano, which was about 70 miles away from my family's house, erupted. The sky went pitch black and rained hot ash for 24 hours. When the ash cloud had passed, the sky was yellow for another 2-3 days, because there was so much ash in the atmosphere, and the ground was covered in six inches of gray ash. It was a FEMA disaster and no one was allowed outside without wearing a surgical mask. School was cancelled for a week. I was only 6 but I remember it so vividly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens
 
LyricalDrug said:
May 18, 1980, Yakima, Washington. 8:32 a.m. The Mt. St. Helens volcano, which was about 70 miles away from my family's house, erupted. The sky went pitch black and rained hot ash for 24 hours. When the ash cloud had passed, the sky was yellow for another 2-3 days, because there was so much ash in the atmosphere, and the ground was covered in six inches of gray ash. It was a FEMA disaster and no one was allowed outside without wearing a surgical mask. School was cancelled for a week. I was only 6 but I remember it so vividly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens
I remember people putting ash in jars and selling it...
 
I suppose the Nisqually Earthquake of 2001? 6.8 on the Richter scale. I was driving off the exit ramp 30 miles south of Seattle when it hit. Shook my car around a bit -- kinda freaky. Really spooked the dog. But I wasn't affected by any damage.

Other than that, probably a New England ice storm or blizzard when I was a kid.
 
:hmm:

THere have been several storms with tornadoes and nasty ice storms.

But the main three are Hurrican Isabel, Tropical Storm Gaston which just sat on top of us and rotated and didn't go anywhere for hours, and Tropical Storm Ernesto which flooded my car last year. I stupidly drove on the interstate during that one :uhoh:
 
I can't believe it's been 4 years already. San Diego Firestorm 2003. I haven't researched the numbers but I quickly grabbed these statistics from someones personal blog. All three of these fires were burning at the same time. I lived (and still live) within a mile of where the Cedar Fire was burning.

Cedar Fire: 280,293 acres burned, 2,232 homes lost, 22 businesses lost, 14 deaths, 91 injuries

Paradise Fire: 56,700 acres burned, 179 homes lost, 2 deaths, 20 firefighters injured

Otay Fire: 46,291 acres burned, 1 home lost
 
The 1971 Sylmar (Los Angeles) earthquake hit on my 17th birthday on 2/9/71. That was a bad one.

I know, I know, a lot of people on this board weren't even born yet.
 
phillyfan26 said:
I live in Philadelphia, so thankfully we usually only get the tail end of hurricanes, and practically no tornadoes, no earthquakes. The Blizzard of 96 happened on my birthday in 96 and snowed us in for quite a while.

The worst that I can think would happen to my family now is a long power outage, due to my brother's diabetic medication needing to stay refrigerated.

I live in northern Virginia, so it is pretty much the same for me. Hurricane Isabel made land fall just south of here in 2003 as a category 2 here. Given that don't we don't get a lot of hurricanes, asides from the tail end, the area was totally unprepared. I live on the top floor of a condo building, and I stayed outside for a good while and thought it was pretty neat. But after a while, it just got scary. A tree smashed the roof of the building right next door and a few cars came out on the losing end of tree battles. Plus, the power company couldn't deal with all the outages, so we were without power for two weeks in the middle of a pretty good sized town right outside of DC.

There was a lot of damage, but in the end, the hardest part was the power being out for so long. Hotel rooms were hard to get, and a lot of friends were in the same position (I don't have family in the area), but I probably only spent a week of that at home. I am lucky and I know it. And it may be a horrible thing to say, especially when so many people lose everything when hurricanes hit, but I thought it was an experience of a lifetime.

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There was also a tornado that touched down in the field behind the house where I grew up, in Ohio. It was fairly minor as far as tornadoes go, and my brother and I thought (and still think) it was the coolest thing ever. :shifty:
 
Summer '04 when 4 hurricanes hit Central Florida in a period of about a month. No a/c and electricity for a week is absolutely brutal, I hope you guys never have to go through it. Thankfully our house wasn't damages too badly, just some shingles blown away.
 
I was still living on Florida's west coast during Andrew. That'd have to be it.
 
Shoot, Isabel hit Richmond HARD.


Most of my friends were without power for 1-2 weeks, and the city alone lost 100,000 trees. One house down the street from me had 8 trees leaning on it.

Interesting how much storms weaken once they hit land.
 
Damn, sorry to hear that. Isabel died once it reached West Virginia. It may have still been a tropical storm once it hit Maryland, but I've seen many supercell thunderstorms that were much more damaging.
 
Nothing too terrible, fortunately!! We had tornadoes on our wedding day which delayed our leaving, but they weren't in the city so nothing major was destroyed. I've been in other areas of the country during storms spawning tornadoes that destroyed and killed. I won't even get into the winter weather...

I think the worst to happen to me locally was the Southern Great Lakes Derecho of 1998. That was some insane shit! We knew it was coming and we knew we were doomed. I slept over at my friend's house b/c I knew everything the next day would be canceled. The storm system basically classified as a Category 3 hurricane based on wind speeds, ground speeds, and barometric pressure readings. It produced a storm surge on the Lake. Wind speeds were 130mph (that's straight line, I don't think this storm spawned actual funnels, just straight line winds and down bursts). It was a Federal disaster area or whatever. The same storm system had already killed people and left millions without power.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/casepages/may30-311998page.htm
 
We're lucky because we're on the same power grid as a water treatment plant, so we had to get our power going. Even so, we went almost 3 days with no power.

I got out of a full week of school though, that was nice :yes:
 
LemonMacPhisto said:
Summer '04 when 4 hurricanes hit Central Florida in a period of about a month. No a/c and electricity for a week is absolutely brutal, I hope you guys never have to go through it. Thankfully our house wasn't damages too badly, just some shingles blown away.

Yes, that sucked. And where I live (Tampa) we got off easy. We had no power for a few days, but that was it.

Where were you living then LemonMacPhisto?

The worst part of it was how it was handled at work. We kept getting called in at weird times (middle of the night), the told to go home, then come back (spent one night sleeping on the floor of my office), go home, etc. because the building where I worked was designated a shelter for city employees (basically it was where all the "on call" people like firemen came to eat & sleep, and since I worked in that building I was on call too). It felt like no one knew what the plan was. God forbid if we had actually gotten hit bad.

Like I said, really minor compared to what other people went threw though. We were really lucky.
 
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kellyahern said:


Yes, that sucked. And where I live (Tampa) we got off easy. We had no power for a few days, but that was it.

Where were you living then LemonMacPhisto?

The worst part of it was how it was handled at work. We kept getting called in at weird times (middle of the night), the told to go home, then come back (spent one night sleeping on the floor of my office), go home, etc. because the building where I worked was designated a shelter for city employees (basically it was where all the "on call" people like firemen came to eat & sleep, and since I worked in that building I was on call too). It felt like no one knew what the plan was. God forbid if we had actually gotten hit bad.

Like I said, really minor compared to what other people went threw though. We were really lucky.

Good thing you were okay. :hug:

I was in Lake Mary, parts of it got pretty rough, more towards Sanford though. School was particularly crazy that year; I think I missed about a 3-4 weeks that year.

Most of my dad's side of the family was in Miami during Andrew. Thankfully they were fine, but had tons of property damage.
 
Various tornadoes, we get plenty every year. I'm basically used to it, and don't let it phase me, but every once in a while, one gets pretty scary. The worst one for me personally, occurred while I was sick with a stomach bug or something. I'd fallen asleep in the afternoon, and when I woke up, it was pitch black and thundering, and hail was hitting my window, and I was still feverish, so I was extra disoriented, and I had no idea what was going on.
 
Blizzard of 1978. link here

I live in fucking Ohio -- we're not supposed to get crap like this. :mad:

I lived on a main road at the time and it was closed for days because of the drifting. Less than half a mile away there was a dip in the road. That filled in completely so the road was under approx 20 ft of snow. The electricity was out for several days (I don't remember exactly how long) and because our water came from a well via electric pumps in the house, we had no water in the house either. Luckily we did have a hand pump connected to the well outside, so we were able to get water for drinking and such, for the horses, and for flushing the toilet. And living out in the boonies we always had food, medicine (my mum had a chronic condition and required perscription meds), and candles handy (power outages were not uncommon) and we did have a coal stove for heat. Mostly we just bundled up and waited it out. I remember being very pleased I didn't have school for several days. :)

A lot of people weren't so lucky. Many had to be airlifted or snowmobiled out of their homes, and 51 people died -- many stranded in their cars.
 
I've had the luck of experience earthquakes and tornados. All the earthquakes I can remember were always cool, because I was a kid and nothing in the house got damaged (Northridge earthquake is the biggest one I can remember feeling).

Tornados to me are a helluva lot scarier than earthquakes. I had an F5 tornado pass within 5-10 miles of campus when I was at the university of Oklahoma on the last week of school in 1999. The whole campus was on lockdown, and all we could do is watch the news and see this HUGE mile-wide twisting mass barreling down. For a while it looked like it might hit campus, but then it twisted north. On the drive home after finals you could see this huge scar across the land, and entire neighborhoods were just completely obliterated - down to the foundations:

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and yet a block away the houses were fine. A few of my friends lost their houses. A few of them were lucky to be on the side of the street that was relatively untouched, when right across the street houses were leveled. It was absolutely surreal. Luckily my family was north of all the damage in Oklahoma City.

I also got to clean up the aftermath of an F2 tornado that skimmed alongside the Six Flags park I worked at in the summer freshman year of college. That was fun.
 
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