Natural disaster experiences

All the news about Hurricane Irene made me think of posting this thread. What kind of storms and natural disasters have you experienced personally?

Nothing much happens in Nova Scotia. There was a 7.2 earthquake off the coast that generated a tsunami back in 1929... but I've never felt one myself. We get a few hurricanes every year, but they're nothing like the ones down south.

The only one I remember that was pretty bad was Hurricane Juan back in 2003. Most of the damage was just to the trees that were ripped up everywhere. We lost power for 8 days and it took us a couple days with a bunch of the neighbours helping to finally get out of our driveway. The storm passed in the middle of the night so we didn't get to watch the epic tree snapping and mini tornadoes on the eye wall. :(

And we have big snowstorms here occasionally, but haven't seen one of those in awhile. :<

Do you have any stories you want to share?

The virginia earthquake was felt in toronto (and where i live, near toronto)

Oh yeah, and once it rain like ass here and i was in a highway. The cars were drving at like 25 KPH and SO MUCH RAIN!

i sware i saw a funnel cloud

Earthquake 1999 5.8

I was in foster care, the epicentre was in washington and it was felt as far as Langley, BC. It was all shakey, and dishes were breaking.

A few years back we had a bad storm (we don't get much bad weather here) and I heard a tornado touched down.

My brother was in high school and didn't have to take exams, and since it was the end of the school year my mom let me skip (in middle school so it didn't matter). So we were driving around and the wind started getting really bad and some trees were touching the ground, so we found a place to park and were ganna wait out the storm in a zaxbys.

So once we get out of my brothers truck we start running for the restaurant, and as we are going I feel something hit me in the back of the legs... I got hit by a fence post. The place next door had a pretty looking white fence... so apparently good looking fences are just for looks and actually don't work. I didn't really get hurt or anything, I was just on the ground for a few seconds, after getting hit with a fence you need a lil while to let it sink in.

Turned out pretty well for getting attacked by a natural disaster

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Originally Posted by Solarflare

Oh yeah, and once it rain like ass here and i was in a highway. The cars were drving at like 25 KPH and SO MUCH RAIN!

i sware i saw a funnel cloud

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When my dad an I went on a roadtrip, on our way back, not far outside Hope, we got that rain, we were going 20 KPH and had our wipers on full speed and it was still very hard to see.

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Originally Posted by mooseantlers

When my dad an I went on a roadtrip, on our way back, not far outside Hope, we got that rain, we were going 20 KPH and had our wipers on full speed and it was still very hard to see.

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yep, want it awesome :3

Probably the worst for me was the '98 ice storm. There was an F3 tornado that hit my city a long time ago as well but I was too young to remember it.

Practically every time I go to the midwest to visit relatives, I get chased by a fucking tornado. Last time I drove there with my sister and her kid. We were on our way out of Kansas and there was a tornado a couple of miles away. We were driving ridiculously fast to get away. I don't understand why anyone would want to live there.

Also, being on the west coast, I've been through countless earthquakes, mostly small. The most recent was actually the same night as all those big ones on the east coast. I was sitting on my bed and it started to shake. I just assumed it was the cats chasing each other under the bed again. Several years ago we had a much bigger quake. I could actually hear it coming; it was really strange. I heard this loud rumbling. Then my normal vision of the living room changed to this completely realistic plain with all these horses running at me. After several seconds my vision returned to normal and the building began to shake for maybe 30 seconds. I was actually relieved that it was an earthquake and that I wasn't going to be stampeded. lol. Never had anything like that happen before or since.

Just a few fires. There were huge fires here last year and the entire sky was filled with smoke, even though I was about 20-30 minutes away from the closest fire area.
So I wasn't really in a natural disaster. But close to it lol

I don't think we have natural disasters here.

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Originally Posted by Spartiate

Probably the worst for me was the '98 ice storm. There was an F3 tornado that hit my city a long time ago as well but I was too young to remember it.

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The pictures from that storm are so awesome.

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Originally Posted by tommo

Just a few fires. There were huge fires here last year and the entire sky was filled with smoke, even though I was about 20-30 minutes away from the closest fire area.
So I wasn't really in a natural disaster. But close to it lol

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We had a forest fire here too a few years ago, on Friday the 13th. It started a few kilometres away from my house and it was ridiculously windy and the woods were still full of fallen trees from Hurricane Juan. Hundreds of people were told to evacuate but most of my neighbours didn't bother because the wind was blowing it away from our area. There were about 6000 acres burned and a couple houses and then I think the wind died down and they got it under control shortly before it reached the ocean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXQL0_qr_oQ

It was sunny once.

I live in Kansas and tornado season gets pretty intense. I've never seen one on the ground, but I've seen funnel clouds and wall clouds that were intense. Also, I was driving to my boyfriend's house one time, out in the boonies and it was storming hardcore. The wind was nearly blowing my car off the road and I swear a small tree flew in front of my car, lol. I have no idea why I decided to go to his house in that weather. The storms get intense here, gotta love it. <3

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Originally Posted by Xei

It was sunny once.

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HO........LY....... SHIT!

d

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Originally Posted by Somniloquist

We had a forest fire here too a few years ago, on Friday the 13th. It started a few kilometres away from my house and it was ridiculously windy and the woods were still full of fallen trees from Hurricane Juan. Hundreds of people were told to evacuate but most of my neighbours didn't bother because the wind was blowing it away from our area. There were about 6000 acres burned and a couple houses and then I think the wind died down and they got it under control shortly before it reached the ocean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXQL0_qr_oQ

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTA3hwyEXnI&feature=related

That is crazy. Amazing footage.

Hehe, I just realised it was 2 and a half years ago, not one. Where the fuck has my life gone!????

I lived in South Louisiana just a little south east of New Orleans. Katrina wasn't terrible (two weeks without power, but no flooding. A tree landed on my room, but I slept through it). Gustave was about a week and half without power, but the flooding in my area was bad. I remember whole roads being just gone. I can't remember the exacts of it, and I don't want to exaggerate, but some places had around 6 feet of water, which sucked.

Earlier this year, I was playing Red Dead Redemption when it started raining, then the rain went sideways, then roofing tiles came down. Then I hear a loud roar. A tornado passed in my front yard, taking out just the fences. it was a pretty costly thing, but it coulda been so much worse.

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Originally Posted by tommo

Hehe, I just realised it was 2 and a half years ago, not one. Where the fuck has my life gone!????

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That's starting to happen to me, my dad and I were talking about past roadtrips and during one we were waiting in the hospital, and we found out it was 2004 instead of 2006 because the LEAFS were in the playoffs. xD

haha yeah it is so fuckin weird hey?
I literally spent 30 minutes searching the web to see if it could have possible been in 2010 lol
And did several reality checks :lol:

I don't really experience very many earthquakes here, but we did get that 7.0 Easter Earthquake... but I was driving and didn't feel it. But months later, I was doing homework when it sounded like a swarm of people was running down my wooden-floor hallway and everything started shaking. It was weird for me because I've never felt an earthquake before :P

Also, I did experience a WildFire in 2003 which took out my house. In the middle of the night, my dad came in and told me to wake up because there was a fire, and he went back to do whatever. I knew my brother liked to cook at random times so I thought maybe he started a small fire in the kitchen. So I don't think to pack anything, and start walking towards the kitchen to see that there was no fire. I go outside and it was really really windy, and the sky to the east was glowing orange/red. We loaded our dogs in the back of the car and took off.

We went down our dirt road and the fire really was starting to close in and it was really big. From there, we got on the highway and there were several firetrucks, ambulances, FBI suburbans heading the opposite direction. We met up with our neighbors at a Circle-K and we all watched the wall of fire climb over the mountains.

That week, we had to stay in a hotel. There was no school because the air was filled with ashes. When school did let back in, I still had to stay another week in the hotel. My parents went to the road which was closed off but there were workers going up to fix telephone poles, so they gave them a ride to the house. When they got there, they said it looked fine because the carport was still up (which is the first thing you see before the house) but then they kept going up, and saw that our house was gone. When I went up there myself, I already knew what to expect. My house sits on a mountain, so looking out west, the sky was covered in red and all the trees were black, it wasn't exactly a great site. Not to mention, there was a bunny by my pool which didn't make it.

I spent the next 5 years in a trailer on the property. It took so long because our insurance company was giving us a hard time. Our insurance was actually due to expire the week after the fire happened. I didn't move back into the house until I started college (which was a little before the time Obama got elected).

I'm just glad we all made it. Wow, I wrote a novel. lol sorry.

Wow, sorry you had to go through all that. :( It sounds pretty traumatic. I'm glad you were all safe.

It's all good. It's all over now.

We cleared out the brush around the house. The fire marshal inspected our home and said that it's good enough to be a safe house for firefighters to rest if there's another fire. I'm just glad to have our house back.

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Originally Posted by louie54

It took so long because our insurance company was giving us a hard time.

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What a joke, you wonder what you even pay insurance for... God help you if you miss an insurance payment, but if you need to cash in? Excuses, excuses.

I've lived in storm-heavy areas, pretty much all my life. We've gone through a few hurricanes, back when I lived in Houston, Texas - as well as a couple of nearby tornadoes (never any direct) hits), here and there. I moved to Georgia in like '92-'93, about a year after their big blizzard, and saw real snow, for the first time. Since then, I've been here in Florida, where hurricanes are so common, we've started to think of them more as temporary house guests, than natural disasters.

I remember one tornado, in particular, which was actually in Georgia, back in maybe '93. It was a few miles away, but we sat out on the balcony of our apartment complex and just watched it. I know I've been through some pretty bad hurricanes, but the worst direct hit that I can think of, recently, was hurricane Charlie, back when we had that quadruple punch in 2004. I can't remember what Charlie came on shore as, but he was still a Cat 1 or Cat 2, by the time he came all the way up the mainland to Deltona. The trees all the way up the I-4 corridor (which includes my neighborhood) are still twisted and have a distinct, uniform lean to them. Our power was out for about 4 days, after Charlie. Then, as soon as we got our lights back on, Frances hit, and we lost power for another week. Losing power in Florida - during the hot, rainy season - sucks. Let me tell you. A normally 1/2 mile drive to the store turned into a drive into a whole 'nother city, just to get ice.

Orlando is the 'lightning capital of the world,' and I've seen some incredible lightning storms, but the worst I've ever seen was back when my daughter was about 7 (I think), and I was driving her back to her mom's. It was bad enough that it was night time, and the rain was making things really hard to see, but the lightning was so frequent that it was literally like a strobe light, going off in the dark. It was blinding, and made it so hard to drive that there was a good mile's worth of cars pulled over to the shoulder of the highway, simply because it was impossible to drive in those conditions.

I don't know if smaller incidents involving nature qualify as 'natural disasters,' or not, but I've also very nearly been struck by lightning, and been in a tornado watch and had a microburst drop down on me while at a gas pump. (Scariest thing ever. Lol.)

Ohio is in a weird position...we get bad ice storms in winter, then when the snow and ice melt we get terrible flooding with the spring rain, then we get bad tornadoes in the spring/summer, and we get fall out rain and black outs from any coastal hurricanes as well. We also get small earthquakes, there's a few fault lines around here, like the New Madrid Fault. No forest fires, volcanoes, or tsunamis though. I love natural disasters. I also love severe weather, bad thunderstorms with lots of lightning and hail, and tornado warnings are my favorite. Such a rush. :cloud:

1993 Storm of the Century - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Great Ohio River Flood at Cincinnati - March 1997
Super Outbreak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LOL awesome!!! :lol:

I know what you mean. I love to get on my mountain bike after a big storm or tornado and scope out the town.
Trees down across the road, no biggie, I can pick up my bike and climb over. Meanwhile cars are stuck there or have to turn around and find another way. And the wet streets and lowering skies are just amazing after a big storm.

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Originally Posted by Spartiate

What a joke, you wonder what you even pay insurance for... God help you if you miss an insurance payment, but if you need to cash in? Excuses, excuses.

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I wasn't the one making the payments, for I was 13. They were going to cancel us because our house was in a high-risk area for fires. I think I said that because I got a little envious when hearing about other people that got there house back within 1 or 2 years.

But you know what, it doesn't matter anymore. It's been 8 years since the incident and I'm over it.

Sounds like those would be interesting places to live. :P