What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been in?
I am a fanatic about natural disasters. I look them up on the Internet all the time. If I could make it happen, I would want to see and witness each kind (as long as I would live through it) just to see what it was like. Anything and everything.
My natural disaster story is this. I was visiting my parents in Alaska in November 2002. My friend Kelly was on the phone, and the ground started to shake. Both of us stopped talking and hung up. It was an earthquake. Later it registered at a 7.9 on the Richter Scale (it was also shallow, which causes it to be more damaging).
But it felt awesome. So scared in one moment, but in awe at the next of what was happening. It started with a slight rumbling, like when a big truck goes by your house. Combine that with a slow back and forth motion, pretend you are on God's porch swing. A big concrete swing, that slowly moves back and forth. But then it is jarring. Sudden stops and starts. Then sudden ups and downs.
That's when dad and I ran out the door and into the car (I know, very wrong thing to do, but fight or flight response isn't necessarily logical). Pine trees were swaying so much... Like a 45 degree angle to the ground.
It felt like forever, but it gradually stopped. I couldn't really tell when, though.
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
Does wildfires count, assuming the decided cause isn't arson?
Although the one I'm thinking about was arson though. (Hayman fire 2 summers ago in CO which burned up nearly half of the state.) There's nothing like waking up choking the entire summer.
Splendora Registered User
Posts: 455
(4/9/04 9:19 pm) Reply
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
I was in a 6.9 earthquake in Mexico City in 1987.
I was asleep when it happened...i remember waking
up and thinking a big truck was driving by. I looked up
at the ceiling...there was a hanging lamp with a 12 inch chain that was hitting the ceiling, first one side, then the other.
So I knew it was no truck...at this point you could hear women screaming outside...I stood up but could not stay on my feet without holding on to the doorway of my bedroom. It lasted a full minute. Luckily the epicentre was pretty far away, so in mexico city there was only one death, plus about 50 buildings were demolished afterwards. Fresh in my memory at the time was that 10,000 people had died in an earthquake there about two years before.
Before that I'd always thought it would be cool to be in
a small earthquake and feel the ground move etc.
After that - no thanks. Hopefully never again.
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
Where I grew up, in WV, we lived right on the Ohio river.
You could actually see it from my back porch.
Im trying to remember the exact year but I think it was in the winter of 96'. There was an unseasonably warm amount of weather just after a Huge dumping of snowfall. Add to that rainfall of a few inches and you have a nice flooding recipe.
Some of you may remember this. Major inland flooding along every state bordering the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
Anyway our house was actually one of the lucky ones. We only got a couple feet of water in the lower level of our home. Some of the other houses, which were actually farther inland from us got it much worse, due to them being on lower ground and water coming up through the sewage system. Lots of people got water in the second story of their houses.
My father and I were actually able to get in a rowboat and paddle around our entire nieghborhood. (I have great pictures of this and will post if I can manage)
Its a strange feeling to be paddling down main street and almost flip because you floated over the top of a mailbox. Its also very eerie before the water goes down, because most people have left or are trapped in their homes and nothing at all seems to be moving, except for the mud-brown water.
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
Blizzard of '78. I was just a kid, but damn the snowbanks were high. I lived in Bangor, Maine at the time. I'll neer forget that winter.
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Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
blizzard of 1996, that sucker closed down even NYC. guess the 03' blackout wasnt natural lol.
Lilum Registered User
Posts: 1401
(4/9/04 10:49 pm) Reply
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
I was on the edge of the floods of '93 that did the most damage of any natural disaster in the US ever.
Registered User
Posts: 601
(4/9/04 10:54 pm) Reply
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
Living in Hawaii, I was through several hurricanes, though I was too little to remember them.
Registered User
Posts: 247
(4/9/04 10:55 pm) Reply
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
Hurricane Andrew.
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Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
Living in Georgia..
The flooding from Hurricane Opal (I think that's which one), a few years ago was really bad for us.
It came on land and then just stalled out over us for about 5 days straight....A small river flows straight through the middle of the town I live in..and it went overflow crazy...There were some spots in my town that had over 3 feet of standing water in the streets.
Another scary natural situation i've been in was driving home one night...the weather was fine most of the trip, then I started hearing about tornado warnings on the radio, and a terrible storm hit really hard and fast.
I just remember looking out the window and every time the lightning flashed, I could see the tornado on the ground..really close I pulled over and laid down in a ditch until it passed...probably one of the scariest moments i've ever been in. When I got back to the car and drove a little ways I saw the path of fallen trees that the tornado had taken...makes me glad as heck I stopped when I did.
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
I live in the mountains of NC, NW corner, only like 30-45 mintues from the TN line. My house sits about 3200 feet elevation.
We got the end of Hugo up here, it tore down a lot of timber because the trees grew resisting one direction of wind. They were fine when the hurricane was coming but when it started to go passed and the winds reversed it did major damage. You can still tell which trees were torn down by Hugo just because of how rotten they are and how they were torn down. Generally they got ripped up by the roots rather than broken off.
Then in 93 we had the blizzard that hit the East Coast, we had 52 inches of snow in 48 hours. My dad spent a week pushing snow and eventually wrote the state a bill and they paid us. At my elementary school some people were trapped on the road outside so they broke in and were stuck there for a day or 2.
Every few years we get a couple feet of snow but generally we just shut down for a day or 2 depending on how quickly it comes on and if they can push it off in time.
From time to time we get some flooding in the valleys but nothing big since the 40's.
Registered User
Posts: 515
(4/10/04 1:41 am) Reply
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
When I lived in Dallas, we had this horrible hail storm one winter. I've never seen anything like it. It was almost exactly what I'd picture astroids falling to the earth to look like, but it was all icy. Really strange to see that in Dallas, and it caused a ton of damage, but I still think it was one of the most amazing things I've seen meteorlogically.
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
Last year, july 22nd.
I live in memphis, and we were hit with a "summer storm". It wasnt a tornado or a hurricane, but did the damage of one. Just imagine the worst thunderstorm you could possibly be in.
My friend and I were sitting at my girlfriends house playing EQ, when we heard what sounded like a tornado. We jumped up, I grabbed my g/f (she was asleep on the bed) carried her into the closet and shut the door because we thought it was a tornado. It lasted about 45 seconds, and when we came out we saw the damage.
There were people without power for 3 weeks, we had a churches roof in our backyard, and the church was a quarter mile away. Trees were down everywhere, houses and cars were crushed from downed limbs and trees. I forgot how many people died, I know a lot died from heat stroke due to no power and any business that had generators sold out of them in hours. Others died from the exhaust from the generators because they had to keep them in doors, or they would get stolen (as sad as that is).
The worst part of it, is that I had to move during all of this. So I was moving furniture from a house with no AC, to an apartment that was upstairs with no AC. All had to be done during the day, because there was no power hehe. I was in a bad mood that week :-P.
I did a search on google, and found some pics that someone had posted from the storm. I know it sounds strange saying that the worst natural disaster ive been in is a thunder storm, but take a look at the pics. Youll see what I mean.
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
Great stories! Keep them coming!
Oh I forgot about the volcanic eruption I was in. Mount Spurr. My grandmother was coming up from Kansas to visit us (I lived there a while too, and tornados are indeed scary). And the volcano erupted and she had to stay in the Seattle airport for a few days until the ashfall settled.
The ash blackened the day at around 4 p.m. and it didn't get light again until the next morning, which was freaky cause at the darkest in the summer up there, it's twilight. The streetlights were on all night, when they normally wouldn't be.
My sister went outside and stood in the ashfall with masks over our faces and standing under an umbrella. It was quite freaky. We collected buckets of the ash the next day from sweeping the driveway. You couldn't just hose it off, or it would collect in the gutter as this concrete-hard substance.
Cars in the city were going through air filters like crazy that summer. And the city used ash for snow traction for a couple years afterward.
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
I lived in the Dallas/Fort Worth area for most of my life so I was used to the annual tornados and occasional hail storms that came with the summer. But in 1995, while attending a Mayfest celebration with about 10,000 other people, a massive storm formed with no warning suddenly pummeling the large gathering with SOFTBALL (no exaggeration) sized hail. All of the businesses were closed and people were running everywhere and huddling under anything they could find. My family was among the stupid group that tried to return to the safety of a car (while having the $#@! beat out of us by hail), only to have all the windows broken as we tried desperately to get away. We eventually found an overpass and sat the hail out without further incident to our family. To add insult to injury though, this little storm was followed by flash flooding that dumped 5 inches of rain in an hour, resulting in flash flooding that drowned several. You still see cars in Dallas with markings from the storm.
Yalum Registered User
Posts: 2228
(4/10/04 8:43 am) Reply
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
Hurricane Andrew. We were far enough north to not get any real damage nearby, just wind and rain, but it was a tense couple of days.
Registered User
Posts: 495
(4/10/04 9:05 am) Reply
Re: What is the biggest natural disaster you have ever been
The day my mother took me home from the hospital there was tornado that ripped through our backyard. I was placed in a shoe box in the closet for protecton, oddly. And no, I don't remember it.
The biggest thing I could remeber was the multiple tornadoes that tore up Fort Worth a few years ago. I didnt actually get to see the tornadoes up close, or anything, but the damage to large buildings was bad. It's amazing what nature can do.
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