Was it earthquake, tsunami, tornado, storm, flood, or?
I’ve been in earthquakes, tornadoes, a hurricane and a few floods. Also, ice and hail storms, many blizzards, thunderstorms and straight line winds. The tornadoes are always the most frightening.
The bigger of the earthquakes was just enough to move the dishes around in the cupboards so that when I went for a cup, a bunch fell out. The closest tornado hit a few streets over from where I lived and bounced, destroying every other house down one side of a street. The hurricane just blew sand around and covered the car in a sand dune. I lost several cars to floods and had to be rescued once.
I should probably go check out a tsunami some time to fill out my disaster bingo board.
I lived next to Plainfield Illinois when the F5 hit. I watched a funnel try to form next our neighborhood. The big one went right past us but spared our neighborhood. The schools were hit, my babysitter’s house was leveled. Never seen destruction on that scale in person since.
Magnitude 6.7 earthquake. Woke up to it shaking my bed violently in my dorm room. (Boarding school) Thankfully, I didn’t have anything above me that could fall, but some of the other students kept books in the shelves above their beds. Suffice it to say they got an even ruder awakening than I did…
There was a big aftershock a few minutes later – just after I’d gotten the hell out of the building, basically – and smaller aftershocks for days afterwards.
It put a big crack in the floor of my dorm and everyone who lived there had to stay outside all day until the administration declared it safe for us to re-enter.
That was coincidentally the same day as a school festival and I’d spent the evening before working with my classmates converting the art room into a haunted house. I never got to see the mess, but whatever happened in there was so bad the room was unusable for months. Most of the rest of the festival (e.g. outdoor stalls and such) was still able to be run though, so they carried on with the parts they could. It was surreal.
Not me, but my aunt and cousins were on holiday in Sri Lanka in 2004 when the tsunami hit. They managed to get to a higher elevation in time, but lost most of their stuff, including passports, as the place they were staying at was basically washed away.
2004 is Aceh earthquake right? The fact that the earthquake was so strong the tsunami reached another country is mind-blowing to me…
Also just remembered that this year will be 20 years since that tragedy…
What does it do to things like visas, customs, etc. when all your travel documents and similar credentials are just obliterated like that?
I’ll have to ask her. But I’d assume the first step would finding the nearest embassy of your country and ask them for help.
Tornados wreck my town every year. In short, it sucks.
Living near a major river, and having gone to school on an island in that river, flooding always was a topic. Especially when it went with two “once in a century” flood within less than a year.
two “once in a century” flood within less than a year.
that is scary… any person who says climate change isn’t real is a moron, because, i swear, it feels like every year i always something hear about the news about record breaking temperature, record breaking flood, etc.
i remember flooding in early 2020 (right before COVID hit) was the worst since 2007 in the province where i lived
People here are used to floodings. They usually come once or twice a year, but the heights have increased. Amazingly, most of this is not due to climate change, but due to the modernisation of the landscape, so the river is confined in a corset of dams which doe not allow for floodplains, andd similar issues.
But people here have experience how to deal with most of the floods. For example, there is a pub down at the promenade. The room is tiled to the ceiling, electrical outlets are all up there, and they can disconnect the bar from fresh and gray water and electricity, seal everything up, and roll it out and up to safety, while the waiters and waitresses put everything on pallets and move it likewise. In less than thirty minutes they can turn the pub into an empty room. After the flood, they just steam clean everything and move back in.
Earthquake in 2012
I’ve experienced a handful of very near tornados, lots of crazy thunderstorms and blizzards growing up in the Midwest as well as many small earthquakes here in Southern California.
Yes. Humans.
I was 15 during the 1998 ice storm.
It’s obviously not as dangerous as a tornado or an earthquake or a flood, but it’s still a natural disaster, and disrupted society in the region for weeks and months.
At first it was difficult to realize the size of the catastrophe but then millions went without power, the infrastructure crumbled under the ice and roads became impracticable. The magnitude of the disaster became apparent when the army had to come and help.
Luckily I lived in a rural area at the time and we relied on a wood furnace for heat and hot water. We also shared a generator with other family members so I had power a few hours a day. Compared to people without heat water, food or electricity, it went ok for my family.
It took about 10 days for my region to have power back, while others had to wait for up to 30 days.
This left its mark on me and now I try to be prepared, have batteries charged, solar panels, water reserves, food for a few days, a camping stove, ways to keep warm, etc., just in case.
Multiple tropical cyclones every year. They don’t really do anything harmful, so we’re all chill about them.
I experienced the edges of hurricanes every summer as a kid. You just deal with it.
Flooding, power outages, etc.
Hurricane in Florida in the 80s, but I was far enough inland to not be in danger. The eye of the storm is really spooky. Complete and utter silence.
Also the 1991 snowstorm in Duluth MN. Started snowing on Halloween and didn’t stop for three days. We had four feet of snow in the yard.
That was a lot of fun, the town was paralyzed for a couple of days until the plows started to get things in order.
I was in Houston for Hurricane Harvey. We didn’t get flooded, but the whole city was paralyzed for two weeks. And that was just to get basic transportation functioning again. I was teaching undergraduate students at the time, and my class was just cancelled for two weeks in the fall term. We just missed two semesters of the fall term with no makeup.
My home didn’t get flooded, but many of my students and colleagues did experience flooding. We did however have a leak open up in the back wall of our townhome. We had a leak that allowed water in the back wall, which resulted in water damage in two rooms. I filed a claim with insurance, but they lowballed us, and after the hurricane, contractors only wanted to work on big projects, whole house gutting and repair. So I actually did the repairs myself. I figured I could either use the insurance payment to cover 1/3 of the repair cost, or I could use the insurance payment to buy the tools I needed to do it myself. I first built an access scaffolding behind the unit to fix the leak. Afterwards on the inside I tore out a bunch of drywall and repaired the interior damage.
Oh well, it put me down the path I’m on now. I eventually got really into woodworking, starting with the tools I had bought to do that repair. And further down the road, that put me on the path to pursuing a PhD in wood science. So what a tangled web we weave, I suppose…
