Like a hurricane or earthquake, tornado etc.... Where I live tornados in the summer time happen often. I have never had one in my town (knock on wood) but have seen the devestation in other parts of Minnesota after the fact. Very frightening it looks like a bomb was dropped. I have seen them from a safe distance, they are amazing to watch but I wouldn't want to be up close!
I have been in a few floods...and quite a few hurricanes...I can count probably about 17 hurricanes up and down the east coast....in fact....this was my first hurricane free summer in about 15 years....(only cos I was inland this summer).
I have also been in a few blizzards as well....and a HORRIBLE Nor'Easter...
We lived through Hurricane Wilma....I watched a 100+ year old tree get uprooted from the ground and topple over....very scary and very sad (damnit I LOVED that tree). Went weeks without power and was so grateful for the $1,500 generator that I chewed hubby out for buying years before. Yes, I ate the crow.....
Nope! *crosses fingers* Never been in one. But I've always been afraid of tornados...they just freak me out.
Junior Death Hag
tornadoes when I lived in Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas, a blizzard in North Dakota and Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma since moving to Florida...
^Hey you live in West Palm! I practically grew up there part of the time because my grandparents lived there. Gotta love the Banana Boat. Is it still there?
my friend was in a tornado in alberta n saw a cow go by her truk
ya i know sounds funny
but she said the look of terror in the cow's eyes n then splat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
right in front of her windshield just before she got outa her truk n hid in a culvert
The Great Tax Audit of 1997.
Hey that sounds like a scene from the movie "Twister" yes tornados can do really weird things, I have seen straw put thru a heavy plank of wood just like a knife goes thru butter. Minnesota also really bad blizzards, it really sucks when the electricity goes out during one brrrr! I wish I had a fireplace. The last few winters have been fairly mild however.Originally Posted by knothere
Renowned Death Hag
I was on St. Croix when Hurricane Allen roared through in the 80's. The power of nature was amazing to watch. I remember looking out the window of the hotel room and seeing palm trees bent over so much from the high winds that they were almost parallel to the ground. The next day, the little bay next to the hotel looked like the boats and docks had gone through the spin cycle of a washing machine. Every single boat that was tied up to the docks and the docks themselves were shattered to pieces.
Then, living in Southern California my whole life, I have been through every single major earthquake that has occured for the last 44 years! I slept through the Sylmar earthquake because I was still very young and at that age I could sleep through anything, but when I did get up, the water in our pool was down about four inches due to the water splashing out when the shaking was going on. That same earthquake caused tons of damage to one of our friend's house. We went over to help them clean up and I remember watching one of the folks literally shoveling out all the china and glasswear that was in the kitchen.
I was already at work and in my 20's when the Whittier quake happened and that was and still is the scariest earthquake I went through. The building was an UNREINFORCED brink building and I was convinced it was going to come down on top of us. I remember I was sitting at my desk when the earthquake hit, doing some paperwork and eating a breakfast burrito. When the shaking started, I grabbed my burrito and dove under the desk! It seemed like it lasted forever, and I remember being huddled under my desk wolfing down my burrito. God forbid that I waste any food! After it was over, the building had lost most of its plaster, both inside and out, all the windows were broken, the ceiling tiles came down and several water and sewer pipes broke. But structurally, the building didn't do that badly.
What was really weird was that my aunt and uncle lived near the epicenter, but only their brick chimney came down and they lost a couple of nick-nacks that fell off shelves. The house next door had major structural damage, but a couple of houses on their street were completely unscathed. It was like that all over... one or two houses pretty much destroyed, a couple that had no damage at all, and then some that had minor damage. I would have thought that every house near the epicenter would have been flattened, but that wasn't the case at all.
All of the other quakes, including the Northridge quake, happened in the very early morning when I was still in bed. In addition, I was in modern, wood-framed houses which are very flexible. It felt like one of those "Thousand Fingers" vibrating beds but on a much larger scale. In one earthquake I remember getting motion sick.
I have also been through a brush fire that turned into a fire storm and came very close to our house. For me, that was without a doubt the scariest of everything I have ever experienced.
Any day above ground is a good day.
I have a friend who lives in Crestline California she said when her oldest son was a toddler, they had a earthquake (they lived closer to San Francisco then) she went to get her baby out of his crib, he was laughing like he was on a rollarcoaster ride lol! Thankfully there wasn't to much damage then. My brother lived in San Francisco when that major earthquake happened he was so scared and very unused to the ground shaking coming from Minnesota. I guess Minnesota has gotton very tiny earthquakes in the past but I have never felt the ground shake.
In Texas, tornados and floods
In Minnesota, blizzards
In CA and WA earthquakes
Guess I live a charmed life!
Renowned Death Hag
I LOVE Minnesota and I have a lot of family who still live back there. What town do you live in?
My Mom, who was born in North Dakota but raised in Minnesota moved to LA in the late 1940's. To her dying day, she thoroughly enjoyed every earthquake. She felt they were better than an "E Ticket" at Disneyland! (Yikes, I'm dating myself, does anyone remember "E Tickets"? Originally you would have to buy a book of tickets that contained a few A, B, C, D, and E tickets. The A tickets were for the crappy rides, but the E tickets were for the good rides like the Matterhorn and the Haunted House).
FYI... There was a HUGE earthquake in Missouri that changed the course of the Mississippi River. Read more about it here:
http://quake.usgs.gov/prepare/factsheets/HiddenHazs/
Any day above ground is a good day.
I lived through Hurricane Katrina.
I was in Hurricane Ffloyd in North Carolina, was a pretty wicked one. Then there was an ice storm the next winter and I went with out heat or electricity for 4 days.
morrissey i love ur quotes hahha
Death Hag Extraordinaire
We were hit by a twister in 1980,2 weeks after moving into our new house.Many near-misses since.My brothers house got slabbed in the may 3rd. 1999 twister.Just part of where you live.The thought of earthquakes scares me more.
Woah. So you sat it out?
Yes indeed.
It was rather scary, to be honest.
Hurricane Alicia in 1983. We were in the Ground Zero
zone went it hit Texas. Does living in Tom DeLay's
district count?
Cheers all,
Doug
I was in the '94 Northridge earthquake. I was 4 years old and it was around 2 in the morning when all of a sudden I get woken up and the power went out, so I couldn't really see a thing and I couldn't walk with all the violent shaking. My grandma was crying hysterically and holding me and looking for safety and we had to evacuate because the house got destroyed and we ended up staying at this old woman's house. It was pretty goddamn scary. Things were falling on us and we got cuts and bruises.
And my mom was on a date that night and ended up sleeping in the car. Pretty romantic, huh?
I didn't sleep for days after that.
May 15th 1968 Charles City Iowa around 4:10 PM. Two F5's leveled my town. Most of the new High School is underground now. The place looked like an atomic blast went off.
I've been thru four tornadoes, one being as a child in the outbreak of '74. We watched a tornado literally go right down our street. Loud as hell. One was a waterspout in Okinawa.
Three hurricanes: two were typhoons when I was in Okinawa. The other was Hugo. I was in Jacksonville NC, we didn't get the brunt, but it was pretty bad.
Last edited by TNpuck; 10-21-2007 at 10:50 AM.
I'm from Miami and was there for Andrew in '92. That was the worst hurricane I've been through, although a few years ago in FL we had three kind of close to eachother and it sucked.
Renowned Death Hag
I went to a Gary Glitter concert when i was younger.
Didn't make it backstage though, thankfully.
I stayed up most of the night watching Andrew go ashore on TV. I couldn't stop watching.
Natural yes, but not big, human disaster YES. PTSD from my 6 months in Rwanda during the Hutu Tutsi thing
Renowned Death Hag
I live a few miles from the New Madrid Fault. Waiting....
I've been thru tornadoes and ice storms here
I've been through several tornadoes in Tennessee...several years ago we had a really bad one and I was working a night shift at the university computer lab at the time...there was SO much wind and debris and hail outside and the lab started getting flooded and ended up being one of the only accessible places on campus and a bunch of people showed up there so we let them in and started sandbagging the place. Cars were floating around in 4 feet of water in the parking lot and it was nuts. (Luckily my car was parked in a less flooded area.) When I was finally able to go home after many hours, I walked out of the building and down the sidewalk, but then went a bit further and felt like I was walking off the sidewalk but ended up soaked up to my armpits in water. I waded through til I got to higher ground, where my car was, then I "drove" my car in the pitch black (I really should have just waited longer) through several feet of water...my poor VW had so much water damage after that. I was hardly on the road most of the time and just plowing through the water...all of the electricity was out in our city and there were no stop lights, not that I could really stop most of the time anyway. It was foolish and I really should have just stuck it out but then the tornadoes got worse again and my roommate and I ended up huddled in my closet with out cats for the rest of the early morning.
We had several before and after that, but that one had the most impact on me!
LOL!!! Glad to hear you survived.
I have been in most of the major S. Cal Earthquakes up to the Northridge quake in 94...missed the Loma Prieta quake by a week but was up north for Coalinga in 1985. Oh and not a natural disaster per say...but what about the "nuclear rain" that fell and circled the earth after the Chernobyl accident in 1986.
Just boring thunderstorms. I missed being in a Calif. earthquake by 10 minutes. I just took off from Ontario Airport and when I got to Mpls Airport, I heard there was an earthquake right after we took off. DAMN!
Never seen a tornado in person, but seen plenty of funnel clouds. I'm FASCINATED by tornadoes!!
Hurricane Isabel hit our beach in 2003 and the first floor of my house was flooded. Hey FEMA sucked then too, but nobody listened when [SIZE=6]I [SIZE=2]bitched.[/SIZE][/SIZE]
Charley & Wilma
Does a crappy marriage count??
Nope. That's much worse than a Natural Disaster! Congratulations for surviving.
I have been through quiet a few hurricanes living only 25 miles from the Florida line, but the worst thing I have been through was the tornado here in Enterprise on March 1st. It killed several students at the high school, and it was heartbreaking. One student was killed while he was trying to hold up a wall, to keep it from injuring other students. I saw the school after the storm and was speechless. Now they have totally cleared off the sight where the school was, but I will never forget the kids that lost their lives that day. My prayers will always be with their fanilies.
Member
We just had an earthquake here at 8:00 pm. Not a big one though. Only 5.6. We're about 6 miles from the epicenter.
All the neighbors were outside right after it happened. Just for a laugh and being the big dork that I am, I walked up to them and said, "Oh ok. So it wasn't just me then."
.
I was swimming (more like struggling) in the ocean at Daytona Beach when Hurricane Charley was about to come to shore.
Just earthquakes and fires out here in CA.
Renowned Death Hag
The big earthquake in California in 1989 - the one the hit the San Francisco Bay Area (and Santa Cruz areas).
I was at work when it hit. Pretty freaky.
Altho living out there, you get used to them - since they have a lot of them all the time - little ones.
Now that I live in Texas - in tornado alley, I guess I'll be dealing with those now...
2 close calls with Tornados. and hellish icestorms.
Thank God that's all we have to deal with...cause I could not DEAL with an earthquake. If the New Madrid fault ever goes,,,,,URGH.
I was in Hurricane Georges in 1998 back in PR. It was bad. Also the President's day blizzard in 03 while I was living in Boston.
I have been through 2 tornadoes which were pretty incredible. I never was able to see a funnel cloud (unfortunately) during the actual storm, I only saw them on the news later. Also, while on a cruise, visiting Jamaica, I was in the middle of a tropical storm that would later become hurricane Wilma. That was a real bummer cuz it hit right when I was supposed to be going ashore. So I didn't really get to expeience Jamaica. I did however get a pretty good look at Margaritaville.
Renowned Death Hag
I can deal with an earthquake - done it for years. Now to have to deal with a tornado wiping my house clean off of it's foundation and taking everything I own with it - well, I couldn't deal with it.
Renowned Death Hag
I was on the Gulf Coast during hurricane Katrina in 2005. The water stopped short of my house by about 300 feet. My neighbors to the immediate south were flooded; my neighbors south of them lost their homes; and some lost their lives. The devastation was incredible. I have stood at the end of the street that I live on and seen piles of rubble 30 feet high, consisting of trees and boards and computers and washing machines, upside down automobiles, and bodys; just as the water left it. I stayed here because the storm that we gaged all stoms by, Hurricane Camille in 1969, came no where close to doing the damage that Katrina did, even though it had winds of 200 mph.
The national media focused on the tragedy in New Orleans, and that was a horrible tragedy; but they largely ignored the most affected areas of the storm because we just quitely started cleaning up and re-building. We did not wait for the Government to "rescue" us, and we certainly did not shoot at the people who were trying to help us. Looking at my neighborhood in the days after the storm was like watching a movie about some nuclear disaster. It just did not look real, it had to be some special effects from some movie. But, it was real. Those homes and businesses were gone; and those people were dead. Today, a little after two years since Katrina, one of our major bridges has been re-opened and the traffic looks a little more like it looked pre-Katrina.
I have images "burned" into my brain that I hope to never see again.
I was in a hurricane twice. Its the howling thats scary!
Renowned Death Hag
living in west texas i've braved 2 tornadoes, when the sirens go off we dont run for cover, we go outside and look up. lol.
Renowned Death Hag
Tropical storm Allison and had to evacuate due to Kristina.
Life?
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