I was bunkered with my grandparents, 92-year old great-grandfather, and his “girlfriend” during Hurricane Andrew in August 1992. We were in Pembroke Pines, FL, about fifteen miles north of Homestead, where they eye hit and the most damage occured.
It was cool. I love storms.
We had a ouse fire when I was a kid. We were out of the house for a couple of months.
We lived in Kentucky during the SuperOutbreak of Tornadoes on April 3rd, 1973. None hit our neighborhood, but they came close.
The Creek in our backyard flooded a couple of times. Nothing major, though.
I am now in the Pacific Northwest, and got through the ‘Great’ Seattle earthquake this year. Once again, no major damage.
>>>lawoot exits, furiously knocking on wood<<<
When I was six, our house burned down. We could’ve all died, but luckily my Mum woke up (at like midnight) when she smelt smoke, and there was a door that led outside in her bedroom, so we could all be alerted and led out before we were engulfed.
In the period of about 1978 to 1986 there were at least three floods that swamped the tiny seaside village where I lived. Luckily, our house was on a rise so didn’t get soaked, but many other houses did, some totally destroyed. We were on a little island of safety for a day or two until the waters subsided.
There was also a major flood that totally covered an entire province, back in… 1979 I think. We were on holiday in the area at the time, but managed to just miss it. The waters lapped the wheels of the car, and we were ordered by the Police to turn back the way we came, so we just went home two days early. For the NZers here, that was the Southland Floods.
Earthquakes, well, I’ve felt a few minor tremors, but nothing really what you’d call a natural disaster. NZ does have big earthquakes sometimes, and volcanic activity, but it’s not directly affected me.
At college in Claremont last year, I’m told that we had an earthquake, but I was apparently to absorbed in the SDMB to notice.
Back in Kentucky, I was out of town for the floods of '92, but I did live through the blizzard of '93 (8 days off from school :)) and two severe ice storms, one of which brought down power for 4 days.
I only remember one a few years back. It turned out to be a few inches tall. Which was lucky since I live on land only 3 feet above sea level. We have been extremely lucky actually, when was the last one April fools 1964?
You ever walk around Hilo and see all the clocks stopped at the exact same time? Eerie!
Seattle earthquake, this year.
It was a 7.0 or something but it was 30 miles below ground so it wasn’t as bad as the Northridge that was a 7.1. The house I was in was built in 1916 and shook like bundle of loosely tied sticks. It shattered the image I had of my house being big and sturdy. Very unnerving. My body shook for about five minutes afterward while I tried to continue playing Diablo II on my computer.
Though the scariest natural element experience I had was sliding on black ice. I was flying down the highway at about 65mph when I hit a patch. My car did a complete 360 degree turn and scared me sh*tless.
When I was a wee sprat, a tornado struck Lake of the Woods, Ontario, where my family and I were in a sailboat regatta. Boats were tossed around, one even up onto shore; a boat’s bowsprit crashed through one of our portholes and our dinghy was flipped into a friend’s cockpit. It was quite frightening. I remember my brother crying and my dad up on deck yelling at my mom over the wind.
A few years after that, we were boating in the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, when we got word that Hurricane Bob was coming. After ascertaining that it wasn’t a joke (Hurricane Bob??!) we hoofed it over to Campobello Island, a natural harbour whose walls are so steep that we didn’t even feel the thing as it passed right over us.
Then, of course, there was the ice storm.
Living in the Philippines, natural disasters are pretty much a way of life. The country gets hit by about 20 typhoons a year. Most of these are piddlin’ little storms; Manila usually gets sideswiped by these, so there’s some wind and rain and not much else. An unhappy combination of wind, rain, and tide may flood low-lying parts of the city.
A true howler may come every couple of years. A direct hit of one of these is an experience not to be missed - I’ve probably lived through four or five. The sky grows dark, the rain pelts you like a million tiny stones, and the wind - the wind is a relentless force that pushes and pushes and pushes at you. Then it all stops; bright sunshine and an eerie silence marks the eye is passing through. Then the darkness and the rain and the wind return. The wind is blowing from the opposite direction, so anything that hadn’t been uprooted or blown away the first time is sure to go this time around - windows, posts, signs, powerlines, leaves, branches, trees, entire houses[sup]1[/sup].
There are also the earthquakes. These are rarer and possibly more dangerous, since you can’t predict when they’ll strike. I haven’t been in any large ones, thank goodness. The biggest one I’ve experienced measured probably about 5.5 - 6.0 by the time it got to us; which was scary enough, thank you very much. Not much damage except for a couple of buildings that collapsed in neighboring cites where the contractor took a few shortcuts. 
:mad:
Then there are the volcanos. The most memorable being Mt Pinatubo. This was quite a ways north; we thought we were safe until the ash started falling down. :eek:
[sup]1[/sup]That last is an exaggeration. Most houses and buildings are quite solidly built and can withstand a direct hit. In contrast, I find myself being quite alarmed at the extremely flimsy construction here in the northeastern US.
Couple of typhoons in Okinawa. Saw one tear the door off a car that had its hatchback not completely latched. Pretty amazing stuff.
Was living in Dayton when the huge tornado went through Xenia (sp?) Ohio back in the 70’s. Freaky color of sky. Dad drove us around the next day to see the damage. I remember seeing a house completely gone except for the bathtub and toilet. Freaky.
Small earthquake on Okinawa. It was at night and I woke up, feeling like I was laying on a rubber raft in a pool with waves.
I have been through 5 hurricanes. (Bonnie, Fran, Bertha, Floyd and Dennis).
The worst of these from my perspective were Fran and Floyd. With Fran I lost electricity for 5 days and boy was it hot! Floyd knocked down a tree in my yard and flood some of the street near me. I was unable to drive into town for a couple of days with out doing some major back-road detours.
My SO spent the night Hurricane Hugo hit in a big rig truck outside of a shelter in Charleston SC. (He thought the shelter was too crowded and he would rather risk death then be crowded.)
I saw a tornado once in 1987. I was at the opposite end of town, and a few of just stood and looked at it. Then someone realized that this wasn’t TV and we got indoors.
Last year the telephone company hit a water main at the edge of our yard and flooded the basement. That was entertaining to watch. Our house was it’s own little island for a couple of hours.
Then there was the ice storm of “72”. Shut down the city for about 3 days, people were stranded on the interstate for hours, no electricity, etc…
I was also in the Loma Prieta earthquake. We lost most of our wedding crystal and a bookcase collapsed onto our bed. Fortunately, with much of the rest of the populace, we were watching the World Series. The section of the freeway that collapsed was less than a mile from our place. The most amazing thing was that moments after the quake, our phone rang. It was my parents, and we were able to assure them that we were fine. We couldn’t make another call for the rest of the day because the phone lines were so overloaded.
It was strange how localized it was. I went to my office in Berkeley the next day and nothing had moved an inch. A friend who lived there assured me that she’d hardly felt a thing.
I was working in Ohio at the time of the Oakland hills fire, but my husband could see it from our apartment window. The owners of our building lost their house, though.
Hurricanes Hugo, Fran, and Floyd.
Fran was by far the worst - - in addition to the war-zone atmosphere in our neighborhood (no power, trees and power lines down everywhere, chain-saw serenades, and the National Guard on deployment) Mrs. Ivorybill and I had a two day old infant at the time. We all hung around long enough for the doctor to give his blessing for my wife and children to go to her parents’ house 90 miles north of Raleigh. I went back to work pretty quickly after dropping them off. We had power at work, but it was 8 days before our neighborhood was back on line.
A curious observation: while at my in-laws, I needed to go to Wal Mart to get a number of baby-related items. This store was located about 2.5 hours north of Raleigh and was fully stocked with generators, chain saws, coolers, ice, water, etc. People-wise, the store was basically empty, so I asked the clerks if anybody was coming up from Raleigh to get supplies. “No, they’re not.” Back in Raleigh, the newspaper was reporting that people were waiting in lines all day to get into the grocery stores and building supply stores. Go figure…
I walked home through the brunt of Hurricane Agnes back in '72—was young enough to think it was fun. Whole neighborhoods got washed away, but luckily, we lived on a hilltop.
Been through 40+ years of East blizzards, but they’re usually pretty easy to plan ahead for and hunker down.
Experienced the Northridge quake, figured the hell with that, moved to the east coast and had the dubious pleasure of meeting Fran. I still think the worst was the quake. At least with a hurricane there’re no aftershocks.
Hurricane in Tallahassee, Florida, I think it was 1966. (I was only 4, so don’t remember it well.)
Mt. St. Helens eruption – with high school choir in Mt. Hood Oregon. We had to drive THROUGH the ash back to Yakima, WA. Once we got back, they wouldn’t let us go home, so we slept on wrestling mats in the school gym.
Fire – lived in a duplex in Moses Lake, WA in 1985. The other side burned to the ground, our side was barely touched.
Earthquake – the Idaho one in 1983, and all the Seattle ones from 1986 on.
I’ve been extremely lucky!
I worked as a transcriptionist at UH’s Oral History department, and one of the projects I did was the interviews with the survivors of the 1946 (April 1st) tsunami.
The tsunami hit early in the morning (around 6am, I think), and most people were completely unprepared for such a disaster. What made things worse was the date: April Fools’ Day. People thought the tsunami warnings on the radio and the warnings from friends evacuating their homes were jokes.
One woman had to cling to the top of a palm tree for several hours before she was rescued. One guy talked about being on the searching-for-victims team and finding the bodies of people he knew. A few of the interviewees remembered talking to people who were never seen again. Most of them lost everything they owned.
At the time, I was well inland and on the top floor of a seven-story building, but I don’t think I’ve ever been more thankful that I knew how to swim.
I didn’t get to see the site when I went to Hilo, but I really wish I had. It would have completely unnerved me, I’m sure, but still…
I’ve seen several tornadoes from uncomfortably close range–I particularly recall seeing one ripping tin roofing off a warehouse less than fifty yards away. One of the tin sheets clipped the top 8 feet out of a nearby tree. Another tornado (even closer) completely destroyed a storage shed behind our house, but I slept through that one (I was quite young at the time).
Floods were a more common problem. No one hears about Louisiana flooding much, because we don’t generally get flash floods. We get backwater floods, instead, where the water slowly creeps up until it covers roads and houses. It’s rare for anyone to die in a backwater, but the retreat to higher ground and the siege mentality (“If we can hold out another day, it’ll start going back down…” day after day) causes quite a bit of emotional strain. These floods covered the roads to our house often enough that we kept boats and an amphibious vehicle (a Swamp Fox–anyone remember those?) ready. For weeks at a time, we’d take boats or the Fox out to the highway (which was up on a levee) to catch a ride to school. For that matter, I had to paddle a boat about half a mile to reach my truck to go to my high school graduation.
Oh, for reference, I didn’t live in the swamp–I lived in what passes for hill country in Louisiana. 