# Have you lived anywhere during a record-setting event? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 15, 2025, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064 "2025-09-15T17:11:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lancia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lancia/32/17174_2.png) [@Lancia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lancia)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2025, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/41 "2025-09-17T16:32:49Z")
> [@susan](#): > > Holiday Farm Fire We had a similar fire during that time, the [Archie Creek Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Creek_Fire). Smoke was so bad in the Umpqua Valley and Roseburg that we couldn’t see the house across the yard, some 200 feet away. By pure luck we had some MERV 14 furnace filters in the garage so we went to Home Depot and bought some box fans and lots of duct tape and made some Seussian air filters. They worked marginally well but not enough to keep the inside air _clean_ particularly. The following summer we had a couple of days of 113-114F temps. I stayed inside and binge watched Breaking Bad. In November of 1996 western Oregon was inundated with rain and on [Nov. 20 a mudslide occurred on a remote mountainside west of Roseburg](https://www.nrtoday.com/news/local/douglas_county/storm-of-1996-caused-death-and-destruction-in-douglas-county/article_00e7aac2-298d-5275-812e-e30d301e1a19.html). At the time the land was owned by several friends of my father (it was kind of a commune thing) and the slide killed 4 people. The following day we – me, my brother, and my father – loaded a bunch of hand tools and chainsaws into the back of dad’s van and went up to help start the cleanup and clear the road. The slide was so big here wasn’t much progress we could make but we spent a day clearing out downed trees and making some semblance of a path to the upstream houses. Rick and Suzanne (not Susan as the article says) apparently heard the slide coming and told their children to run out of the house, the parents running right behind them. The kids made it out but the slide hit the house before the parents could escape. Rick and Suzanne were literally just a few feet behind their kids, but it was enough that they were swept away by the slide. The kids both survived. The flooding killed several other people, including a mother and her two children when their car was swept into the river. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2025, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/42 "2025-09-17T16:53:15Z")
I, probably along with several other dopers, were in Phoenix June 26, 1990 when we hit an official all-time record high of 122. It was…hot. It was interesting how they grounded airplanes, not because they were sinking into the tarmac, but because the flight performance charts didn’t cover temperatures that high. ---
**Author:** ![FloatyGimpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/floatygimpy/32/7750_2.png) [@FloatyGimpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FloatyGimpy)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2025, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/43 "2025-09-17T16:55:34Z")
I was smack dab in the middle of this: [January 1998 North American ice storm - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm) No power for three weeks and no phone for a month. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2025, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/44 "2025-09-17T17:04:01Z")
> [@Fair\_Rarity](#): > > I don’t remember the Blizzard of ‘78 but 2015 is seared into my memory I was here for that one. After shoveling, snow was about eight feet high on both sides of my driveway. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/45 "2025-09-17T17:09:32Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > On a lighter note, I lived in Quincy, Illinois during the 00s, and one weekend evening, they were going to attempt a world record kazoo chorus in the town square - and they did! Do you recall whose record they broke? My college did a massed-kazoo event (Kazoolapalooza?) back in the '80s, but I don’t know if we set a record. As I recall the songs were _Also Sprach Zarathustra_ and _Louie Louie_. I never could play the damn thing. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2025, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/46 "2025-09-17T19:43:12Z")
In 1959, Alaska was the first non-contiguous territory to become a U.S. state. I was 12 at the time and living in Anchorage. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2025, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/47 "2025-09-17T19:48:20Z")
Terrible. I remember that slide. ---
**Author:** ![Fair\_Rarity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fair_rarity/32/153_2.png) [@Fair\_Rarity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fair_Rarity)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2025, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/48 "2025-09-17T22:00:08Z")
My kid was unable to see over the snowbanks for months… I could see over some of the smaller ones. My preference for driving at that time was on one-way streets because they were the most passable. Two-way streets with cars parked on both sides and snow piled everywhere made for cross-your-fingers driving. You couldn’t pull over if someone came the other way, whereas at least if that happened on a one-way, you could honk and wave your middle finger at the Masshole who was driving the wrong way ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2025, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/49 "2025-09-18T11:06:42Z")
> [@gkster](#): > > Northeast blackout of 2003, not 2023. I remember it clearly because when it happened we were driving with our 2 young kids from Toronto to the NYC area. Radio stations were reporting on it in dire tones and from the highway we could see long lines at gas stations. I was also driving in it toward and past the NYC area. The only bad thing that happened was that the traffic lights were all completely off. No traffic jams for me that I remember. Thankfully, the gas station on the Thruway was on without a line, so I was able to get fuel sufficient to leave the area. ---
**Author:** ![mozchron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mozchron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mozchron)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2025, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/50 "2025-09-18T11:21:11Z")
I lived at the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake in 1994. I had just driven home from out of town a few hours earlier, over the overpass that later collapsed. My apartment building was OK (cupbords came down and the interior was trashed) but the buildings on either side of mine both slid off their foundations. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2025, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064/51 "2025-09-19T00:47:06Z")
Hurricane Sandy, October 2012, was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter. It caused flooding and knocked out power for millions in NYC and suburbs. Crews from all over came to help out; we saw companies from North Carolina and Indiana. We were luckier than some and lost power for just 4 days. We went to stay at a relative’s apartment in Queens, NYC; even though they were in a mandatory evacuation zone near the East River, they never lost power. Friends living 20 minutes from us on the south shore of Long Island had chest- high flooding in their home. Another friend living 5 minutes away had major damage on her home when a transformer was hit by a falling tree and caught fire. Tree damage was strangely random: on some streets loads of trees came down, but on the next block the trees were fine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-lived-anywhere-during-a-record-setting-event/1023064.md?page=2)