Here in Jackson, MS, we had a lot of trees get knocked down and almost everyone lost power. It was only a Cat 1 by the time it reached us, but for someone who has never experienced a hurricane it was pretty impressive.
I was reviewing the disasters I have experienced:
Northridge earthquake
Rodney King riots
Hurricane Katrina
Not to impressive, but I can’t say I’ve lived a boring life either.
Well, there was this one date I went on…
If it has happened in Southern California in the last 50 years, then I lived through it. Earthquakes, riots, Grey Davis…
Apartheid - not what you were looking for, but a disaster none the less.
SFO earthquake of 1989 - only 7.2 (if memory serves) but impressive enough to this furriner
Cape Town earthquake of 1970 - although I was still in the womb at the time.
September 11, 2001.
I was a block and a half away when the towers came down.
Zev Steinhardt
Failure of my marriage.
Puberty.
http://climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/top5/numberthree.htm
Not much of a disaster, but the closest I could come up with. I was out trick/treating this night. Think we ultimately got 38 inches of snow that week.
I was trapped by the blizzard of 1993, miles from shelter. If a friend didn’t pick me up I would have been stuck in a small pickup outside in the storm.
The 1977 Johnstown Flood happened all around me, but we lived on relatively high ground so we didn’t get any floodwater. Roads were closed all over, and our town was inaccessible for a day or so.
Hurricanes, blizzards, minor earthquakes, and 9/11
I was 1/4 mile from the epicenter of the Northridge Earthquake, 1994.
I was camping on top of Big Bear mountain during the Big Bear Earthquake, 1992.
I was in nearby Burbank during the L.A. Riots, 1992.
When I was a kid our house burned down, 1964. I was the one who discovered the fire in the kitchen caused by our a/c.
Hurricaine Iniki, when it hit Hawaii. Scared the hell out of me and didn’t even really hit where I was - just lots of high wind and rain.
First two marriages, several tornadoes. Which reminds me - we don’t name tornadoes - I wonder why that is? It doesn’t seem quite fair…
Seattle/Nisqually earthquake in February of 2001. Feeling the ground roll was surreal.
-Hurricane, probably Cat 1. We were about 20 miles inland, it went through very fast, no big deal, except we were stuck in our hotel for two days longer than we wanted.
-Very minor earthquakes.
-Misc. mid-west blizzards.
-Brush fires starting around San Jose, the day we left. They got them under control.
-Maybe 50 miles from The Tsunami. Only learned about it from the news.
-The worst was the tornado that went over our house when I was in 2nd grade. There was a warning, my parents did what they always did in such situations, which was ignore it. Very very loud storm while we are all sitting in the living room, watchin tv. Go to school next day and see that the biggest tree in the playground was ripped out. “What caused that?” “Oh, that was the tornado that went over your house and touched down here.”
Tornados are probably the one childhood phobia I have not been able to shake, even though I live in the tropics now.
Northridge earthquake. The La Cienega overpass on the 10 fell down. I lived on Clarington at Palms, so the La Cienega exit was the next one east after the Robertson exit.
L.A. riots. I don’t think they approached closer than two or three mile of where I lived. Most of the activity was well east.
Bushfires of 2003. I’d lost my job in L.A. and needed to reposition my Jeep to my sister’s place in San Diego. Fires all over SoCal. As I drove home, there were fires burning beside the freeway at Balboa.
I was in Monterey, CA during the San Francisco earthquake of 1989. I was closer to the epicenter than SanFran, but I’m led to believe that Monterey is geologically more stable and thus was not damaged as much as Frisco.
I was at 2 World Financial Center (9th floor, facing the World Trade Center) on September 11, 2001; literally across the street.
I was also present for hurricane Gloria in either 1986 or 1987, but that wasn’t a disaster.
I was very near the center of a hurricane and flood in Greenville, NC in (I think) 1999. I think it was called Floyd, but I am not sure–I really have a crap memory. The county I was in (Pitt) was totally isolated for several days–no way in or out, as all the roads were flooded out. I lived walking distance from work (a hosptial), so I was fine. They were helicoptering in nurses from outlying areas, though, which was cool.
My hometown flooded in 1987. Nothing, of course, like Katrina, but it was on the national news. We were out of school for a couple days. You could boat down main street and the cars left in the lower parking lots were covered.
Also, blizzard of '93 kind of stranded me somewhere, but probably about half of us here could say that.
My folks lost power for 2 weeks in January a few years back because of an ice storm. The woods behind their house were trashed.
The Loma Prieta earthquake of '89.
The Oakland Hills firestorm of '91 was about 30 miles north of me, and we could see & smell the smoke from our home. (The day before I was at a football game in Berkeley, and could see the smoke from the tiny little brushfire, that later that evening everyone thought had been put out…)
Several small (abnd large) blizzards, cutting off power and what not anywhere from one day to a week. A HUGE ice storm that hit the northeast in…'98? I think. A very large flood in 2000 (I think) that wiped out three bridges and many, many houses and chunks of road. My dad was actually on the cover of the Boston Sunday Globe because of that flood.