Your experiences with natural disasters

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been fortunate enough to have spent most of my life in places where natural disasters are not uncommon. However, I’ve been through a few.

Earthquakes

I spent a few months teaching English in Japan in 1996. The morning after my first night there, my hosts asked if I had felt the earthquake the previous night. I had not. Some time later in my stay, I was laying in bed and I felt a vibration, as if a truck was driving by (my place was nowhere near a rod that had truck traffic). Lasted a few seconds. I never got confirmation that it had been an earthquake. So in Japan, I lived through one earthquake that I didn’t feel, and another event that may or may not have been a quake.

Early in the morning of April 18, 2008, Mrs. H and I were sound asleep in our beds in Springfield, IL, when our bed started shaking. We realized pretty quickly it was an earthquake. In fact, it was a 5.2, epic entered in Mt. Carmel, IL. A rare Midwest earthquake, the extent of the damage was a few bricks dislodged from buildings in Louisville. A few hours later, I felt the aftershock. It felt and sounded like someone had detonated a powerful firework outside of a nearby window. Lasted a few seconds.

Since 2014, when we moved to Missouri, we’ve had a few measurable quakes, but I haven’t felt any of them. Mrs. Homie claims she felt them.

Tornadoes

I lived most of my life in places where tornadoes are a possibility (viz, Illinois and Missouri), including seven years in Joplin (and I think you know where I’m going with this). Tornado sirens were and are about a thrice-weekly occurrence in the spring and summer in these parts, but I was comfortably in my 30s before I ever directly experienced a tornado.

March 12, 2006, I was working at a pizza joint in Springfield. The sky had been angry all afternoon and evening, but minutes after I got back from a delivery, I heard the boss yelling at customers and employees to get into the walk in freezer, which we did. Long story short, two F2s, including one that went over my head and tore up the parking lot of the shopping center where the place was, tore up the city. Fortunately no fatalities or injuries, and the net effects on me consisted of having a longer drive home that night, our cable going out for a few days, and my having to avoid parts of town that were unnavigable due to debris/recovery efforts.

On May 22, 2011 … Joplin. I wasn’t there at the time and hadn’t been in over a decade. Still, we knew people and places that were affected by it. I helped with the cleanup afterwards.

And that is the beginning and the end of my natural disaster experience.

2

Did you mean to write “are uncommon”?

3

When I was 11 or 12 I was at a church field trip to Cedar Point (a really neat rollercoaster park in Sandusky, OH that I practically lived at every summer.) I was already afraid of storms before this happened because my Mom watched the weather channel obsessively and acted like every storm was the end of the world.

So this amusement park is built on a peninsula, which is pretty cool. Surrounded on three sides by Great Lakes.

I’m waiting in line for the Disaster Transport, which is an indoor coaster, and the staff lady comes out and says, “I’m going to need everyone to exit the building.”

Someone asks, “Why?” and her response is, “You’ll see when you get outside.”

Go outside and the first thing I see are two big-ass water spouts on the lake. Now I had no idea those don’t typically fall on land, all I could tell was two fucking tornadoes coming toward me. I ran to the other side of the park, and there was another water spout on the other side!

Everything is pandemonium because there’s really no place safe to go. I went to the bathroom but they were crammed full of people trying to shelter, then I looked up and I swear to God, right over top of us was a big-ass funnel cloud. It looked like it was going to come right down on top of my head.

We ended up in the arcade, which does not feel like the greatest place to shelter, and of course the pastor and his sons were outside taking pictures. There were youth groups praying and kids crying.

… And nothing happened. All told that day there were three water spouts and two over-land funnel clouds and fortunately neither of them touched down.

I still have nightmares about tornadoes.

4

A derecho came through a few years ago. Luckily I lived at the edge of it where the winds weren’t as strong so it just knocked down some tree branches and damaged the screen door. Those in the center had some major damage.

5

Only major disaster I’ve experienced was the 921 earthquake. I was 11 at the time.

Our family evacuated our apartment building for a couple of weeks, living in a lower-height residence for safety. Ate a lot of canned food and crackers. Also went helping some folks who were living in tents near the Nantou epicenter.

6

A Wind Shear that clobbered my area and knocked part of an oak onto the house. No power for 5 days. Roof repairs required. It sounded like a freight train coming so I got everyone down into the basement.

Super Storm Sandy, scary one, knocked out power for 11 days and trees down around my yard. I don’t miss having a large yard, too much work. This was the worst I’ve been through, though it was more the aftermath. The whole area was hammered and getting gas was very difficult for the first 7 days or so.

Hurricane Irene flooded the basement about 8" deep or so. No power for 5 days. At that point that was the longest I was ever without power. I had a large maple come down and just miss my shed. A pine took out my basketball pole, that was a little weird, it took a very unlucky hit. The clean-up of the basement and yard screwed up my back pretty bad.

We had a Dec 26 storm, I think in 2010. It dumped 26" of wet snow on us. Insult to injury, I had a snow blower on order that I was suppose to get on the 14th and it got delayed twice. A large spruce in the front fell on the house and thankfully did minimal damage to the roof, scared the shit out of me when it happened, I was in my office next to the living room where my kids were playing with some of their new Christmas toys. I think I broke a speed record getting there to make sure they were OK.

Those are my big ones. I remember the big Ice Storm I think in 1973, but being a kid, that was just magical to me.

7

Fortunately, I live in an area that is free of most natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, or flooding. The weather here is remarkably benign, though with climate change who knows what the future holds. Tornadoes are possible but very, very rare. I have never even seen one IRL. Large hail is a remote possibility but also extremely rare. I understand it happens quite frequently in some parts of Alberta.

The worst that has happened is a rare windstorm several years ago that caused major damage to a power substation. Power was restored fairly quickly to the business area and the houses on a nearby main street, but most residential areas including mine were out for two days. I was able to entertain myself with my tablet and Kindle, recharging them from a power pack, but otherwise was without power. Fortunately this was during mild but not hot summer weather, so neither heating nor cooling was a concern.

8

I’ve had a couple of close calls with tornadoes. The scariest was an F4 or F5 that picked up a mile west of me, went over the house and set down again about a mile east. It continued into a city and caused tons of damage and killed several people. It truly sounded like a freight train going over the house.

Hail is common here, and once had about $30k damage done to my house (that was probably 15 years ago so quite a bit more in today’s money). All of the windows on one side were taken out, hail shredded the blinds and then did damage to the drywall inside, and a new roof, garage door and gutters were needed.

But the worst has been ice storms. They happen every couple of years and cause power outages. We had a terrible ice storm one October when the trees still had all of their leaves and it caused catastrophic tree damage. Power was out for nearly two weeks, it was absolutely miserable.

9

Your post reminded me that I experienced a really bad ice storm c. 1979 when I was about nine years old. This was in Springfield, IL, and I don’t remember much about it except we had to go to my stepdad’s parents’ house because they had power.

10

Where do you live?? I’m in Michigan and I’ve never seen hail damage like that. Or tornadoes that big.

11

I think even in areas where tornadoes are common, most people haven’t seen one in real life. Even where they are common, they aren’t really common. I mean you hear all the time that one touched down five miles southwest of you or whatever but statistically I think they just aren’t likely to affect any given person.

Doesn’t stop me from being afraid of them, though. Even when it’s not raining, if a cloud looks too dark or weird shaped I get nervous.

12

I’ve lived in California for most of my life so I’ve experienced many earthquakes. Most of them have been small. I’ve been in one significant earthquake: the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.

13

Loma Prieta earthquake, SF Bay area, October 1989. If you were around at the time, you saw photos (always the same ones) of residential buildings in the Marina area, which was landfill, that had subsided into the ground, the fallen upper deck panel of the Bay Bridge and the collapsed upper deck of a freeway in the East Bay. Most of the city was actually undamaged, and except for power being out for 2 or 3 days, I suffered very little inconvenience myself. The building I was living in was built on a rocky hill (Telegraph Hill) and when I got home absolutely nothing had moved or fallen off a shelf.

It’s slightly shocking to me that this was now almost 36 years ago. I guess we may be overdue for another one.

I guess I should mention the Columbus Day storm on the Pacific coast in October 1962. It was an extratropical typhoon, the most serious storm in the area in some time (maybe since 1880). I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time, 13 years old, and both my parents were at work in the afternoon when it really got going. I don’t think they had any real difficulty getting home. We lost power, and the half-dead maple tree in the front parking strip was blown over. Again, not that serious for us.

14

Loma Prieta quake–I was stopped an intersection a couple of blocks from home in San Jose when it hit. The car started shaking…at first I thought there was something wrong with my engine, then I noticed the lamposts were swaying. By the time realized it was a big earthquake the whole thing was over. I continued on my way to my friend’s place where we were supposed to watch the world series and drink beer. The game was called off so we drank beer and watched the news coverage instead.

The Cedar Fire: I was living in Scripps Ranch and had been watching the coverage early in the day when it was almost 15 miles away, but then it exploded and evacuation orders were issued. From our back door the entire horizon was a wall of black smoke. I packed up as many important documents as I could and headed out. Fortunately the fire was stopped about a mile away.

15

We’ve 3 or 4 earthquakes, but very minor. I remember one where my wife didn’t believe me but the next morning’s news confirmed it.

But two events still stand out. July 14 (Bastille Day, which is why I am sure of the date) 1987 brought perhaps 8” of rain, 4 of which fell in one hour. Our basement was flooded in about 2’ of water, the power failed and my wife had to walk from downtown (4 miles or so) because the Metro was out and buses couldn’t through the traffic (there was an underpass totally blocked).

The other event I recall was the ice storm of Jan. 1997. For a week, the weather stayed around -1 C (30 F) and it alternated rain and ice fall. Much of the city was out of power for a week or more. I was able to crash with a former student of mine who was in an area that had power most of the time (although there were intermittent outages and one hour and a half with no water, probably until the pumping station could get its emergency power going) and my wife and I slept on mattress laid on the floor of one of his rooms. We drove over to our house and drained the water and to two other homes we knew about to drain their water. Every morning, I would phone home and the phone rang and rang. Until 7 1/2 days after our power went off, I phoned and the answering machine picked up with its generic message and I knew we had power. I drove home, the temperature in the house was 34 F, the food in the fridge was fine. Chances are the meat in the freezer was also safe, but my cooked an enormous stew from it that we ate off for days. By that night the house was above 50 and it was over 60 by the next morning. The city was pretty much running by then. But people in the rural areas were left without power for weeks, in a few cases a couple months.

Winter snow storms pale by comparison.

16

Yeah, on the very rare occasion that we get earthquakes, those are the kinds of earthquakes we get around here. I remember one about 20 years ago, where I briefly thought there was something wrong with my desk chair as I sat at the computer at home. Turned out, the desk chair was fine, but the whole world was slightly wobbling for a moment! But that’s about as bad as it ever gets. And I only found that out from subsequent news reports.

17

My earthquakes were very minor, only 4 I noticed. 2 in San Diego and 2 here in Jersey.

18

I live on Vancouver Island so my local disasters are usually forest fires or earthquakes. I’m on the east side so no tsunamis for me (or if I ever did have to worry about one, I’d have more pressing problems).

Earthquake activity has been merciful to me over my lifetime. I think I’ve only ever felt an earthquake once and it was more of a feeling of “did a vehicle just crash into something nearby?” than “oh shit, find cover”. However, as we’re sitting on a fault line, we’re overdue for a once-in-a-thousand-years quake that will split this island right in half.

Forest fires are more of a potential problem although we haven’t had too many close calls despite everything around here basically being forest or things made from forest products. There was a forest fire south of town a few weeks ago but it was quickly contained. The big fires near Port Alberni were too far away to be of concern to me but we did get a lot of smoke. Many years ago we had lots of fires all over the place and I was working a Sunday shift at a liquor store at the time. I posted on Facebook “Yellow sky means the end is nigh. Come down to the First Nanaimo Church of the Depreciated Liver and repent sinners! You don’t want to face the apocalypse sober, do you?”

19

Memphis has only had one earthquake in my lifetime, though we have been expecting “the big one” any day now for at least that long. It was a 5.0 in 1976. I missed it because I was driving downtown to see some friends in a play. I was so pissed that I didn’t get to experience it. After the play, the cast and crew threw a party at The Top of the 100, a revolving restaurant on a 30 story building. We were the only people there. We were all young and fearless. Aftershocks, pshaw.

The worst I’ve been through was Hurricane Elvis on July 22, 2003. That was a derecho that left 75% of the city without power, many hundreds of trees down and massive damage to infrastructure. I’d just bought my house several weeks before. I slept through the storm (around 6 a.m.) and was woken by the house getting hot. I remember looking out the window and seeing so much debris it looked like Godzilla had stomped through. I thought “it’s going to suck for whoever has to clean that up oh shit that’s me”. My power was out for a week. It was in the high 90s every day and just fucking miserable all around.

20

I estimate having experienced 8-10 earthquakes. I’ve lived my entire life in California, and that’s what we do. Most of them were of the “Did you feel that? Look, the plant/lamp/beaded curtain is swaying” variety. The biggest was the Loma Prieta. I had just settled down to watch Game 1 when I felt it hit. My wife was just pulling into the garage after coming home from work, so I met her and we watched the pavement and sidewalk undulate like ocean waves rolling up the street. I must have had a concerned look on my face, because she, also a California earthquake veteran, laughed, and said, “What, this isn’t your first quake, is it?” I replied, “It’s my first as a homeowner!” She quit laughing pretty quickly.

That’s it. No fires, no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no tsunamis, no plagues of frogs. And hail around here doesn’t get big enough to be considered a disaster.