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What natural disasters/events have you guys been through?

Duck Rodgers

Duck Rodgers

Well-Known Member
Just curious with all the earthquakes, flooding, and whatnot dominating the news cycle in the last week or so. Not anything too interesting to share on my end. Been through a couple of high 5 scale quakes , was pretty close to some big fires, but nothing really directly impactful thankfully.
 
I was at my dads butcher shop on the upper east side of Manhattan during the blackout.. We knew the whole seaboard was down before the rest of the block. so I went to the corner store and bought all the bags of Ice they'd sell..

Covered everything in the icebox with ice and GTFO quick... Took over 5 hours to walk to Prospect Park West, Brooklyn (where we lived)

Seeing the bridges completely filled with humanity was some sort of sight.. People were remarkably calm.. Every bar we passed was filled shoulder to shoulder..

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The highlight was some couple on a Japanese Motorcycle weaving thru the gridlock.. The chick on the back of the bike had a neon colored thong sticking out of her pants, so as they matriculated down the avenue the roar followed. It was almost like a stadium of people doing the wave..


also another non-natural disaster.. I was maybe a block or 2 away from the "2006 NYC plane crash" when it struck.. we had several customers in the building that got hit.. Loudest noise I've ever heard in my life.. I had my headphones in and was doing deliveries.. all of a sudden I hear this loud boom, and people running around hysterically.. Distinctly remember a middle-aged woman pushing a baby carriage at full-speed..
 
Thankfully, nothing too serious. My family was camping in Yellowstone in the 80s and our campsite was evacuated during the really bad wildfires and I had night mares about fire for years and I'm still freaked out about it.
I was in Orlando when hurricane Francis (?) hit in 2004.

At home: wildfires. We had a wildfire in 2012 that burned out power lines and we didn't have power for a few days, but we were never really in danger from the fire. Last year we had a wild fire that was really close.

I just remembered that in the spring of 99 I was traveling on a bus with my school and we were driving through eastern Colorado and we saw a tornado. It was one of those things where it was so cool but so scary!
 
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Closest I have was an ice storm in Memphis in 94 that shut down the entire city, and electricity, for 2-4 days. I went to Mud Island, still had power, and did the resort thing for a few days. Hot tubs, nice dinners, pool table...
 
I've been through a few but fortunately I've never been directly impacted:


The NYC Blackout in 1977 - the real one where half the city went completely ape ****.

The first WTC attack in 1993 - I worked about a quarter-mile away from the Twin Towers back then.

9/11

Hurricane Sandy

I was close to a couple of tornados in Texas but fortunately they never hit ground.
 
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I was in the 94 Northridge 6.8 quake. We also had a couple of major fires come awfully close to where we lived. They were talking evacuation but a wind change shifted the direction.

Rodney King riots.

83 flooding in downtown Salt Lake

Not a natural disaster but I did ride over a cliff as a passenger in car. Probably more traumatic than any of the above.
 
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I've slept through a couple very minor earthquakes.

I survived the winter of '93 (I think that was the year) and the flooding of '83
 
Summer of 2002, did a primate ecology course in Bocas del Toro, Panama, a small island just off Panama on the Caribbean side right off the Costa Rica border. Was sitting in class after dinner in the beach restaurant, which was feet from the coast. Got annoyed when someone was pulling on my beach/lawn chair I was in. Turned around and no one was there. Turns out it was an earthquake. Fortunately, the epicenter was on the Pacific side on the Costa Rica/Panama border. I recall the restaurant owner about 15 minutes to a half hour later frantically saying to everyone, "No tsunami! No tsunami!" And we were all relieved considering the peak elevation on that island is 15 feet at best.

Oh hey, a Wikipedia blurb on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Burica_earthquake
 
Been Around

longer, so I'm favored by the prob stats.

Two hurricanes of the 140mph class, went out in the eye to see all the tin roofs blowing in circles around me, then scurried back for safety. The roof on my place was lifted about a foot and left in place afterwards.

One shooting protest, buses burned in the streets, that sort of thing.

six weeks flooding during a series of seven typhoons. didn't see the sun in forty days, and people were riding boats where the elevated roads were. US Air Force dropped rice from helicopters.

two earthquakes 7.2 and 7.9, plus quite a few in the 5/6 range. One left a crack in the ground about four inches wide and a hundred feet or more deep? I went out to look at it.

Forest Fire two years ago that started out as a "management fire, do not report" that became a huge disaster. Stupid firefighters sat around and drank coffee saying it was too dangerous to do anything.

Floods of 82 and 83 in SLC, and floods after the stupid forest fire about six times with monsoon rains bringing all the ash/clay rock erosion down on my fields. Damn govmint takes no responsibility. People in my neck of the woods say next times there's a fire, they'll get their guns..... to take out the obstructionist guvmint officials, and go fight the fire themselves. We ain't gonna take it anymore.

Pres. Ferdinand Marcos' "Martial Law" declaration in the Philippines. I was daily crossing the river between the Philippine Army and the Huks patrolling their territory with jeeploads of armed "protesters". The "protestors" invited me to supper, the Army gave me written permission to hold meetings. Somehow, I had friends of influence on both sides.

oh, and a couple of fairly large power blackouts but I was OK in my place just sitting it out with food and water and a kerosene lamp/heater. Pretty much have a few days' supplies wherever I am, even in my truck.
 
When I was an arborist I removed trees that had crashed through homes a few times a year. The real fun part is that a lot of the time a fallen tree will stand back up as you remove weight from the top. Sometimes it's slow sometimes it's crazy violent.

(word to the wise hire someone with tools and experience, not a diy project) I also removed quite a few where the husband would come to the door in a neck brace when I showed up for the estimate.
 
Katrina and a handful of other hurricanes. Some close calls with tornadoes.

We didnt stay for Katrina, but we came back a week later. Spent 3 weeks without power fixing the house back up/cleaning debris. Nothing super interesting.
 
Bushfires in 1983 which killed about 70 ppl and in 2009 which killed about 160. Fires came to within 500 m in 2009, were a few miles away in 83
 
My *** has survived the 3-4 ****s I take every day for 40 years.


It's good to be regular.
 
A few really big hurricanes in Taiwan when I was there mid 2000s.

Forest fires, but the only big one I've been around was in Yosemite, the whole valley was filled with smoke.

1993 winter, 10 feet of snow at our house.

2011 summer in jackson hole was crazy because of the flooding. We had more water in the river for longer that year than I had ever seen. Multiple large scale landslides. Our portion of hwy 89 was closed for a month. One landslide completely changed the river, and made the biggest wave I have ever seen in a river. Then it collapsed and was one if the most dangerous things I have ever run in a river.

The salt lake tornado.

A huge windstorm in Davis county a few years ago. It was like a war zone. So many trees had fallen. I spent two weeks cutting trees and moving them to the dump from in laws homes. This was the largest scale disaster I had seen. The entire section of bountiful and centerville was like a bomb went off. Streets and sidewalks were torn up from trees falling, nobody had roofs. I watched a trampoline fly 300 yards through the air and land on a home. Sections of roofs were coming off and taking out trees, trees falling on homes. It was awesome to behold.

And the inversion in salt lake city. That is a disaster.
 
I can't remember what year it was but it was in the early 80's. I was a kid and I woke up for elementary school and just hear treefall after treefall. It was very early October and we had gotten well over a foot of snow overnight. I didn't know why the trees were falling until I left for school (In Utah there's no such thing as a snow day). They hadn't shed their leaves and the snow was sticking to the leaves and weighing the trees down so much they were snapping. It was a surreal winter. On the playground at school we had several little huts built out of the fallen branches on the edge of the playground (on that side of the playground, on the other side of a high fence, was the Jordan River where the Jordan River Parkway is now, but at the time trees grew right up against the fence). At recess there were petty warlords who controlled these little huts. Anyway, it was pretty fun. I like extreme weather. If there's a forecast for something out of the ordinary I definitely cheer for it to be a record breaking or life altering event.
 
Hurricane Mitch in Honduras in 99. At that point in time it was the biggest and deadliest hurricane to hit that part of the Caribbean. We got something like 20" of rain in a 24 hour period. For three our for days straight. I remember after the storm broke, we walked outside and entire villages on the hills around were completely gone in mudslides.
 
Gameface said:
I can't remember what year it was but it was in the early 80's. I was a kid and I woke up for elementary school and just hear treefall after treefall. It was very early October and we had gotten well over a foot of snow overnight. I didn't know why the trees were falling until I left for school (In Utah there's no such thing as a snow day). They hadn't shed their leaves and the snow was sticking to the leaves and weighing the trees down so much they were snapping. It was a surreal winter. On the playground at school we had several little huts built out of the fallen branches on the edge of the playground (on that side of the playground, on the other side of a high fence, was the Jordan River where the Jordan River Parkway is now, but at the time trees grew right up against the fence). At recess there were petty warlords who controlled these little huts. Anyway, it was pretty fun. I like extreme weather. If there's a forecast for something out of the ordinary I definitely cheer for it to be a record breaking or life altering event.
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You are a deconstructionist. You like destruction in the way of a better construction.
 
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