Natural Disasters

[East]

First off...I would like to say that if I was Mother Nature I would have kicked all of our asses a long time ago....she is much too kind

Having gotten that out of the way...have you ever experienced a Natural Disaster? Do you fear one more than all the others?

I have this mystical friend who says he had a recurring dream when he was young about me and him walking around after a huge earthquake and there was water all around us...and he tries to see his reflection in the water to see how old he is at the time....

When we met he told me he knew me from his dream and was afraid I would think he was a weirdo...but I didn't.

For some reason I think the water signifies something else...I hope it isn't literal...

I do fear earthquakes though and when I am stuck in traffic under an overpass now I get nervous until I can drive again...the 1989 earthquake was pretty bad...but I know they can get a lot worse....

Anyone else ever been in one or afraid of one in particular?

[Edward]

I experienced earthquake when I was in Japan, but in my opinion nothing is more terrifying than a tsunami. Hope I'll never have to experience ocean coming to me with no where to run.

[Wolfpack]

We are quite lucky in the UK as the only natural disasters we really have are flood and high winds related.
We are very poorly prepared for heavy snow in this country, literally a few inches of snow and EVERYTHING grinds to a halt.

[Virge]

meter deep snow storms, wind storms lasting 3-4 days, hail storms (already had 7 in June) tornados, grass fires in August Sept caused by lightning,

Do those count?

[Jake]

Canada is very lucky on that front, we have some earthquakes but never like those happening down south, we have no typhoon, no cyclones and I can't recall the last time we had a hurricane. We do have quite a lot of twisters, but so far never as close as those happening in Wichita every year. But in winter, we have snow and a lot of it.

The provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada are Tornado's heaven

[Virge]

Funny story to stick in here....
Back in May we had about 10 inches of beautiful wet snow on a Friday afternoon that covered everything like a blanket. My party-beast straight room mate got up Saturday morning with a hangover and didn't even hear the hail storm that came through about 4 am. It left craters all over the snow-scape. He looked out the window and was stunned and said,

"See if you can get Adam Levine on the phone and get a few barrels of that shit he's pushing on television."

[MikeW]

I grew up in the US mid-west where tornados are frequent but I never experienced one. When I was a young adult and not living at home, however, one went through the farm, tore part of the roof off the barn, traveled onward and destroyed my older sister's home (no one was injured, thankfully), and at a different point overturned a school bus killing two children, I believe. More recently a town a mile or so from where I grew up was wiped off the map.

In high school I lived in Florida and went through a couple hurricanes. Nothing overly dramatic, just a lot of gusting wind and rain. We lived near the beach and although we were warned not to do it, I enjoyed getting into the immense surf; it was scary but fun.

Like East, I was in the Bay Area for the 1989 earthquake. That's the biggest one I've felt but even it wasn't "the big one" everyone here is expecting "someday".

Just a few years later, we had the Oakland hills fire storm that destroyed over 3,000 homes and killed 25 people in one afternoon. I wasn't directly in it but watched from a distance and it was truly horrific. A small grass fire that had started the day before but was thought to be out was whipped into an inferno the next day, driven by hot, dry winds from the central valley blowing West (our prevailing winds are to the East, off the Pacific).The blaze spread so quickly people had to abandon their cars, fleeing on foot (about half of those who died perished in their cars). Houses were exploding one after another. Some took refuge in a club swimming pool, having nowhere else to run. It is difficult to imagine a suburban conflagration that is utterly out of control, devastating neighborhood after neighborhood. Had the winds not died down as the sun went down, half the city could have gone up in smoke. Here is some news footage video with remembrances of people who were directly in it. The most interesting begins about 2:30:

[East]

I forgot about the Oakland Hills Fire...truly horrific.

Speaking of fires....the overpass they built to replace the one that collapsed in Oakland...I hate it. For arguments sake...let's just say I am very intuitive and I was a little freaked out when I first drove over the new one so I would avoid it but this one morning on my way to Petaluma in the middle of the night I decided I didn't want to take the long way around through San Francisco and the Golden Gate so I reluctantly started on my journey over the dreaded overpass even though something was telling me not to go...and right before I got onto it where the only options are to either enter it or go left to the Bay bridge these two police cars race ahead of me and did a spin in the middle of the road at the entrance waving me away...

I thought at first they thought I was a criminal or something and wanted to stop me but as I was forced on to the Bay Bridge my boyfriend looked over to the right and saw a fire and a lot of smoke...and we couldn't figure out where it could be coming from as there is nothing there....

So I crossed the Bay bridge...went through SF...and over the Golden Gate on my way to Petaluma...

Turns out...that was the tanker that crashed and melted a part of the freeway,..made a traffic mess for months...I would have been stuck on that damn roadway (or worse) driving right into it.....

I will NEVER go on that stretch of road again.

[TwisttheLeaf]

I have never been in a natural disaster but flooding/tsunami is at the top of the list for me. Interestingly, I live in Seattle, which if hit by a tsunami would probably be decimated. You'd think I'd move but I love it here.

For decades, scientists have been predicting a huge earthquake that will break off a good portion of the Washington coastline.
They have also had concerns with the 'ring of fire' volcanoes, which also feeds into the earthquake concerns.

I figure if that if either of those scenarios happen, I'll be dead before I realize what the hells going on. And that works for me.

[Iceblink]

I was evacuated from a town where I was going to college for a flood once and could not return for a couple weeks. Many people in the area lost everything, but the university itself was not flooded. It was just evacuated because electricity and phone service had been knocked out in the town. I've also been in areas of tornadoes and fires, but Like the flood, for someone reason you don't think of yourself as being a part of the disaster when you're not the one who actually experienced loss.