Forces of Nature
 

Have you been chased by a tornado? Lived through something like Hurrican Andrew? Had everything you owned taken away by a huge flood? Forced to evacuate because a huge fire was headed your way?

Have you lived through a force of nature? What was it like? How did it make you feel? Do you have any advice for others who may some day find themselves in a similar situation?


When I was in my early 20s, I was driving north on I-95 (the interstate highway that goes from Florida to Maine). I was in Virginia and it was a horrible rain storm. I was just taking my time, listening to the radio. Not many other cars were on the road.

All of a sudden, the EBS (Emergency Broadcast System) came on with it's familiar tones. I thought it was a test until the announcer came on and said, "This is NOT a test. I repeat NOT a test." He proceeded to say that a tornado was spotted traveling in a north to north-east manner near some town. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the town, but I can remember looking at the road sign on the highway for the next exit... it was THAT town.

I looked in my rearview mirror... TORNADO. I could hear it when I turned down the radio... I tried to remember what the "experts" said you should do if you didn't have access to any type of shelter. I saw an overpass ahead. I knew I couldn't outrun the tornado, and it looked like it was coming my way. I parked under the overpass, and ran my ass up as far as I could go inside of it. It's not so easy to run up that concrete when you're panicking.

Yes, it was a good idea. I don't want to know what would have happened if I didn't remember that advice.

I wish there were checks instead of options,
because I've been through a few.

Tornado - born in OKC, sucked up the house next door (nuff said)
Hurricane - almost got my ankles cut off by a hovering sheet metal.
Earthquake - several in San Diego
Forest Fire - again the big Rancho Fire in SD
Flood - yup, that too, in a couple different places.

I haven't done Avalanche, Tidal wave or Volcano yet,
but give me time, it's still early in life.;)

I said tornado as its all I've lived through. Over here we have a nice long Tornado Season. They LOVE to hit the town above us, I remember countless nights going to the basement and lighting a candle as tornadoes were spotted nearby. One of them finally did hit my town, and it was actually 3 or 4 of them... ugh. I Saw one of them actually.. Had it been closer I would have been scared a lot worse, but it was about 2 miles away(yeah not that far. heh) I stepped outside as I usually do, just cause I like the forces of nature, and then i thought to myself.... Train? I shouldn't hear a train...... ................. CRAP! as i asked my parents if i heard a tornado, went back outside and saw LOTS of debree in the distance getting torn up. If i remember correctly, it wasn't even a mile away from Dragon2fire, and he was being commanded to mow the lawn.. haha.

I may laugh, but they suck and have, again, wasted countless nights in a dark basement.

I'd rather burn up from magma or get sucked up by a tornado than be buried in snow and die slowly! :(

I've never been through any of these. We've had a couple of Tornado warnings, but I've never seen one.


Hey Jadzia, I remember seeing a show on TLC talking about how to survive a tornado, and they were saying that running up the side of an overpass is a VERY BAD thing to do, you can sucked right out. From what I understood its better to park under the overpass and stay in your car, OR, find a ditch and crawl into a pipe thingy.

I've been through all but avalanche, volcano, earthquake, and tidal wave. Thank God for that.

I've lived through few tornados when I was younger. One tore up all of downtown. One crashed a tree right on top of my bedroom. Thankfully no one was home when the tree fell but it wasn't fun cleaning up. Although, we did have fire wood for long time afterwards..

Heh, the only earthquake that ive ever experienced, i slept through ^^, but i could imagine that a really bad earthquake would be the worst.

Anyway, living in Australia, fire is almost an annual event for us. Last year i was holidaying in the Culbarra beach area, and was completely stranded there because the authorities had sealed off the only road leading there. A bushfire had breached both sides of the road, and was raging out the control. the air at Culbarra was so thick with smoke, that you could look up and see the Sun during the day, without hurting your eyes at all. At night, the moon was a deep deep red, almost like the color of blood.

Thankfully, a southerly change a few days on meant that the firefighters were able to contain the fire and re-open the road. The carnage that the fire had caused was incredible though. The whole area near the road where the fire had been the worst, looked like something from a wasteland of some sort. Trees were burnt to black crisps, without a single leaf in sight. Animal life was gone from the area, like it had never been. The stench, from charred flesh and bark was almost gut-wrenching.

But its all a cycle of life. All of the native plants here have seeds that have very hard exteriors, which can only be cracked by extreme heat (i.e. heat from fires...). Within a few years, if you showed someone that very same site, it would be impossible for them to say a fire had occured there.

Anyway, my advice?

always holiday somewhere that has at least two ways in and out!

I was in hurricane David in Ft. Lauderdale in 1979. Not too big of deal as it had pretty much already spent itself on the Carribean. It was only a category 2 when it got to us. Got to experience boarding up the windows, the reversal of the wind as the eye passed, and the flooded streets with fish and aligators in them. More of an adventure really.

But the thing that scared the bejesus out of me was what has come to be known as the Xenia Ohio Tornado. At the time, I was living in Mason, a little town just NE of Cincinatti. On the afternoon of April 3, 1974 a storm of literally biblical proportions roared into the Ohio river valley. A record 148 separate tornados, including a record number of F4 and F5 tornados, ripped a path from Cincinatti, NE toward Columbus. Xenia faired the worst and was almost completely destroyed. But before the tornados converged there, they took their toll on Mason.

At 4 in the afternoon, I was standing outside my school with my mother and about 2 dozen other kids and their mothers. We were waiting to be let in to sign up for Little League. It was somewhat dark, a little stormy looking. Felt like it was going to rain. One of the women pointed up in the sky and said, "Look at all those birds." Circling high above us was what indeed looked like a huge 'Hitchcockian' flock of birds. It was, in fact, shingles from an already flattened neighborhood on the southern side of town.

At that moment, the tornado literally sat down on our heads. Everyone screamed and ran for the doors of the school. The door I ran to was locked. As I ran back towards the front door, a huge tree cracked in half in front of me and went sailing down the street. A piece of gutter about 15 feet long ripped from the roof and landed a few feet away. The blowing dust and sand stung my face and eyes making it hard to see. I made it to the door, which was being held open by the one father in attendance. Except for him, I was the last in, and as he entered behind me, the door was blown shut and broke his arm.

We hunkered down in the basement of the school, and it wasn't long before the tornado passed and we emerged to what looked like a war zone. I remember my mother driving slowly home, and me having to get out every couple hundred feet to move some piece of wreckage out of the road. When we got home, we got to hear my father's story.

My dad worked in Cincinatti and was on his way home early, I think because he knew the storm was coming and that my 9-year-old sister was home alone watching my 4-year-old brother. He raced up I-71, trying to beat a different tornado that had formed and was also heading toward Mason. He exited the highway, came over a rise that looked right down on our development, and watched as the tornado hit. It took part of the roof off our neighbor's house across the street, leaped over our house, pulled the awning off the house behind us, and continued its carnage up through town. He drove the last couple of blocks home, rushed inside, and found that my bright little sister had hidden in the basement with my brother and the dog and was safe.

In the weeks and months after the storm, we would often see some of the most bizarre sights. I saw a cow carcass stuck up in a tree. I remember an entire red barn roof also perched on top of huge tree. We were lucky. My family came through the storm just fine, with very minor damage to our property. Wish I could say the same for everyone else. Over 300 people died that day. I will never forget it.

all of 'em are scary

Avalanche. I would definetly NOT want to be trapped under a few dozen feet of snow.

I've been through a dozen different tornados and they're not pleasant. I think it's because they're so random and hard to predict. Hurricanes you see coming; Volcanoes are usually pretty obvious as well, but tornados just come and go in a blink of an eye and destroy so much.

I was also in a pretty good sized earthquake, but since it was so far away it only shook things for a few seconds. Pretty scary, but nothing harmed.

(edited after I re-read the question) :crazy:

We had a pretty big tornado around here about 4 years ago. I was living in a shoddy little apartment complex and my roommate and I had to go out in it to check on some friends. It wasn't that bad when we left, but it got real dark real quick. I drove around several sharp turns and found big fricken' trees crossing the road.

Once we got to our pal's house we sat outside and watched the lightning on his front porch (the power was out and we had our little weather radio) Then we saw the biggest, darkest, blackest wall of clouds I think I've ever seen. It looked like it was coming right at us, but it was actually taking a more parallel route.

Once all the shit was over we started to drive through my pal's neighborhood; strange thing is we found out a smaller tornado had come through the neighborhood while we were out screwing around on the porch! It knocked out a couple of houses and totally demolished the housing complex behind my pal's house. We assumed the tornado the radio was warning us about was the one we could see!

Now everytime we have a "severe thunderstorm" I hightail it to the basement and find me a corner to hole up in. :)

i havent experienced anything but a hurricane and it wasnt that big, but experiencing any of them has got to b scary

I'm thinking perhaps many of the Australians here will tick bushfire (aka forest fire). As a Sydneysider we have a blood red sun and little ash particles floating for miles through the air in December every few years.

The foliage always bounces back quickly though because, as Loki said, its designed for fire.

i haven't been through any major disatsers myself, but because fire has always been bored into our heads (we have extremely dry forests in arizona), it's at the top of my list.

coming from Sydney, bushfires are a very real threat every summer.
therefore, i'd have to say that of all disasters on that list, fires scare me the most.

edit... i just read loki's story.
mate, similar thing happened to me last summer. bunch of friends and i were trapped when the only road out of the beach we were camping on was cut off. we just put everything in the 4WD and got ready to drive it down onto the sand, because the fires were pushing up from the south very quickly. worst thing was, that the smoke in the air started to trigger my asthma. thank god for the change in wind. definitely agree with the two roads idea.

I said Tornados...Mainly because there have been several in my area and I have seen first hand the destruction they cause.

It is a very scarey thing.

i say Tornado or Volcanic eruption because of their violent nature (more violent than most of the flooding i've seen)... but moslty because they are so unpredictable and one simply cannot "prepare" in any way to protect one's self or family.

I've only done Hurricane and flood... both are reasonably predictable... I would think volcano and Tornado would be the most frightening to me... due to their intensity and unpredictability...

Living in California, I've been through a few earthquakes. They are freakishly scary. Nothing like waking up at 2 a.m. with the feeling that a humongous hand just picked up ur house and is shaking it violently without regard for human life. :D :(

whoopsie. i polled but forgot to come back and leave a comment.

I chose earthquake cuz I've never been in one and I'm in a wheelchair. i'm pretty much doomed to tip on my side.

tornadoes are the worse for most people. we get them monthly, sometimes weekly, and it is unnerving.
last summer we had a tornado directly above our home.... physics..... changes.
gravity? it felt like everything was trying to lift... float i guess.

it creeped me the fuck out. loud, too. thankfully it didn't lower, it was literaly on top of us. I've also watched two tornadoes up close...

hurricaines are a pain in the ass and they produce mass tornadoes. but they are bearable. and yeah, jad, i remember Andrew very well.

i live in mississippi. can't say an avalanche is a worry for a few hundred years :) never flooded (we live well away from lakes and flood zones) and never had aa tidal wave or volcano.

at least a tornado could pose a neat way to die. it would be fun if we could accept our fate....

Re: Forces of Nature
 

Just a reminder of the question, guys...

Some of you have lived through some pretty freaky stuff. I don't know about huge earthquakes (we only get small ones here when we do). I've never been near an avalanche. The closest fires were still tens of miles away (even though I could see and smell the smoke).

Never had close contact with something like that but close enough that it struck such awe in me. Had been driving down the road on my way home. A large storm was looming. Where we live it is hilly and many many large fields. I was just coming off the top of one of the larger hills on my way home and looking across to the next hill where it was topped by a field I saw the dirt (It was spring so nothing was growing yet in the field) begin to swirl. UP above in the clouds there was a large swirl. I slowed the car as I reached the valley and couldn't do anything but watch in awe as the swirls extended slowly and grew until they met in the middle. Then the funnel strung along the ridge above to the east (I was in the south and my road passed the field to the west). The ridge angled down and as the funnel slipped down the ridge it ran into trees. There it began to break up somewhat. It wasn't apparently a very strong tornado as far as they go but it was amazing enough to see the sticks that it was trowing and realizing they were actually whole trees. To see it form was amazing in and of itself.

when i saw the title to this thread, i thought it was about the bad ben affleck movie. i think sitting through that is worse than any of the options listed above.

I have a large field passed my back yard. and it goes on for maybe a mile and there is a old coal mines haul road. We had two fires that started at the road and slowly moved toward our house. That was kind of scary but with 2 days work from the fire department it didn't get half way.

But probally the scariest to me is tornados. There have been alot within just a few miles of me. I've looked out my window and saw one travelling up the pre mentioned haul road once, that was pretty scary.

I lived in the Caribbean when I was a kid, so I saw several hurricanes. Our house was built to withstand the wind and rain, so I never felt worried too much. I remember watching a 30 foot tree snap like twig and roll down the road and huge puddles filling up with rain and a big gust of wind swish the water away...very cool. Having the eye of the storm pass over us was freaky because the wind changed direction after about an hour of relatively calm clear weather..."round two", my dad said. My job was to squeegee the water out of the house and bring my dad beer:)

I remember when Mt St Helens blew up too. It sounded like a dull, but deep thud.. even at 400 miles away.

I now live in an area that has earthquakes, forest fires, avalanches and the occasional flood, but they don't worry me because if it happens it happens, I wouldn't move away from here...I love where I live.
.

I'm going with volcano because it'd cause a minor earthquake, definately set the forest on fire, and destroy everything in it's path at a high rate of speed.

I think that the scariest type of disaster would be what's called a Mega Tsunami, or basically a tidal wave x 20

I saw this thing on Discovery... creepy. Anything that can go across the ocean in 5 hours can't be happy.

the idea of tidal waves has always freaked me out, so i'm going with that

I've never been involved in a natural disaster (the closest I've been is those gale force winds...) but the sight of those 5/6 thick as fuck tornadoes scares the fucking shit out of me. The way the clouds look, the way the sky looks, the fact that these things more or less come out of nowhere...

Scary shit!

Volcanoes cause fires, and are just plain scariest

I figure it must be a tidal wave because of the lack of warning and the width. The combination would likely make it the hardest to dodge.

tornadoes are totally unpredictable

I have been under a few warnings but never experienced any of disasters mentioned. I would have to think that earthquakes have got to be the scariest. At least with Hurricanes and most of the rest you get some kind of warning to prepare. Earthquakes just happen and you don't even have a clue of which direction to run.

I picked flood (i'm the only one who has so far!) because I've lived through two. Growing up I lived in a town on a floodplain. We got flooded out of our house once...it only took once for us to move to higher ground ;) Flooding isn't as predictable as people think. It's hard to say how high the water will get within your own home...and when the water does get in it's terribly unpleasant. I have vivid memories of sitting in my brother's crib eating cold blueberry pancakes and watching bill statements float past. I remember the big burly fireman who carried both my brother and I out to a rowboat in his waders and I remember living in a trailer in our friends' driveway for a month while the purchase of our new house closed. Thank goodness the house we got flooded out of was a rental.

In the PacNW, we deal with a lot of potential natural disasters--who's to say when there will be an earthquake, a tsunami or a volcanic eruption. We have forest fires every summer. I guess ater a while it just becomes an expected part of life.