lindalove

As I was reading the thread about tornados in Britain, I was curious about your stories about Disasters experienced/narrowly averted.

A tornado that hit here a few years ago that was a Class V, and measured the highest wind speed ever recorded. At 317 mph (510 kph) and a mile (1.6 km) wide, it totally destroyed part of our city, as it moved into rural Oklahoma, the tornado actually decimated complete cities leaving a husk of a grocery store / mini-mall which are still there today.

Here is a picture of Moore, OK a suburb, this is not a farm but the remains of a neighborhood.





Here is a satellite image of the path of the same tornado.

Grasshopper Green

I must have missed the thread on the tornadoes...

About a month after I moved to North Carolina, Hurricane Floyd hit; it is recorded as being North Carolina's worst natural disaster on the books (I think as far as cost/damages). I was living in my mom's Civil War era house, and we stayed there for the storm. I thought the house was going to fall down around my ears; I was scared to death and didn't get a wink of sleep all night. I "slept" in the hallway because the only tree in my mom's yard happened to be right in front of my bedroom, so I thought it would be safer somewhere else. It's actually lucky we didn't go inland as a lot of people did, because the coast didn't actually get hit as badly as 70-80 miles inland did.

I also had a tornado hit the town I lived in while I was in NC. I heard the news report as I was driving home from work. I was basically driving toward the storm in order to get to my house. We lived on the military base, so when I got to the guard gate, the driver stopped me; I was thinking, I can't believe he is checking my ID. He actually told me to get my ass home as fast as I could, because the storm wasn't too far off. We had a strange door that required both hands to unlock/open at the same time, so I jumped out of the car, unlocked the door, and dropped my purse and keys on the floor. When I returned, son in arms, the door was closed....and locked since it locked automatically. What I didn't realize was my husband had come home early and thought it would be funny to play a joke on me. I wasn't amused. The tornado didn't hit our housing area, but it did do quite a bit of damage to the town.

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Formerly Medusa

maleficent

Years back. when I actually still took vacations... I had gone to the somewhere in the carribbean with some friends.. I honestly don't remember which island it was... and we got a great deal - -what us idiots didnt realize that it was the height of hurricane season... We arrived on a thursdat - with unbelievable humidity and the airport shutting down because of the weather... Umm - guys ya think we should leave? Nooooo it'll be fun.. Sure - famous last words... (this might be whyt i Atdon't take vacations anymore)

We get to the hotel and check in - I think there are 20 people left in this hotel.. .the rest were brits... We went down to the beach - which wasn't that far from the hotel to huge waves... and gray skies.. .looked pretty - the pictures were cool... at some point, we headed back to the hotel to find the staff taping all the windows... and we were told that a hurricane was about an hour or two away... to go to our rooms get what we wanted and then head into the ballroom of the hotel... it was the only windowless room in the hotel.

Being good campers, we got what we wanted from our rooms, dropped it in the ballroom, and helped the staff move furniture (that woudl become projectiles) and other stuff from outside - inside, and also taped up some windows... the shoreline all of a sudden had gotten alot closer.

the 20 guests and us, along with about 10 staff members all were in the ballroom, with a very well stocked bar and a storm that raged (literally raged) around us... I love a good storm, but I've never heard anything like this before... nor since...

I dont know how long we were in the ballroom, but it was after several very good bottles of tequilla, the storm ended... we left the hotel ballroom, to palmtrees literring the lobby of the hotel... and extensive damage... but no casualties in our group...

We spent the rest of the week of our vacation helping the area get cleaned up -- we couldn't go anywhere anyhow, the power was out and hte airport was out of service.. .It was an adventure...

Probably about 10 or so years ago, I was out in the middle of nowhere, Kansas... pretty area -- probably about 90 minutes outside of Topeka.. staying with a colleague after... that night there was a tornado, we ended up spending the night in a storm shelter.. the comments about a freight train running over your head, was absolutely true.. Tornados are loud!!!

Growing up in NJ< one house my parents had was not far from the Ramapo Fauilt line, which used to rumble occassionally - never quite severa as a california quake, but a little unnerving when pictures fall off the wall...

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snowy

I've been through a few minor earthquakes and the Nisqually earthquake (biggest quake to shake the PacNW in years, and yes, it was felt as far south as Corvallis). The Nisqually quake was the weirdest because we are so far away from the epicenter, but because of the composition of the Willamette Valley, the ground picks up any little wiggle from elsewhere in the NW. So we felt it pretty good--my lofted bed managed to move itself four inches. I actually didn't feel it as I was walking to class--I thought it was odd all of the birds were on the ground and not in the trees. Then when I got to class everyone was outside since they were checking for seismic damage.

The worst natural disaster I've ever been in was a flood. A combination of record rainfalls and high tides brought down a seawall holding back the bay that we lived roughly a block from. Because we lived below sea-level, we ended up with the bay in our living room. It was about 2.5 feet deep when the fire department rescued us. I remember sitting in my brother's crib, eating cold blueberry pancakes from the night before, and watching the garbage float past. Fortunately we all got out safely, though a lot of our stuff was damaged. Also fortunate--it wasn't our house. My parents had just purchased a house up on the hill overlooking the bay to get us out of the rental we were in. But it would take 30 days to close--so in the meantime we had to go live in our friends' driveway in a trailer. I'm thankful they put us up when no one else would (including my own grandmother).

I've been through some fierce storms, major power outages, and other interesting things, but nothing will ever top getting flooded out.

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MikeSty

Floods really suck. Here in PA it's probably (thank god) the closest thing to a horrible natural disaster we can ever get. Sometimes they'll result from hurricanes, but usually just nasty rainstorms in the spring or fall. Part of the town I am in is very low, and right near a rather large creek. Right near the creek is a set of cheesy low-class apartments.

Some of the apartments are actually below ground by a few feet, and the whole place gets flooded. Most of the people living there are hispanic, and end up spending a few nights at the firehouse nextdoor. It's pretty scary though, the bridge right in the middle of town that crosses this creek has had some issues as well...

Fortunately I live on a big giant hill

Elphaba

The last earthquake I experienced in Washington knocked my home partially off it's foundation and emptied all of my kitchen cabinets, glasswear and all. Overall, it wasn't as damaging as the Alaska earthquake that rattled Seattle many years before.

There was a "roar" to this last earthquake that prevented me from hearing all of the crashing going on in the kitchen, all of 15 feet away. Maybe I was too focused on whether my dancing monitor was going to end up in my lap.

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