Have you ever experienced a natural disaster?

Mine was not traumatic…but, it was a tornado in the midwest when I was 11. I rounded up my step grandmother and a step brother and sister. We made it to the fruit cellar when all hell broke loose. What an incredible force.

In California we get a lot of earthquakes. I was about two when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. My mom lives only a little ways away from the San Andreas Fault.

The last earthquake I felt was the gnarliest one I’ve personally ever felt and remembered. It hit in Mexicali. I was actually taking a nap and I woke up and my apartment was swaying back and forth. I felt like I was on a boat. Apparently, it lasted for about 45 seconds. I was actually kinda pissed that I missed it. I slept through most of it. Motherfuckles.

But other than that, I’ve never seen a tornado or been through any bad hurricanes or anything. It gets stormy here, but nothing traumatic.

August 10, 1995 my house was flooded. Luckily, only my basement was damaged, but I lost my car, my washer/dryer, lawnmower and various other items. I cried the entire time we were cleaning out the mud. A couple of snakes even washed into my basement. It was the worst time I have ever been through. Such a feeling of helplessness.

Several earthquakes. Starting in Seattle, with an Alaska quake, then down to CA for the rest of them. It seemed as if I just migrated to where the next big one would be. Some of them were pretty devastating, involving lots of loss of property and some loss of life of people I knew. No family members, though, fortunately. People around those areas got pretty skittish. Especially after a big one, when there could be numerous smaller aftershocks, some about as big as the first. My kids kept the chairs away from the very solid dining room table, and at the slightest sign of shaking they dived under there like pros. One day one of them just reached out to steady and stop the grandfather clock from falling on his little brother on his way to the table.

I developed an uncanny knack of being able to tell how big it was right after the rocking stopped. People would (try to) call me to get my prognostication. Not like the phone system always worked, though. I’m not sorry to say that I’m not in an area where that’s so likely any more, so it’s been awhile since that’s happened.

Southern California has lots of earthquakes, good ol’ San Andreas fault.
I’ve lived through two wildfires.
The Cedar Fire in 2003. If the fires had continued another day or two, my neighborhood would’ve been evacuated. Luckily, they stopped soon enough. here was how our view of the neighborhood looked for about a week. You can see on the far right side of the picture, that’s our neighbor’s halloween decoration. These fires started ~Oct 25th.

4 years later, I was living in a different place. And the Witch Creek fire broke out. I remember this one. So very well.
We were told to evacuate on that very first night. I went to stay with my sister (Who was actually living about 10 minutes away from where I lived in 2003).
In the middle of the night, we had to evacuate from my sister’s place as well.

After 12 days of living with my parents (and 2 cats) in a small hotel room, we were finally allowed to see if your house was still standing.
We were lucky, our neighborhood resisted the fire. It made a semi-circle around the area, but never penetrated into it.

Ever since 2003, I’ve dreaded Octobers.

I’ve been fortunate to never have experienced any major disaster. The ones I have read about or seen in the news are enough to make me very very thankful.

Earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes.

Besides, my existence, only a couple of earthquakes which did not lead to anything tragic luckily.

I was out in Louisiana visiting my great aunt when hurricane Katrina hit. I have never been so scared before in my life. I thought we were going to die, and the aftermath was way beyond what you saw on tv.

When the last Tsunami was happening in this world there was an incredibly earthquake that shake most houses in our town for quite a long time. We live near the source of that disaster but I’m glad it didn’t strike to our place.

Flooding once, and a nasty ice storm, both of which were enough fo rthe National Guard to be deployed.

@jerv I’ve been through a flood too, when I get old I’ll be all like, back in 1997 we had this…but again, where I lived, we got the least significant part of it. Was still scary though, that’s all they talked about on the news for a month.

@Symbeline We were lucky to only lose four people in the whole affair, but Alstead NH will never be the same again. Much of the town is still missing! Kind of makes the fact that I couldn’t leave my house for two days seem insignificant.

As for the ice storm…. well, when it’s the middle of winter, the power goes out for nearly two weeks taking the heat and running water with it (electric water pump and a well) as well as making phone service and road access erratic due to falling trees, it can suck too. Gas stations were running out of gas, propane was virtually impossible to get, and it was 33.6 degrees in our house.

I experienced the 1997 flood of the Red River of the North which submerged a large portion of southern Manitoba and nearly destroyed some US cities on the same river further south.
We were sandbagging in many places in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

My basement was flooded with water and sewage twice in one week.

@Dr_Lawrence Haha yeah, I remember that same flood. (In Québec they had an ice storm.) I was in highschool then, and they always took us out to places on the outskirts of Winnipeg to help with sandbagging and things. Interesting fieldtrips, to say the least.