Was it earthquake, tsunami, tornado, storm, flood, or?
I was in the Tohoku earthquake in Japan in 2011, in Fukushima, relatively close to the epicenter and the nuclear power plant.
It was an ordeal, to say the least. We were completely cut off for eight days.
I’m sorry you had to endure that. I remember watching it happen and knew the scale of the devastation made it even worse than what the media portrayed it as.
I’m happy you were able to get out.
Thank you.
Oklahoma ice storms and tornados.
Funny enough the ice storms took the power out for a longer amount of time. Id say collectively I’ve lost 3 to 4 weeks worth of power to ice storms. Around 1 to 2 weeks to tornados in my 38 years of living south of Oklahoma city
Tornados are a fact of life where I’m from. You just hunker down and hope it misses you.
That said, hurricane Ike basically wrecked my Midwestern area when I was a kid. We were prepared for tornadoes with their localized but intense destruction and weren’t ready for a large area to need less extreme but still large reconstruction
I’ve been in earthquakes, tornadoes, a hurricane and a few floods. Also, ice and hail storms, many blizzards, thunderstorms and straight line winds. The tornadoes are always the most frightening.
The bigger of the earthquakes was just enough to move the dishes around in the cupboards so that when I went for a cup, a bunch fell out. The closest tornado hit a few streets over from where I lived and bounced, destroying every other house down one side of a street. The hurricane just blew sand around and covered the car in a sand dune. I lost several cars to floods and had to be rescued once.
I should probably go check out a tsunami some time to fill out my disaster bingo board.
Not a disaster but I was on vacation in Cancun during the summer about a decade ago and a small hurricane went through headed north. That’s pretty routine there and it was relatively mild, though my flight was delayed 24h.
When I got home, which was north TX at the time, that night the same storm went over me again. Though at that point it had reduced significantly to just a thunderstorm.
Then early that morning I got in my car and headed north to IL where my cousin was getting married. As I was crossing into Missouri, I went through a heavy rainstorm and I realized it was the same storm from before. It was pretty neat to experience it in different parts of the continent over 48 hours.
I lived next to Plainfield Illinois when the F5 hit. I watched a funnel try to form next our neighborhood. The big one went right past us but spared our neighborhood. The schools were hit, my babysitter’s house was leveled. Never seen destruction on that scale in person since.
I experienced the edges of hurricanes every summer as a kid. You just deal with it.
Flooding, power outages, etc.
A few hurricanes and the Texas snow storm
Lol! I was just thinking to myself, “Huh, I guess not” and then I remembered I lived in Fort Worth for a few years and one year it snowed barely even two inches. The city shut down for a week and the roads were littered with debris from car wrecks. Having grown up in the northern Midwest, I was quite amused.
Does Ice Storm '98 count? As a kid, it was super wild to wake up to our house being ~10C then realizing that the heat wasn’t gonna be turning back on for a loooooong time.
Fortunately our neighbor had a gas stove in his basement and invited a bunch of folks from the neighborhood to use his house as a shelter for a while. It was super fun playing outdoors in the ice though. Literally everything was covered with inches of ice. You could put on a pair of skates and go anywhere you wanted for a couple days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm
Yup, Helene, a few months ago, in Asheville NC.
You could say I’m still experiencing it, I suppose. We’ve always been a place that’s too far inland for a hurricane. Very climate insulated. That bubble has burst for us here after this storm.
It was super scary, no cell service for days, no power or water or gas for days. We have a great network of people so we were supported and supporting but it went bad for many others.
But more than scary right now, it’s sad. Just seeing the devastation
Experienced a river flooding due to excessive rainfall. Both on a small scale on a camping where some tents floated away, which was kind of funny because the owners had warned not to pitch the tents to close to the river.
More recently witnessed a large scale flooding last winter when large parts of the rhine flooded. There were no casualties in my region, but the damage was quite severe. Very sobering to see the death toll in the upstream regions. Also the impact to agriculture and infrastructure, with frequent rain keeping the ground fully saturated for months al the way up to summer.
Water is so vital for human civilization, and yet also very dangerous.
thunder, i guess
My dog would certainly consider that a disaster
Hurricane in Florida in the 80s, but I was far enough inland to not be in danger. The eye of the storm is really spooky. Complete and utter silence.
Also the 1991 snowstorm in Duluth MN. Started snowing on Halloween and didn’t stop for three days. We had four feet of snow in the yard.
That was a lot of fun, the town was paralyzed for a couple of days until the plows started to get things in order.
Volcano
Several tornados and multiple hurricanes.
Same. Florida’s worst disasters are usually just the people.
