Surviving Disasters

Hugo for us. Never expected it being 200 miles inland!

When it was happening we were not believing it. Ended up with no power for days. Witnessed people fighting for ice and bread. Never had the huge warning because we were so far inland.

It was an eye opener. All ended ok. Very scary going through it.

We'll never forget.

Yup. Lets see:

- A few massive earthquakes in Japan (6's mostly, enough to bring houses down, one around our ears when I was a toddler)
- 2 really bad monsoons in Japan (monsoons come every year, but just like hurricanes, some years are worse than others)
- SF Earthquake (pshaw, correction I think of 89-91 as a single event)
- A couple gnarly hurricanes on the east coast (FL, VA)

Those weren't the worst, though. The worst was one of the jobs I did when I got out of the military. I ran with a mercenary group that was contracted to clean up "after" natural disasters. (Quotes, because that meant we were often on the ground *during* said disasters). Those were all over the world. Theoretically, you have a helo to come lift you out. In reality, you're just as trapped in the floods and body parts as everyone else. Unlike living there, though, you're trying to get in instead of get out, like a rational person. I liked the work, though. I came really close to phoning up a friend to go help out with the Thai tsunami, but since my son was a toddler at the time, I just sat on my hands swearing at the computer screen for a few days. I haven't had that much crisis of conscience since, though. My son needs me, and it's dangerous work. When he's grown, maybe.

You get through on adrenaline, no matter why you're there, in my experience.

Hurricane Katrina
'nuff said.

As far as I remember,when I was in middle school the very last day before Thanksgiving holiday's,we were hit by a tornado.(The school had 3 stories) and I was on the 3rd floor. But lucky the tornado jump over the school, thats what I heard. We were very blessed that nobody got hurt. It did have damage.Trees fell around the school and cars got damage. And hurricane Katrina. Very bad time for Louisiana. Lucky at the time I was living with my M. and step-dad before I got married and had any kids. We were on the Northshore,so we didn't get any flooding or anything like New Orleans did. But we had alot of trees snap and some buildings destroy also. But our house didn't get any damage but lucky our car didn't either. We was without electricity for 2 weeks. Bad for louisiana,usually we have high temp. during the summer time. So 2 weeks we were sweating our butts off. You can only imangine how good it felt to have electricty back on,and have cold a/c back on again.Lucky Rita missed us also. I think you realize how blessed we are until something bad like a disaster hit in your area.At the time i didn't have any kids,now i look back and could only imagine how parents with small children felt at that time.Gas stations line were back up.They had limit of stores open.People were mad,angry,stress and so on. People argured about other people getting more ice,food,etc.I think everyone was stress out that time.Trying to survive and take care of love ones. 6 years will be here on August 29th, and some people are still rebuilding here to this day......Oh and also a big baby boom happened after Katrina. I found 2 weeks after Katrina that I was pregnant with my first child. :) She came out healthy and beautiful.

When I was in high school, I had stayed out late at a friend's house(which was not typical for me) watching the Wizard of Oz for the first time. My M. picked me up after midnight. About four hours after getting home and going to sleep, my parents woke me up and rushed us to the downstairs shower. It was really scary especially since I did not have my glasses to see what was happening. The huge pine tree in the front yard had fallen in a tornado and hit right in the middle of the house. Luckily just the porch roof and part of the main roof had to be replaced and there was some water damage.
My parents have continued to use the emergency weather radios to let them know if there are tornado warnings in their area so they can be prepared.

I was right in the middle of hurricane ike. I was 8 months pregnant, without power, fresh water and a.c. for 3 weeks. Does that count?

Im glad we had money and stocked up on gasoline, batteries and canned food, we would drive to where they had clean food, but i still spent a few nights puking due to food poisoning. Other than all that though i was lucky, my husband was with me and the only damage i got was 3 fallen trees, one of which fell on my house but never punctured the structure. The tree removal and stump grinding nearly wiped out our bank account though.

I still remember how rare ice was, my husband volunteered to deliver it to nursing homes to keep the insulin cold.

Other than that i've lived trough hurricane alicia (although i was very young), hurricane katrina and rita which barely effected me, and tropical storm allison which completely flooded houston.

I ran away from Floyd to Chicago because after a week I still couldn't get back home. The roads were closed and there was no power. We were in TN for three days but that started getting expensive. So I took the kids to Grandma's.
Did the same thing after Isabel becasue there was no power for a week, so we went to Chicago then too.

We lived in IL when a tornado wiped out the town of Ogden, and the shopping center about 4 blocks from us. THat was scary. My hubby was on the ESDA rescue dive team and had to dive the lakes for weeks afterword. Thankfully he never pulled up any bodies. File cabinets, toys, tools, farm equipment. But no bodies, human or otherwise.

I'm not keen on earthquakes, the MIneral one was pretty shaky here. Although we didn't lose anything, some of my friends have some pretty severe damage.

I was in both of the huge earthquakes in California -

Pasadena 1987 and San Francisco 1989...

Both of those were huge...I was in my car in Pasadena on my way to work...it was like a scene from a movie - the building behind my work collapsed...the dust was horrible...the aftershocks were good shakes too - my filing cabinet was like a roller coaster - each drawer opening and closing going up and down...

came home to some cracks and bricks missing in the fireplace and some crystal broken...

1989 - windows exploded in the front of the building I was working in - I was on the 4th floor.

Came home to pictures shattered on the floor and a plant that came off the hook it was hanging on and there was dirt everywhere! :)

Which has caused me to be prepared the way I am - my car has an emergency kit as does my husband's...

I have been, since a child.... been through many earthquakes and hurricanes. My parents as well since they were kids too.
Being in the middle of the ocean, here.

Oh and most recently, we had a Tsunami.
After Japan's, earthquake.

Gigantic Disasters....with like a death toll number. None.

I have been in some major scary storms.

We had a wind storm blow through five years ago, Winds were at times 90 miles an hours. We(as in most of western Washington)had no power for a week. Gas station lines were a two hour wait. It was Chaos.

Three Earthquakes that were strong enough to do some structure damage...no loss of life though. My school(where I was when the biggest quake hit)suffer damage. The Basket ball hoops fell down...one going almost through the gym floor. We also had bad damage to locker rooms and main hallways throughout the school.

My moms house suffered stuff just falling off the walls...and tables.

When driving through the midwest we had two Tornadoes touch down on either side of us off the Highway. It was the most insane weather happening.

So I have never had to SURVIVE anything. but we have endured alot of weather annoyance's.

I always wonder how places like New Orleans and all of the states that get hit with major weather ALL the time, even stay Populated.

Guess that goes to show you can never guess what can happen.

We had a bad ice storm in 76 (in Western Ny, south of Buffalo).
Everything was coated in several inches of ice and trees were exploding under the weight of it.
When I came home from school I went to look at some branches on the ground and as I turned and walk back I heard creaking.
I started running as another branch came crashing down. There was a few inches of snow on the ground that was coated with ice and I had icy twigs skittering ahead on me, but I was away enough where I wasn't clobbered by the branch.
It sounded like a crystal chandelier had smashed to pieces.
Power was out for days (ice and trees had broken the power lines every few yards) and we had to evacuate to our friends house in the next town over as my M. came down with pneumonia and our friends had gas heat to keep warm.
While driving there we had fog so thick you couldn't see the hand on the end of your arm. A drive that usually took 20 min took more than 2 hours due to the fog and branches on the road.

Then there was the Blizzard of 77.
We had 22 ft drifts and we were fortunate our house wasn't buried.
We had to drag the snow thrower through the living room to get it out the front door because if we opened the garage door an 8 ft drift of snow would have fallen inside.
School was closed for several weeks but we were glad when we could go back so we could take a break from all the shoveling.
Several businesses with flat roofs collapsed under the weight of the snow.
Anyone who had snow mobiles were volunteering to deliver medicines to people or help doctors/nurses get to hospitals.
Plows could not push the snow back off the roads and high lifts had to dig it into dump trucks to clear the streets.
Occasionally they dug up stranded cars and some had bodies in them.
People had fallen asleep while the snow fell and covered the exhaust pipe.
They died of carbon monoxide poisoning and hypothermia.
For weeks afterward the streets looked like canyons.
I like a little winter, but I never want to live anywhere where that kind of snow is possible again.
I live a bit further south now.

A couple of snow and /or ice events ages ago (missed a month of school) and more recent - luckily w/o too much power loss as some were w/o power for days/weeks. (I stopped and thanked the guys in the neighborhood working to fix the line - we got lucky since it was a big line and tops priority lists!)

The remanents of Ike - who'da thunk hurricane this far inland! Our little power company did well, but in the metro area, some were w/o power again for days/weeks.

Tornado jumped this area back in 96.

Flooding in the area - but I knew this county had problems areas (lived here most of life), so I was careful where I bought! Didn't want to be a Louisville in 1937 kind of thing! (or any of the others in more recent years in other areas).

Been really lucky and able to work with/around most stuff

Stayed through Hurricane Hugo in 1989 in Charleston, SC. It was a Category 4 storm. No water, power for 2+ weeks. A 40 foot oak tree landed at the back door of my parent's house at the time - blocking us in. Had to remove the back door to get out. 60 foot pine crashed through my grandmother's home down the street. Trees throughout the city looked like they had been "sharpened" in a pencil sharpener from the tornados that come with the hurricane. The city was on curfew/lockdown to prevent/stop looting. Grocery stores couldn't open, so truckers would bring in groceries on 18 wheelers, then the National Guard would have to man the trucks so riots wouldn't break out. Many roads were impassible for months after the storm because there was just so much debris. Main roads were cleared after about 7 days so people could get back to their homes and supplies could be brought in. However if you lived on the islands - you weren't allowed back for 2-3 weeks because of all the devastation, and bugs, snakes, and alligators were rampant everywhere. It was awful. I evacuate now if it's a Cat. 3, possible a Cat 2 if predicted to hit at high tide. Not fun at all. I don't mess with mother nature. She wins every time.