Have you ever been a victim of a disaster?  (Natural or Man-Made)  Were you directly impacted such that it interrupted your life?

Or how about, have you had such a close encounter or near miss with a disaster, it gave you "the willies"?

Of course this includes the likes of floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, big snows/blizzards, wildfires, dust bowls, wind storms, tornadoes and the like.  Also to include "small footprint" disasters like house fires or lightning strikes.

I've experienced some blizzards but not on the disaster scale, 15 or 20 inches of snow, schools closed, this was many years ago. Might be a disaster if it occurred in Alabama or Georgia, but it's a typical event up here in Canada.

I once worked in a high rise commercial building some 30 to 40 years ago and there was a small earthquake, being 45 stories high it was a little scary, some bookends and books fell off the shelves, vases fell down and cracked...things like that. Being there at the time it felt like the whole building would collapse, guess you had to be there. Turned out to be less than a 4.0 quake.

Through the years, I've seen hurricanes, floods, thunder and lightning storms and winter blizzards that had an impact on our neighborhood during the cold seasons.

...there was a small earthquake, being 45 stories high it was a little scary...


For those of us not living in earthquake country, they are very jarring.  I was working once in "earthquake country" in the morning in a lab by myself and heard a sudden loud noise.  My first thought was "what rude so-an-so is rolling that gigantic dumpster across the way at this early morning hour?".  But then as I looked at the clock I noticed it shaking and my thought changed to "EARTHQUAKE!!!" at which time I quickly made myself small and leapt under the metal desk.  And stayed there.  Petrified.  For a while.  Finally another employee came into the lab (an area native).  He said to me "you can come out now", and I'm pretty sure he was snickering at me.  Who cares - I was shook up all morning.

It turns out the quake was a 5.0 but it wasn't centered real close to my location.  Nonetheless, I was really scared.

We very occasionally get small earthquakes in the U.K.

American Girls story reminds me of one time at the university were I worked. I was standing chatting with two or three colleagues on the second floor landing when we all felt the floor shaking and heard a rumbling noise. We all blamed Gerry whose research involved studying distortion in materials after heavy loads had been dropped on them. His lab was on the floor below. However, just then Gerry walked through the door to the landing where we were. He had been in his office, and came out to see what the noise was. That’s when we realised it could have been an earthquake.

When I was in Kindergarten in 1986 we weren't allowed to play outside anymore all of a sudden. Chernobyl had just exploded and radioactive particles got blown over half of Europe including Germany. Half of my family, including me, developed massive thyroid gland problems in the decades after that. (This does not necessarily have to come from that but we all had no symptoms until the 90ies and we were all at the same stage of the illness when it was diagnosed. So it's likely it was triggered by some event and not just genetically.)

Back in 1987, "The Great Storm" was a violent extratropical cyclone that occurred on the night of 15–16 October, with hurricane-force winds across southern England. I was up all night with the loud winds, and traveled to work across London seeing storm damage and up-rooted trees, if I had know of the serious side of it, I would stayed at home.

In my time in The Philippines, I have felt an earthquake, no structural damage just a shaking, and been in a path of a typhoon.

The human body is generally chronically short of iodine. Radioactive iodine is released during a nuclear event such as Chernobyl and the body grabs hold of any iodine it encounters. Iodine is used mostly in the thyroid gland and this is likely to be the cause of your problems.

People can be given potassium iodide pills if they are at risk of ingesting radioactive iodine. This tops up the body’s supply of iodine so it doesn’t use the radioactive stuff in the atmosphere

The human body is generally chronically short of iodine. Radioactive iodine is released during a nuclear event such as Chernobyl and the body grabs hold of any iodine it encounters. Iodine is used mostly in the thyroid gland and this is likely to be the cause of your problems.

People can be given potassium iodide pills if they are at risk of ingesting radioactive iodine. This tops up the body’s supply of iodine so it doesn’t use the radioactive stuff in the atmosphere

Exactly my thoughts. I'm pretty sure that's where it comes from.

-When I was in tech school (right after basic training) in Wichita Falls, TX (close to the Texas panhandle but not quite there), we were all sitting in the hall as the tornado sirens were blaring. (This is a place where the trees grew sideways because of the wind.) Luckily, we were spared the tornado and the flood that hit the town. 

-When I was living in San Antonio in 1988, I had just gotten back from a trip to my sister's the day before and wanted to sleep in. This was in the mist of Hurricane Gilbert. My husband (at the time) was watching t.v. and woke me up to tell me there was a tornado. I thought it was on the other side of the city because is usually where the tornadoes hit. I TRIED to go back to sleep. He kept telling me about another tornado and another tornado. I think when I heard FIVE tornadoes, I figured I had been get up. We gather some things (radio, flashlight, etc, etc.) and sat in our hallway. The phone rang and I thought it was my sister asking how we were doing. It ended up to be a survey asking us who we were going to vote for in the election. I said kind of nastily, "This is NOT a good time" and hung up. Hello, we were in a tornado WARNING! I was NOT going to talk politics. We were spared but there was a tornado 10 miles from our house. WAY TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT if you ask me. There were 40 tornadoes in Texas and 9 of those hit San Antonio.

-One time, Carlos & I were driving back from my sister's in Tulsa. We were in Illinois and was hoping to hit the border before stopping for the night. We stopped for dinner at a WONDERFUL restaurant. As we were leaving the restaurant, we saw this BIG BLACK cloud. Uh oh. We were hoping to outrun it. Nope. That cloud swept over us and man, did it get dark. I was so scared because I knew that was the kind of cloud at tornadoes like. When we finally reached the next exit, I told Carlos that we should stop. We pulled into a convenient store. I told him to park on the side so give us a bit protection. When we decided to brave leaving the car, the women who worked at the store came running out excited, "Did you see the tornado?" Um, no. That didn't make us feel anymore comfortable. After mulling it over for a bit, we decided to stop for the night. There was a motel across from the convenient store. That was as far as we got that night. Nope, we didn't make it to the border that night. 

-When I was in Greece, I went with a friend to the town close to the base for dinner. We just stepped off the bus, crossed the street and was stepping up on the sidewalk. She was looking down and said, "Wow, the sidewalk is moving." The it hit! I said, "AN EARTHQUAKE" and out of instinct I grabbed her arm. I'm sure if there was total stranger standing next to me, I would have grabbed their arm. too. It was a 4.8 and we were about 20 miles from the epicenter. I couldn't eat after that. I was (no pun intended) shaken by the experience since it was the first earthquake I had ever been in. There were a few aftershocks. Actually, there were always tremors. It was not unusual for someone to say, "Did you feel that?" 

-I can't remember when it was but we were sleeping in a Saturday morning. We were awaken by the bed shaking. I said to Carlos, "Is that what I think it was?" He said, "An earthquake? Yes." It is not unusual for our house to shake when a truck goes by but this felt so different. I got up but he stayed in bed. As I was reading the morning paper, there was an aftershock. But, I could tell they were very deep down. That is the difference with earthquakes in New England-they are deep so the damage isn't too bad unlike on the west coast where they are closer to the surface. In that one, nothing fell off the walls and maybe a couple of the pics we had hanging were askew but no damage.

-Of course there were blizzards, hurricanes, and such. SIL lived through Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. She came to stay with us for a while after that.

I'm sure I will have more stories later.


Cat

The one disaster that has had an impact on me was the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

I posted a synopsis of it back in 2019 (in time for the 25th anniversary) on another thread: http://www.inthe00s.com/index.php?topic=8488.msg3781866#msg3781866
...but I'm going to elaborate more here:

At the time it struck, we were living in a mobile home...which was knocked off of its foundation, rendering it uninhabitable. Fortunately for us, we had good earthquake insurance which would help us with all repairs that needed to be done. We spent the first two nights after the quake at my paternal grandparents' place, then over the next three months - while we were waiting for the repairs to be done - we spent nights at several hotels, mostly in the San Gabriel Valley (Pasadena and eastward), mainly to get away from the aftershocks. The school I was attending - which happened to be located in eastern Northridge - was shut down for two weeks after the quake so that it could be inspected for repairs; turns out, only one of its buildings suffered significant damage. When the school finally reopened, getting there took a lot longer than it did from our actual home, because not only was the drive longer, but certain freeways were shut down due to damage.

And during the three-month span that we were displaced from our home, I had to do all my homework at whatever hotel we were staying in; plus, we ate all of our meals out (in restaurants). This also included, in most cases, getting breakfast from a fast food place (such as Mcdonalds) during the 6 AM hour on weekday mornings. We saved the receipts from all of our meals out, plus the receipts from our hotel stays, to send to our insurance company for reimbursement.

During the first few days following the earthquake, we packed up most of our belongings and put them into Public Storage; we also arranged for a group of movers from Bekins to store our furniture and related items at their facility in Pasadena. And in mid-April, when the repairs were completed on our mobile home and we could move back into it, everything was moved back in accordingly. This was on the 15th of April (a Friday). Then the next day - Saturday April 16th - I realized I was coming down with the chickenpox and had to miss a full week of school.

That summer, our mobile home received earthquake bracing underneath to prevent it from ever crashing in another earthquake - which, fortunately, never happened in the remaining six years we lived in it. (In 2000 we determinedly sold the place and moved to a brand new house in Oxnard in early 2001.)

Can being in a foreign country when martial law has been declared be included here?

The one disaster that has had an impact on me was the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

I posted a synopsis of it back in 2019 (in time for the 25th anniversary) on another thread: http://www.inthe00s.com/index.php?topic=8488.msg3781866#msg3781866
...but I'm going to elaborate more here:

At the time it struck, we were living in a mobile home...which was knocked off of its foundation, rendering it uninhabitable. Fortunately for us, we had good earthquake insurance which would help us with all repairs that needed to be done. We spent the first two nights after the quake at my paternal grandparents' place, then over the next three months - while we were waiting for the repairs to be done - we spent nights at several hotels, mostly in the San Gabriel Valley (Pasadena and eastward), mainly to get away from the aftershocks. The school I was attending - which happened to be located in eastern Northridge - was shut down for two weeks after the quake so that it could be inspected for repairs; turns out, only one of its buildings suffered significant damage. When the school finally reopened, getting there took a lot longer than it did from our actual home, because not only was the drive longer, but certain freeways were shut down due to damage.

And during the three-month span that we were displaced from our home, I had to do all my homework at whatever hotel we were staying in; plus, we ate all of our meals out (in restaurants). This also included, in most cases, getting breakfast from a fast food place (such as Mcdonalds) during the 6 AM hour on weekday mornings. We saved the receipts from all of our meals out, plus the receipts from our hotel stays, to send to our insurance company for reimbursement.

During the first few days following the earthquake, we packed up most of our belongings and put them into Public Storage; we also arranged for a group of movers from Bekins to store our furniture and related items at their facility in Pasadena. And in mid-April, when the repairs were completed on our mobile home and we could move back into it, everything was moved back in accordingly. This was on the 15th of April (a Friday). Then the next day - Saturday April 16th - I realized I was coming down with the chickenpox and had to miss a full week of school.

That summer, our mobile home received earthquake bracing underneath to prevent it from ever crashing in another earthquake - which, fortunately, never happened in the remaining six years we lived in it. (In 2000 we determinedly sold the place and moved to a brand new house in Oxnard in early 2001.)


My sister-in-law & one of my step-daughters were in it. What I was told that the two of them were in bed when it happened and they just hugged each other hoping it would stop.


Cat

My sister-in-law & one of my step-daughters were in it. What I was told that the two of them were in bed when it happened and they just hugged each other hoping it would stop.


Cat

Wow. :o

Yeah, it struck at 4:30am PST, thus awakening me and my parents. I remember jumping out of bed and running straight for the open door to my parents' bedroom and holding onto my mom. My dad, however, tried to get out of bed, but a dresser/mirror unit fell down and pinned him underneath; however, he was able to push it up and get out of bed by the time the shaking stopped.
We then had to evacuate the house, carrying our flashlights in hand, but getting out of it was not easy because the door to the carport was stuck, as was the front door. Fortunately, we could use the sliding glass door to get out... but then we had to carefully make our way onto the porch because that's when we noticed that the house slid off its foundation.
Once we got outside (along with other neighbors who also evacuated their damaged homes), all we could do was stand around until the sunrise. (But first we had to get our gas line turned off because it ruptured in the quake; doing that, particularly in the dark, wasn't exactly easy.) Once the sun came up, my parents could get their cars (both of which were undamaged) out of the driveway and park them in the street; then we could assess the damage to our home.

The rest is history.

My sister-in-law & one of my step-daughters were in it. What I was told that the two of them were in bed when it happened and they just hugged each other hoping it would stop.


Cat


What was the number on the Richter scale?  ???

What was the number on the Richter scale?  ???


6.7.


Cat

...it struck at 4:30am PST, thus awakening me and my parents. I remember jumping out of bed and running straight for the open door to my parents' bedroom and holding onto my mom. My dad, however, tried to get out of bed, but a dresser/mirror unit fell down and pinned him underneath; however, he was able to push it up and get out of bed by the time the shaking stopped.
We then had to evacuate the house, carrying our flashlights in hand, but getting out of it was not easy because the door to the carport was stuck, as was the front door. Fortunately, we could use the sliding glass door to get out... but then we had to carefully make our way onto the porch because that's when we noticed that the house slid off its foundation.
Once we got outside (along with other neighbors who also evacuated their damaged homes), all we could do was stand around until the sunrise. (But first we had to get our gas line turned off because it ruptured in the quake; doing that, particularly in the dark, wasn't exactly easy.) Once the sun came up, my parents could get their cars (both of which were undamaged) out of the driveway and park them in the street; then we could assess the damage to our home.

The rest is history.


That sounds like one seriously traumatic experience.  :o  Glad none of you were injured.

My brother's family's apartment was condemned and they had to move.  They also had a number of belongings damaged that fell down in the quake.  All in all, despite all that they were probably on the lucky side.

-When I was in tech school (right after basic training) in Wichita Falls, TX (close to the Texas panhandle but not quite there), we were all sitting in the hall as the tornado sirens were blaring. (This is a place where the trees grew sideways because of the wind.) Luckily, we were spared the tornado and the flood that hit the town. 

-When I was living in San Antonio in 1988, I had just gotten back from a trip to my sister's the day before and wanted to sleep in. This was in the mist of Hurricane Gilbert. My husband (at the time) was watching t.v. and woke me up to tell me there was a tornado. I thought it was on the other side of the city because is usually where the tornadoes hit. I TRIED to go back to sleep. He kept telling me about another tornado and another tornado. I think when I heard FIVE tornadoes, I figured I had been get up. We gather some things (radio, flashlight, etc, etc.) and sat in our hallway. The phone rang and I thought it was my sister asking how we were doing. It ended up to be a survey asking us who we were going to vote for in the election. I said kind of nastily, "This is NOT a good time" and hung up. Hello, we were in a tornado WARNING! I was NOT going to talk politics. We were spared but there was a tornado 10 miles from our house. WAY TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT if you ask me. There were 40 tornadoes in Texas and 9 of those hit San Antonio.

-One time, Carlos & I were driving back from my sister's in Tulsa. We were in Illinois and was hoping to hit the border before stopping for the night. We stopped for dinner at a WONDERFUL restaurant. As we were leaving the restaurant, we saw this BIG BLACK cloud. Uh oh. We were hoping to outrun it. Nope. That cloud swept over us and man, did it get dark. I was so scared because I knew that was the kind of cloud at tornadoes like. When we finally reached the next exit, I told Carlos that we should stop. We pulled into a convenient store. I told him to park on the side so give us a bit protection. When we decided to brave leaving the car, the women who worked at the store came running out excited, "Did you see the tornado?" Um, no. That didn't make us feel anymore comfortable. After mulling it over for a bit, we decided to stop for the night. There was a motel across from the convenient store. That was as far as we got that night. Nope, we didn't make it to the border that night...

Cat


That's quite a few tornado "close encounters"!

About 10 years ago, a "small" tornado came very close to our home.  Less than the length of a football field away.  Our condo complex is constructed around a circular driveway and there is a residential street to the immediate north.  On this day we saw the tornado warning on TV then heard sirens and the sky turned black, so we went downstairs to the bottom level behind the stairs and waited.  This area was a half flight down from the vestibule.  We waited impatiently (I didn't enjoy hanging out there) and things got quiet.  Then suddenly I heard a sound from the vestibule, an eerie high pitched squeal I'd never heard before or since, lasting just a few seconds, and then it got quiet again.  Neither of us knew what the noise was, but agreed it sounded ominous.  After a few more minutes we went back to out unit.  (We later surmised the squeal was from air being forced through the door.)

When we got out the next morning, we found several damaged garages on the north side of the complex; debris was strewn around; furthermore, on the residential street just to our north, all six of the full grown trees were gone, broken off leaving nothing but tall stumps.  That street must've taken a direct hit.  :-\\

That's quite a few tornado "close encounters"!



I think that is why most of my "nightmares" usually deal with tornadoes. I can't recall how many "tornado dreams" I have had. Some times it is just a small tornado attacking my feet to a HUGE one that sweeps a lot of people away. (I had that one right after my sister died.)



About 10 years ago, a "small" tornado came very close to our home.  Less than the length of a football field away.  Our condo complex is constructed around a circular driveway and there is a residential street to the immediate north.  On this day we saw the tornado warning on TV then heard sirens and the sky turned black, so we went downstairs to the bottom level behind the stairs and waited.  This area was a half flight down from the vestibule.  We waited impatiently (I didn't enjoy hanging out there) and things got quiet.  Then suddenly I heard a sound from the vestibule, an eerie high pitched squeal I'd never heard before or since, lasting just a few seconds, and then it got quiet again.  Neither of us knew what the noise was, but agreed it sounded ominous.  After a few more minutes we went back to out unit.  (We later surmised the squeal was from air being forced through the door.)

When we got out the next morning, we found several damaged garages on the north side of the complex; debris was strewn around; furthermore, on the residential street just to our north, all six of the full grown trees were gone, broken off leaving nothing but tall stumps.  That street must've taken a direct hit.  :-\\


WOW, that must have been scary.


Cat

WOW, you guys have really been in some nasty stuff.  I've never experienced anything like it.  The worst was some small tremors when I was living in Chile, but that was really nothing, just a little shaking

WOW, you guys have really been in some nasty stuff.  I've never experienced anything like it.  The worst was some small tremors when I was living in Chile, but that was really nothing, just a little shaking


And that one that woke us up.


Cat

Yesterday afternoon I felt the shakes of the magnitude 5 earthquake that hit the Philippines. It was the first time I felt the tremors. I was around 30km from the epicentre, the shakes were very light, and no structural damage.
This is the post I sent to the boards reporting on the tremor I felt back in November 2016.

I can remember Hurricane Gloria back in The Fall of 1985, I was about 11 years old at the time that The Hurricane hit The Northeast area region.

That sounds like one seriously traumatic experience.  :o  Glad none of you were injured.


Yeah, we were all physically just fine.

We also wanted to check on our relatives to make sure they were fine, but we couldn't call them (because the power had been knocked out, and phone service was corrupted; furthermore, none of us had cellphones back then)...so all we could do was drive to their homes, which we did after the sun came up. However, we couldn't use the freeways because we were well aware that some of them had damaged overpasses...so we used surface streets to drive to my maternal grandma's house (in Granada Hills) and my paternal grandparents' house (in Winnetka; eastern edge of Canoga Park). They, too, were all just fine physically, but they lost plenty of glassware and dishes. (Then again, some of ours also got broken.)



My brother's family's apartment was condemned and they had to move.  They also had a number of belongings damaged that fell down in the quake.  All in all, despite all that they were probably on the lucky side.

:o

In my time in The Philippines...
... and been in a path of a typhoon.

November 9th 2013 – Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, strikes the Visayas region of the Philippines; the storm left at least 6,340 people dead with over 1,000 still missing, and caused $2.86 billion (2013 USD) in damage.
I was there!

...In my time in The Philippines, ... been in a path of a typhoon.



I was there!


Did you have to take cover?

Here's an indirect as opposed to a direct impact from a disaster.

I was given to remember the devastating 2011 Japan earthquake/tsunami today.  The reason is that I saw another car the same model as mine, but a different color than mine.  In fact, this car carried my "first choice" paint color, whereas my car has my "second choice" paint color.  The correlation?  I ordered my car in summer 2011 and used all the shiny brochures to select my paint color.  I chose the pretty dark blue and ordered my car with that color.  My dealer informed me that I had to choose a different color because due to the devastation in Japan, that paint color just would not be available for a while.  Fortunately my second choice, medium gray, was available; I went with that instead.  (No regrets.)  But seeing a car in that color made me remember just what happened in Japan during that awful time.

Here's an indirect as opposed to a direct impact from a disaster.

I was given to remember the devastating 2011 Japan earthquake/tsunami today.  The reason is that I saw another car the same model as mine, but a different color than mine.  In fact, this car carried my "first choice" paint color, whereas my car has my "second choice" paint color.  The correlation?  I ordered my car in summer 2011 and used all the shiny brochures to select my paint color.  I chose the pretty dark blue and ordered my car with that color.  My dealer informed me that I had to choose a different color because due to the devastation in Japan, that paint color just would not be available for a while.  Fortunately my second choice, medium gray, was available; I went with that instead.  (No regrets.)  But seeing a car in that color made me remember just what happened in Japan during that awful time.


I knew that earthquake was going to happen-but not there. About a week before, I had the feeling about an earthquake but I thought it was going to happen HERE. I kept looking at the USGS earthquake website. When it hit, I was like, "I KNEW it!" I always am surprised whenever my E.S.P. is right.


Cat

Did you have to take cover?


Where I was it happened overnight and was not so strong, but it still caused havoc, moored boats set adrift, and some structural damage. What I remember the most is the difference in the sound of the wind, lying in bed and the eerie howling.

I'm in my apartment now cause Hurricane Harvey blew the roof off my childhood home in 2017. WHILE I WAS SLEEPING IN BED.
Downside is I lost my childhood pictures.Upside is it opened alot of doors for me.

I'm in my apartment now cause Hurricane Harvey blew the roof off my childhood home in 2017. WHILE I WAS SLEEPING IN BED.
Downside is I lost my childhood pictures.Upside is it opened alot of doors for me.


WOW!!!  :o  If you ever want to elaborate more, we're all ears.