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The 2006 Western Washington storm was nuts. The hospital grids always come back first in widespread power outages, so a couple friends and I drove out to Ballard in search of coffee. We found a Denny's that had power and was, I believe, actually crowded past capacity. They ran out of absolutely everything, but it was warm and dry and while they were out of coffee by the time we got there, they did have hot chocolate.
Not nearly as bad as some stories as it didn't (and doesn't) effect me, but wildfires. I get to see the results every summer. I live in central California on the valley floor where viability gets under a mile. And the past few summers we have had ash swirling and falling in what little gusts there were. Left work and my car had a light dusting off white ash in the 3-4 hours since I had parked.
A Chinese guy ate an undercooked bat and now we're all in a natural disaster.
I remember being in Iowa and after a little Derby race we were about 30 minutes from my uncle's place and we had be hearing weather broadcasts about a tornado. No big we're used to this, it got real when we were filling up on gas when I head the soft click, click, click of shingles falling around me. I thought "oh shit it's going down" and then, BANG. I turned around to a pulverized DISHWASHER in the middle of this parking lot. We were out of there before my uncle could finish saying, "I just pissed myself".
I live in north east Kansas and I know it's about to hit the fan when someone interrupts Matt Miller because a neighborhood just got wiped of the face of the Earth. Every single spring there is a 1-2 week period were this is what it's like every single night.
I live in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria was so fucked up. We thought it wasn’t going to be so bad, but I stayed with my boyfriend’s family instead of staying alone in my apartment. Thankfully too. The roof of my apartment was completely destroyed. Somehow my Star Wars bathroom curtain was the only thing that survived despite the bathroom roof having crashed down. In the middle of the night while we slept a piece of metal hit the window of my boyfriend’s room, scared the living shit out of us and we saw his sister standing by the door saying there were tornado warnings. The next day we had 0 service and everything was just completely destroyed.
guy, did anyone else notice the huge glitch?
I was in a hurricane when I was really young in Mexico. The hotel power went out and it was category 1. 7 people (like surfers or something) died.
I was also in the better parts of the 4th of July California earthquake. I felt the ground shook and thought I was imagining it. Everything was then normal. The next day another earthquake hit harder, still, nothing happened except the hanging lights shake.
TV show Small Wonder was disaster all on its own . I forgot to mention Oogieloves Big Balloon Adventure now you got a disaster there kids show .
I have several.
I forget the year. But it was the Ice Storm in Oklahoma. I was about 10 maybe 11. If I remember correctly it hit on the weekend. So that Friday during school the teachers have extra homework because of the up coming storm. I though we were going to be out for 2 days as per normal when Oklahoma is hit with a snow storm. The oh frick things got real was when the power gone out. It rarely happened during snow storms. But usually it's back on during the next day or day after. I woke up and went outside and everything was covered in ice. Next to my childhood home was a line of flat leaved carnivorous trees with one gotten tree in the middle. With the wind, the trees were cracking the ice with loud popping sounds that sounded like the Titanic breaking apart in the 1997 film. I thought the trees were going to break in half and collapse on the house. That was one of the oh frick this is real. On the second day we found out my grandparents had power and through radio found out that there was no school for two weeks. This was in February. Usually to my grandparents it was a 45 min drive. This drive took nearly the whole day well into the night due to all the downed power lines that were on country roads where there's bothering but wheat and hay fields.
The tornado outbreaks of 1999: The oh frick moment was when there was a large funnel cloud over my town and a tornado (ef3) on the horizon.
The 2013 El Reno 2013 ef5 tornado: I was working at McDonald's when it hit. The oh frick moment was the path that the tornado was taking. My stepmother and little sister lived 2 miles away from I40 and off of US81. They were okay and the luckily the tornados multi vortexes were up when it passed their house. I think that tornado was the one of the few that took the lives of storm chasers for channel 9.
That same year but in Moore, the ef5 tornado went almost the same path as the ef5 in 1999 but was stronger and did more damage due to how big Moore had gotten due to the residential area. My eldest brother and sister-in-law lived near where the tornado hit. I got use to all the landmarks and roads there because of how often I went to visit them. Ironically my brother was in college to become a metrologist. Luckily both were in school at the time and were fine. But when I went to see them a couple of days later, even though the roads were clear it was unreal to see the damage done.
Hurricane Harvey was my first REAL Hurricane. Hurricane Ike did hit Oklahoma and caused major flooding to my town but that lasted two days, the storm itself lasted at night. My oh frick moment was I was a stocker at Walmart. Nearly everything on the shelf was gone leading up to the hurricane because we were told not to vacate. I was panicking myself the day before the storm hits because everything I knew about hurricanes was either from books and news. Up north the news always showed people boarding up their windows and leaving and miles of waiting to get gas. When Harvey came that night, I was really let down. Aside from my apartments parking lot becoming like a giant kiddie pool, nothing server happened. Still had power, running water, cell phone service, ect. (Aside from wifi) But then when I went back to work a week later due to the store being closed, about 20 people lost everything due to the flooding and that's when it became real again. Also, frick Joel Osteen.
Also, if you live in Oklahoma you can see my eldest brother for the weather in the mornings on channel 5.
Your legs are yelling to your brain "brain the ground is moving DO SOMETHING" and your brain replies "come on legs the ground doesn't move like that it's the GROUND"
This is quite possibly one of the greatest things I have ever heard
The piano music in the background pisses me off everytime you make a video about a serious topic on AskReddit.
Glad we saved our masks from the Thomas Fire. We're gonna need'em for Covid-19.
Omg when the person said they went outside to look around then looked up and saw that I instantly saw an image of that and it's was terrifying
Hasn’t happened yet but, i live on the west coast, and we all know of the fault line. From what I heard when things finally happen it’ll be a 9 point something (idk earthquake terms lol) so that’s quite scary
I was in the middle of a particularly bad monsoon near the base of a mountains, so all the water pooled down to us. The "ohh crap" moment started when the first level of our old house slowly flooded. Now, this house is higher than the rest of the ones in the block, and 1/3 of it filled with flood water in about 3 hours of relentless rain.
The rest of the neighborhood who had one story houses (which were the overwhelming majority) were practically submerged. You could only see the rooftops, but the rest was underwater. This persisted for about 3 days before the water started to recede, and only totally drained out after a week.
1:40 what happened on this one?
I wasn't in any major disasters, but I do remember being stuck in Harpers Ferry, WV when Hurricane Agnes hit in 1972. We were on vacation and had to stay 5 days longer than planned until the flood waters receded enough for us to drive home. I remember traveling over on highway bridge back into Northern Virginia where, before the river was WAY below us going TO WV, but was lapping up under the roadbed on the way home from WV. We have been brushed by many hurricanes in the 50+ years living in the No. VA/Maryland area, but Agnes was the worst, I think. I also was living in Maryland when we were all surprised by the 5.8 earthquake that hit the Virginia Piedmont area in 2011. I was working on the 5th floor of an 8 story building and had never been in an earthquake before. I was terrified! Fortunately, our building had be built to withstand higher magnitude earthquakes and we were just fine. We had never had emergency training for earthquakes before. We sure did after!! I have also been in a tornado in a trailer park when I was about 5 – it hit the other end of the park, but I can remember our trailer rocking back and forth. I also saw one (F1 probably) about a mile down the road from where I was standing – it was heading away from me. Good thing, because I was NOT at home and the only way to get home was to run about 1/2 mile.
I didn't leave for hurricane Michael. Went to my mother's to take care of her. We thought it was headed to Panama City beach where our house was. Nope instead hit where my mother's place was. Got hit by the hurricane produced tornado. Think God for over done hurricane ties. 20 of the 26 trailers was tossed around like they were children's toys. Only 1 was livable not including my mother's. Took us 3 days to get back home not knowing if we had a place to live. Still living and would do the same again. You don't know what's the right choice until the moment you are in.
More of a minor story but i remember going through a tornado and I wanted to go outside, but the teachers wouldn’t let us. Keep in mind it was like a really weak tornado and the only damage was leaves and branches on all of the road.
I was a kid when those 4 hurricanes went through the center of Florida one after the other. They went directly through us each time. We didn’t have power for like a month and there was sooo much damage. I was a kid, so it was pretty much camping for us. But still. Our house was untouched.
My cousin and I were driving home from college in her little Saturn in August of 2006. Started in Idaho. In Wyoming, the car kept overheating and a piston shot straight out of the engine as I was driving. I pulled over to the side of the road. The car was dead at this point, but it had sparked a fire in the grass. Everything we own is in this car. Up ahead of us was a black cloud as a severe storm was headed our way. Fire department put the fire out and we got towed to a motel. It starts pouring rain and hailing as we try to get our stuff inside. As soon as we finish, standing in his hotel room in a small town we didn't even know the name of, the power goes out. We eventually get two bus tickets to Atlanta. Somewhere in Kanas we hit a serious storm at night and our bus hits a flooded bridge, jolting us awake. It opened the undercarriage and my cousin's stuff goes floating down the river. Everyone else's ends up getting smashed in the freeway. We get on another bus and end up in St. Louis. We get to know people on the bus, as it's a 36-hour drive. One lady was telling us about her life in New Orleans, and her dreams about the future. We got off on another bus headed for Atlanta as she stayed on that bus headed to New Orleans the day before Katrina hit. I'll never know if she made it. This was the worst experience of my life and I've hated traveling ever since.
It's not the natural disasters you remember, it's how humanity shows its true self. Some are all about helping out, others are all about themselves and how they can profit from someone's misery. Like now, with coronavirus.
Glad you are safe but small wonder was a good show!!
SoCal quake of '94. Some of my earliest memories. Being woken in the middle of the night and being whisked out of bed and out onto the porch in 40 degree weather before I could even utter a word. Next thing I know I'm seeing big bright explosions over the mountaintops crackling in multicolor pulses. This was power transformers blowing up. Thankfully our home was a ranch house on a solid stone foundation on flat land, so minimal damages. But going into town was freaky. We went to the grocery store and waited in line for 3 hours for grocery rations and water. Half of the store's ceiling was caved in and probably 80% of all goods were strewn over the floors. Passed by an overpass on I5 and a section of it had collapsed. Learned later that day that a motorcycle cop was the sole victim at the time of the quake. Things were edgy for weeks. The aftershocks lasted for days and everyone feared a follow-up. Everyone was quiet at school when it resumed. No one went out to do anything. Probably took an entire year for most Californians to shake their paranoia. Also got to see some major brushfires up close as our ranch was settled on the edge of the Angeles National Forest. Nothing threatening, but it was crazy to take a trip up the mountain at 10PM to see it lighting the entire wilderness night sky orange.
It's really funny to me how perspectives change depending on what you are used to. Here in Chile (a very seismic country) a 5.4 earthquake is nothing, hell a 6.5 earthquake (we had one las night) is not even news worthy. Nothing falls apart, people don't freak out, I don't even get out of bed if it happens in the middle of the night, just see if it gets worse, and if not, go back to sleep. We consider an 8.0 or above something concerning and a natural disaster (we had one in 2010).
I can’t even imagine 13 funerals in 1 week.
Gimme gimmie, money pigeon.
The falling trees thing really scares me. My and my gran were driving once after a big storm and a tree fell across the road behind us. Really close behind us. My gran just stopped the car and her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. I was about 8 and I knelt on the back seat staring at the tree and said "that tree nearly hit us" and she said "I know" in a really tight voice and that's all I remember.
6.0 earthquake woke me up at 3:20am nothing broke luckily it scared the crap out of me and a small piece of furniture cracked me on the head but my bed stopped it from doing damage I only got a sore goose egg from it
It was 2011 when Virginia had an earthquake that was felt by Maryland and Delaware, it wasn't big but the problem is, we don't get earthquakes like that over here. That morning, I was sleeping in because the night before I had been watching the Cloverfield movie while smoking weed and eating snacks until I went to sleep. What woke me up was this rumbling sound that kinda reminded me of the garbage truck coming up the street except it was weird. I sat up in my bed, still groggy AF and that's when I started feeling my bed bouncing in this really unnatural way. It was like being on a trampoline in slow mo but that was because it wasn't my bed bouncing after all, it was my entire bedroom floor and everything in my room was along for the ride including me, holding on to the bed and being SHOOK literally. Then I looked at the walls of my room and the walls were swaying. At that point, I was wide awake and sober as a priest on weed because I couldn't wrap my head around how my walls were going from side to side like that. I've never been in an earthquake before and the last time I got trained for one, I was in elementary. I couldn't remember what the hell to do because I couldn't remember if they changed the protocol or what, so I was in the doorway but then I thought about getting under my computer desk, but then I kept thinking about the house collapsing right under me and there are 2 floors beneath me and that's when I saw it. This huge shadow swaying towards my bedroom window. At the time, I sincerely thought some Cloverfield sized creature was about to smash in my window or shake my house down. In my PJs, I said f* it and ran for the stairs, the damn stairs were moving while I made my escape but it was all over by the time I got down the stairs. I screamed all the way down lol. After applying some logic, I realized it was probably the trees in the forest behind my house, waving because they were shook the same way the house was.Neighbors were all outside freaked as well. I called my grandma, bless her heart she said "i thought it was a little storm, it knocked some of my teddy bears over". I remember I was freaked out that we would have aftershocks for like weeks after that.
When James Spann takes off his jacket, says “oh god” or shows any type of fear, you know that the area you are in is absolutely screwed. Beyond screwed, you better be praying to any god you’ve ever heard of.
gimme gimme
Omg the Gatlinburg one hits hard i was just there this summer with my family and i actually saw where the fires happened it was really bad
1995 tornado hit our farm, the wind was shaking the house and a branch came through the wall… we went down stairs to basement right then and there.
Lost our dairy barn, and many other sheds amd buildings
Had other tornados in 2017 and 2018 around us we didnt get damage but 3 miles north one time amd 3 miles south of us another time got damaged
I was just chilling inside until the hurricane/tropical storm went away.
That wasn't my first rodeo
I'm currently living in quarantine because of a virus that is killing the population of my country. I'm not in a third world country, I'm italian and I'm living during the coronavirus time, I'm even lucky because I'm in sardinia, an island, and now we are isolated, so this disease is easier to fight, but Spain, France and Germany are going to live the same situation. It's kind of a natural disaster btw
Praying won't help, bunkers/safe rooms might.
Rode out the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the SF Bay Area. 5th grade (10 years old). I grew up in a suburb in the East Bay with buildings that were maybe 40 years old at the oldest so there was no damage other than the power and cable being out for about an hour. Had school the next day, business as usual, but of course the quake was all anyone was talking about.
Also rode out the 2011 quake in New York with a population who'd mostly never experienced one so that was something.
The 89 quake wound up doing wonders for San Francisco. It took some time to finally make it happen but the quake resulted in the demolition of the ugly Embarcadero Freeway giving the city a waterfront renaissance. And despite the multiple debacles surrounding its construction, the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge is a huge improvement over the old, ugly one. Back in the city, damage to two aging museums spurred reconstruction of the de Young and the Academy of Sciences and led, ultimately, to construction of the current SFMOMA, the Asian Art Museum, and new main library building.
random wish but i wish i had the ability to fix or replace every personal item that people lost from natural weather an other things like family picture albums an or other things that people have personal attachments to like family heirlooms an be able to fully restore them or make a 100 percent duplicate that looks exactly the same either with magic or more regular means
Gimmie gimmie
I was in two major earthquakes…
Actually only three years ago, one was 8.2 in the ritcher scale, and the other one was 7.1 (Mexico City)
Both caused a lot of destruction, my school went down, people died, everyone was so panicked they stopped caring about the others, they would just push one another out of the way, walk over the ones who fell, curse the f out of whoever tried to stop them… We eventually were evacuated out of the building before it fell down on us.
The power went out for days, there were no phone lines, everyone was crying, we didn’t see our family for almost a day, we really thought it’d be our end when the ground was shaking so hard that it would throw us around and slam us against the walls, I don’t remember anything but horror screams and the sound of windows shattering, the next day we were told it had destroyed a significant part of the city, killing many and leaving others homeless.
I hope no one has to live through this ever.
People were making fun of earthquakes cause it was right 3 hours after a simulation, it was during the anniversary of another major earthquake that had happened that same day, 32 years ago.
I bet they won’t ever laugh at them again.
Thanks for reading.
If you want to see my school going down look for “Tec de Monterrey sismo” and you’ll see.
Gimme gimme
I was training my SAR K9s in Joplin. If you saw a tiny clueless woman working for ARDA freaking out with three dogs, that was me.
Once we cleaned out the corpses (my team was cadaver recovery), I started looking for lost pets because I didn't know how else to help. I'm from Columbia, so it was kinda surreal.
Gimmie Gimmie
There was an earthquake here for the first time since the 1600s, I'm prefer hurricanes.
When I was 10 years old I experienced a decent 5.1 quake in Tacoma Washington. It maybe lasted 45 seconds, but it’s 45 seconds branded into my memory.
I was at our dining room table. Dinner was done and I was helping my mom grade a pile of homework from her job as a long term substitute teacher. I was on one end, while my Mom was at the opposite end.
Suddenly my Hot Coco next to be almost jumped off the table…like someone violently kicked the table. That was the P-Wave hitting.
Surprised and started I looked up to see Mom glaring at ME because her Hot Coco was almost spilled too!
But her pissed off expression became confusion when she saw me looking at her with a WTH just happened my face.
She was about to open her mouth to lecture me when the S-Wave hit and EVERYTHING began to shake!
? See Mom…not my fault! I may be slightly hyper and autistic, but you can’t blame me for this!
Anyways. Earthquake drills practiced at school had me dive for under the heavy dining room table and grabbing a leg to hang on to.
My Mother, on the other hand, had been trained to brace and stand under a door way. So she grabbed me, and tried to pull me to the door way next to us.
I resisted and told her to get under the dang table.
?? While the pine wood floor undulated like small ocean waves, Mother and I were having a tug of war arguing which spot was safer……
Then everything was quiet.
My first thought: Hmmmmm. So. Are we dead now? Not very exciting.
House was fine, no severe structural damage besides a few micro cracks in the walls (little paint fixed it right up)and small spider cracks in the pine wood floor…….
That Mom spent 2 weeks sanding out with a grinder.
I had noticed that day my Cat ? Majic (yes, correct spelling) had vanished earlier that day. The dogs had also been very quiet too.
But by the next day my cat reappeared and the dogs were fine.
But yea. My respect for the earth went up a few points after that 45 second display.
shutters I can’t imagine being in a 9.0 quake with 5 minuets of shaking.
All quakes I hear about are now based off that 5.1 quake I experienced….l
was in a tornado in cedar rapids iowa when i was around 10 or so did not know what a tornado was in tell it put a tree through the bathroom wall with me in the bathroom
Lived on MS Gulf Coast during Katrina; born and raised in FL, so no stranger to hurricanes, but Katrina was by far the worst I'd ever experienced and hopefully it'll stay that way. Seeing bodies after weeks spent floating in filthy storm surge is not awesome.
Hurricanes…they suck