Was it earthquake, tsunami, tornado, storm, flood, or?
I was 183 miles from Mount Saint Helens when it blew up in 1980. We still had half an inch of ash. The volcano was on a Sunday, school was cancelled on Monday. We had to wear dust masks to go outside.
When we got closer to the mountain, everything smelled like rotten eggs (sulfur). Even weeks later.
I was in Christchurch for the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes that killed 185 people and critically damaged essentially every building within the city centre.
The whole thing was pretty surreal. My family were pretty lucky, our house was lightly damaged (old timber frame, moved ~2cm off its piles but was livable while that was fixed) and we had a few things break (including a 60L fishtank that nearly landed on me as I tried to get to a doorway), I know a few people who were without electricity and clean water for a week, or whose houses were damaged beyond repair then had to spend years fighting insurance companies to get what they were due.
I still live in the city, and it’s pretty much unrecognisable as to how it was before. Basically every major building in the central city had to either be torn down or significantly renovated to repair it. Basically every brick building built before the 1950s was damaged beyond repair. Huge chunks of residential land in the east of the city was so badly damaged that there is no way it could be safely built on again - the government brought all the houses, tore them down and fenced the area off.
I didn’t know Chrischurch also had earthquake in 2011…
7.1 in 2010 6.2 in 2011
Interesting tidbit: The 2011 earthquake had a lower magnitude however it had 3x the wave frequency than the 2010 which made it feel much more violent.
The first one was west of Christchurch, the second was south. Different direction of the waves brought many of the already weakened buildings down.
Where I was staying was on the hill of the epicenter of the second earthquake. Couldn’t stay from fear a boulder would roll through the house during an aftershock. I remember after every aftershock running outside to make sure nothing was coming our way.
The 2011 earthquake was not long before the Japan earthquake.
I flew into Christchurch the night before the 2011 earthquake, couldn’t do anything from all the damage. Flew to Indonesia. In Indonesia woke up to the rumble of a 6+ mag earthquake off the coast of Bali and ran out of the house…
That’s when Japan was already having 7+ magnitude earthquakes. The next day was the 9 magnitude earthquake in Japan.
Incredible experience.
Being on the hill must have been rough. Have a friend who moved to the city a few years ago and was super excited to find a bit of bare land up on the hill with a great view into the estuary to build a house on - explained why it was bare, didn’t seem to deter him.
It’s interesting how the geography affected things - another friend had a batch in Akaroa on the other side of the peninsula that barely felt the quakes - theory being the peninsula is a dead volcano, so it’s mostly really spongy basalt that effectively acted as a dampener and absorbed most of the energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_earthquake_(disambiguation)
One in 2010 that did a bunch of damage but only killed 2 people, but then triggered a significant aftershock in February 2011 that was much more destructive - partly because it was shallower and closer to the city, but also because lots of buildings had been damaged but not fully repaired.
Hey. So was I. I don’t live there anymore though.
Had a tornado go by 1/4 mile from our house once. It was dark so we didn’t really realize how close it was at the time. My dad and I were on the front porch when the sirens went off and were like “yea, whatever” because those things go off just about every time we have a storm in spring. Then we felt the air pressure drop and were like “Oh, shit, maybe we should go inside”. The next day we drove by where it went through and saw all the debris everywhere. Fortunately it was mostly empty field and didn’t hit any houses.
What does it feel like when the air pressure drops?
It went from feeling normal to feeling like there was less air around instantly. Like it was slightly harder to breathe and just feels lighter. It’s hard to explain. The closest thing I’d compare it to was going to someplace that’s a high altitude but it was an instant drop instead of changing as you go up.
To me at least, it feels like the air got heavier (even though it’s really getting lighter). That could be followed by your ears popping. Some people like me get joint pain. My wife gets migraines right away with big pressure drops. Atmospheric pressure is a weird thing.
Mine would be back in 2011, Tohoku Earthquake. Despite being pretty far from the epicentre, the earthquake is to this day the strongest I have felt…
Earthquakes have to be one of the weirdest natural disasters. I’ve only been in a ‘tiny’ 5.4 magnitude (+countless aftershocks) and it was an experience I will never forget - so surreal. I understood that the ground moved in an earthquake before, but there is a different level of understanding when you’ve felt the earth betray you en masse like that.
I’ve also been in a couple of tornados, which were also scary af, but in a more normal sort of way. They are amazingly loud and the sandpaper wind is so much more painful than I would have expected.
Interesting— growing up in California, I feel differently. I’ve never seen a tornado before but I think I’d be way more spooked by that than an earthquake. But I’ve been through plenty of earthquakes, including in the middle of the night when they woke me up, so they don’t really phase me. The only scary thing is that, unlike weather, you don’t know they’re coming. But they’re also over pretty quick (usually).
Same here. Was walking out of a friend’s apartment complex in Asakasa Tokyo where I was staying in when it hit. Heard this low rumbling that came from all directions and the birds were going nuts. Looked up and saw the high rise I just walked from swaying while the glass facade of another building was undulating. Never been in an earthquake before so I was more amused about the shaking ground than frightened. And it didn’t help that every single Japanese was very calm, so I thought it was no big deal until much later when the tsunami hit.
When I lived in San Jose as a kid, I experienced several earthquakes. Including the really big one that hit San Francisco in 1989. I remember it hitting while I was walking home from a friend’s house and it was strong enough to keep knocking me down.
This is mine too. I was six and lived in San Jose also. I don’t remember the earthquake itself but I have very vivid memories of the rest of the day, talking to neighbors, cooking dinner with the propane camp stove, candles, and hazy TV after midnight when the power finally came back on.
Loma Prieta gang rise up! I was in Los Gatos swinging across a set of monkey bars on a playground. I remember being able to see literal waves in the ground.
I was in Houston for Hurricane Harvey. We didn’t get flooded, but the whole city was paralyzed for two weeks. And that was just to get basic transportation functioning again. I was teaching undergraduate students at the time, and my class was just cancelled for two weeks in the fall term. We just missed two semesters of the fall term with no makeup.
My home didn’t get flooded, but many of my students and colleagues did experience flooding. We did however have a leak open up in the back wall of our townhome. We had a leak that allowed water in the back wall, which resulted in water damage in two rooms. I filed a claim with insurance, but they lowballed us, and after the hurricane, contractors only wanted to work on big projects, whole house gutting and repair. So I actually did the repairs myself. I figured I could either use the insurance payment to cover 1/3 of the repair cost, or I could use the insurance payment to buy the tools I needed to do it myself. I first built an access scaffolding behind the unit to fix the leak. Afterwards on the inside I tore out a bunch of drywall and repaired the interior damage.
Oh well, it put me down the path I’m on now. I eventually got really into woodworking, starting with the tools I had bought to do that repair. And further down the road, that put me on the path to pursuing a PhD in wood science. So what a tangled web we weave, I suppose…
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
Hurricane Sandy in Connecticut. My house caught on fire…twice…when a tree fell on some wires and caused power to backfeed into my home. Luckily I didn’t touch anything or I might not be here to tell the tale. It was supposedly put out once (fire was inside the walls), and I was allowed back to fetch a few essentials, but it filled up with smoke again because of a hot spot or something…and I had to convince dispatch to send a truck out a second time. I was displaced for three months and lost about 85% of my belongings. Luckily some VERY brave firefighters prevented my entire house from burning to the ground. 0/10 - do not recommend
I’ve also been in earthquakes, blizzards, and wildfires, but nothing comparable to that experience on a personal level.
I experienced Sandy while I was in college. My roommate and I decided to brave the storm to get food. Stupid idea, I know, but somehow we made it to the one open cafe safely and got pizza. My umbrella got completely destroyed.
Magnitude 6.7 earthquake. Woke up to it shaking my bed violently in my dorm room. (Boarding school) Thankfully, I didn’t have anything above me that could fall, but some of the other students kept books in the shelves above their beds. Suffice it to say they got an even ruder awakening than I did…
There was a big aftershock a few minutes later – just after I’d gotten the hell out of the building, basically – and smaller aftershocks for days afterwards.
It put a big crack in the floor of my dorm and everyone who lived there had to stay outside all day until the administration declared it safe for us to re-enter.
That was coincidentally the same day as a school festival and I’d spent the evening before working with my classmates converting the art room into a haunted house. I never got to see the mess, but whatever happened in there was so bad the room was unusable for months. Most of the rest of the festival (e.g. outdoor stalls and such) was still able to be run though, so they carried on with the parts they could. It was surreal.
I live on the east coast of the US, and I’ve experienced about four earthquakes in my lifetime. None very big.
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
Took a direct hit from Hurricane Ivan. Blew all our roofing off so the rain was blowing in and big chunks of ceiling were falling in while we were all huddled in the hallway. We found the roof of our back porch in the middle of the street, about 4 houses down. We’ve ridden out a lot of hurricanes over the decades, but Ivan was the scariest.
In the end we came out of it smelling like a rose. My wife’s parents had both recently passed, and we were planning on buying their house out of their estate. I was in the middle of readying our house for sale when the storm hit. Our house got wrecked, while the parents house was left pretty much unhurt, aside from a few missing shingles and a downed tree. We moved in immediately and ended up selling our house as-is to the “we buy ugly houses” people for about half it’s normal value, collected a fat insurance check from Liberty Mutual, which combined with the sale was enough to pay off the mortgage and pocket a few grand, which was right at what we hoped to sell it for because we didn’t have very much equity in it at the time. We ended up right where we planned on being, much sooner than we thought we would. We got lucky for sure…
I was 15 during the 1998 ice storm.
It’s obviously not as dangerous as a tornado or an earthquake or a flood, but it’s still a natural disaster, and disrupted society in the region for weeks and months.
At first it was difficult to realize the size of the catastrophe but then millions went without power, the infrastructure crumbled under the ice and roads became impracticable. The magnitude of the disaster became apparent when the army had to come and help.
Luckily I lived in a rural area at the time and we relied on a wood furnace for heat and hot water. We also shared a generator with other family members so I had power a few hours a day. Compared to people without heat water, food or electricity, it went ok for my family.
It took about 10 days for my region to have power back, while others had to wait for up to 30 days.
This left its mark on me and now I try to be prepared, have batteries charged, solar panels, water reserves, food for a few days, a camping stove, ways to keep warm, etc., just in case.
Tornados wreck my town every year. In short, it sucks.
Australia catches fire every half decade or so. Never had anything burn down because the RFS are fucking champions, but having it come near to your property is not uncommon here. When the big fires were going in 2019 we were wearing ppe at times to avoid the smoke inhalation. Wild times.
