Natural Disasters

I live in the boring Midwest. About the only thing we have are tornadoes or some occasional flooding. Sometimes we get crippling snowfalls - but that’s not really a disaster. You just get stuck at home for a day eating French toast and watching movies.

One of the more famous tornadoes in US history did hit our town when I was in kindergarten. LBJ was president and he came to town so it was a pretty big deal.

2004 or 5 Hurricane that crossed Florida from Keys to like Fort Pierce or so meant no power for days. I flew to AZ once airport opened I let my friend and his wife use my apt once my power came back before his. Curfew was 6 pm, and had to boil water.

Ice storm in NH, no power and freezing... that sucked. Had to use Wendy's wifi for work.

2009 we had an ice storm. The sounds of branches snapping sounded like gunshots. In my yard alone I had enough downed branches to build a wall across my front yard 80 feet long, 6 feet wide and six feet high after we paid to have our front yard cleaned. Lost 13 trees, which crushed my car, my neighbors car, their house, no electricity for 6 days in December. The single most fucked up thing is the "line". It was literally 400 feet from my house and we got crushed while 400 feet away all they got was rain.

I was at a management course and there was a guy in my group who handled assignments all over the country. He was in Charleston SC when hurricane Hugo hit, and he was stuck there for three days until the airport reopened and he could fly out to Los Angeles for his next job - just in time for the World Series earthquake!! If it weren't for bad luck ....

Down here South GA... parts of buildings have collapsed, trees have fallen, 40% of the city doesn't have power... but I'm still hoping the club is open tonight 😂

Only problem is in bad weather a lot of the out of town dancers don't come in.

I have had two close calls with tornadoes over the years.

The first was an F4 in 1999 when I was a 17 and working at a Costco in a suburb of Cincinnati. We got about a 5 minute warning that there was a tornado on the ground and heading our way so we had to get everyone in the store into the hallway area between the stockroom and freezers. Those of us who could see the security monitors in the manager's office were able to watch as the tornado approached and completely destroyed the gas station at the far end of the parking lot. It broke the pumps off the ground and tossed them like rag dolls, some of them were found almost a half mile away. I ended up having to replace the windshield and hood of my truck and had other hail damage that I simply couldn't afford to fix on it.

The second was just a couple of years ago in 2022 when an EF1 tornado came hit my home as I was working from home. Luckily my house only had some shingles and siding ripped off, but my detached garage that was about 30 feet from the side of the house was completely destroyed along with all of the contents of the garage. My travel trailer that was parked behind the garage was also completely ripped apart. The back half of my property is completely wooded and there is now a very visible path about 75 feet wide where the tornado came through and destroyed all of the trees.

Anyone planning on going to Vivide today better check with them by phone before you go. The building has a history of flooding during heavy rains.

Helene did not do any damage to my sub division 30 miles south of Atlanta. Just a lot of rain.

I've been in south Florida my whole life, I've been through many. Back as a teenager I was in a house that had the roof ripped off of it in Andrew. That shit was wild, I'd never seen anything like before and haven't since. We were literally sitting inside one minute, the next minute we were basically outside.

Luckily, it wasn't my family house that was destroyed. I've had significant damage to commercial property I owned during several storms. Back in I think it was 2004, we had those 3 or 4 storms in a row, I had significant damage to the first residential investment properties I ever bought. Those turned out to be positives for me, as the houses were kinda shitholes basically held together with duct tape and construction glue. But insurance ended up covering a lot of the repairs I had planned to make anyway.

More than the stories of damage, I remember the hurricane parties. We get all geared up and hunkered down, then when the storm comes it's fairly minor. We wind up in garages or on porches with friends or neighbors, drinking booze, talking shit. Often grilling out. We'd all usually play hooky from work and take an extra day off to "clean up debris" or "wait for the roads to be cleared" or some bullshit, which usually consisted of 2hrs of cleanup and 10hrs of time out on the boat. In recent years, some of those hurricane parties have included strippers, which always makes for an interesting time.

I also remember the aftermath. After Andrew, looting was a serious issue. It started out with regular thieves just trying to take valuables. There were assholes driving around breaking into any house or business that wasn't destroyed. But we had no power, no phones, no gas or grocery stores were open. So it escalated into people scavenging for food and gas and that's when it got real. Cops weren't really around. I got into my first fight that wasn't just some childhood bullshit bickering. Damn near got shot, damn near shot other people.

More recently, I have more pleasant memories of the aftermath. There was that storm that came through and flooded the shit out of the Fort Lauderdale area a few years ago. After that, I had a parade of strippers coming over for some time in the AC with a hot shower and a hot meal, followed by some hot sex.

I don't remember if it was that same storm, or another one, but there was something that flooded large areas and took out power to a large area but somehow the old Pre-remodel Booby Trap still had power and was unscathed. They opened that motherfucker up while it was still blowing 45mph out there, and it was fucking packed full to the gills.

^ he had prearranged for a commercial generator rental, that’s how they had power, I remember having that conversation with him a day earlier and put him in touch with a company that was a commercial equipment rental supplier.

Not a full-blown disaster, but I've often clubbed during a blizzard. Few customers, grateful girls.

The most interesting weather disaster in our area remains an amazing subject almost 50 years later, more so because of how society reacted, as opposed to what happens now in an emergency.
IN Feb. 1978 a snowstorm was expected and contrary to current myth, it was not a surprise. This storm came 10 days after a 20" snowfall with drains still blocked and roads still a bit of a mess. The storm didn't start early morning so everyone got up and went to work and schools were open. It started snowing late morning and a huge on-shore wind came up. By early afternoon it became apparant that something unique was happening so work and schoools all let out at the same time. With 50-60 mps wimdes and 24-30" of snow in a short time, eastern mass. got crushed.
Examples: Anthony's Pier Four, a restaurant on Boston Harbor had a 100 foot schooner anchored outside, which was a very cool bar. It sank. Nauset Light Beach down the Cape went into the winter with 500 parking spaces and emerged with 3, with the rest in the ocean.
In the day of rear wheel drive and bias ply tires, cars started sliding and stopping on Rte 128. Traffic stalled and people abandoned their cars on the road. If you have never seen the spectacle of tow trucks and front end loaders digging 10,000 cars out of the snow on the highway, it is stunning and took 6 days.
People banded together and became as one. The government sent emergency messages asking people with snow mobiles to go look for stranded drivers in the snow and bring them home with them. Gas stations opened up and gave free gas to these folks. Dunkin Donuts called in managers to open up and provide free coffee to rescue workers and snow plow drivers. One of my friends was stuclk at wotk, in the same clothes for 6 days. Another was at his fiancee's apartment waiting for her to get home, having a glass of wine with her roommate. He was there for 5 days and ended up dumping the fiance and marrying the roomamte 2 years later.
The best part? On my street and hundreds of others, the men all grabbed sbow shovels started at the end of the street and everyone helped everyone else until the street was done.
State was closed for 6 days. Pretty much anyone alive then still remembers that adversity brought out the best in all of us. Even fucking Mike Dukakis was a stud and a savior during this. Sorta miss that version of america.
No one clubbed. No one did anything but hang out with neighbors. Only day in 4 years at Umass that school was cancelled and we were 75 miles away.

Where to begin? 500 year flood event in Chicago suburbs circa 87-88 from biblical rainfall. Three days of hail caused roof failure in same house circa 2001. More blizzards, wicked heavy snow, and subzero cold snaps than I can count.

In New Orleans, I lived through Ivan, Cindy, Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Isaac and more. Also had two storms with golf ball and tennis ball sized hail, plus a tornado.

In Florida, it has been Irma, Ian, and now Helene. Also drive through the brush fires on I-75 around 2018.

Like @Dolfan, I’ve been in South Florida my entire life, and hurricanes are just a way of life. My house in Miami Beach was originally built in the 1940’s and she’s weathered a lot of storms. The hurricane parties in the 70s and 80s were great, but since Andrew, everyone now seems to be taking storms more seriously.
More recently, flooding has become a big issue due to sea level rise and the fact that everything’s paved over now, and a lack of suitable drainage infrastructure. I also believe that storms are much more intense now due to warmer water.
Ironically, severe hurricane damage often results in an increase to property values, like what happened in the lower Keys after Irma in 2017. The storm destroyed crappy old buildings and trailer parks that were replaced with high end condos and resorts. Same thing happened in the panhandle after hurricane Michael.

^ yep most of us in south Florida, have gotten smacked by a storm or a flood, and I’m no different, I lost my screen enclosure to Willa, and the insurance company was not very helpful, fortunately we put in accordion shutters in 1999, and we rewired the house for a generator back in 1996, so we’ve dodged a few bullets along the way. We are pretty well prepared for whatever comes our way, I hope.
Florida is a tough insurance market but people want to be here, so folks put up with the problems because the lifestyle is so great. It’s no longer cheap to live here, and I can see this state becoming more like California, because more and more, that’s the folks who can afford to live here.

Ski - My father was a Boston Firefighter during the Blizzard of 78. They put the entire department on a 3 days on, one day off schedule for two weeks. He has stories of them getting called to fires and having to watch the building burn down because they couldn't find any of the hydrants under ten foot snowdrifts. I grew up on the coast. My town got utterly crushed. I was a toddler, so I have no memory of it.

What I do remember is the so called "No Name Storm" in 1991. For those that don't know, this was same storm from the book and movie "The Perfect Storm.". My coastal town got crushed again. I remember being three blocks from the water in my father's fire boots raking seaweed out of storm drains in 3 to 4 feet of water.

I walked down to the beach the next day to see how bad the damage was. The street abutting the beach was gone. I remember getting home, my parents asking me what it looked like and saying Beach Avenue was gone. When asked "what do you mean it's gone?" I told them gone, as in it no longer exists and the beach was now on the front porches of the houses across the street.

For those of you that like lobsters, hundreds if not thousands of them washed up the beach and people were filling garbage bags with fresh lobsters and bringing them home. So there was that. Crazy, crazy experience. A pissed off Mother Nature is no joke.

I was a freshman in college during the blizzard of ‘78. At that time this university had never closed for snow in its entire history. The chatter in the dorm was “the president is from Syracuse NY so snow doesn’t phase him - he will not cancel classes”. Boy, were they wrong

Estero Key aka Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel Island and Pine Island all took additional damage from Hurricane Helene. There was also flooding inland from those in Cape Coral and downtown Fort Myers. Cedar Key was landfall for Hurricane Helene and everything below a second floor was smashed into pieces no larger than toothpicks. Grand Isle, in Louisiana, was flattened during Katrina and every hurricane since.

At some point, people will need to pull their collective heads out of their asses and realize that these barrier islands are our first defense against hurricanes and storm surges. After the storm does the demo work for us, the state and feds should immediately set about restoring the island back to a natural state with mangroves, dunes, and sand grasses which would naturally stabilize the soil and reduce the battering impacts of surge and waves on neighborhoods on the mainland. Some people would lose their homes, but the lives and properties protected by restored barrier islands would more than offset that cost.

@Skibum609: "Feb 1978: The best part? On my street and hundreds of others, the men all grabbed snow shovels started at the end of the street and everyone helped everyone else until the street was done." This was a time when neighbors helped each other and pitched in. I miss that a lot.

I grew-up in Syracuse NY - legendary for Winter. I was just a real little kid at the time, had a week off from school - EXCELLENT, except my brother and I had to shovel the driveway, and city plows had no worries at shoving street snow the end of you driveway. To this day, I still see articles about The Blizzard of 1966. A Nor'easter started up the Eastern Seaboard and hit VA and the coast to Maine. It covered as far east as Cleveland, and Syracuse. At the same time a heavy Lake Effect Blizzard headed to Syracuse with record lows to like -25F and 45". And this snow is very wet and heavy, not like Colorado's fluffy stuff I call "amateur" when people complain about 6". All you New Englanders know what I mean. I do miss the Fall colors...

Oswego, NY (~60 due north of Syracuse) had 100" over 4 days, wind to like 70MPH, ~200 died. Many froze to death. The mist and waves off Ontario buried cars and houses along the shoreline in very thick ice. This Blizzard was massive even for this region.

I lived in Miami for 18 months. I was there for the Cuban Flotilla and Cocaine Cowboys. The scene in "Scareface" at the detention camp under the Interstate, that was real from the Flotilla. A Hurricane was forecasted, as I recall it turned out to be a Cat 1 or 2 and went north of Miami to hit Ft Lauderdale or up a tad more, my apartment never lost power. I remember on local news to knock coconuts, avocados and citrus out of trees. One weather guy said, "Ever see the damage a 90 MPH coconut or avocado pit can do?" Is that real? No idea if this is really a problem or not, however, a 90 MPH coconut would be like a Civil War cannon ball.

I have a very close friend in Tallahassee I heard from last night. She lost power, has a Generac, and the roof was not damaged. She said the noise and driving wind was so hard you couldn't play Led Zeppelin or ZZ Top loud enough to drown it out. Her son who is 10 said the storm was cool.

Ive smoked weed and had sex during earthquakes. Drove through brush and forest fires. Never gave it much thought. You have to be in the moment because you cant do anything.

^
That wasn't an actual earthquake when you were having sex dougster, that was the room creaking from the fat broad that you were with, lulz

I'm not going to complain about having a sheltered life...

I survived Hurricane Bob and used to have a shirt to prove it

The closest natural disaster that I dealt with from a distance was when I was in the Navy and we went through a few typhoons / hurricanes out in the Pacific back in 1971 and 1972.It put that aircraft carrier I was on through a lot of heavy seas.
In 1992 on vacation my and my family had hurricane Andrew chasing us around the southeast. we were in New Orleans a few days before it hit that area... delt with the rain at disneyworld and then in Nashville for the heavy rain after it was degraded...

This literally blows. Feel bad for the folks in that area. The area is the most visited national park by millions, so impacts will be felt forever.
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