What's the worst natural disaster you've been in?

I live in tornado alley

I was on a camping trip in Panama, and because there’s no service in the jungle, didn’t know that a hurricane was coming. I rode out hurricane David in a tent on the side of a mountain.

Surprisingly I’m no longer a fan of camping.

2011 Tohoku earthquake

The Baltic sea just had a once-in-a-century storm surge this fall. There was little danger since the baltic sea is rather well protected, but many local dikes weren't up for the job, resulting in quite some damage (in general, the houses on my island were mostly unscathered).

Took us the better of two months to drain the water from the island, and in the meantime we had to hike along the more robust dikes to get to the harbor.

We also had to empty our lakes of saltwater to attempt and save our fire-bellied toads, as the Copenhagen Zoo is trying to preserve the species on the island.

2022 Australian floods. Woken up pre-dawn by a car alarm set off by rising flood waters. Thankfully I had the foresight to park up on the street, which was a higher level, because water was more than half way up the height of the wheels by then in my garage.

All the proper roads out of the area were flooded already before I left, but thankfully I could get out by driving through pedestrian areas of the university I live near.

That was a very anxiety-ridden day as I waited until I could go back to assess the damage. Luckily the water only reached about 3/4 the height of the garage, which is below the 1st floor apartments. My apartment is at the top of a very small (like 5 m vertical) hill, just enough that we got off safe when neighbours did far, far worse.

2003 Canberra bushfires. My little city was made to burn.

2019 Black Summer bushfires - see: whole fucking country either on fire or enveloped in smoke. I owned a tonne of masks before Covid hit.

We've been lucky in the last few bushfires seasons since but it won't last.

Climate change in general.

Weather getting worse and worse

The 2019 Memorial Day tornado outbreak. Less than a week away from the 5 year anniversary of it.

My apartment is located roughly 500 feet (152 meters) from the end point of an EF4 tornado that hit and about 1500 feet (~450 meters) of the start point of an EF3 tornado that hit. One ended and the other began within minutes of each other.

I recall I looked out of my front door and could only see the sideways winds. I had just woken up after sleeping all day because I was tired, having stayed up late the night before, burying my cat which had eaten mouse poison, which I was unaware of the symptoms for until it was too late. I had to bury my cat a second time then next day and broke my hand in frustration while doing it.

My power was out for 10 days and I had no water for 6 days. I didn't own a car and public transportation had halted in my area from trees blocking the roads. I walked 4.5 miles to a nearby Urgent Care for my hand but they had closed due to damage. From there I walked 9 miles to the nearest hospital. They had too many people. I gave up waiting to be seen after 8 hours and went home, then wrapped my hand with bandages myself, around an old brace I had from a previous unrelated broken wrist.

When my power came back, I learned that a power surge had fried the power supply of my computer. I eventually managed to check my email at the community college, which is when I learned my health insurance coverage through Medicaid had ended, thanks to an order from the president at the time.

My absentee landlord never checked on the building. Less than a month later, the in-wall A/C unit fell out of the wall, leaving a hole large enough for me, a 6'3" 250 lb man, to easily crawl through. It was there for 6 months before it was repaired by the landlords maintenance person, who bought a cheap window unit A/C and stuck it in the hole then filled in around it with expanding foam.

The hole was 'fixed' around the same time I was able to buy a replacement power supply for my computer. My data storage drive had also stopped working and I learned an important lesson regarding backups. That was right around Christmas time.

Unrelated to the tornados, that's about when I started passing kidney stones. I tried to go to the hospital for them but without insurance, they turned me away. It wasn't considered an emergency. I missed several days of work while I passed them at home. Work said because of the amount of time I missed, I needed a doctors note to return to work. Work would schedule me 6 hour shifts, 6 days a week, which comes to 36 hours. Employees needed 40 hours a week to be considered full time and to qualify for the company insurance. Without insurance, I couldn't find a doctor who would see me. I was terminated and the reason they listed was that I abandoned my job.

My official last day with the company was 31 December 2019. I was ready to start a new year. 2019 had not been kind to me. I remember thinking to myself on New Years Day "At least 2020 can't possibly be worse, right?"

2010 chilean Earthquake and tsunami (8.8), and the 2016-17 forest fires too

Chile has an extreme propensity to natural disasters, but Chileans have learn to deal with them so they aren't that bad, like after the 2010 8.8 quake there was an 8.5 or so in 2015 that caused little damage because lessons were learned, consider that quakes over 6.0 happens every year or two in chile, also we have floods, forest fires? Volcanoes, landslide, etc.

My grandma felt the 9.5 Valdivia quake (biggest earthquake recorded in world history) and shortly after started working in the ministry of infrastructure, she always says she had to type "devastated area" a lot lol, my mom also felt her fair share of quakes too, and my parents were just away from Santiago (the city where we live) when a enormous flood hit here and caused a ton of damage, and we're not talking about the natural disasters that happened in other areas of the county, like more quakes, floods, forest fires and volcanoes...

Yeah, if you want to safely-ish experience natural disasters, come live in chile! Lmao.

The worst was also the funniest. An earthquake hit while I was on the toilet.

Slow one but- several years of drought and then bug infestation of some of our forests.

It affected badly planted forests (monocultures) but still it is sad to see bare places you remember covered.

There are several of these man made disasters around here but this one is most visible.

Hurricane Irene in the Caribbean in, what, 2011? Luckily we were tucked up safely in a hotel with a concrete structure but it still scared the crap out of us.

We thought our windows and patio door were going to blow out and we used all the bedding and towels to stop water coming in under the door. It soaked up so much water that we couldn’t lift them in the morning.

Thankfully I think it dropped to a cat 2 (?) as it hit land, so damage wasn’t as bad as expected. Still, our hearts broke when we saw the damage to the island and homes as we returned to the airport a few days later. I don’t know how the locals deal with it every year.

A hurricane. Which is pretty mild for natural disasters, but some of my neighbours lost their roofs.

Global Climate Change / Anthropocene Extinction event.

The Kaikoura Earthquake in November 2016. Imagine lying between the rails of a railway track and having a freight train pass over you - our whole HOUSE was shaking like that.

And we were HUNDREDS of kilometers away from the epicenter.

Glass fire in central California, I saw it the very first morning on my way to work (a Sunday), had no idea it was going to become as big as it did.

I drove through an f3 tornado without realizing it was a tornado.

Was headed home after work one night and my girlfriend at the time wanted taco bell so when I finally headed home I was met with a wall of rain that immediately blinded me. I pulled off the road into a clearing and as soon as I did a lightning bolt hit the telephone pole next to me.

Needless to say I floored it and moved a decent distance from the pole which was now on fire. I waited for the rain to clear a bit and decided it was time to drive home.

Bad idea.

Next thing I know I'm literally dodging falling trees left and right with the wind almost forcing me off the road. I eventually made it home but not until having to turn around multiple times due to trees blocking roads and having to drive over downed power lines that I didn't know were there until I was already driving on them.

3/10 wouldn't recommend.

The sad part is I recently drove through another tornado and I thought it would never happen again 😭

Poland

The human race

94 Northridge Earthquake.

Seemed pretty shitty at the time, but having seen the shits that happened in the time since, I got off easy.

Have been through hurricanes, but the most severe natural disaster I've been in was a flood around 1980, it rained steadily, not so hard but without stopping, for over 2 weeks and the storm drain system just slowly got overwhelmed and the streets started filling up, my mom's house was pretty far above street level and far from the river and the bay but still got flooded, people were getting out on boats in what had been streets but now were streams. I was young and remember getting out but don't remember how we returned.

Loma Prieta earthquake.

American Northeast - Blizzard of 1996 It snowed for days! School was closed for a week. Then unseasonably warm weather melted the tons of snow and the river flooded. As if being 13 wasn’t difficult enough, that was quite a year

Ice storm in 1998 in Maine. Tame compared to some of these, but a huge part of the state was just covered in multiple inches of ice. We didn't have power for 3 weeks (due to ice buildup pulling down power lines, or trees falling on them) and while the roads were plowed, they had inches-thick ice on them in most areas so we could leave the house, but it was like, 5-10 mph speeds, tops.

Article from last year talking about it

definitely the Tubbs Fire. You can see where my childhood home used to be in the wikipedia image! Fortunately, we didn't live there at the time, we were a couple neighborhoods over, but it was still quite scary, the air was horrible, it lasted forever, and we had to evacuate for a while to my grandma's house to the south. Fortunately the worst of the damage to our home was holes melted in the fake grass from raining embers, and a persistent smell of smoke, and nobody i knew got hurt.

someday, i want to live somewhere that doesn't have to worry about 'fire season'.

I've seen the aftermath of various larger ones,but that is kind of my job,so it doesn't count.

And I got married on the day on the day my wife's hometown was hit by the Central European summer floods. We didn't notice much, though,thanks to fabulous staff at the venue.

I experienced a few local ones, though - an avalanche, a thunderstorm in the alps that had torrential gusts of 180km/h and killed a few people (and we were in a very exposed spot-that was fucking scary) - one person died a mere 800m away from us (but we didn't know and would not have any means to get there in time anyway, as it was 600m vertical rock between us and he died on the spot).

Hurricane Katrina

The August 2020 derecho that tore up a lot of the US Midwest. I lost power for 4 days, there was extremely hot weather, and I had a menial labor job at that time. it was hell

Florida. Need I say more?

Hurricane Harvey was a bastard of a storm.

I was up all hours of the night for days on end keeping tabs on the flood control reservoir at the end of my street only a few houses away, it got dangerously close to overflowing but fortunately never did.

Craziest thing, I remember being inside my house in the middle of the day all dark no power, and I hear the unmistakable sound of a military helicopter getting closer and closer and suddenly the house was starting to shake. I ran outside and looked up and there was a Blackhawk hovering no higher than 50 meters directly above my house and a soldier poking their head out the side looking straight down, I swear we made eye contact it was so close. Fucking wild.

Hurricane Katrina. We were on the outskirts of the storm and were inundated with evacuees. The city was closed for a curfew. Got stuck driving far from home to sleep at a friend's house. Spent the next 3 days cutting trees and cleaning debris at all of our family and friends houses. No power. Hottt. Wake me up when September Dnds was real to us.

The Witch Creek Fires in San Diego in 2007. I didn't receive the reverse 911 call and ended up fleeing my building after it was already on fire.

Both major freezes in the last 5 years in Texas.

Twitter 😂

Tied between Hurricane Sandy (I was literally in Connecticut and the winds were still bad) and a recent-ish (March 2023) wind storm here in Kentucky. 70mph winds. Very fun. A McDonalds got can opener-ed. Power was out for 3 days, and we were some of the first. Worst winds in a couple of decades.

I live in New York, so natural disasters are pretty rare other than the random hurricane, though I have experienced about four earthquakes (though mild) in my lifetime, and once a tornado came through my neighborhood.

Have born

I've been in earthquakes, hurricanes, and a couple blizzards and ice storms. The worst were the tornados. I would rather put up with the first four combined than be anywhere near an F-4 or F-5 ever again.

I've been through some significant droughts, which are probably worse overall that the few minor floods and forest fires.

When I was little we had a bad storm that knocked down turns of trees and took out the power for like a week.

More recently, various wildfires in California. We fortunately didn't need to evacuate, but we were ready and could see the flames cresting the hills of the state park from our house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Nargis

There was one in particular that almost did me in because I have no skills that would've helped.

Central Virginia reason, so Hurricane Isabel, I think we lost power for like a week had a bunch of trees down. Hurricane Gaston, wasn’t as severe I don’t remember a lot of wind or power going out but it just dumped a ton of rain on the region b/c like it just move so slowly over the region. And then I just remember a hand full of snow storms that closed school for awhile, and I think like a really bad ice storm where we lost power for like a week or two. But Isabel by far the worst.

Probably the May 5th tornado outbreak.

In the grand scheme of disasters, I didn't get this too bad, but hurican Ida.

I live in an area with a lot of rivers and streams and we experienced some historic flooding for our area to the point that it took us a few days or weeks to even know exactly how high the water got because the river gauges went completely under water, the old records were totally shattered.

My house was at a high enough elevation that I didn't have an immediate flood danger to my house, but we did loose power for about 16 hours, which meant I did need to go bail out my basement sump pump every so often because the pump wasn't running without power. People who were closer to the rivers of course got it worse, some people had to be evacuated from their homes by boat, lots of flood damage to go around, a handful of homes practically got washed away completely. There was some concern about certain dams potentially being overwhelmed but thankfully nothing much came of that.

I work in my county's 911 center, and of course they paged out for anyone available to come in to do so. I tried, couldn't make it more than a mile or so in any direction without hitting flooding and that was the before the worst of the flooding. Some roads and bridges were really fucked up from the flooding.

Luckily I have some friends nearby with a generator so we ran our perishables over to them to throw in their fridge. Those friends get their water from a well, and their generator doesn't have enough juice to run the well pump with their fridge and stuff, so we bartered some potable water and cold showers with them in exchange.

They pulled up the stats at work for how many storm related calls we had, water rescues, electrical fires, downed trees, flooding, etc. I don't remember the numbers, it's been a few years but they we insane.