Hurricane Katrina. I lived in Gulfport, MS. I was on leave in Maine 3 weeks before we were heading back to Fallujah. Friday before the storm they showed the track landing between Mobile and Gulfport and we started heading south. We got back to Gulfport the afternoon before she made landfall and had just enough time to board up, fuel the generators, fill the water jugs and grab a few hours of sleep before it hit us.

We got through it with not too much damage, many of my troops lost everything

My house


Gulfport and Biloxi damage

Yea, Iraq.

I did cleanup work in Thailand after the Boxing Day Tsunami, and then after Katrina less than a year later.

Mother nature don't play.

Asphalt driveway cracked straight across the day of the huge Indonesian quake/tsunami.  Maybe coincidence but thats when it happened

Luckily this section of SW Pa has been very mundane.    There was a hollow near ligonier PA that always got a tornado through it every year.   And Pittsburgh used to get a tornado or microburst during their arts festival in June.   But the last few years has been mild in Pittsburgh, and I dont recall the last tornado in Lignonier.  
The house did get shook for about 15 seconds several years ago when there was a quake in Virginia
Sit too high to have any natural flooding problems.

Concur the earthquake was brutal. My kid was 4 and now freaks out over every noticeable tremor. I was 1 during the volcano.

Endured a tornado hunkered down in a tent.

The deafening roar of the wind and sounds of trees crashing down all around me still haunt me.  The tent amazingly held, everything else was gone.

Utility line clearance trimmers are there first, before the linemen.

Had 2 tornadoes pass within ~200 yards during the April 27, 2011 outbreak when I lived in Alabama. Luckily we only had minor roof damage and trees down.

Never experienced anything remotely close to any of this in 33 years.

Now I live in “tornado alley” so will see what my first spring holds

Hurricane Kate - 1985  The eye came through 10 miles west of us.  80 mph - gusts to 105

I worked Sheriff's Posse that night. ALL roads in and out of town were totally blocked by big pines down.

The next day when I saw some of the roads I was patrolling the night before, I almost shit. Huge pines could have taken me out at any moment.

Had a UPS driver helping a wrecker driver get killed by a falling tree. Many folks were blocked in their cars on the road by falling pines.

We were without electricity for 5 days. Major power line damage all over the area.

Blizzard of 78 was interesting.   We lived in a crappy old trailer that had super thin walls.   Seriously, maybe 2” thick.  The oil furnace wouldn’t keep up.  It would run continuously and trailer was getting colder.   Huge drifts of snow made travel impossible.   My grandparents sent food to us on a snowmobile.

June 29, 2012 was a derecho that left us without power for a week.  It was also extremely hot when the power was out.

June 2012 derecho


Also had a tornado on the south end of my property.  It only damaged some of the corn that was in the path.   It crossed the road and lifted off the ground.  We had a sheet of plywood land 20 feet from our house and other Debris from the tornado landed at least 11 miles away.   I was at work at the time, but my wife saw it.

Red River has flooded on us a few times in the last 30 years.

Katrina…

One inch of snow. I was two miles away from where this photo was taken.

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does this count? It was so cute when it was small.


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We haven't survived that yet and it's not natural.

Hurricane Ian this past Sept. still displaced and living in a camper with wife, two kids, and a couple dogs.

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Hurricane Floyd was epic around my parts. Flooding like nobody has experienced here. Never forget fish swimming on the road and in peoples yards that were nowhere close to rivers or creeks lol.

Ditto. Both threw me completly outta bed
.

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Hurricane Frederick, Dauphin Island/Mobile Alabama 1979.  

No water for 5 days, no electricity for 2 1/2 weeks.  

Hurricane Katrina.  I wasn’t affected damages-wise, but knew many who were.  And knew the chaplain of Charity hospital who was at the hospital and stuck there after.  He wrote a book aboit it.  

I remember the day bf, out grocery shopping to prepare. The sky was still.  Just a weird feeling.  Then Sunday morning, Mayor Nagin in NOLA says to evacuate.  

The next one is the great flood of Baton Rouge in 2016, I think.  3 family members lost homes. The flood was in Livingston Parish, but Baton Rouge is what folks will know.

The 2020 fire complex in RMNP.  

Brutal cold.  103 mph winds when some of these photos were taken.  A boiling pot of water of gradual NF closures, road closures, smaller local evacuations, voluntary evacuations, and then one big evacuation when one of the fires jumped the Continental Divide up around Hallets Peak, or so, culminating in a big moose out front telling folks the park was closed.










This was the hood of my truck about 9 hours before the town of Estes Park was evacuated.  I had been up on the Lower East Face of Longs Peak that day, and was in the lee of the smoke from the East Troublesome fire, as that fire covered 20 linear miles towards me, and I was completely unaware, maybe getting photo of the smoke coming over the peak on my drive out, maybe not, I'd have to look at the timestamps.  When I saw the debris on my truck, I decided to leave town, but ran into road closures and detours that just brought me back into town, where I slept in the parking lot of the police station, figuring I'd wake up in the evacuation commotion.  I might have caught some footage of the fire over at Grand Lake on a TV at the bar, but nobody was really paying attention to that, either.  It wasn't until the morning when I was washing up at the laundromat when I happened to be talking to an NPS ranger who had a pile of bags at his feet - and he told the East Troublesome fire, that wasn't even at Grand Lake this time yesterday, had not only burned past Grand Lake, but jumped the Continental Divide and was on a path into Estes Park - and the town was about to be evacuated.  30 minutes later, just after I had filled up my gas tank, and pulled away from the pump into a parking space to speak with a former student of mine on the phone, from this hilltop, I watched every emergency vehicle in town light up and take off in every direction imaginable.  In five minutes time, it was a 1/4 mile line for this gas station.



This is a pano of Estes Park 20 minutes prior to the mandatory evacuation.  The fire was coming from one direction, and a massive cold front that was going to drop the temperatures to single digits and dump close to a foot of snow was coming from the other.  This is the scene as those two forces of nature met in Estes Park 22 Oct 2020.  If that cold front had arrived just a half a day later, the town of Estes Park would have been burned to the ground.



And the evac roue to the south, with some additional road closures and detours.  Sherrif's Office personnel were going all down these various dirt roads to make sure that residents got the word about the evacuation.



Here is a comparison to the Yellowstone fires in the 1980s.  While the fire complex at RMNP doesn't cover as much area, the East Troublesome covered 20 miles in one day.  I can't recall anything in my lifetime that's done that.

As far as destruction, was laying wood to a chick once and broke the bed. Had to fix it after i finished.

As for disasters that caused mental anguish, i once did the courtesy flush when i took a huge dump and it plugged the toilet. The water level came up high enough that it dipped my nuts.  That was a pretty tough one to get over

1997 flood of the Red River. 1000 year event according to the "experts"

Was the largest evacuation in US history up until Katrina.







The firetruck in this picture is sitting on a flat bed semi tailer.  Decent size boats could traverse the downtown streets.





This was the house of a good friend of mine at the time.



After all was said and done there was not a single death attributed to the flood and crime and looting was nearly non-existant.

That is why I live in North Dakota.

Did anyone else already say "My first marriage"??

Yeah I think most of the holes were being vac'd due to all the utilities in the ground.

Yeah and they sit and wait until the line crew shows up to install grounds and deemed safe.

I live in Flint, MI.

The Great Recession was brutal, I consider it a natural disaster caused by morons in government.

1976 Michigan Ice storm

I had a raven fly off with all my keys while I was cutting firewood in Alaska. That kinda sucked

I guess it was Hurricane Hermine for me (so far).  It was only a cat 1 when it hit land 19 miles from me, which says a lot about how lucky I've been, living within 25 miles of the gulf coast for the last 45 years.

Anyway it was a direct hit, in the middle of the night, and knocked over a number of oaks in my yard and across my driveway, and about 25 pines across the neighborhood entrance road.  Power was out for about a week, too.

Tropical Storm Debby (2012) dropped over 30" of rain in 2 days, but I'm on a spot that's a little higher than the surrounding, and of course its mostly sand here.  Was a good test, so I don't worry about flooding anymore.

That flood was something like no other.  With a hurricane you expect it can happen.  This was a freak accident.  I still remember being in BR 2 days before moving my daughter into her apt for LSU. The sky was gray and it was already starting to rain.  I go on back home to nola and am getting phone calls on Saturday of family flooding and what’s happening and nobody could get to them.  Then phones went dead.  It was Livingston Parish, but people say Baton Rouge.

Don't know, I'm 34. Ask me in a few decades.

Immediate: Snovid 2021

Longest lasting effect: Katrina... refugees

You are one old guy.

Hurricane/tropical storm Irene.  

Absolutely devistating for the state of Vermont.  We build our road alongside rivers.  The rivers destroyed roads EVERYWHERE.  The flash flooding was insane.  There were entire towns that were cut off for a week or more.  My wife at the time was stuck at work for over a week.  There were about 3-4 roads destroyed between us.  Thankfully she worked at a hotel.  

In chronological order:

Ice storm of '94
Blizzard of '96, 38 inches of snow overnight.
Hurricane Floyd, I was stuck in New Brunswick with my vehicle on the other side of the Raritan River in Piscataway.  iirc, it was something like 14 feet higher than the next highest flood level recorded.
The surprise flood of 2004, 13 inches of rain in about 15 hours just in my area.  It blew out dozens of dams across the county.
Hurricane Sandy
and last but certainly not least, The Biden Presidency

1993 when St. Louis MO area had a once every 500 years flood.

Hmm i hadnt really thought about ice and winter weather being a disaster.

06 we got 6 inches of freezing rain with 70mph winds followed by 4 ft of snow. Not a powerline was left. Most farmhouses were drifted over to the point folks could not get out and a lot of the community went around with front end loaders digging people out of their houses. I kept chains on my pickup for 2 months that winter

For all its faults, NJ is pretty low on the list of places with bad natural disasters.  3x the annual snowfall in one night is serious business for us.

Multiple Gulf Coast hurricanes over my lifetime when we lived on or near the Texas coast.  Celia when I was a little kid was probably the worst.

A tornado hit our house when we lived in Kansas.  Grateful that it was only an F1.

Charlie, Jean, Wilma, Irma...all assholes.

I'd still rather be in hurricane country than tornado, earthquake, mudslide, blizzard, area though.

We get plenty of notice.

Although hurricanes are certainly life changing. I'm sure we have some southwest Florida members that got turned upside-down.

Been way too close to a few tornadoes, like...car rocking around and losing sight of the semi-truck in from me close.
We were missed by the huge flood in Nashville by less than a mile.

That's all I've got...and all I want

Four hurricanes in the Houston, TX area. Alicia, Rita, Ike and Harvey. Went through the eye on Alisha and Ike. No power for a week after Alicia. No power for two weeks after Ike; my high rise office building was closed for two months after Ike. Harvey flooded out our office equipment storage; flooded my son's in laws home that we spent a week cleaning out and tearing out sheetrock, etc.

At the end of the day from these storms our personal losses just amounted to some trees going down, fences getting blown down and inconveniences to eating, sleeping, working and shopping. Just reinforces the idea to be prepared and go with the flow. We also installed a 38 KW whole house generator after Ike.

Also went through numerous flooding events in the Houston area over the years; always chuckle about launching our canoe in neighbors front yard during 1994 flood of the San Jacinto River/Lake Houston near Houston, TX. Neighbor was a local newscaster. We ended up on the 10 pm news. Fun paddling through the golf course and down the greenbelts. Spent many hours prepping neighbors homes as the water was rising. Also had to deal with the same flood tearing out some corporate pipelines that I spent a lot of time working with customers and authorities on repairs, etc.

Went through the cold snap of Feb 2021 in the Texas Hill Country. Again we were more or less prepared. Had a wood stove for heat when power was cut. Only issue was diesel vehicles would not start in the cold (fuel gelled) for a few days and a minor concussion from a slip on the ice. Lost some livestock (new born goats). Finally got our solar bank and battery backup installed after the ice storm (I guess there is a pattern here; do these things after the event, lol, learn what works and what doesn't). Also have fuel additive now for cold weather diesel operation. We also have carried lots of spare parts at the ranch house for plumbing repairs, etc. for years.

In 2007, my first wife died after a lengthy illness.  I was technically bankrupt due to all the medical debt, yet I clawed my way out of it.

Here it is 2023, and I'm just over the 90 day mark in the separation from my second wife.  Other than financially, this marriage ending isn't anywhere near as bad as the death of my first wife.

Holy Shit!

F 3 took everything. Just a foundation left.

I-10 outside of Beaumont...