Fires, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, and the like.

[spas-ticShotty 3,588]

I've had numerous tornado warnings encountered in the Charlotte area. Plus, when I was in Bogota, Colombia, a magnitude 4 earthquake struck. Since I was on a rolling bed, I didn't notice jack-diddly-squat. Mah grandparents have been in Hurricane Andrew back in 1992 (They were in Miami Beach, so they felt the full brunt of it), and they were in a typhoon back during a Hong Kong trip in 1999.

Edited August 22, 2012 by akimBrony

[Regality 233]

When I used to live in Southern California we had (small) earthquakes quite frequently. There was a larger one that I do remember quite vividly though, where the floor cracked and some of the furniture was damaged.

 

Other than that, I did have a small house fire a year ago. Fortunately, I was able to smell the smoke before it could really get bad, and only one room was damaged.

~~

Edited August 22, 2012 by VOODOO

[Envy 6,529]

Even though I live in Oklahoma, the most severe thing I have ever been through was an ice storm. It knocked the power out for weeks for some locations (thankfully my house got power back a few days or so after the storm), but the costliest part of it was the trees and damage caused by them.

 

We didn't personally deal with the worst of it, but still had a load of clean-up to do:

 

 

 

Oh, and this also happened:

 

 

 

Miraculously (well, not really, but you get my point) it didn't do a bit of damage. However, it was the car I was supposed to learn to drive, and it was just the whole par for the course of that year in being that my future being 'normal' was being crushed right in front of my eyes.

 

Now, we would have actually had damage, but we moved quickly. We had another car parked right next to that one, but we moved it minutes before a huge branch would have crushed it. And it actually would have hurt it.

 

Edited August 23, 2012 by Envy

[Dusty Soul 2,614]

I've been in a pretty severe thunderstorm in the middle of my counties 4H fair. I was walking and a huge gust of wind started blowing tents up and it started raining. I continued walking through the chaos. It was awesome a wall of wind you could actually see started blowing the tents apart, one by one. It was awesome. I continued walking through the tents that were flying by me. I saw my parents inside a building and I went to join them and all of a sudden a tent comes flying right in front of my face. I started running. It rained really hard that we could hardly see.

Oh did I mention it was awesome.

[ShinyRibbonsAndSparkles 164]

I get really severe weather once in a while. One time at 5am on a school morning a few years ago we had to go to our basement in the middle of a tornado warning. Thank goodness we weren't hit.

 

Also, a few winters ago we had a massive ice storm. Trees coated in ice, thick snow (heck yes), and tree damage. One morning I was sitting there in my pajamas, eating cereal and watching cartoons, when I hear a gigantic thump in the backyard. It turns out a huge branch broke off and fell from our backyard tree.

Edited August 23, 2012 by ShinyRibbonsAndSparkles

[brian577 120]

Well I'm living in a natural disaster right now. I posted on the last page on how my town was nearly hit by a wild fire 6 years ago, well it's happening again. There is a fire dangerously close to the town, evacuations are just on the outskirts but it's not looking good.

It's 1 AM in the morning and I don't feel like going to bed anytime soon.

Edited August 30, 2012 by brian577

[~WhiteHawk~ 186]

I live in Florida, so I've been through a lot of hurricanes and storms.

 

Once, at my grandfather's house, there was a tornado in the neighboring county that tore off part of a jail.

 

A few years ago, there was this huge storm rolling through at about 5 in the morning when I heard about a tornado warning on my radio while getting ready for school. I woke up my mom and we turned on the news to see that 3 tornadoes were headed in our direction but were currently on the water. We were one of the only solid houses on our road, so we had a family with 4 kids stay at our house that day. One of them went to school though, since our middle school had a very safe gym for the students to stay in during something like that. It was completely made of concrete, so her parents sent her there during the storm. The rest of the kids stayed at our house, though, since the elementary school was a piece of shit.

 

Two of the tornadoes died when they hit land, and the other one skirted around our area at the last minute. A few other formed I think, but none of them hit us. The next day there was a big storm, but no tornado warnings yet so I went to school that day. But during first period we were stuck for longer than usual because the winds were pretty bad. Oh my god, I was terrified. Luckily, no tornadoes that day.

 

I also slept through a earthquake in Nevada once. While I was there, there was this huge blizzard too. My cat got stuck in it and we couldn't do anything. A week later he showed up though.

[~The Snowy Wolf~ 1,579]

I'm going back home from hurrication (hurricane vacation. It's Louisiana lingo) in the morning. I can't believe hurricane Isaac was on the 7th anniversary of Katrina

[Gone Airborne 22,008]

When I was like 3 or 4 I remember there was a (really) bad tornado very close to where we lived at the time. I faintly remember looking out the window just out of curiosity to see what it looked like outside... I was terrified at the time this was such a long time ago I am amazed I actually remember 0.o

[Retro*Derpy 3,833]

I've experienced an earthquake only once, and it was so short I mistaked it as thunder at first. Also I live in tornado alley, so tornados are a regular during spring.

 

The worst one would of been while I was at school. As the school went into lockdown at 2:50, 5 minutes before release, my mother called saying she wanted me home instead and that I need to pick up my brother and lock the house down. Boy, driving home all the trees were swirling and everyone was practically speeding. Once arriving home and locking everything down, the power went out, trees were uprooting, and I locked my brother and I in the basement. Luckily after an hour of the intense storm we found most of everything to still be intact, and the house only moderately damaged. Scary and exciting.

[Neptunebyte 22]

I live in Chicago, so I have seen my fair share of extreme weather, mainly cold weather and severe thunderstorms.

 

I believe this was in 2006, a derecho thunderstorm passed by the city at night. The tornado alarms started blaring even though a tornado wasn't reported in Cook County. The wind was so strong it made the rain look like it was falling horizontally.

 

There was also the blizzard we got a couple of years back, I believe that we got about two feet of snow where I live. 

[Zygen 6,066]

I have only really been in one natural disaster type, and that's hurricanes, we get those since I'm on the southern coast . it's basically some heavy winds and rain and stuff, if anyone doesn't know. Sometimes flooding but eh not as much around here typically, it's really not to bad because if it ever gets to bad we evacuate.

 

Oh and there's ocassionally power outages for a while. Depends on the severity.

 

I think I've only stayed for 1 actually we evacuated the others.

 

The others listed don't really happen ever much around here.

[~Chaotic Fireball~ 499]

Once, my mom made a fire in the kitchen when she was cooking. No lie. (She loves fire, like me, and my granddad on her side does too. I think it's a family thing)

Anyways, so she was boiling some soup or something, and something fell on the red hot stove. Then it started to get really hot, and started to smoke. I saw it, but didn't think too much of it. Then it flared up, and I shouted. My mom turned off the electricity (the outlet is like right there in the kitchen) and covered it with a potcover. Then I woke up my dad to tell him about it, and he just merely blew on it. And it went out. It was awesome, though! It was dark, and you just saw the flames dancing across the stove, it was so amazing!

Needless to say, the stove was never the same again.

 

Also, I've been in an Earthquake before, too. I was at school, and my mom was picking up my little bro and sis, and we felt the ground moving. Then it stopped. Yeah, it was small, but it counts.

[EndtheRaven 161]

I live in Oklahoma, so I went through the infamous May 3rd, 1999 tornado when I was in kindergarten, and I've seen any others. 

I actually rode my motorcycle home from work during a tornado warning last spring. It was rather chaotic. 

[Neptunebyte 22]

Heard that there would be a severe weather outbreak in the plains this week.

 

Take care, anypony that would be affected by the storms.

[CC_Maud_Pie 6,431]

I experience the 2014 South Napa earthquake. I don't live in Napa but it was the longest earthquake I've experienced in my life. And the fact that it happened while I was still sleeping made it scary and woke me up. If I was in Napa, I would have heard buildings collapse. It even made it onto CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/24/us/california-earthquake/

[SCS 7,538]

Well, there have been a few fire scares at my high school. I can think of two occasions in which the fire department had to come and sweep the whole building. Once was when I was in 9th grade. I'm currently in 12th grade, and the second time was last semester.

 

There have been a few tornado warnings in my area. Tornadoes have done damage to my city at least once or twice during my lifetime. It is fucking horrifying.

 

In regard to crime and such, I've been around drug dealers before (no choice, long story) and I almost got ran over by a car once. There's also been a lot of fights and shit at my high school but I've somehow managed to avoid all of them.

[Sommar 1,289]

Back in 2011, there was a small earthquake in the Northeast area of the USA. I was in my livingroom watching TV at the time when it hit. After it was over I was actually excited because I never felt an earthquake before. It scared the heck out of me at first, but I was fine afterwards.

Edited March 20, 2015 by MissBookworm

[gone~ 614]

I was living in Chengdu when I experienced the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. I remember being at school, I was on the third or fourth floor of the building. The room started shaking a little bit, and I thought maybe a large truck was driving by the school or something. But then the shaking got even harder, and the teacher told us it was an earthquake. We were then lead out to the soccer field and I remember sitting down and feeling like there was jello beneath the ground or something, since it was so wobbly ^^;

And we felt some aftershocks for a while after the initial earthquake.

 

I also remember that when I got home, some of our books had fallen off the shelves, and one of the large speakers connected to the TV had fallen and broke ^^;

 

Besides that, I've also experienced many minor earthquakes ever since I've moved to Japan; probably about 10-15ish over the past 3 years, but they all were pretty small and short ^^

Edited March 20, 2015 by Drasamo

[Moved to Elsewhere 11,331]

I don't live in an earthquake prone area but I do live in an area that gets tornadoes. I've never seen one though.

 

There have been a few times the fire alarm was set off, but that was because one class was experimenting with smoke.

[DubWolf 20,687]

The most common natural... danger is wildfires. I've seem giant plumes of smoke from miles away. How exciting? Nope.

 

Also tornadoes, but those at much more rare.

[JonasDarkmane 19,792]

I've experienced quite a few earthquakes and volcano eruptions. 

 

 

 

[BlueSkies 82]

We've had some extreme Nor'Easters and hurricanes hit us a few times.  The worst was a huge snowstorm that knocked out our power for a week.  It got wicked cold, so we spent a several nights huddled in front of the fireplace for warmth.  Every summer we also get an outbreak of EEE near us--the horses die first, but mosquitoes can spread it to humans.  That one scares me, though West Nile is more common.

 

I think the scariest incident was a tornado warning.  It didn't do any damage, but it freaked my mom out 'cause she's a midwesterner and she knows what those things can do.  We sat in our unfinished basement with the dog for close to an hour, waiting for it to pass.  Not fun.

[TheJLeeTeam 914]

In California there have actually been a few tornadoes around where I live but strangely no earthquakes.