A spinoff from the other thread...

When I was in 8th grade in 1978, our house was flooded with 6 feet of water here in Arizona. It was over the school winter break and we were at my grandparents' for Christmas (12+ hours drive from home) when we saw it on the news. We left in the middle of the night; talk about a long drive home... and when we got home, everything was gone -- our house had actually floated and everything had either floated away or was severely mud/water damaged.

Afterward, we moved into a government issued single wide trailer (there were massive amounts of people in the area that were displaced).

To this day, I'll only live in a house on top of a hill with really good drainage.

Have you lived through a natural disaster where you have lost everything? If so, please describe.

Does a divorce count??

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Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass
It's about learning to dance in the rain.

Having moved due to the military, numerous winter storms that shut everything down, a whopper flood, several hurricanes, and dh also survived Mt. Pinatubo erupting and was part of the last group to secure the base, help move government property out and then close it.

dl

We had the huge ice storm that hit Maine back in 1997 (I think that was the year). Some areas went three weeks without power. It damaged the trees, power lines, and many homes (pipes bursting, spoiled food, damaged roofs, etc). We all did the best we could. We did end up losing our two parakeets because of not having any heat. I tried everything to keep them warm, even putting candles around their cage trying to keep them warm. But, compared to the damage that hurricanes have caused, I wouldn't consider what we endured a real natural disaster.

LOL! Love it... Of course it counts!!! and I'm sorry to hear about that.

My parents had just gotten divorced before the flood. It felt more like an unnatural disaster though. It totally threw me for a loop when that happened! I lost everything in less than a year.

I guess Katrina would qualify, huh? :-) And...my divorce was quite a nasty storm, too!

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If you're not living on the edge, you're wasting space.

The floods in Southern Illinois in the 90's and tornadoes in western Tennessee in the late 90's. Both leveled parts of the area I was living in....

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I'm the kind of woman when my feet hit the floor in each morning, the devil says "Oh crap, she's up."

Just this past September, we experienced a flood which resulted in nearly 13 feet in our house. I never thought this could even be possible as we do live right by what they call a river (but it really looks more like a creek to me). We were displaced from our home for weeks, and many of our neighbors are still out of their home right now. Devastating experience, which I would not want anyone to go through.

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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!

Floods of '93 and '08, tornadoes,straight line winds of '98, ice storms, etc... Nothing to damage the house too much though. My mom lost her garage in the '98 storm though. Usual Midwest weather.

Do the past 8 years count? Oh wait, I guess not. That was unnatural.

Edited to add: I was in the New England blizzard of '78 too. We lost power for about a week. No school, streets shut down. Only cops and people like doctors were allowed on the road. It was the one and only time I hitchhiked. Towards the end of the week, a neighborhood friend and I were bored to tears, so we walked a couple miles to a convenience store. It was open, so we bought some candy or something like that, but then we didn't want to walk back. So my friend talked me into hitchhiking. A doctor picked us up. He had a bunch of X-rays in the back seat that we had to stack into a pile so we wouldn't bend them!

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If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition, and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

- Stephen Colbert.

Hurricane's Rita and Ike..

The Blizzard of 78! I lived in Plymouth, MA at the time and we were luckier than most. We never lost our power. I did get to see something I never saw before though... the eye of that storm passed right over my house. Here's how it looked after the storm went by.









All the above shots were my house or the street we lived on. The blizzard was a two day affair. It started on Monday, Feb 6th and ended on the 7th.

These two were taken down the beach the Saturday after the storm hit. We weren't suppose to be on the roads until the next day but we were out of everything and had 2 kiddos ages 1 and 3.

For those of you who know that area, that's Burt's restaurant... or what was left of it after the storm threw stove size boulders through it.





The only other disaster I've been through was Hurricane Carol. I was only 5 at the time so I don't remember much except the sounds of the wind and the trees falling over. Scary stuff!

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When I was 10, we were at a friends home for a birthday party. They had rented a place with a inside pool and we were all swimming. It was in april and it came up a thunderstorm. we were called outa the pool and was sitting around eating when a friend called my dad and told him lightening had hit our home and it was on fire. by the time we got home ( about 30 miles away) you could see the glow from about 2 miles away. the fire dept did what they could but it didnt help alot. our home burned and fell into the basement. we were homeless and all we had on was bathing suits. we stayed with my grandparents for a few days and someone donated the use of a very very small mobile home for us to use until we could get our house built back. I remember goiing to school wearing a cousins cloths. She was way bigger than me and her pants fell off of me . I tied a rope around them to hold them up on me. I also wore her shoes with paper towels stuffed in the toes so they didnt fall off. it was horrible. As word spread, people began to bring cloths and such and we finally had cloths to fit.

Also. Hugo. we are 200 miles INLAND!!!! didnt think Hugo would be a problem but boy was he a pain in the butt! No eletric for 3 weeks.lost all the food in the fridge and had just put a side of beef in. lots and lots of our trees down in the yard. lost a 100 yr old willow tree

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I was in Milwaukee, WI in the winter of '77 & 78. My son was 6 months old. I did not leave the house for 3 weeks. We had 80 inches of snow (they had 100 inches last year). For 3 weeks, we had -25 degrees.

Maryland 1996-1997 winter. Ice storm that knocked out power for about a week.

Sept. 2003 Hurricane Isabel Although we were inland, power was out for a week in some areas.

Yep 2
The blizzard of 78 when we lived in Conn and the wrath of Katrina.

Here is a photo of just 1 home

http://forms.belointeractive.com/sha...ATRINA_004.jpg

Many earthquakes including the *big* Northridge quake in CA back in the 90's that destroyed pieces of interstate.

I've been through a tornado in OK when I was a kid

We had the Blizzard of 1996 here in CO and it shut down everything in my town for about 1 week and lots of things for 2 weeks right around Christmas. The airport in Denver was shut down...we were at a standstill.

Here is a photo of my neighbors cop car


I had never seen so much snow and never thought we would get enough to stop the town (and most of the state) in it's tracks. It's probably nothing compared to what some of you have gone through but it was huge for us

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

omg!

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I grew up in SF so I lived through many earthquakes in the 60s and 70s no big deal. The last one up here was about 20 yrs ago I woke up and saw the clothes swinging in the closet and I thought "oh earthquake" and went back to sleep.
That being said I have NEVER lived through a BIG one.

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The political system is broke and it's a joke.

Blizzard of '78 , we must have been ok, I remember it being fun ( I was 9 )
Ice storms in Maryland @ 1993-94, no power for over a week, poor cat was sleeping under the covers with me.
Super Typhoon Bart (Okinawa), amazing!
We had floor to ceiling windows/doors that I thought for sure would blow in and kill us all but we only lost CABLE tv for an hour. They are so well prepared!, the bases had millions of dollars of damages, but town was fine! (concrete block buildings, buried utilities, etc) I think the top wind speed was 176MPH, gusts over 214+mph. On the base DH worked @ they found helicopter blades that had been bundled together and hooked into the pavement flung like leaves from a tree. One ended up centered/ balanced on a cement fence post , they could spin it ....these weigh over 200lbs each!
Hurricane Ivan finally killed our power for a few weeks, but that was one of several over that summer....we were in the middle of MS! Our Florida friends lived with us most of that summer!
Luckily my father in law left Gulfport a few hours before they stopped allowing people onto the roads. He wasn't going to leave! He apartment COMPLEX was washed away to the cement slabs. He was on Beach Blvd, right across from the water. He lost everything but some paperwork he grabbed.

Blizzard of 78 in Massachusetts and ice storm here in New Hampshire last year. No electricity for 2 weeks. Plenty of Hurricanes in Mass in my 59 years.

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When you don`t know what to do-Walk fast and look worried.

Hurricane Fredrick back in the 70's and Katrina in 05, I think it was. Major freakout over Katrina. I was at work and drove home around 20 miles during it. We got a huge pine tree thru the house and lots of water damage, no power for a week , but all made it thru safe and sound.
Hope we never have one like that again. I would flip if we had another one now with me having the baby.

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*** Find A Need , Fill A Need ***