Tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, tsumanis, blizzards, and ...well war, 9-1-1 disaster etc.

Well, have you lived through one in person for real? Were you there? And how did you escape?

I must say the most significant stuff in the areas where I've lived and experienced in person, are snow blizzards where a city gets knocked out for a whole day or snow.

I was in my home, when smoke from a burning suite above me was seeping through. It was a terrifying feeling, because I wondered if I would be forced to jump several stories below..onto pavement. (yea and paralyze myself..right). It's been proven repeatedly that most people die of smoke inhalation or are trampled to death in an evacuation, instead of being burned in a fire disaster. I worked for one of the provincial fire marshal's office and this was shown repeatedly in many fire investigations.

I only know of people who did personally get affected:
There was a serious major ice storm in southern Ontario and southern Quebec over 20 years ago, where whole power transformer towers and wires were collapsed like a row of collapsed houses. 9-1-1 was telling all drivers to get out of the highway. My friend unbeknowest, managed to drive 100 kms, skidding through that horrible mess. Many car accident pileups, power outtages through thousands of homes in several cities for a few days, etc.

*When I worked for Pricewaterhousecoopers in Canada, we learned next day after the event, that 4 PwC US employees died in World Trade Centre and Pentagon plane attacks.

I have lived through more ice blizzards with snow so deep they couldn't even plow the roads, and we weren't able to shovel our house out of snow drifts that had us buried well up over the tops of the windows. The wind chill factor was 80 below zero and they were warning people not to go outside. I was scared to death. That was what our winters were like every year practically.

Then in the summer it was tornado time, winds that uprooted hundred year old trees. Not sure which was worse.
The weather was why I finally left the midwest, had had enough of the "we escaped by the skin of our teeth" mentality...

Here in Vegas its just HOT in the summer, nothing drastic or earth shattering, the rest of the year, and the winters are just great. Like today, 73* and balmy...

I gave birth to my oldest son in the middle of the tornado that hit Huntsville, AL on April 3, 1974. It destroyed 2/2 of Huntsville. Our little apartment was spared. Thank the good Lord! It was devasting.

Chatty, are you describing winters in Chicago? I lived there for 6 years. The 15 minutes of summer were not long enough to ever thaw out.

Then I lived two years in Oklahoma, ice storms in winter where the road was a solid sheet of non-drivable ice.

Decades ago, we were on vacation in the Blue Mountains of Australia when an ice/wind storm knocked out all the power in the town for two days.

I left NYC (vacation) 5 days before 9/11. A gf appeared on news channels worldwide evacuating her class of grade school students through the streets of Manhattan as the second tower collapsed. Their school was literally in the shadow of the World Trade Center.

And then my dear home SoCali. Experienced a handful of earthquakes, none large enough to do huge damage. During the Whittier quake, some small breakage in our house and the large living room windows shifted. And another time, I was selling at a CRAFT FAIR when the sidewalk beneath us started rolling!! And of course, the ubiquitous Santa Ana fires, caused partially by nature and sometimes abetted by arsonists.

My goodness!! You have all been in some freaky weather conditions!! We've had some fairly bleak and snowy winters here in Scotland...getting blocked in at home due to drifting snow, etc and the odd gale-force storm but nothing as extreme as you ladies have been thru!

I guess the only thing I can talk about is the ice storm of 1998. It was very extreme and knocked out trees and power lines for 5-6 weeks for people. People scrambled to shelters or relatives that might have been unaffected. Most rural people like myself have wells instead of town/city water. When the power is out you don't have water (can't even flush the toilet!) At the time we lost power for 45 minutes at the church. I think it was what God wanted so we could help others. We opened up the church which was a designated shelter in disaster times. We spent weeks caring for many people until one by one, their power was back on. Of course, they lost anything frozen or refrigerated, had burst water pipes, etc. The food shelters were traumatized and the damage to properties was horrible. The good thing that I saw was that even the folks that came for help pitched in with others to do child care, buy and prepare food and so many other things. It was like one massive camp out but we all were thankful as things got back to normal. Some people insisted on toughing it out at home with kerosene heaters and hauling water.

I live in Maryland and we really don't have extreme weather, except heat and humidity in the summer, but I have no stories like you all do. Ho hum.

We were living in California during the Whittier earthquake. Our house suffered no damage. Just frayed nerves. Since the earthquake, I lived with a tad of paranoia for my children's safety for the duration of our time there. We had a pool table in the living room on which I would lay out our jackets and under which I would have our sneakers and a little suitcase with a change of clothes for each of us, a bottle of water, granola bars and a first aid kit.

7/7 London bombing. My train had just reached the station when one of the three bombs in the underground was set off behind us. The other three bombings were within a radius of 1-2 miles from the first. We were initally told that chaos in the underground system was caused by an electrical surge. Until the bus bombing. I managed to phone my son who, as a forensic toxicologist for the fire rescue service was running in, along with his colleagues, whilst we were all trying to find our way out to safety. He advised me to find a way out of the city, walk if I must, because it was likely they would close the bridges and we live on the other side of the Thames River. I managed to take a cab out of town's hub before they were closed and the ride home took 3 1/2 hours. A long, slow journey considering my house is 7 miles from the city.

Train derailment underground. Not a major incident but, limped away from it with a hurt ankle which still bothers me now.

Travelling by ocean liner used to be cheaper then flying. That’s why when I was a little girl; we would travel to Europe almost every other summer by ship.

On one Atlantic crossing we got into a wild storm. It was so bad that we arrived in NY ten days later then planned! We must have been driven off course or something. Ten days! … I know it’s hard to imagine. Everyone was seasick, so hardly a person came to the lifejacket drills. I don’t know how my mother did it. I was nine and my brother six. She must have been frightened to death, but I never knew it.

From a child’s perspective it was an unbelievable adventure. I remember running around with a group of other kids on board. We had the time of our lives. The ship seemed empty, because all the adults were ill. We took over the lounge, and would sit on the couches and slide through the rooms as the boat rocked from side to side. The huge dining room was always empty, and we kids would meet there and stuff our faces with all the wrong foods. It was a trip for us to see the movie “Alamo”…(it played continuously all day and night), while rocking back in forth in the theatre seat. On the closed decks we grabbed blankets from the deck chairs and used them as sleds, sliding down the polished wooden floors, when the ship lunged from the front to the back. The waves were tremendous. I wonder if they would call them Tsunamis today. We sure were often close to capsizing. Everyone knew their designated lifeboat …just in case. How a lifeboat would survive that storm…well that is another story. I remember looking out of the porthole, two stories above deck, and wondering if we were already under water!

I wish I could find those other kids again. I bet they still remember this episode in their lives as vividly as I do.