by JH 18 Replies latest jw friends
I was born in No. California so I was here for the big earthquake in San Francisco....actually it was in the Santa Cruz mountains, but not many people know where they are, so it's easier to say San Francisco, a more recognizable place.
Most people are scared of earthquakes. They can startle you, but it's rare that they do damage.
ml
Yes, I was living in South Carolina in September "89 when hurricane Hugo hit. The wind sounded like a freight train. We all had to put mattresses up to any glass windows. I had a huge plate glass one in the LR.
The night it hit was so weird. First, winds blowing so hard trees were bent over touching the ground. It was so "black"...lights went out....we all bunked in the living room. I'd just had my son, Gabriel. He was only 6 months old. Me, my sons, and my daughter put blankets on the floor and sat around with candles listening to the wind. Scared out of our minds.
Then it got so quiet..
The next morning we walked outside to see what happened. It was awful. Huge oak trees were broken in half, lying across the roads. No power. Stores on Main St were demolished. I still have photos we took. It was strange to see boats sitting in the tops of trees. Most of the beach houses in Pawleys Island were history. The flooding was terrible. There are a lot of trailer parks in SC, and they were just GONE.
But the aftermath really sucked. We had no power for almost 3 weeks. All grocery stores were out of food. We grilled out on the porch. Mostly bologna. We'd filled up the tub with water. And some jugs. But, it wasn't enough. There was no gas either. And human nature being what it is sometimes, store owners were selling tiny bags of charcoal for 10.00. Bags of ice for 5.00. People raised hell.
But we saw the other side of human nature too. When huge trucks started coming in from all over the country with food, clothing, baby cribs, furniture, (for people who lost their homes), just all kinds of merchandise you couldn't even imagine. We had to stand in line sometimes for 5 or 6 hours. But it was what we had to do.
I'm glad Ilive in Chicago now....where we just get blizzards and the wind chill is -40!!!
April
Tatiana --- I just hope you reported those scum bags that were trying to extort money in times of crises . That makes me sooooooooooooooo angry when people lose all sense of decency in a crisis . As a nation we are constantly faced with the gas being price gouged evertime there is a rumor of war , there's not even a shortage and these schmucks try to roll you over a barrel.
Tatiana, interesting story you told. I lived in Chicago until 1999 and now live in S. Florida! 44 years of cold cold cold and snow sometimes drifting to the rooftops! Yucko. The year that we moved here in 1999 we had 4 major hurricanes. I wasnt used to the constant afternoon thunderstorms and lightning and such they have here in the rainy season. That fall ( I think it was that fall or 2000...) we had a category 5 bearing down on us here in West Palm (cant remember its name LOL, Lloyd?Floyd?), and had to evacuate inland! Then hurricane Irene went directly OVER OUR HEADS after dumping three feet of rain first! What a mess afterwards. They had told me they hadnt had a hurricane come ashore in WPB since like 1938! I guess I brought it all with me then. Wouldnt move back up north for ANYTHING tho.
:)
JeffT....I imagine that eruption (Mt. St. Helens) looked a lot like the video we saw after the collapse of the Twin Towers. Ash everywhere.....
heathen...yes, I lived in a small town about 15 miles inland (like THAT mattered!) and we boycotted Carol's Service Station, (ice @ 5.00) and our local "Ice House" store. (10.00 charcoal) There weren't that many stores in town, so I guess they wanted to take advantage and make a quick buck.
LovesDubs....I actually moved up here for personal reasons, but I don't miss the mosquitoes, and the heat and humidity. I used to be a "beach" person, but skin cancer cured me of that!!!! The lake here is fine.
http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~pgore/students/w97/matheson/temp2.htm
I know that my family was terrified during this. We used to go to the cong. in Charleston when my mom lived there. I know a lot of the brothers and sisters were stranded on Sullivans Island. This is a pic of the bridge. The only way across was by boat, but most of them were destroyed.
A huge tree fell on my grandmother's Maxima. It was totaled. Luckily, no one in my family was hurt.
I actually saw boats like this in Georgetown. Sitting right in the middle of Front St.
I wish I had my scanner working so I could post my own pics I took afterwards. But these are par for the course. Unfortunately, despite all the media coverage and advanced warnings, Hugo's human toll was high. Twenty people died in South Carolina. Several of the fatalities occurred in the mobile home communities northwest of Charleston. It's like, we were saying to ourselves...."It can't be THAT bad." But, it was........
Thanks for the pictures Tatiana. It must have been really bad out there to do that kind of damage.
When I saw the bridge, it made me think of how bridges will look soon in Iraq.
JH, it was really creepy. Like someone dropped a bomb. You walk out your front door and it's pure devastation. I can't imagine how people who live in war-torn countries deal with it. Do they get used to it?
That bridge.....it was even worse when we were parked on the other side looking at it. I just kept thinking...."We just drove across that bridge yesterday. We just drove across that bridge yesterday." Like maybe repeating it to myself would make it go away.
Over the many years, I have experienced quite a few different displays of Mother Nature.
When I was a kid growing up in Atlantic Canada, I remember hurricanes. A few were scary for me as a kid, but I do not believe they were as intense as the ones further down the coast in the United States.
Earthquake: February 1982 - the province of New Brunswick was hit with a few earthquakes and strong aftershocks. It was an unusual feeling and the sound that accompanies it, is most unsettling. I was a Dub then, and well, field service had 'plenty' of publishers out that weekend.
Typhoon: May 1989 - southern Luzon island, Philippines. Essentially, a typhoon and hurricane are the same. It was not a bad one, but nasty enough. Down there, ones first concern: flying debris. Coconuts going through the air at 100-160kph can kill you. Serrated edges from corrugated rooftops could be equally dangerous. I remember when the eye of the typhoon went overhead, it was so still...then 20-30 minutes later, all hell broke loose again. The neat thing was, where I was staying, the old lady that owned the house, ensured that all the huge spiders had a safe place to congregate. There was a huge bowl with a candle inside of it, and the native spiders (quite large) would crawl over there and wait out the storm. I was always warned to not step on them. I was not afraid of the spiders, as I knew they never bothered anyone, and would happily eat the giant insects, mosquitoes and other annoying and biting crittes.
Tornado: September 1984 - Sarnia, Ontario. I remember it was a humid Sunday afternoon. I was listening to some Detroit FM stations on my stereo, and heard about a Tornado Watch north and east of Flint. From where I lived in Sarnia, I could go down the street and look across the St. Clair River at Port Huron, Michigan, USA. I noticed in the western horizon, that the sky was becoming occluded with dark ominus clouds. I hurriedly walked back to my apartment, turned on the radio, but this time for the stations just across the river in Port Huron and Lapeer, Michigan. They had moved the watch up to a Tornado Warning! Then I hear sirens. Can you believe it, Port Huron, Michigan set off their Tornado Warning system, and you could hear it across the river in Canada, clear as a bell. Very eerie. Time goes on, the sky gets supremely dark, almost black-green in colour - and one helluva a thunderstorm. It got mighty nasty. I couldn't see much from where I was living because the rain, hail and wind made it very difficult to see...not to mention, dangerous. A funnel cloud (2 or 3) were spotted overhead, and one touched down just east of Sarnia in the rural communities south of highway 402. Later, about 30-40 minutes later, the same tornado touched down in the south end of London, ON., causing considerable damage. Not sure of the strength, but my guess was it was an F2.
Since then, it has been 'business as usual'.
My husband (we were not married at the time) was in the Navy and lived in Charleston during Hugo. He could tell you the horror stories, i.e., no power, no water, etc. I visited him a year later and remember how shocked I was that they were STILL cleaning up the devastation.
I'm from Indianapolis, IN and remember the devastating tornadoes that hit around us in the 70's. Now live in Western Michigan and just deal with, and plow out of, frozen Lake Michigan, after a lake effect snow storm.
