Was it earthquake, tsunami, tornado, storm, flood, or?
I lived next to Plainfield Illinois when the F5 hit. I watched a funnel try to form next our neighborhood. The big one went right past us but spared our neighborhood. The schools were hit, my babysitter’s house was leveled. Never seen destruction on that scale in person since.
Not a disaster but I was on vacation in Cancun during the summer about a decade ago and a small hurricane went through headed north. That’s pretty routine there and it was relatively mild, though my flight was delayed 24h.
When I got home, which was north TX at the time, that night the same storm went over me again. Though at that point it had reduced significantly to just a thunderstorm.
Then early that morning I got in my car and headed north to IL where my cousin was getting married. As I was crossing into Missouri, I went through a heavy rainstorm and I realized it was the same storm from before. It was pretty neat to experience it in different parts of the continent over 48 hours.
I experienced the edges of hurricanes every summer as a kid. You just deal with it.
Flooding, power outages, etc.
A few hurricanes and the Texas snow storm
Lol! I was just thinking to myself, “Huh, I guess not” and then I remembered I lived in Fort Worth for a few years and one year it snowed barely even two inches. The city shut down for a week and the roads were littered with debris from car wrecks. Having grown up in the northern Midwest, I was quite amused.
- you have experienced: you experienced something
- you have BEEN experienced: something experienced you
Compare: dropped. “You have dropped it” vs “you have been dropped”
or?
You’ve left words out.
A hurricane has experienced ME
im not a native speaker man, give me a break
Lol, relax Francis.
Your English is excellent for a non-native speaker, probably as good as the average native speaker (frankly that’s a criticism of the average speaker as much a compliment to you).
I can see how you made this mistake, it’s pretty easy to make as you’re thinking of the question, you kind of combined 2 ways of asking it.
“Have you ever been in a natural disaster”
“Have you ever experienced a natural disaster”
He respectfully taught you how to improve, you ought to say thank you.
Is “you have been experienced” correct in any way (genuine question)?
I just can’t think of any way that works.
Hurricane in Florida in the 80s, but I was far enough inland to not be in danger. The eye of the storm is really spooky. Complete and utter silence.
Also the 1991 snowstorm in Duluth MN. Started snowing on Halloween and didn’t stop for three days. We had four feet of snow in the yard.
That was a lot of fun, the town was paralyzed for a couple of days until the plows started to get things in order.
Volcano
Experienced a river flooding due to excessive rainfall. Both on a small scale on a camping where some tents floated away, which was kind of funny because the owners had warned not to pitch the tents to close to the river.
More recently witnessed a large scale flooding last winter when large parts of the rhine flooded. There were no casualties in my region, but the damage was quite severe. Very sobering to see the death toll in the upstream regions. Also the impact to agriculture and infrastructure, with frequent rain keeping the ground fully saturated for months al the way up to summer.
Water is so vital for human civilization, and yet also very dangerous.
Does Ice Storm '98 count? As a kid, it was super wild to wake up to our house being ~10C then realizing that the heat wasn’t gonna be turning back on for a loooooong time.
Fortunately our neighbor had a gas stove in his basement and invited a bunch of folks from the neighborhood to use his house as a shelter for a while. It was super fun playing outdoors in the ice though. Literally everything was covered with inches of ice. You could put on a pair of skates and go anywhere you wanted for a couple days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm
thunder, i guess
My dog would certainly consider that a disaster
Yup, Helene, a few months ago, in Asheville NC.
You could say I’m still experiencing it, I suppose. We’ve always been a place that’s too far inland for a hurricane. Very climate insulated. That bubble has burst for us here after this storm.
It was super scary, no cell service for days, no power or water or gas for days. We have a great network of people so we were supported and supporting but it went bad for many others.
But more than scary right now, it’s sad. Just seeing the devastation
Several tornados and multiple hurricanes.
Same. Florida’s worst disasters are usually just the people.
Live in Australia, so lotta fire, and been in Brisbane for a while now, and it’s gone underwater a good few times during my time here, large floods are not very fun!
I was in Christchurch for the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes that killed 185 people and critically damaged essentially every building within the city centre.
The whole thing was pretty surreal. My family were pretty lucky, our house was lightly damaged (old timber frame, moved ~2cm off its piles but was livable while that was fixed) and we had a few things break (including a 60L fishtank that nearly landed on me as I tried to get to a doorway), I know a few people who were without electricity and clean water for a week, or whose houses were damaged beyond repair then had to spend years fighting insurance companies to get what they were due.
I still live in the city, and it’s pretty much unrecognisable as to how it was before. Basically every major building in the central city had to either be torn down or significantly renovated to repair it. Basically every brick building built before the 1950s was damaged beyond repair. Huge chunks of residential land in the east of the city was so badly damaged that there is no way it could be safely built on again - the government brought all the houses, tore them down and fenced the area off.
Hey. So was I. I don’t live there anymore though.
I didn’t know Chrischurch also had earthquake in 2011…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_earthquake_(disambiguation)
One in 2010 that did a bunch of damage but only killed 2 people, but then triggered a significant aftershock in February 2011 that was much more destructive - partly because it was shallower and closer to the city, but also because lots of buildings had been damaged but not fully repaired.
7.1 in 2010 6.2 in 2011
Interesting tidbit: The 2011 earthquake had a lower magnitude however it had 3x the wave frequency than the 2010 which made it feel much more violent.
The first one was west of Christchurch, the second was south. Different direction of the waves brought many of the already weakened buildings down.
Where I was staying was on the hill of the epicenter of the second earthquake. Couldn’t stay from fear a boulder would roll through the house during an aftershock. I remember after every aftershock running outside to make sure nothing was coming our way.
The 2011 earthquake was not long before the Japan earthquake.
I flew into Christchurch the night before the 2011 earthquake, couldn’t do anything from all the damage. Flew to Indonesia. In Indonesia woke up to the rumble of a 6+ mag earthquake off the coast of Bali and ran out of the house…
That’s when Japan was already having 7+ magnitude earthquakes. The next day was the 9 magnitude earthquake in Japan.
Incredible experience.
Being on the hill must have been rough. Have a friend who moved to the city a few years ago and was super excited to find a bit of bare land up on the hill with a great view into the estuary to build a house on - explained why it was bare, didn’t seem to deter him.
It’s interesting how the geography affected things - another friend had a batch in Akaroa on the other side of the peninsula that barely felt the quakes - theory being the peninsula is a dead volcano, so it’s mostly really spongy basalt that effectively acted as a dampener and absorbed most of the energy
I was 183 miles from Mount Saint Helens when it blew up in 1980. We still had half an inch of ash. The volcano was on a Sunday, school was cancelled on Monday. We had to wear dust masks to go outside.
When we got closer to the mountain, everything smelled like rotten eggs (sulfur). Even weeks later.
