Just another of the many, many joys of living in Alaska.
Well, to make this a thread, rather than just a post, I should lead into a discussion.
Have you ever been affected by a natural disaster? What's your story?
Me? Well, closest I've come would be a mini plain tornado. Not one of those little wispy things you might have seen, a real plain-based MT. Dusty, sand, dirty and gravel, carried me about five meters then blew away. Cut open my cheek, about the worst it did. More fun then scary. Though, I would never live next to a volcano. Inactive or not.
But it is about 100 miles away, so it's not like I can see it from my house. :P
I saw one of those small tornadoes come down the middle of street. It didn't do any real damage except snap a telephone pole that landed on a neighbor's trailer and rip the bark off of some trees nearby.
Afterwards, the street was filled with little bits of debris. I wasn't really scared. At the time, it was kinda' cool.
I did once have a teacher that was a little girl when that huge earth quake in Anchorage hit many years ago. Her family then moved out of Alaska and went to the safety of the Hawaiian Islands. After screwing up once more they moved to the safety of San Fransisco....OK so they made another mistake. Her parents didn't seem to be that good at getting away from natural disaster zones.
Since I live in Sacramento these days, natural disasters aren't really a big deal. Well, we are in the middle of a two-year drought right now, but that isn't the dramatic kind. However, the only time I ever drove down to L.A. (for a videogame convention late in 2007), a major wildfire broke out just as we were leaving. We had to drive right past the fires and through the smoke as we left town. I actually saw some firefighters on a nearby hilltop. That event capped off a trip that convinced me that L.A. didn't like me. Too bad that I might have to move there sooner or later.
I'm not sure I'm going to be any help as far as "dealing with it." I remember thinking the whole thing was pretty cool.
As for natural disasters, I have lived my entire life near Buffalo, NY, in Finland, or in Chicago. To date the only natural disasters I have had to contend with are blizzards. No earthquakes (though the New Madrid Fault Line could level Chicago), to volacanos (though the Yellowstone Caldera could destroy Chicago), to tornados, no major flooding, no hurricanes, no tsunamis. Gotta love the snow!
A sign, perhaps..........
Of course, for the first time in my life I had a student body who wasn't de-facto hateful of my very presence. I opened up and learned how to make friends. When I came back down I was transferred out of that hateful ****hole of a school I had been going to and proceeded to have a pretty decent Junior and Senior year. The Christmas of the later we moved into a nice new house near the person who would come to be one of my closest friends.
In actuality, that damn storm was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
the army stationed you in Alaska? thats better than afghanistan, which is were I will likely be stationed
My husband is stationed in Alaska, so this is where we live. He and his unit are currently deployed, and will be for the next year.
The way the US Army works is that there are military bases to which soldiers are stationed, in units (battalions, batteries, companies, etc). Those units are then deployed to other areas (combat zones, etc).
So, while my husband is stationed in Alaska, he is not here (he's actually in Afghanistan right now). I hope I'm explaining this right. I don't know how other countries' military work (just not assuming you're familiar with the US military).
EDIT: A quick glance through your profile makes me think you are in the US, so ... you'll be stationed somewhere in the US (or possibly a few areas OCONUS) and then be deployed to somewhere else with your unit.
*Gets mauled by a bear*
*Gets mauled by a penguin*
*Throws a snowball*
*Gets mauled by a bear*
Why the hell are you throwing snowballs at a godless killing machine?
The neighbor's daughter had a baby who was on a heart monitor. The battery went dead so they jerry-rigged it to a car battery until someone could scout a clear path to the local hospital. I drove her there and rode out aftershocks most of the evening. When I came back through a darkened, spooky neighborhood, my parents had dragged out an old crank-style record player and the older folks brought out their old 78RPM records. It turned into a block party of sorts. I got to meet the guy across the street who is now my husband, and now nothing smaller than a 6.5 gets my attention.
I don't buy the drought thing in this state. For one, we're right next to the Pacific Ocean. If we were as desperate as they say we are, we could desalinate the salt water. It's not like it won't wind up back in the ocean again at some point in the natural cycle. There's also all that snowpack up in the Sierras. How much of it isn't going to be put to use? I'll believe there's a drought when the golf courses go yellow and the fat cats in LA drive around in dusty cars. (My
, YMMV.)I don't buy the drought thing in this state. For one, we're right next to the Pacific Ocean. If we were as desperate as they say we are, we could desalinate the salt water. It's not like it won't wind up back in the ocean again at some point in the natural cycle. There's also all that snowpack up in the Sierras. How much of it isn't going to be put to use? I'll believe there's a drought when the golf courses go yellow and the fat cats in LA drive around in dusty cars. (My
People always say there is a drought when there isn't enough snow for the snowboarders.
Mt Redoubt erupted five times last night. It's about 100 miles from me, and we haven't had any repercussions yet, but this is probably the closest I've been to a national disaster in a long time. If the winds change, we may get some ash here.
Just another of the many, many joys of living in Alaska.
Well, to make this a thread, rather than just a post, I should lead into a discussion.
Have you ever been affected by a natural disaster? What's your story?
Hurricane Hugo, I was really little so I don't remember much. I remember so many trees coming down and then my dad having to cut down the survivors because they weren't really survivors.
There was that other Hurricane that came up, flooded the river (think water level rising over 30 feet and that's what I mean by flood) flooded out a very large swath of town. I lived waaay uphill from that so we dodged a bullet there. But I know a few people that had to close up shop because their store was destroyed, and a lot of people's houses were severely damaged.
We don't get many hurricanes up where I live but usually the ones we get are real heavy hitters.
With all the natural disasters I've seen, I'm just wondering what new trick nature is going to come up with.
@Ciaran I remember that one. That was an interesting earthquake.
We made Werewolves. :D
We had an ash advisory last night. It almost canceled my game, but I made my players show up anyway.
That's right, show them who's boss.
KGM, update your sig. You leveled in the Edition War
Dude, I just got here. Give me a damned minute! :P
PS - Awesome, Level 2!! :D
I jumped from barely lvl 2 to being lvl 4......while dead.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the Test of Fortitude that I got XP for. That would have bumped me up.
I'll edit the post with it in it. :D
Here is one of many pics:
Show
What you cannot see is that behind the building, off the picture and to the right, is the remnants of a gravel commuter parking lot with cars piled on top of each other. That is where my car would have been parked when the tornado came through if I did not have a dentist's appointment that day. Rather than driving in to work instead of riding my transit van I took the whole day off. The tornado came through while many of my coworkers were enroute to that very spot to pick up their cars and drive home. All their cars and trucks were totaled. Since, I have an older car and only keep liability insurance I have a good reason to be thankful for having a check-up that day.
anyway, it was odd to be watching live chopper footage from the national news and realize the chopper was directly above me.
What you cannot see is that behind the building, off the picture and to the right, is the remnants of a gravel commuter parking lot with cars piled on top of each other. That is where my car would have been parked when the tornado came through if I did not have a dentist's appointment that day. Rather than driving in to work instead of riding my transit van I took the whole day off.
The tornado came through while many of my coworkers were enroute to that very spot to pick up their cars and drive home. All their cars and trucks were totaled. Since, I have an older car and only keep liability insurance I have a good reason to be thankful for having a check-up that day.anyway, it was odd to be watching live chopper footage from the national news and realize the chopper was directly above me.
My dad's in the Army, so we move around a lot, and everywhere we go, fun stuff has happened. Move down to Florida? Yay hurricane! Move out to California? Yay fires! Move to Kansas? Yay tornadoes (and about five feet away from the car, too)! Move to Virginia? Yay earthquake! (Yes, an earthquake in Virginia. Granted, it was a pathetic one, but who's ever heard of earthquakes on the East Coast!?)
A sizable part of an entire province - many villages and towns were simply obliterated. No trace whatsoever.
From where I was when it happened, the sky turned dark and noontime was as dark as night. Cars and houses crumpled under the heavy load of ash that blanketed everything - and THEN it started raining mud.
Mount Pinatubo eruption. When that volcano blew its top, it rained mud for days. Rivers turned into sloshing, grinding flows of lahar that carved the land under and around them like they were vast high-powered tractors.
A sizable part of an entire province - many villages and towns were simply obliterated. No trace whatsoever.
From where I was when it happened, the sky turned dark and noontime was as dark as night. Cars and houses crumpled under the heavy load of ash that blanketed everything - and THEN it started raining mud.
Wow, that's crazy! What did you do?
Wow, that's crazy! What did you do?
He lived, obviously. :P
He lived, obviously. :P
That would be one smart-ass way of responding, yes. Jerk. :P
I don't use dirty language. Well, on the boards, at least. :P
There is no such thing as an innately dirty word. The words you perceive as dirty are based on your connotation, not the denotation of the word itself. Words are just words, you make them dirty or clean.
Frank my be a jerk or an ass, but he's dead right. Roxlimn lived, end of story.
There is no such thing as an innately dirty word. The words you perceive as dirty are based on your connotation, not the denotation of the word itself. Words are just words, you make them dirty or clean.
Once I've been around a word then it's hard to wash the filth off of it.
Frank my be a jerk or an ass, but he's dead right. Roxlimn lived, end of story.
I'm a jerk, not an ass.
There is no such thing as an innately dirty word. The words you perceive as dirty are based on your connotation, not the denotation of the word itself. Words are just words, you make them dirty or clean.
Frank my be a jerk or an ass, but he's dead right. Roxlimn lived, end of story.
What about the word "dirty"? :D
I'm a jerk, not an ass.
Correct. I am an ass, not a jerk. They are diffrent.
I'm a jerk, not an ass.
My apologies, sir. I stand corrected. Although I must say I've never shared that opinion of you.
You've never shared the opinion that dirtyfrank is not an ass?
I never thought he was a jerk, either. I can see how he'd be tken that way by the average person, but I've always thought there was a bit more to him than just that surface impression. If I'm giving him too much credit, I'm sure he'll let me know.
So you've always thought that he was, or atleast might be, an ass, but that he was, infact, not a jerk, except superficially?
Why am I having flashbacks of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing"?
Of course some people on both the forums and IRL think I'm an angel or something. Of course everyone, no matter how much of an ass they are has someone that thinks they are some kind of nice guy. Maybe I just feel I'm a jerk because I see honesty > niceness and I always see the worst in people and in situations.
I turned on the lights. ;)
But seriously, our place had a sloping roof, so all we needed to do was hose it down every so often so the ash didn't bury us under. And we kept the cars indoors. Ash is bad for the paintjob.
We didn't live anywhere near the volcano so we weren't in danger from the lahar or anything, but we helped ferry people around during the evacuation. Thousands could have died - Punongbayan's timely prediction and gutsy decision saved tens of thousands.
That alone qualifies him as one of the greatest volcanologists of our time. Not many could have claimed to have a similar acheivement.
Every few years we get some flooding and the basement gets water leakage, that's the worst we've got it, but moving all the furniture to take out the carpet is a pain. Its nasty, heavy and wet taking it up to the driveway to dry and still heavy taking it down.
To dry? Dude, try taking it to the curb for the garbage men to haul away. And then the couch, the TV, the books in your library, your bed...
The river here in Iowa last year went nineteen feet above it's banks. That's seven feet above the levees designed to prevent flooding. I lived ten city blocks away from the river and it went through my living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom et cetera. It's getting close to a year later and I'm still trying to recover from what I lost to it. I feel bad for the people of Fargo right now because I've been there, literally. I even have a cousin that teaches at a university there that I haven't been able to get in touch with.