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Dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DrFrylock, Aug 27, 2010.

  1. DrFrylock

    DrFrylock
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    The White

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    I have no idea how I stumbled upon this site, but apparently the city of Kingman, AZ is trying to increase its attractiveness to potential citizens.

    It has set up a site called - I shit you not - escapenaturesfury.com where it uses aggregate data about natural disasters to show that, as disasters go - Kingman is pretty immune. I guess they don't consider the fact that it's hotter than the surface of the sun out there 6 months a year a natural disaster.

    During some wildfires a couple years ago, I was driving out to see my girlfriend when the radio announced that the freeway I would normally take was closed. A toll-road shortcut, however, was still open. So I headed for that and drove through the canyon. I came down the back side of a hill toward the last toll plaza and I could not believe what I saw. It looked exactly like fucking Mordor from Lord of the Rings. All that was missing was a giant stone tower with a flaming eye on top. I got to the toll plaza, and the toll taker gave me some advice: "Hurry."

    I got onto the main freeway and the brush on the side of the freeway right next to my car was on fire. Literally 10 feet away from my car, ON FIRE. Not 5 minutes later I am listening to news radio when they announce that the road I was just on has closed, and people are abandoning their vehicles and running for safety because they are overwhelmed with smoke.

    FOCUS: We live in a natural world that, frankly, doesn't give a shit about our well-being. What natural disasters have you experienced? How did you handle them? Was it awesome, with hurricane parties? Or did it suck, like your car got thrown three miles by a tornado?
     
  2. Jay-Bird

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    I live in Arizona, you may remember a few years back when the whole damn state caught on fire circa 2002. I could see the mountains burning from my back porch. I lived in apartments. On top of that, It was while I was in high school, and had to play a football game at the base of the mountain, the school was about 1.5hrs from Tucson. As we get closer to the area it looks like it is snowing, but it's not snow, it was ash. The air wreaked of smoke and burnt our lungs, and we played our football game in raining ash. On the way home the highway followed the foothills, and we were able to get an up close look at the mountain burning. It was an awesome sight, the flames shining on the smoke lit the whole sky up.

    2cents: I'll take the AZ heat over back east humidity any day.
     
  3. Maltob14

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    I've been through one hurricane (a level 1) and several blizzards. During the hurricane, which was dubbed Juan, I was without power for a couple of days. What did I have to eat during those 4-5 days you ask? Well if you guessed several bricks of cheddar cheese then you'd be correct. By day 5, what I shit and what I ate looked the same. Hell, it was even branded Cracker Barrel.
     
  4. Dmix3

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    I've never experienced it, or quite frankly heard of it until a few days ago but fuck if I wouldn't wanna see one if given the chance.

    Ladies and Gentlemen I give you........


    FIRE TORNADO!!

     
    #4 Dmix3, Aug 27, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 27, 2015
  5. CharlesJohnson

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    I live in Palm Beach County in South Florida. We seem to be pretty immune to hurricanes. This area doesn't flood easy either. The most serious storm was in 1928. I've been through Frances, Jeanne, and Wilma. All cat 3 and lower. Frances was a category 2 and absolutely shredded my roof. The howling wind and rain and the occasional shutter of the house didn't bother me. What got me was that the old roof ripped up pretty well and we had to catch a couple hundred gallons of water in pots and pans. Water damage everywhere. Mold got everywhere. The day after a storm it gets hot and muggy like you've never known. Everything is still and the air sticks to your skin even more so. The mold sprung up within a few hours of daylight. I got a couple bottles of tilex to go through the place bleaching the walls down. Then Jeanne hit less 3 weeks later and took more off the roof, repeat bailing, repeat garage door getting sucked in, repeat bleaching the walls. My supplies for these storms were several packages of hotdogs, a 12 pack of Guinness and gin and whiskey. That was it. Everyone went loco depleting the stores. I just grilled everything in my fridge and kept it on ice.

    Wilma hit in late 2005. That was fun. New roof was on by then, no big deal. Just got liquored up. The only real damage, besides ancient power lines down, was the Lutheran Church collapsed. That was the only structural damage in town. The storm barely lasted 2 hours, didn't get above 100mph and only the church built in the 60s collapsed in a neighborhood dotted with 20s construction. Ironic, and yanno, funny as hell. When it was over a cold wave moved in so it was 70 in the day for a week and a half. Which was nice because my power was out for 21 days. The only thing I missed was the A/C. You can't live in Florida without one. Otherwise no TV, no goddamn phones, just books and pen to paper. That was awesome. Cook everything on the propane grill anyway, so that was hardly a change.

    So if you're in a cat 3 or under the only precautions one should take is to have a good roof, a stocked liquor cabinet, and maybe some hotdogs. Because everyone else is an alarmist moron. If our roof wasn't 18 years old at the time, we would have had negligible damage. And I could have enjoyed my Guinness more.
     
  6. villagebicycle

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    Worst I've been through is some bad snow storms and rain storms, but nothing that pulling over for an hour didn't cure. I'm going to go knock on some wood now. Sucks for these guys in Russia though, some of the worst fires to hit the region:

    Note: this video is not safe for work if your boss knows Russian.



    edit: All this Florida talk made me realize the worst disaster in Florida isn't natural at all, it's the god damn turn pike. I swear it cost nearly twice as much in tolls than it did for gas to drive from Miami to Georgia.
     
    #6 villagebicycle, Aug 27, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 27, 2015
  7. Now Slappy

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    Like CharlesJohnson I live in Florida, Collier County to be specific. The only real bad storm we've had to deal with since I moved here in '93 has been Wilma. It huffed and puffed all night and most of the next morning. For us it was a direct hit, we even walked outside around six in the morning to experience the eye. You want to experience a creepy feeling, be in an eye of a hurricane. Dead silence, no wind, nothing.

    We only had minimal damage, lost part of our fence and a few shingles were blown off the roof. I have to agree with CJ also, in that if it's a Cat 3 or below just stock up on booze, ice, and non-perishables. Then fire up the genny when the power goes out and crack a beer.
     
  8. FSB

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    Living in central Ohio gets you a nice blizzard every couple of years. And then it cycles through all the seasons the next week. In any case, the worst blizzard I was home for was a few years ago in late december where my hometown and two other towns near it lost electricity for two weeks, and some areas longer than that. There were some rich neighborhoods that had power the entire time, of course, the fuckers. The real dickslap was that the middle of the power outage was Christmas day.

    Sitting in a cold, dark living room huddled around a fire and trying to feel your toes on Christmas isn't the best way to spend it, although I suppose it's far from the worst.
     
  9. Decatur Dave

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    I really can't add to the hurricane stories, I've been lucky enough to miss all the really big one's that hit Savnnah and Melbourne beach (I moved to GA the year AFTER Savannah was underwater) when I lived on the coast. I did survive the Rochester ice storm of 1991. Here's a pretty good account. We lived on spinach spaghetti for about a week. We had gas and water, but no power for ten days.

    None of that compares to the absolute chaos even an inch of snow in Atlanta causes.
     
  10. Elset

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    I don't think this was a natural disaster, but rather caused by some careless folk (or so I was told in one of my engineering classes), the most significant thing I've been through was the Great Northeast Power Blackout of 2003
    [​IMG]

    One time there was a pretty sweet ice storm that left everything in a thing sheet of ice. Every blade of grass, every pine needle on every tree had an ice casing on it, and it was awesome.
     
  11. Croftie

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    I'm from Jackson, MS, so we caught a lot of Hurricane Katrina when it came through. It wasn't still a Category 5, but I think it was 2-3 at the very least when it barreled through the state of MS. I remember driving home from school to the south and seeing this never ending line of cars driving north on I-55, at least half of which had Louisiana tags. That's when I knew things were going to get interesting. The scariest thing I remember seeing was standing on my front porch and watching a 100+ year old oak tree crack in half (sounded like a gun shot) and crash to the ground on top of a neighbors house. My family was fortunate enough to only lose power for 3 or 4 hours, mainly because our next door neighbor was the head of the local power company. Most of my friends lost power for at least 2 weeks and many couldn't get out of their neighborhood because of the maze of downed trees and live power lines. We had a bunch of family and friends from the coast come and stay with us, so my house felt like a refugee camp for a month or so. We cooked all meals in bulk because of the amount of people staying with us. It was unreal, but I know it was nothing compared to those who lived further south. We were incredibly fortunate, and it's something that I will definitely never forget.
     
  12. Blue Dog

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    I was in a weird situation back in '05. I'm from Southeast Louisiana, which was ground zero for Katrina, but I was away for school in Southwest Louisiana at the time, which turned out to be the friggin' bullseye for Rita. So kinda got nailed on both ends.

    With Katrina, my experience was more peripheral than anything. I was in contact with my parents when I could get through (cell phone service was shot), but there was really nothing I could do for them that was not being done by others. My older brother had evacuated with his family, and when they came back down afterwards, the only supplies my dad told him to bring were 50 gallons of gas, 10 NY strips, and as much beer and Jack Daniels as he could fit on his credit card.

    Rita hit more close to home for me. My girlfriend at the time took the initiative and evacuated about a day before everyone else in the area. We drove east towards Baton Rouge and alternated staying with her parents and mine. After about a week, my football coaches finally got in touch with everyone on the team to let them know that we were all being housed together in some old abandoned dormitories at the university in my hometown, which worked out great for me because I was a senior so they just let me continue to sleep at my parents' house.

    I ended up not getting back to Lake Charles for around 2 months or so, and even when we did return, the place was pretty much a wreck. A shitload of people on my team had lost their houses/apartments, so the living room of my place became a kind of homeless shelter. That was a little bit of a clusterfuck, as you can imagine. I don't think I will ever be able to look another MRE in the face after that time period.

    Oh, and then the federal government tried to play a funny joke. After applying and receiving recovery money, about 3 years later they decided that they really wanted that money back, saying that I did not live in the apartment and that I REALLY was making the daily commute to school and football from my parents' house. Two and a half hours away. Yeah.

    I went back and forth with them for about 6 months, and they wouldn't budge. After a while, I just stopped responding, and I eventually never heard from them again. That was about 2 or 3 years ago. I guess they gave up, but I don't know.

    But other than that- hurricanes have been fun for the most part. I got a boat from Katrina and almost an entire semester off of school from Rita (which I still received full credit for).

    For Gustav, I spent almost the entire storm on my dad's from porch drinking whiskey, cooking, and telling stories with my brothers. The only bad part about Gustav was that the power was out for about a week, and that wasn't even as bad as the freak snowstorm we had a few years ago that knocked us out for 9 days. The hardest part about losing power is the showering situation, but you get used to cold water after a few days.

    Ike just flooded my camp down the river, but was fine other than that.

    So, for the most part, I was extremely fortunate, all things considered. I've glossed over a lot of the bad shit that happened around me, because I would be here typing all day.
     
  13. tweetybird

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    I've lived in coastal California for all but 5 years of my life, so I've been through a bunch of earthquakes. Usually you just enjoy the ride, straighten the picture frames, and go about your day, but the biggest one was the Northridge quake in 1994.

    Dogs can see it coming. Our dog jumped on my sister's bed in the middle of the night (the quake hit around 4 a.m.) and started crying and shaking a few minutes before it started.

    We lived on a hillside and it was obviously still dark, so we could see the generators violently swinging and sparking on the power lines and the power going out through the entire city - whole areas one at a time, poof.

    The power came back for us (we were about 30 miles from the epicenter) around 4 p.m., but we were still getting aftershocks. We kept the local news on, and discovered that it was pretty hilarious watching the news anchors try to keep a straight face as the entire newsroom and our house were shaking!

    The other thing we get in California is fire. I got panicked facebook messages from multiple people when I was at a conference in Philly in November 2008. Called my mother the next day to find she was frantically driving for our house after having been in LA for meetings, trying to beat the fire so she could rescue our dog. Put together a list of things to save (she had one carload so it was easy: photos, videos, jewelry, silver). Apparently she chilled in our driveway with the fireman for hours watching the fire approach on the next ridge.

    It never got to us, but lots of our friends were not so lucky. Tip: if you have a pool, you can throw silver, jewelry, and oil paintings in to save them from fire. Good friends of my mom's now have no photos of their entire lives, but they have the silver goddamn it!
     
  14. DAMAGGOT

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    I have lived in california all my life, but not near the bay area with the quakes or south with the big wild fires. In 1998 (I believe, could have been '99) the hills behind our house caught fire.
    The family house at this time had no neighbors to the south, north, or west for a couple miles, and our property was only 30 acres of it. My father, two of his buddies, and myself were out there digging a break at about 9pm. I just remember looking toward the hill and seeing the top of it glow. We dug for about 3 hours when the fire got stupid close and started coming over the hill I mentioned before.
    The fire department came and evacuated my mother and I about that point. Not too sure where ol' pops went.
     
  15. Durbanite

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    I'm lucky to live in a region of South Africa that doesn't get many natural disasters - I don't recall the last time we had an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. However, there was one exeption...

    My parents and I were travelling back from a presentation my mom had made in Richards Bay (about 2 hours north by road) and it started to rain when we left. It then went from raining to "fuck, we can't see out the window!". We ended up doing most of the drive at like 25mph because visibility had completely gone to shit and the rain was bucketing down. We got to the John Ross bridge and proceeded across. This bridge was less than two years old and was completed to remove the bottleneck that the previous bridge had created. 5 minutes after we'd crossed, reports came in on the radio that the bridge had been washed away! A four-lane reinforced concrete bridge! If we'd been going any slower, we would've been caught and swept away.

    That's the closest I've ever been to being involved in a natural disaster.