What is the worst disaster to ever strike where you live?

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bandman232

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Jun 27, 2010
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The Reno Airshow Crash of 2011. Oh god that was terrible. Also, the Dayton Airshow crash yesterday. I was there.
 

squeebles12

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Well the biggest to happen recently in my lifetime is probably the riots in London, thats city-wise but suburb-wise its either the Stephen Laurence murder or the recent beheading in Woolwich, because these are murders I dont know if they count though.
 

Alcamonic

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In a nearby area there were a massive landslide which destroyed over 30 houses, oddly enough only one person died. A few minutes before couple of trains had departed with several hundreds of workers.

But that was some time in the 50's so was way before I was born.
 

Kuilui

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The worst disaster to ever hit my area was hurricane sandy. I live on Long Island so people with power weren't many for awhile. Got pretty nuts, people were siphoning gas out of each others cars to keep their generators going. Fights were breaking out, robbing people at gun point. The military and the police were literally taking over gas stations and telling ordinary civilians to get lost just so they can fuel themselves up. They also made sure even if they weren't around the gas station owner would swear they didn't have gas even though a truck just pulled in with gas. I didn't even know the military was around here but apparently they are. Funny really when the chips were down you'd think those groups of people would be the most helpful but instead they just abused their power and seemed to look after themselves, they weren't even directing traffic or anything, what a surprise, not.

Oh and not a disaster but if we ever went to actual war with the Russians during the cold war my town was the first target Russia was going to blow up because my town made the most advanced stealth aircraft the U.S. had back then.
 

The Tibballs

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The worst thing to happen in the state I grew up in was huge wild fires, the worst thing to happen (that I know of) in the state that I'm in now would possibly be huge wild fires and the worst thing to happen to the whole county is Tony Abbott becoming the leader of the opposition.
 

Samantha Burt

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Amethyst Wind said:
The I.R.A. bombed my town. Not much besides that. We're in a pretty stable area in terms of geography.
Interestingly, the same is true for me. When I was very very young, someone blew up a naval recruitment centre in the City (I assume that's what it was. I can't remember it being anything else prior to a the shopping centre).
 

DarkhoIlow

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Well there wasn't that big of well known disasters during my lifetime, but I did ask my mother who is 56.

She told me during her own lifetime that the biggest disasters were an earthquake in 1977 (7.8 richter scale) and big floods in 1970.
 
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A_Parked_Car said:
Hey Escapists,

I'm wondering what is the worst disaster to ever strike where you live? It can be natural or man-made.

I have asked this because I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Right now the whole of southern Alberta is experiencing serious flooding. This is certainly the worst disaster that has ever hit where I live. Luckily there seem to be very few fatalities, though the flooding has caused a lot of damage and displaced tens of thousands of people.

http://bizboxtv.com/calgary-flooding-2013-flood-pictures-video/

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/two-confirmed-dead-in-alberta-flooding-calgary-s-downtown-evacuated-1.1335330
There seems to be more Escapists from Calgary than I thought. Did your home get hit? I fortunately live far enough away that if it weren't for the news I might not have any idea all of this was happening
 

superstringz

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About 3 years ago we had the worst on-land oil spill in history. $800 million in cleanup later and there's still tar sands in the river.

Facts Here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enbridge_oil_spill]
 

rosac

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place I grew up in- double murder

nottingham- urm, I'm guessing the gun running.
 

A_Parked_Car

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The Almighty Aardvark said:
There seems to be more Escapists from Calgary than I thought. Did your home get hit? I fortunately live far enough away that if it weren't for the news I might not have any idea all of this was happening
Yeah, I'm finding that their are more Calgarians around here than I originally thought as well.

I too was far enough away to avoid any flooding. I didn't realize something was up until I went to Superstore to pick up ice cream and popcorn only to find out that people were panic-buying water and such like it was the apocalypse.
 

Vie

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Well, the town I live in looked like this after the Blitz - http://www.cornwall24.net/wp-content/uploads/img-Tom302.jpg

Bar that, and a few IRA bombings, the worst damage was of a political nature.
 

Ren_Li

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Where I live specifically? Erm... Not much. We're high enough not to have severe flooding from rains (although not all towns within a hundred or so square miles can say as much), far enough from the coast not to be impacted by coastal weather, and the south coast (which I'm not tooooo far from) doesn't have too much to worry about anyway as it's a relatively small stretch of ocean between here and France. Our climate is relatively temperate, although we've been having more extreme weather of late.

In fact, we've had the coldest winter for many many years last year (not the one just passed), and the hottest summer for many many years, hmm... Last year or the year before? And both were so different from what we were used to that there were fatalities due to people simply being unable to cope. Almost any other country in the world would scoff at either our inability to deal with that winter, or with that summer; but that's probably the closest to a natural "disaster" that I can think of specifically where I live.
We're pretty fortunate not to have much in the way of natural disasters in England. More northern parts of the country may suffer from floodings sometimes, but that's far from a yearly occurrence. (As far as I know.)

London did have a bomb attack about ten or twelve years ago, if that counts. I can't think of any other major man-made "disasters" though. Oh, I'm sure there's been fires, but I don't recall hearing of any really bad ones.

Of course, if we want to talk historically, I'm sure most people have heard of the London Plague and following fire. I'm probably close enough to London to say that's the worst.
 

Toilet

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Buncefield, everything got closed and it was impossible to get anywhere. The water tasted funny as well for a while and the industrial estate looked like a war zone.
 

Xanadu84

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shrekfan246 said:
Ice storms.

Specifically within my lifetime, the ice storm of 1998.

But I lived in the city and we were hit probably the softest out of most areas impacted, so it didn't really affect me all that much. If I'd been living up in Fairfield like I was when I went into high school, then...

Other than that, nothing much happens in Vermont. We get the occasional light forest fire, the occasional small tornado, the occasional small flood, the occasional earthquake (I think there've been two in my lifetime), but snow, ice, and how they mess the roads are pretty much what you have to pay the most attention to around here.
I was JUST thinking, "Hey, I had Ice Storms back in 1998, I wonder...why yes, you're a fellow Vermonter!". Roundabout where are you? I'm out of Waterbury, work in Burlington.

I should point out that the small Tornados and Earthquakes arn't really anything to mention along with, "Disaster". Maybe ive just never seen a Tornado here thats capable of doing damage, but the earthquakes are all universally in the realm of, "Unless you happen to be paying close attention, you won't notice it" variety. But, I think you lucked out if you're overlooking Irene: my place had 3 feet of water on the first floor, and there was some pretty significant damage all over town. Thank god our floods are of the once-a-century frequency.
 

Ytomyth

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Probably about the time when they ran out of my favourite soda in the store (and at home too).

Not uneventful, merely subjective. :p
 

shrekfan246

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Xanadu84 said:
shrekfan246 said:
Ice storms.

Specifically within my lifetime, the ice storm of 1998.

But I lived in the city and we were hit probably the softest out of most areas impacted, so it didn't really affect me all that much. If I'd been living up in Fairfield like I was when I went into high school, then...

Other than that, nothing much happens in Vermont. We get the occasional light forest fire, the occasional small tornado, the occasional small flood, the occasional earthquake (I think there've been two in my lifetime), but snow, ice, and how they mess the roads are pretty much what you have to pay the most attention to around here.
I was JUST thinking, "Hey, I had Ice Storms back in 1998, I wonder...why yes, you're a fellow Vermonter!". Roundabout where are you? I'm out of Waterbury, work in Burlington.
Essex Junction at the moment. I bounce between here and Shoreham every so often.

I should point out that the small Tornados and Earthquakes arn't really anything to mention along with, "Disaster". Maybe ive just never seen a Tornado here thats capable of doing damage, but the earthquakes are all universally in the realm of, "Unless you happen to be paying close attention, you won't notice it" variety.
Oh yeah, there's been one earthquake that was something like a 5.6 on the Richter Scale probably... a decade or a little more ago now, other than that none I've felt and I've never seen a tornado myself, but hey, they still happen.

But, I think you lucked out if you're overlooking Irene: my place had 3 feet of water on the first floor, and there was some pretty significant damage all over town. Thank god our floods are of the once-a-century frequency.
Some of our roads flooded a little bit, but aside from the heavy rain I don't think the power was even cut off around here, at least not for longer than a few hours.
 

White_Lama

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I live in Sweden, Uppsala to be more exact and well, apart from the city burning down and stuff that happened hundreds of years ago and such, I guess...

Well, Sweden don't really get any sort of disasters except maybe some storms now and again, and even then since Norway is in the way for most of the clouds, we don't get hit that bad.

Unless the storm comes from the east or south, and goes all Gudrun on our asses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Gudrun

"The death toll in Sweden was eighteen victims, making it one of the biggest environmental disasters in Swedish history, while four were killed in Denmark."

Yeah... 18 isn't exactly that much is it...