I was on a camping trip in Panama, and because there’s no service in the jungle, didn’t know that a hurricane was coming. I rode out hurricane David in a tent on the side of a mountain.

Surprisingly I’m no longer a fan of camping.

The 2019 Memorial Day tornado outbreak. Less than a week away from the 5 year anniversary of it.

My apartment is located roughly 500 feet (152 meters) from the end point of an EF4 tornado that hit and about 1500 feet (~450 meters) of the start point of an EF3 tornado that hit. One ended and the other began within minutes of each other.

I recall I looked out of my front door and could only see the sideways winds. I had just woken up after sleeping all day because I was tired, having stayed up late the night before, burying my cat which had eaten mouse poison, which I was unaware of the symptoms for until it was too late. I had to bury my cat a second time then next day and broke my hand in frustration while doing it.

My power was out for 10 days and I had no water for 6 days. I didn’t own a car and public transportation had halted in my area from trees blocking the roads. I walked 4.5 miles to a nearby Urgent Care for my hand but they had closed due to damage. From there I walked 9 miles to the nearest hospital. They had too many people. I gave up waiting to be seen after 8 hours and went home, then wrapped my hand with bandages myself, around an old brace I had from a previous unrelated broken wrist.

When my power came back, I learned that a power surge had fried the power supply of my computer. I eventually managed to check my email at the community college, which is when I learned my health insurance coverage through Medicaid had ended, thanks to an order from the president at the time.

My absentee landlord never checked on the building. Less than a month later, the in-wall A/C unit fell out of the wall, leaving a hole large enough for me, a 6’3" 250 lb man, to easily crawl through. It was there for 6 months before it was repaired by the landlords maintenance person, who bought a cheap window unit A/C and stuck it in the hole then filled in around it with expanding foam.

The hole was ‘fixed’ around the same time I was able to buy a replacement power supply for my computer. My data storage drive had also stopped working and I learned an important lesson regarding backups. That was right around Christmas time.

Unrelated to the tornados, that’s about when I started passing kidney stones. I tried to go to the hospital for them but without insurance, they turned me away. It wasn’t considered an emergency. I missed several days of work while I passed them at home. Work said because of the amount of time I missed, I needed a doctors note to return to work. Work would schedule me 6 hour shifts, 6 days a week, which comes to 36 hours. Employees needed 40 hours a week to be considered full time and to qualify for the company insurance. Without insurance, I couldn’t find a doctor who would see me. I was terminated and the reason they listed was that I abandoned my job.

My official last day with the company was 31 December 2019. I was ready to start a new year. 2019 had not been kind to me. I remember thinking to myself on New Years Day “At least 2020 can’t possibly be worse, right?”

I live in tornado alley

The worst was also the funniest. An earthquake hit while I was on the toilet.

Climate change, shit sucks

Loma Prieta earthquake.

I drove through an f3 tornado without realizing it was a tornado.

Was headed home after work one night and my girlfriend at the time wanted taco bell so when I finally headed home I was met with a wall of rain that immediately blinded me. I pulled off the road into a clearing and as soon as I did a lightning bolt hit the telephone pole next to me.

Needless to say I floored it and moved a decent distance from the pole which was now on fire. I waited for the rain to clear a bit and decided it was time to drive home.

Bad idea.

Next thing I know I’m literally dodging falling trees left and right with the wind almost forcing me off the road. I eventually made it home but not until having to turn around multiple times due to trees blocking roads and having to drive over downed power lines that I didn’t know were there until I was already driving on them.

3/10 wouldn’t recommend.

The sad part is I recently drove through another tornado and I thought it would never happen again 😭

Glass fire in central California, I saw it the very first morning on my way to work (a Sunday), had no idea it was going to become as big as it did.

Have been through hurricanes, but the most severe natural disaster I’ve been in was a flood around 1980, it rained steadily, not so hard but without stopping, for over 2 weeks and the storm drain system just slowly got overwhelmed and the streets started filling up, my mom’s house was pretty far above street level and far from the river and the bay but still got flooded, people were getting out on boats in what had been streets but now were streams. I was young and remember getting out but don’t remember how we returned.

A hurricane. Which is pretty mild for natural disasters, but some of my neighbours lost their roofs.

The human race

American Northeast - Blizzard of 1996 It snowed for days! School was closed for a week. Then unseasonably warm weather melted the tons of snow and the river flooded. As if being 13 wasn’t difficult enough, that was quite a year

The Witch Creek Fires in San Diego in 2007. I didn’t receive the reverse 911 call and ended up fleeing my building after it was already on fire.

Poland

definitely the Tubbs Fire. You can see where my childhood home used to be in the wikipedia image! Fortunately, we didn’t live there at the time, we were a couple neighborhoods over, but it was still quite scary, the air was horrible, it lasted forever, and we had to evacuate for a while to my grandma’s house to the south. Fortunately the worst of the damage to our home was holes melted in the fake grass from raining embers, and a persistent smell of smoke, and nobody i knew got hurt.

someday, i want to live somewhere that doesn’t have to worry about ‘fire season’.