Natural Disasters

It's nearing the end of August.  There's a fearsome hurricane forming in the Atlantic Ocean and a freakish earthquake recently shook the east coast of the USA.  Watching too much news coverage of these events has forced me into reminiscing/recalling/remembering the tumultuous disasters that we (me and the hubby) have been associated with.

The strongest tornado ever recorded happened in the OKC metro area on May 3, 1999.  My sister's house was completely wiped out.  As she frantically held the wrists of my nieces while crouched in the bathtub, my brother-in-law covered his girls with a mattress.  It's horrific to think what could have happened to them.  They lost their neighborhood, home, vehicles, photo albums, keep sakes, clothes and sense of security.  For the first 18 years of my life, I was fully aware that I lived in a severe weather prone area, but I never thought that it could truly affect me.  And it was with only one degree of separation that I was forever changed by this powerful, swirling wind.

The calm before the storm:
Brooke and the pups waiting for the hurricane to arrive

The hubby and I moved to Houston during the winter of 2007.  Category 3 Hurricane Ike bulls-eyed the city that following summer.  We lived far enough away from the coast that we were told by authorities to not evacuate and to just ride out the storm in our house.  Which we did.  Which was very scary. Which ended up being just fine.  Which resulted in 2 weeks without electricity.  The dogs and I were refugees with family in OKC while we waited for the power = a/c to bring relief from the Houston heat.  Meanwhile, the hubby flew to the Middle East for work.  He always misses the good stuff.

After Ike:  clean up of our once beautiful pergola

In Denver, we didn't encounter a per se defined natural disaster.  But, the amount of snow that we received our first (and only) October was overwhelming.  Feet and feet of the dreaded white stuff.  While shoveling the driveway, I wondered, "where am I supposed to put all of this?"  Denver is not for the fair-weathered or thin-blooded.   

Kyle and the pups play in the Denver snow

Kyle and Brooke at the top of Kok Tobe in Almaty,
a mountainous region of the count

Both Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Baku, Azerbaijan, are located in high seismic activity areas.  A fact that we did not share with our families until we were safely back in the USA.  We kept an earthquake preparedness bag next to the front door.  It was stocked with first aid supplies, flashlights, bottled water, etc.  But, of course, as life goes, being prepared really didn't help out Kyle when he was in the Almaty airport, waiting in the customs line, when the world trembled.  He looked around at his fellow passengers and figured that the local Kazaks would know what to do, so he followed them outside and stood around for a bit.  His plane later took off without much to-do.  Later, we found out that the quake that Kyle felt was the first of several magnitude 6.0+ to hit the area over the next few days.

Variety is the spice of life.  Apparently, for us, that includes a multitude of environmental occurrences.