Taiwan 6.5 Magnitude Earthquake. Very Exciting...

[Jozi]

No natural disasters where I live :)

[joshuamurphy]

I live in New Zealand, we had a magnitude 7.1 in September 2010 and a 6.3 in February 2011.

yozare aucklander here. were you in the red zone? also have you been paid out by your insurance yet? also any tips where to get cheap parts in nz? i know of pricespy dot co dot nz

[ofr057]

canberra bushfires and alot of floods.

 

no big deal really

[Christian]

Minor earthquake near Canberra last year (3.7). More like a little tremble. But it did lead to this fantastic image:

Hey that was for the Melbourne one!

[Bramm17]

Pretty cool Linus. I can imagine that when you never felt it before it must have been weird, especially so high up :D! Have fun in Taiwan!! :D :D

[nishank93]

Hey that was for the Melbourne one!

LOL it was all over my Facebook for the one in Canberra. I still find it hilarious.

[bennyino]

very tiny earthquake, it shook my chair for 1.5 seconds or so

[that_one_kid]

Well a lot of minor stuff actually. 

 

There was a tornado down the street which lifted the roof's of a few houses when I was 1 or 2. There was Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy. There was an earthquake up in Canada that I felt down in Utica, NY and then the one right outside of Washington D.C. that I felt in and could see (the blinds were swaying back and forth) in Princeton. And that's pretty much it...

[gill2k]

Having been born and lived in Philippines, I've experience countless typhoons, flooding, and at one time an earthquake.

 

Now here in Canada, it's the blizzards one after another, particularly this past winter.

[fade]

Only had one earthquake experience.  For a split second I thought someone was pulling a prank on me.  Not used to them so thought my home was collapsing for some reason.  Then finally it clicked that it was an earthquake.  That moment of confusion was pretty surreal.  Thankfully I was at home.  Couldn't imagine experiencing something like that overseas in a country I'm not used to.

[AceHunter]

6.5????

 

congrats~

[wtfxmitchell]

i live in the netherland, nothing happends here, it only rains and rains and rains.....

[Morfy]

8. something in '77, destroyed half of my capital, also a few around here, and some bad-ass floods in other parts of the country.

[James McFurry]

We currently have a high risk of flooding here in Prague. It's not exactly pleasing.

[DigiKing]

I was in a level 3.5 hurricane once. I live next to a park and huge trees (some around 150 feet tall) lying on the ground.

[Brissinger6]

I live in Belgium, most boring country of them all --' nothing has ever happened around here..

[1funnygame]

damn global warming causing Earthquakes!

[Mario-]

Our entire city is flooded right now.

Not so fun here in Austria.

[Blackterror25]

6.5 Magnitude

 

[JordanMac]

we had a small earthquake in the uk several years back i remember waking up in the middle of the night with everything shaking, it stopped quickly and i went back to sleep it was only like 3 or something like that. 

[Killoginet]

Missed the last couple of live shows because of tornadoes, I was underground in a shelter. Ah the life of Oklahoma.

Here is a picture I took of the last one.

[Esivo]

Had a couple earthquakes here and there.. Don't think any of them was over 6 richter though.

[adiobe]

I'm 23 years old and never experienced a disaster thankfully! 

[That Norwegian Guy]

Norway is pretty boring when it comes to these things. The worst you could expect to see in your life time here is a snow avalanche or two.

 

However, contrary to historical events, there was a real hurricane in 1996 where I lived, it was amazing, I went outside and watched the huge waves and the scary thing about it was that it was in the middle of the winter, and prior to the hurricane it had been -12 degrees celsius (below freezing for you fahrenheit limited individuals) but once the storm started it was suddenly room temperature outside. Like 25 degrees. It went from full on winter with snow and ice and shit to summer in maybe 45 seconds.

 

 

Our entire city is flooded right now.
Not so fun here in Austria.

 

That sucks big time, hope it's over soon for you.

[richythomas]

I was woken to what the United States Geological Survey estimate a 9.1 Mw Earthquake.

 

A little worse for wear as the evening before had been spent having a few drinks with my friend whilst celebrating on a remote beach that we had a local take us too in his boat and latterly on a cruise around the islands.

 

During the day I spoke to my parents as it was Christmas Day, wished them a Happy Christmas as they were at home in Wales whilst I was on a months vacation in Thailand.

 

We had no idea as to what we had just felt as only a few days previous whilst in Chiang Mai a local guide announced Thailand don't really experience Earthquakes as they're not located on a major fault line.  Little did he know only a few days later one of my most violent earthquakes would wake us in our bed, shaking for two to three minutes thereafter.

 

The plan for the day was to hire a Moped from the hotel to travel around Phuket and visit Phuket Town as well as other coves and inlets around the coast.  The hotel had unfortunately hired its last bike out so off down to the sea front we went in search of a moped to hire.  The day before we had seen some for hire next to the beach a few hundred yards from our hotel.

 

They were due to setup for the day so we hung around on the beach waiting for them to open.  Finally opened and whilst handing over money we noticed the water at the beach disappeared out to a far distance, no one had any idea as to why as this had never happened before.

 

A few minutes later I handed my passport over to the rep for ID purposes and were just getting on to the bike for a demonstration when the Tsunami hit us, taking across to the other side of the road, trapping my friends leg under the bike.  We never did see my passport again nor the people, my prayers are with them and their families.

 

The force of that water on ones back is no match for sheer determination, eventually the bike was taken away by the force of water, freeing her and the next wave took us into what was once a restaurant.  There we clambered to wooden uprights and anything that may have floated as the water by this time was deeper than us.

 

Whilst clambering to wooden struts my friend disappeared from view, my heart was racing for what seemed to be eternity when I saw her on a wooden platform, she still remembers the relief on my face to this day.

 

I'm not sure about timings but half an hour later the water had somewhat receded but was still about waist high.  We made a decision to get back to our hotel (a few hundred yards down the main beach road) which took a while and on the way we heard someone shouting for her husband (of a few days), god only knows what we were stepping on as one could not see through the muddy water.

 

Our hotel room was on the second storey so our belongings were intact, we had to search for our security box in reception as our airline tickets etc. were in it, after much searching (they were all floating in water) it was found and managed to salvage our tickets although I'm sure we could have got new ones.

 

Numerous calls for additional Tsunami's ensured we had to evacuate the hotel so we all walked up to higher ground with all of our belongings.

 

By this time it was around 2pm local time so managed to coax the pub owner into letting us use the landline to phone home.  If it weren't for the number of people walking past with backpacks this part of Patong didn't seem to be any different to a normal day.  My friend called her parents and I called mine which was kind of funny.  About 7am on Boxing Day morning in Wales I wake my Dad up and said, "It's okay, we're both find." To which my Dad replied, "Call us later, its early and I've got a bad head from last night!".  Only an hour or so later he turned the TV on and realised how important that telephone call had been.

 

We stayed in the pub for a few hours and made friends with a bunch of Australian guys who couldn't believe what had happened only a mile or so away.  They took us in and made us feel welcome in the house they had rented in the hills for Christmas, something they did every year.  They couldn't have been nicer and to this day I am so grateful to them.  They ran us down to Phuket Town the next day to register at the make-shift UK Embassy and I registered a lost passport with the Police.  My friend was treated for a fractured finger which was the only injury any of us had except a multitude of cuts and bruises.

 

We all took a trip down to the beach that day also and there were boats in the road, cars upside down, the restaurant which we were in was completely demolished (not sure how long after we had vacated it).  The worst was whilst at the make shift Embassy it brought it home how incredibly lucky we both were as there was a British man there who lost his wife and children in Koh Phi Phi in those few dreadful minutes, again my most sincere prayers and thoughts are with him.

 

Over the next day or two we were in two minds whether to cut the trip short or carry on to Koh Samui on the other side of Thailand where we had reservations (as well as airline travel) before making a trip back to Bangkok (instead of Koh Phi PHi which was devastated) so that I could get a new passport before travelling to our last destination at Hau Hin prior to a couple of days back in Bangkok.  This we did and had a marvellous time.

 

I experienced a few unsettled nights in the months that followed but this soon passed.  Now and again I do get a flash back but nothing too bad and these are becoming few and far between.  I haven't seen the film based on the 2004 Tsunami and nor do I really want too.  My wife (no not the lady who I was with in Thailand) would like to see it but won't force the issue for understandable reasons.