Natural Disasters

We have had some adventures while we moved to Maryland that we definitely never expected! 

We have now lived here for almost four months and have now experienced or been issued a warning for four different disasters.

In August we experienced an earthquake of a 5.8 magnitude. Nate was at work and I was at Target. Everyone was pretty worried and while it is good to be safe I really just wanted to finish my shopping instead of sitting in the parking lot. Eventually, I was able to and Nate even got off work early! There was some damage done in a few areas around Washington D.C., Virgninia, and Maryland but nothing that affected us directly. 

About two weeks after the earthquake we got drift of Hurricane Irene along the east coast. We were on a hurricane and tropical storm warning. We got a pretty bad storm and lost power for a few hours that night in our apartment but that was about all that really affected us. There was quite a bit of damage done to trees around our complex and the city of Laurel. A large tree was uprooted by the road in our complex and a few other trees in Laurel. Church was cancelled as it happened on Saturday night and some people in our ward were out of power for about a week! We were lucky to only loose it for a few hours!

Two weekends ago from today we were on our way home from being in town with Nathan's dad and there were a few fire trucks that passed us. As we got closer to our apartment complex another one passed us and we followed it into the complex. A building in the complex caught on fire and was damaged pretty bad. There were about five fire trucks and two of the buildings were evacuated. We found out later that it was the furnace that caused the fire and one of the buildings was pretty much destroyed on the inside. The structure is still standing but they will have to completely gut everything out and redo the roof as it burned through. Nobody was hurt and everyone is being put in new apartments. We know at least one man is moving into our building.

 View of the smoke from our apartment building

Close up of some of the damage!

Now, it brings us to today! Nate came home from work and notified me that we were on Tornado warning. It has been storming the last few days and I guess there was a tornado that touched down in Virginia and there have been some funnel clouds around the D.C. area. It has just stormed and we don't really expect much else as the warning was only until 11:00 pm. It is now 11:05 pm. 

We are very grateful that we have not been affected by any of these disasters and not sure what to expect next here in Maryland! Don't forget the hostage situation with police, swat, loud speakers, and army soldiers with bazookas at our apartment complex in Oregon. That was an interesting experience too! That happened within the last year as well!

We are all about excitement but don't really prefer to experience it in these forms! Are we missing anything that we should expect next? We have covered just about everything you could experience with natural disasters!