re: What's the scariest natural disaster footage you've ever seen?

I need you to see my wedding video.

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That guy died filming that tornado

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No he didn’t. His wife and their neighbor died downstairs. He was upstairs and survived, although severely injured by a collapsing chimney.

It appears the water in those small streams/wetlands is flash boiling.

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2004 tsunami footage

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I really don't think I could live a tsunami zone. Those are the things that scare me the most in terms of natural disasters.

Tornadoes are devastating but a lot of times the path of destruction is very limited. It's just hard as they are random. One side of a street could be devastated and the other side of a street could be largely untouched.

Hurricanes are devastating, but you have plenty of time to evacuate.

Flooding is bad but again in most cases you have time to evacuate.

Earthquakes scare me but I can handle them. But tsunami's are just a different animal altogether. There's no preparing for them. When they happen you have maybe 15 minutes notice and unless you are in the mountainous terrain where you can get to high ground or in a large city with large skyscrapers, there's not way to get above it. A tsunami, if it hits you, there's just not much you can do and you can easily go from living life to being dead very quickly.

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...I later read about that lady in the paper. I've never felt so bad about the death of a stranger as I did that lady. Just all the destruction that was around that neighborhood. Houses just completely gone and the foundation and exterior brick stairs left. Big arse trees broken and tossed like toothpicks. Dead horses scattered around a barn and adjacent to pasture. Then you had the juxtaposition of places like my grandfather's. He had a tree take out the service line to his house and a 2" long by 1/4 wide hole in part of his vinyl siding. We never did find what it was that caused the hol, but didn't really care and thanked the Lord for sparing his place...

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I few days after the tornado went through, I took my small boat to Lake Martin and launched it. I am very familiar with Garnet Point and the Gold Mines, having camped in those places numerous times when in Scouts. I also have a friend who has a place in that area, so I knew it well. We went to check see how his place fared.

Had to go slow because of all the debris in the water. When we got to Garnet Point, every house was gone, only slabs remained. There was no grass or shrubs either and only one tree, oddly sitting there, looking virtually untouched. I think it was a medium-sized tulip poplar, maybe 40' tall. As we got closer we realized its root ball was sitting on top of the ground. It had been yanked out of the dirt somewhere and deposited there.

The area looked like a lawnmower 50-yards wide had driven across the island, Garnet Point, and then across the slough to the other side, mowing down to the bare dirt everything in its path. It was stunning and left us speechless.

Fortunately, my friend only lost his boathouse.

A buddy and I drove down to Baton Rouge for the Auburn v. LSU game that had been postponed because of Katrina. I-10 backed up at Diamond Head so we got off the interstate in hopes of getting some ice and something to drink.

We saw a convenience store, but as we drove up we realized the store was closed and the locals were there getting ice and water and food, so we left and continued south towards the coast. Things really changed after you crossed the train tracks.

The road was lined by tall debris piles, broken occasionally by a driveway. If you looked down the driveway, you would see a clean, sand yard and a concrete pad where a house once stood. On the pad would be a tent, a picnic table, a grill, a couple of folding chairs, and maybe a big wheel or other toys.

The residents didn't wait for FEMA or some other aid organization, they just got busy, and now they were waiting to rebuild. They weren't going anywhere.

As we drove to the coast, we saw Nissan trucks and boats lodged 10 feet up in trees. There was no color, everything was a sand-blasted yellowish gray and everything looked like it had been beaten to a pulp. And we just kept driving to the south. We were several miles from the coast.

We made it to the coast finally and it was beautiful. The water was blue and clear, like the sky. The sand was white and piled so deep on the road we could not go far before we had to turn around and go back.

Both of us had watched TV during the storm and after, We had seen the pictures. We had heard the reports. Still, we were not prepared for what we saw, and we drove speechless at the power of that storm -- and also in the resilience of the people who lived there and took it upon themselves to get ready for the rebuilt.

They should have expected something bad when they first heard the scary ominous music starting to play.

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Omg. I’ll take a hurricane any day over a tornado.

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The joy of living in the gulf south is that you get them both at the same time, although the tornadoes are not usually that size.

Definitely. I just appreciate the chance to leave town, which we did when kids were young. Other than some tropical storms, I believe Ida was the1st biggie we stayed home for. Didn’t get what other areas of the state got, but it was bad enough and roof replacement. Unsure if I’ll stick around for another like that.