What is your biggest natural disaster threat? | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

A conversation on the chat last night got me thinking about this. I have always prioritized in the back of my mind what was a concern for the safety of my family but never really wrote them down.

Obviously Blizzards and ice storms are a concern here in Maine. When we moved here in 97 the following year we had a major ice storm in 98. Our apartment was without power for 2 weeks and some of the outlying areas were without for a month or more. Looking back on it, it could have been a lot worse for us than what it was. Luckily my wife and daughter were down at her parents at the time and rode the storm out there and I crashed on a coworkers couch who was lucky enough to have not lost power. If it happened again today, for us anyways, it wouldn't have a huge impact today as it did then. We could probably ride out a whole winter if we needed to.

Hurricanes, even though people wouldn't think hurricanes in maine we do sometimes end up in the path of hurricanes coming up the east coast. In the 20th century there were 7 that had a major impact on the area with the last one being bob in 1991. Usually by the time they get to maine they are category 1 with winds of 80-100 miles per hour. Our biggest concern would be flying debris with the amount of glass we have on our home. Note to self, look into storm shutters.

Earthquakes, these are pretty much a non issue here, but there is a old fault that runs through maine down to NYC. Since we have lived here I think there was 4.2 EQ about 10 years ago. With that being said, I did see a show on history channel that said that the fault that runs through new england can not be discounted. It's the ones that aren't active that when they go causes the biggest damage since no one has built their homes and buildings to resist the affects of a EQ. I would think my House would ride a EQ all right, personally, I don't want to find out.

Tsunami, being near the ocean a tsunami is plausable but highly unlikely on a geological timescale. There is only 2 ways that this could happen here, meteor strike or canary island land slide.

I have looked at different models for the landslide and from what I can gather the east coast would have about a 5 hour window of warnings of the danger. I have seen models that show a 100 foot wave to 1000 foot. Our town rests about 285 above sea level and we are about 20 miles inland so I believe we would be alright, but just to be on the safe side, I would probably drive to greenville which is 1200 feet above sea level and another 25 miles inland.

That's all I can think of for us