Gerson and I took an offer to work in Orlando, Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Charley and now we are watching Frances pummel Orlando through our (hopefully) secure hotel window.
I hope that if you or anyone you know is within Frances' rage, that you are safe and dry and remember, roofs, fences, drywall, etc. can all be replaced. Wakeboarders cannot.
Louise- You are so correct about dealing with earthquakes instead of Hurricanes. No around here believes me about that though. I keep telling them that with all the earthquakes that I've been through, it's always been sunny and no rain.
Louise, our thoughts and prayers are with you. My brother also lives in FL. Here in the Pacific Northwest, I'll stick with earthquakes and the occasional volcano
Don't get me wrong.... Hurricanes do suck. But we have ample warning and i'd rather have my tree's knocked down than to have the earth open up and swallow me whole !!
are they that common Phantom, because ive never seen or heard of one where im from in NW Fl?? Oh and by the way the ones i have heard about in the southern parts opened up so slow people had plenty of time to "get out the way ...get out the way"
If i'm not mistaken, sinkholes open up to resemble a swimming pool.....I can deal with that(unless it's under my house)......earthquakes split open to the center of the earth !
A few sinkholes have taken houses in recent weeks. If they're big enough they will resemble a pool since most parts of the state aren't that much higher than sea level. A couple weeks ago, in Winter Springs, a guy was upstairs in his "bonus" room over the garage and heard the house splitting in two. He grabbed his kids and got out. His garage sank five feet last I heard and his neighbors house was unstable.
I think there will be a lot more sink holes in the coming months. With all the rain that soaks through the ground it creates changes in the earth, but the sinkholes typically don't occur until the sub-terrain dries out somewhat from what I understand.
I couldn't find any cool pics of earthquakes where the earth opened up and swallowed a car or something....but I saw it on the movie Superman, so it's gotta be true!
Try doing a search on the amount of devastation inflicted by hurricanes on the East Coast and earthquakes on the West during the last 50-100 years. But then again I really hate having to straighten all the pictures on my walls every 20 years or so.