What Is The Worse Crisis Your Town or City Has Had

[Janice]

Our Island is flat broke. They have to money. They are talking about shutting down the whole government on Monday, schools too. It is overspending by the past couple administrations, but that is enough from me. There are several articles in the column telling of some of it.

http://www.prwow.com/html/GeneralNews.asp

What is the worse crisis your town or city has had. We know what New Orleans and the southern states have had and that is way worse than any of our problems on the island.

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL QUESTION. I am just saying we have a crisis and have you ever had one, like floods, etc.

[SouthFloridawx]

Sorry your island is going through that Janice. It must be some trying times there now.

[GalvestonDuck]

Easy answer for my city -- 1900.

[Lindaloo]

Hurricane Katrina.

[CajunMama]

Janice, I was wondering about PR and their economy. KnotImpaired was in chat the other night and was telling us about that but I hadn't heard anything else.

[Janice]

Yes, if you update the link I gave you, will be able to keep up. We are fine. John has enough grant money to pay himself and his lab students. We just bought a ton of gas for car and cans and John went to Sams Club. The worse for us is if the truck strike and no gas or food gets to the stores. We are fine. It is the lower income who depend on their jobs. I just hope they do not close the schools, they only have a month to go. Things will be ok in the end. My husband only has grad students and post docs, so they do not attend classes, they will be fine.

[TexasStooge]

The worst crisis in my area I can think of happens to be backyards sinking into a local lake in my area.

Click here to see entire thread about it.

[gtalum]

The real estate bust of the late 1920's. Sarasota really hasn't had a lot of crises.

[CajunMama]

The oil bust in the early 80's. Grown men unemployed, many housed foreclosed upon, retail stores closing and a major exodus out of Lafayette. Lafayette was a ghost town. There was a bumper sticker that said "Last one out of town please turn off the lights"

[conestogo_flood]

Nothing really ever happens here. I think the worse anyone here went through was the Crompton Refinery explosion in 2004. It didn't really affect Con/Wat, the cloud went northeast. We had massive floods in the early 90s, and in the 70s. Or the meltdown scare in the middle 90s from a nuclear power plant in Ajax, Ontario near Toronto. There was a small radiation leak, but it had everyone talking before we knew how big it was.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Not even close for this area--at least not since the Yellow Jack epidemics... and that would undoubtedly be a gal named Katrina!

A2K

[wxmann_91]

The wildfires in October-November 2003.

[Audrey2Katrina]

The wildfires in October-November 2003.

Oh, I remember those... had a friend who very nearly lost her home in that inferno.... terrible!

A2K

[HurricaneHunter914]

Hurricane Charley, 2004

[wxmann_91]

The wildfires in October-November 2003.

Oh, I remember those... had a friend who very nearly lost her home in that inferno.... terrible!

A2K

The place where my mom worked was 1 mile away from the flames. That morning the entire sky was orange and there was soot falling from the sky. Will never forget it. Then a few days later the wind picked up again and it was so smoky I could barely breathe.

Another vivid memory from that was on live TV they were showing the flames jump across I-15, which is a HUGE freeway (10 lanes both directions+2 HOV lanes), and my family and I drove through there every Saturday to buy food. They had reporters live from the freeway as well.

At least I got a week off from school... but it was very sad as one of othe teachers at our school lost his home due to the flames.

Then the next six months the entire Eucalyptus forest near my mom's workplace was completely charred and black with the exception of a few flowers and grass that started growing only a week after the flames abated.

[Cookiely]

In terms of human suffering the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. If your talking money, I would say when the land boom went bust followed by the great depression.

[nystate]

Not sure about my area's history, but while I was here a few years ago we had a nasty shooting at an upscale Italian restaurant. A soldier walked in with a shotgun and a pistol and shot about 15 people, killing many of them. A police officer across the street heard the gunshots, ran into the restaurant, and shot the shooter four times in the chest. He survived, was arrested, and sentenced to death. The restaurant is still around (I just went there last week), although the owners were among those killed in the rampage when they tried to stop the shooter from killing their customers.

Besides that we also had a pretty bad plane crash a few years ago; Clinton (who was president at the time) even came down from DC to show his support to the community.

[ohiostorm]

The floods following Frances and Ivan in 2004 were probably my towns biggest problems.

[Gorky]

The only time my little home town has made any sort of news outside of the uk was about 14 years ago, when a landslip left a 4 star hotel teetering on the edge of the cliffs, and its subsequent fall into the sea. Even that only got interest because part of the collapse happened during a live tv broadcast.

this is what the hotel guests woke up to that morning



Bear in mind that the hotel was over 100ft from the cliff edge the previous night. Also.. low tide prevented any sort of localised tsunami effect, and it happening at 7.00am meant there was no one on that part of the beach when the cliff gave way, otherwise there would have been a large death toll. The beaches in Scarborough are usually packed with tourists in summer...



Edit: Another pic

[TexasStooge]

The only time my little home town has made any sort of news outside of the uk was about 14 years ago, when a landslip left a 4 star hotel teetering on the edge of the cliffs, and its subsequent fall into the sea. Even that only got interest because part of the collapse happened during a live tv broadcast.

this is what the hotel guests woke up to that morning



Bear in mind that the hotel was over 100ft from the cliff edge the previous night. Also.. low tide prevented any sort of localised tsunami effect, and it happening at 7.00am meant there was no one on that part of the beach when the cliff gave way, otherwise there would have been a large death toll. The beaches in Scarborough are usually packed with tourists in summer...

WOW!! And I thought the sinking backyards situation last year in my hometown was scary.