Personal Experiences Hurricane David Savannah GA, Sept 4, 1979 Sometimes we are able to live through a disastrous storm and be able to find pleasant memories about it years later. September 4, 1979, Hurricane David made landfall at Savannah, Georgia, after a devastating path through the Caribbean. My husband, son and I were living in there in a row house near the historic downtown area.  My husband was a native of Savannah so he knew how to prepare for the storm. I had grown up in eastern Montana and Wyoming so I had no experience with hurricane storm patterns. Row Houses Early that day, as the rain was already filling the storm drains and causing street flooding several inches deep, we hurried to the grocery store and got chicken and vegetables, other necessary foods and some presto logs to use in our fireplace.  Then it was home again so I could start cooking meals that could be heated in the fireplace. I finished the stove cooking just a few minutes before we lost electrici...

The recent flooding destruction and tragedy in the hill country of central Texas shows us that people often choose to live close to danger. Closer to home, remember when " Mount St. Helens erupted for nine hours on May 18, 1980 destroying plant and animal life in the surrounding 230 square miles of forest and killing 57 people. In this post-eruption image, Spirit Lake is buried by debris." Famously, Harry Truman refused to leave his home on Spirit Lake, and is presumably buried under the debris shown in the photo below. Mt. St. Helens from  https://catalog.archives.gov/  via Picryl.com Recovery from this utter destruction seemed impossible, but the next photo shows that nature is creative and resilient—and so are we humans.  Aerial photo of Mount St. Helens (center), with Mount Hood (in the distance, far left), Spirit Lake (on left with floating log mat), and St. Helens Lake with a little ice cover (lower left). USGS image taken by K. Spicer on June 6, 2024. Public Domain...