I've experienced small earthquakes, and several small or close hurricanes.
The worst experience was Hurricane Hugo in 1989. It hit our area in South Carolina during the night, with 140 mph winds. It was awful, worse because we couldn't see anything in the dark. We lived in a one-story ranch house at the time. Hubby, our daughter, our two Labs, two cats, and I spent the night in our hallway. It was the safest area because it was in the middle of the house, no windows. We kept hearing loud crashing noises and whistling wind. The inside walls of the hallway kept heaving in and out, like breathing. In the middle of the night, there was a brief period of quiet during the passing of the eye. We went outside for a few minutes to check for damage. We couldn't see much because it was totally black outside, except for flashlights. We didn't go far from our yard, so we didn't see the whole neighborhood during eye. Our car was parked outside, and looked OK. Then, the winds began again, and we went back inside. It was even worse. We expected to die but we didn't panic. We are all Christians in our family, so we had peace about death. But listening to the crashing, and feeling the walls move was still scary.
Finally, it was morning. The sun came up, and we could see the damages. Our yard wasn't bad. It was waist-deep in broken tree limbs and leaves but no trees fell in our yard. Our fence gate blew off the hinges but was easy to fix. The car was damaged but it was weird. Our car was maroon color but it looked green. It had thousands of pieces of green leaves stuck on it, like decoupage. When I opened the car doors, there were pieces of leaves
inside the car (but no water).
As we looked up the street, we saw much more devastation. Trees were on roofs, on cars, on the street. We had no electricity or running water. The land line phones did work. We had a battery radio but the closest station we could get was from Florida. All the radio and TV stations in the Charleston area were wiped out.
We drove around the local towns looking for friends and helping them because they had worse damage. One family of friends had all the pine trees fall on their house, crisscrossing the roof. You could see the sky from inside their house, which was full of wet insulation and pine trees. The trees also fell on their car and truck. We helped them for a while, then went on to the next town.
It was very hard to find places. Every (and I mean every) street sign, billboard, and traffic light was gone. We couldn't even recognize familiar neighborhoods. For one family that we checked on, we had to leave our car and go several blocks on foot in her subdivision. We climbed over, and crawled under the huge trees that blockaded the roads.
We didn't have it so bad as many people. We got water back in less than a week, and electricity in a couple of weeks. But many neighborhoods had no water or electricity for months.
We had to be careful how much gas we used because there was no gas for sale because there was no electricity. Hubby had a special pass from the Navy so he could travel beyond curfew. He went to another town inland, about 50 miles, to get gas, ice and supplies for our neighborhood. The National Guardsmen let him thru because he had a permission letter from his commanding officer.
Hurricane Hugo 1989