Personally, I don’t have any dramatic experiences of being in a natural disaster, but I have family members and friends who’ve experienced earthquakes in the past. My dad told me a story of an earthquake he experienced while at work in Washington in 2001. It must have been at least a 6 on the richter scale, significant enough to cause light damage. The building he was in was old, so when the earthquake happened and people realized what was going on, they evacuated outside. He recalled seeing a piece of the ceiling flake off and everything shaking. The shaking ground perplexed him and was disorienting. He said he couldn’t walk in a straight line, and that trying to run or sprint would have been impossible. Trees and telephone poles were swaying as well, and the whole experience was dizzying.
The earthquake my dad experienced was called the Nisqually earthquake which had a magnitude of 6.8. He said it damaged many of the older buildings that weren’t reinforced or built with earthquakes in mind. I did not know he had experienced an earthquake of this size before he told me. It was kind of cool to listen to his personal experience. The only earthquakes I have experienced were light shakings or ones too small to even notice.