Fifty Plus (50+) - 50+ Safe Check for Fires, Floods, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, other disasters

Let us know you are OK if there is a disaster in your area.

At times the media has a way of making things worse than they are.

DnvrFox - safe and sound in Parker, CO. I can see smoke looking south and north (S to Colorado Springs and north to Boulder and Fort Collins) but we purposely chose an area to live that is about as safe as one can get. Our major threat is small tornados - one came through a few years back and tore up some fencing down the street - and hail. Since living in CO, I have never had to pay for a new roof - it always gets destroyed by hail, and the insurance covers it. I got a new one 2 years ago.

Others?

We live a quite a ways from the "foothills" of Colorado Springs, (Academy Blvd. and La Salle St.) so were ok but the smoke smell is HEAVY especially in the mornings, add 90+ temps and it's not a great combo for bicycling! Most of the city would have to be on fire for us to be evacuated, since we don't own a car, we have everything packed and ready to put in the panniers, then head to my brothers and Mom's place in Security via MUPS and backroads that shouldn't have much traffic! :)

Aside from the upcoming heat wave, and edging on drought conditions here, the St. Louis Metro region is doing okay, though the fireworks are likely to be cancelled because of the extremely dry conditions.

I have been going through Tropical Storm Debbie, now Tropical Depression Debbie. We started getting rain early Sunday and I think the last of it might have just blown out around 11 AM today. I think that we must have gotten about 7" of rain. We are still about 2" behind for the year but maybe Debbie will double back and get us up to pace. I rather think that if about half of the state isn't flooded and the other half nearly so, we are in a drought. Going to the gym today in the rain, I noticed that people still had sprinklers on.

It is all too true about the coverage emphasizing the worst. I went out for a ride the morning after a hurricane. There were quite a few limbs down, power was out and the traffic lights were not working. Other than that, things were OK. I rode something over 30 miles. As I was riding home through a suburb, I saw the worst damage yet. Someone had their pickup truck parked in their driveway. In hurricanes, the ground gets really wet. That means that trees have less grip in the muddy soil. On top of that, the trees get saturated and thus top heavy. If you add a little wind, the tree goes over. This large pine tree had fallen on the truck and pretty much smashed it up. There was a TV news crew there filming the whole thing. They must have driven around for a couple of hours and filmed a few minutes of the very worst things they saw for the news.

I could not comment much on the news coverage in that set of hurricanes. My power was out so I did not see the TV news. Relatives called me and asked me things but except for stuff I had seen with my eyeballs, they had far more information than I had.

I did my early morning ride today which includes a lap around the Morgul Bismark. Just enough smoke in the air to irritate the lungs.:mad:

I've become so accustomed to slurry bombers overhead that I'll miss them when they are gone. The Northbound ones turn right over my house as them depart Jeff...errr..."Rocky Mtn Metro" airport.

This is an excellent idea. :thumb: I was working in New York City on 9/11, and I remember the concern that people on various web sites had for me before I could get to a computer and check in.

We don't have any of that bad stuff here in St Louis except that it's hot. It's hot enough that our local recreational cycling club is cancelling it's regular morning rides. 'Sposed to get up to 108 tomorrow.

We live a quite a ways from the "foothills" of Colorado Springs, (Academy Blvd. and La Salle St.) so were ok but the smoke smell is HEAVY especially in the mornings, add 90+ temps and it's not a great combo for bicycling! Most of the city would have to be on fire for us to be evacuated, since we don't own a car, we have everything packed and ready to put in the panniers, then head to my brothers and Mom's place in Security via MUPS and backroads that shouldn't have much traffic! :)

New boy here, but also a Colorado Springs resident. Live quite a way out from the front range, but I work less then 3 miles from the Rockrimmon area that was evacuated last night. Very bad and watched the fires come down the ridge line yesterday and go out of control. Horrible to watch and the air quality is worsening by the hour.

Looking to get a lot of info from this forum esp. the over-50's section as that's right in my wheelhouse. Especially interested in cycling for people with health problems.

Good post Denver. A reminder the that the web is useful for more than slamming people we disagree with.

Our drought is not quite at the "disaster" stage yet, at least not to anyone but local ag people. But it will be soon.

Northwest Florida escaped Tropical storm Debby after the initial forecast. some rain but nothing like Central Florida has endured. Bill and Monica are okay here. Haven't heard form TomD77 or Vaportrail as of yet. Hope the other Central Florida members are okay.

Bill

Nothing ever happens here in the Arizona desert except for the monsoon rain and or dust storms. Up north some fires on occasion.

That fire in Colorado Springs reminds me of the Station Fire here in SoCal 2 summers ago. We were in Glenwood Springs, CO at the time and the smoke had spread that far and beyond. It made the front page headline of the newspaper in Salida. The fire came within a few hundred yards of my workplace, and when I returned to work it was like walking around in a giant ashtray.

Wishing all of you are safe and sound in the danger zones.

The San Diego fires in '07 put me out of work for a week. This whole area came to a standstill. I was never in danger of loosing my home, but one coworker barely escaped loosing hers.

After record snowfall last winter, and a wetter than average June, British Columbia is having some major flooding and mud slides on the main rivers and tributaries. Amazing to watch the TV news and see somebody's house float away. Highways being flooded and bridges washed out...

My son and I paddled a 50 km, 30 mile canoe circuit last week. The biggest obstacle was one mile of swamp, which at normal water levels needs to be hiked through knee deep mud, pulling the canoe behind you. Because of the high water, we were able to paddle it. But stepping out of the canoe, I sank in mud up to my waste. It was the only time I wished I wasn't there.

When watching the network news last night with coverage on the Florida flooding, I heard the weather guy say that the rivers in the area would crest "some time about the end of next month (!)." I thought surely that was wrong and he meant next week, not next month. Then he said it again and explained that it is so flat that it really does take that long to drain off. Wow!

No issues in Houston, but the small town of Roundup, MT where I grew up has experienced disastrous fires in the adjacent area. I have friends near Castle Rock, CO that I hope are free of fire encroachment.

I have family in Lafayette (Boulder, CO). Anyone know how it's going?

I have family in Lafayette (Boulder, CO). Anyone know how it's going?

We sang at the Lafayett UMC a few weeks back - reat little church. Things were fine then, and are fine now.

We sang at the Lafayett UMC a few weeks back - reat little church. Things were fine then, and are fine now.
Very reassuring. We're hoping to visit out there when things settle down a bit.