03-06-2016, 02:08 PM
Dakine has a point, some life experiences truly cannot be fully comprehended by people who did not go through them, natural disasters among them, and a natural disaster that lasted for as long as that one would be a unique experience.
I've been though having my town destroyed by a tornado, flooding so bad the feds made us moved the town rather than rebuild, and ice storms that wiped out power for 6 weeks because 100s of square miles of forests were destroyed, but those were all relatively quick events that allowed us to get to the cleanup and rebuild stage fairly quickly. Just the Iselle/lava flow combo we went through was grueling enough, and there was scarcely any actual damage and only a handful of families had to live with the lava right on their doorstep. The Kalapana flow was a disaster of much greater length and magnitude and I agree with Dakine on this one, if you didn't experience it you've got no business judging those who did.