Apr 10, 2017

Disasters - Fact and Fiction


We have lived through a real natural disaster here in the Northern Rivers of NSW (along with other parts of the country) with many of our local towns and villages flooding. SBS shows an aerial view of Lismore and it's shocking.

Our family wasn’t flooded but we couldn’t pick up our son from Gold Coast airport when he flew home last week. We were a bit panicked as we didn’t know if we’d be able to get someone to him at all as areas to the north were also starting to flood. We had to get relatives to drive from Brisbane (over 200kms return) to pick him up and he had to stay up there overnight until the floodwaters over the Pacific Motorway receded. All a bit dramatic, but not nearly as bad as for some who had houses flood to the roof and businesses destroyed. Truly awful.

Every experience is useful to a writer. Not being able to get to your child is certainly a nerve-wracking time and I wrote in my diary about it so as not to forget how it felt – all for future reference.

Natural disasters force people into unusual circumstance and this can be a useful tool in fiction. Just running through the story angles of all my books, I realize I’ve only written one disaster story – The Love Deception -  in which a hurricane causes havoc in the Caribbean. I know some of my LoveCats friends have also written about disasters (thinking about one of yours at the moment, Rachel Bailey).


Have you read a book recently that featured a disaster? Or have you lived through one yourself?

11 comments:

  1. Tornado went through our town when I was 14 (in 1973).
    My brother was running home from his friend's place when a tree limb knocked him out. We tell him that that explains a lot, LOL.
    Otherwise, didn't hear of anybody else hurt.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OMG, that is terrifying. Thank goodness your brother is okay.

      Delete
  2. Oh, Jen, that must've been so nerve-wracking not being able to collect your son. So glad it worked out well in the end.

    The Pasha Bulker storm here in Newcastle in 2007 was pretty hairy with widespread flooding (and SO many trees down). And at the moment I'm reading a book that features the Newcastle earthquake (1989). Funnily enough I was living in Hunter St (Newcastle's main street) at the time but was a couple of hours north when it hit so missed the action...but not the aftermath--there was such a clean-up to be done.

    But you're right -- this is all definitely fodder for the writerly brain.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank goodness you weren't in town when the Newcastle earthquake hit. I can remember thinking at the time that I didn't even know we had earthquakes in Australia (I was still pretty young back then).

      Imagine the clean up was full on!

      Delete
  3. Hugs Jen on stranded at airport boy - great to have family nearish by to call on!

    I've been through a couple of cyclones - hard to avoid when you live close to the coast in central QLD! As a kid it meant days off school which was awesome but not so great seeing it through the eyes of an adult...

    I have written a few diaster books. A fictional tsunmai. And one where the h and h meet during an Earthquake.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, you certainly get more up north (especially in your home town) compared to us further south.

    I lived through the 1974 floods in Brisbane (lots of days of school) and still remember looking over the low lying areas of our suburb and seeing nothing but water all the way to the river several kilometres away. My best friends house was somewhere in that sea of water - the memory is so vivid.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Goodness how scary for you, Jen! I feel so lucky that I haven't ever been in a natural disaster, although nature has been throwing some big wobbles recently. I haven't written any disaster books, or read any recently.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wobbles sound a little scary, Louisa. Let's hope there are no natural disasters in your future!!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. That would have been very scary! Glad your son was able to stay with relatives.

    I'm lucky enough to say that I haven't really experienced any disaster first hand (touch wood!), living in Melbourne we were relatively free of some of the weather issues that you all face further up the country. But I do remember the Black Saturday fires, we lived in a leafy suburb at the base of the Dandenong ranges at the time and I still remember walking outside and being enveloped in thick black smoke. The burning smell was everywhere. Nothing, of course, even close to what many other people experienced that day - but the memory won't leave me anytime soon.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Jen, I've been fortunate not to have suffered through any natural disasters. Talking fictional disasters, I recently watched the movie San Andreas. The special effects were scarily good!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Eek... not good Jen. That said, even though it was a lengthy drive, at least you had family who could collect and home him for the evening.
    Definitely experienced disasters - that pesky earthquake on 14 Nov last year, that is still having side-effects. We were evacuated from usual work building on 8 Feb, supposed to have been back this week but they now don't have a timeframe to return as repairs are needed. Life is back to normal for the most part.
    Michelle - I didn't realise that Newcastle had had a quake

    ReplyDelete