Actually that is wrong Nemo...
I don't want to say anything that would make it sound like I was rubbing someones nose in it, but who ever wrote that article doesn't know what they are talking about.
A Solar Flare - Carrington Effect - you would see it - just a couple of minutes after it happened, since anything that happens on the Sun appears in the speed of light, light taking just a couple of minutes to travel from the sun to the earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859As far as the debris goes, anything ejected usually takes 2 to 3 days, depending upon how fast the solar wind blows and brings it!
What you don't realize is that these types of solar storms happens about once every 150 years and that we are over due to have another one.
We have had terrible Geomagnetic storms all this summer, and last year there was an event that if it would have struck the earth, would have probably shut down civilization for a year or two at the least because the power generation and sub stations would have failed and there is no replacement parts on hand to repair / replace what would have broke.
For a city dweller, this means people stuck in elevators, no electric to run anything - water works, sanitary sewage, air conditioning, gas pumps, banking.
No one would be able to access their money, no one would be able to go to work, even if you went to work, there probably wouldn't be any work - because there wouldn't be any telephones or internet to do anything. The grocery stores wouldn't be able to sell the food they have, because they wouldn't know what price to charge, and there wouldn't be any computer to take inventory or order more food and there wouldn't be any computer to take their order or deliver what the store needed.
The people in the country has it a little better.
They can kill animals for food. Grow a garden, fish, and can drink from springs and bathe in creeks and ponds.
Once the looting and shooting starts, it is every man for himself!
Someone without these basic skills will be S.O.L.!