Our entire neighborhood was out on Sunday waiting for a pine tree to fall. It was weakened by the drought last year. The owner of the tree informed the next-door neighbors that the tree might fall right on their cars, and they should probably move them. Then we all stood around, "safely" out of the way, and waited. We took plenty of pictures and video of the tree leaning and leaning and splitting. Then Rick's tree fell, while we were all watching the other tree. He had 2 trees injured in a wind storm a few months back, and both of those trees lost significant limbs again. He'll soon be cutting down both trees completely. But how soon, who knows. He's going to hire out to do it, and there are trees down EVERYWHERE. The companies are going to be swamped.
I'm at a friend's house right now, using their power. Our power has now been out since Sunday at 2:03 p.m. (a clock at my house is stopped at that time--I should take a picture of it, now that I think of it) and last night they said it could take most people another 24 - 48 hours to have power back on, but some people might have power off until the weekend. As of this morning there were still half a million people without power. Miciah didn't have school yesterday and doesn't have school today. One of the main problems is that driving is a mess. The news said that a third of the stop lights in ALL OF OHIO weren't up yesterday. I drove to a friend's house. Should have been a 15 minute drive that took me about 40 minutes. There were 7 stop lights that I passed, ONE of which was working. By the time I weaved through town, turning around a few times because of trees and power lines over the road, and got to the freeway, I had reached 12 stop lights and THREE of them were working. There were more working in the city, at the bigger intersections. Still, there were cops out directing traffic at many, many intersections.
Anyways, it's been crazy. I've been taking lots of pictures. I've included a few in this post. I took a picture of ALL the damage on our street. There wasn't a lot, but if you figure that our street was a typical street, ... holy cow. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damage. We were really blessed that our house was untouched. The worst damage we had was wind damage to our garden and our grill got knocked over and the handle broke (we'll re-glue it and no problems). As I've been driving around a little (as little as possible), I was noting all the damage. MOST houses have at least a little damage on them. Some houses burned down. Some trees through the roof. Siding ripped off. Shingles gone. Crazy, crazy, crazy.
I haven't taken a ton of pictures of the more dramatic stuff. Once you've seen a few downed trees, it's not so dramatic any more, even if it is over the street. I've included a few pictures for this post, and I'll post more when our power is back on. Plus a more complete posting about the goings-on.
We are safe. We are healthy and doing well. We just moved all our freezer and fridge food over to a friend's house this morning so we won't lose hundreds of dollars of food. We are grateful for our friends and their hospitality during this mini-crisis. We were fed by friends last night. My kids played all day yesterday with their friends. We have fridge and freezer space provided for us. We have been blessed.
We love you all. Thank you for your prayers.
the Thacker family
The worst damage of any house on our street. This house has been in disrepair for a while, but still, this is intense:
Elijah sitting in front of a downed tree's roots:
This is my favorite picture. I took this from the driver's seat of my van while I was stalled in traffic:
1 comment:
I totally know what that is like, when we lived in San Bernardino every winter the wind was awful, We had to replace our fence every year, one of our neighbors had the roof of there garage ripped off. It is amazing how much power there is in wind! We love you all!
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