I had watched the front come across the river on radar. The question was, would it kick to the north of us, as it often does, or would we get "it."
So Tuesday night around 11:30 I was watching the TV when the "No Signal" display came on. About 10 minutes later power was lost. About 10 minutes later the thunder and lighting was over powered by a roar that shook the house for maybe 30 seconds and then all we had was rain and rain and rain.
A quick look outside showed the Bradford Pear tree in front of the house was down across the driveway. Another tree was down about 100' away across the driveway. This one was about 18" in diameter. So we went to bed.
No place to go and the driveway blocked. No use to agonize over it.
Didn't sleep much. Come Wednesday morning a stroll around the grounds revealed no damage to the house but a total of 11 trees were on the ground.
Two were blocking the driveway. Three were down across the street in front of the house. The city was very prompt in getting at least part of them removed. The trees had taken down the cable TV cable and a light pole.
The power had came back on around 6:00AM but the cable TV was off until early Wednesday PM. The city showed back up around 2:00PM with a front loader/shovel to crush the trees across the road and stack the brush off to one side. At about that time the phone quit. No Internet. No Phone. No TV.
Things be serious.
Since then we have been busy with the 14" chainsaw. The 20" comes later. Cable came back on Wednesday PM but the phones were off until around 12 noon today.
The front loader had ripped the buried cable out of the ground while trying to use its stablizer feet to enable it to grab the tree across the road.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Kudos to the local cable TV folks. They proved that bad service from the cable company to be a false rumor. Same with the local utility folks. Even with almost all the power lines pole mounted and exposed to the falling trees and limbs they limited the power outages.
Through it all the cell phone worked. Not very well, but it worked. So much for all the worry we had about it back in the 80's.
ATT said they had over 800 trouble tickets. I have no doubt they had at least that many. And with lighting strikes going on you can't work on cable. At last not if you want to live a long life. But I can't shake the feeling that all of the telephone companies bought into the "with electronics you don't need maintenance people" BS and have down sized to the point that they can't react to a major weather related incident.
After the maintenance guy got here it took him about 30 minutes to get us back up and everything working.
Here are a few pictures.
And we were real lucky.
I sure wish Bush would quit harming the country.
This one is across the driveway.
This one is misleading. It is resting on about three other trees. Somehow it has to be cut out and dropped without killing one's self.
How'd you like to work on this tangled mess? Cut a limb under tension the wrong way and have your head taken off.
And yes, Bush has been widely blamed.
But I know it is Obama's fault.
OnTwitter I am Lesabre1 "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.” - William Pitt
"Logic. There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense." - Victor Davis Hanson
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