A Windy Journey

For the amount and force of wind that went through my city the other night, we were very fortunate with the outcome at Casa de Cub.

I had not been aware of how hard the winds we were expected to have would blow.  I was pleasantly ignorant.  I took few precautions.  I laid our patio chairs and a ladder on their side.  I put our hose on top of Cub's outdoor toys inside his plastic pool. But that was about it.

As I prepared for sleep, I put in my earplugs per usual (Camera Guy snores, don'tcha know) and heard the wind a few times throughout the night.  Thankfully Cub slept through it all.

I awoke to find a large piece of tree branch blocking half of our street and twigs and leaves in our yard.  A neighbor had a relatively small-sized tree crack and fall over.  Our next door neighbor had a tree crack and fall into our yard.  She also lost most of the shingles on the front of her house.  I saw several branches in the street farther down aways.  Not anything catastrophic, just inconvenient and unfortunate.

Our mayor asked us to stay inside and not venture out if it wasn't necessary, leaving the roads to the emergency vehicles and Water & Power crews.  I did just that.  However, I did walk around the corner to a local church to see what I had heard was a very large tree that had fallen.  Very large was an understatement.  It was then that I started to get a sense of the magnitude of this wind event.

After deciding to clean up our front yard and salvage what I could of the twigs for free kindling, Cub and I retired to the house for the remainder of the evening.  We were supposed to have another windy night so I got out the flashlights and candles, just in case we lost power, which hadn't happened the previous night. But, again, fortunately, we didn't.

Today was my first time venturing outside of my little pocket, my protected bubble.  When I recalled someone on the internet having referred to the destruction they saw in my city as a war zone, I decided to modify that (after all, a war zone surely is horrific) to say this looked like all the trees, and I mean ALL the trees in the city got into a war with one another.  Hardly a tree is unaffected.  And this is a city that loves it's trees.  As are our neighboring cities, which also sustained a fair amount of damage and loss.  Driving takes more concentration than usual as large amounts of tree branches and trees are blocking entire lanes of some streets and parts of lanes on others.  Not one street has full use of their driving surface.  You cannot imagine what it looks like by seeing a news report on TV or pictures on the internet. It's almost beyond comperhension.

I mean, how hard must it have been blowing to break a cement light pole in half?  I saw a half dozen in that condition in the 2 mile drive between my and my mother's house.  How many more are there like that?  Several friends are still without power and one friend in a neighboring city had her apartment red tagged after a power pole AND a tree went through the wall of her kitchen.  I am thankful it wasn't her bedroom.  She is not allowed to live there until the pole and tree are removed, and presumably until the wall is repaired.  How long might THAT all take?

It's truly devastating and disheartening to see the destruction that has occurred.  It makes me sad knowing that some folks aren't going to be able to afford to pay to have their trees cut down and removed and the city will only take care of those trees in the front parking strip or if they are blocking a road.  And if it's not a main artery, they may not get to it for awhile.

My journey today is one of pain.  I am hurting for the loss our city has suffered and the amount of clean up we as a whole are facing.  And yet, I am even more thankful and grateful knowing how truly fortunate we were at Casa de Cub after experiencing a small portion of what other folks are facing.  A few roof shingles is nothing in comparison.