Our Crushed Car

A sudden storm with 80 mile an hour winds swept through our neighborhood shortly after DH got home from work Tuesday night. I was almost finished making dinner when the lights flickered and went out. A few minutes later, there was a loud crash. DH looked out the door and announced that we no longer had a car. A 50 foot pine tree had come crashing down on it.

The first time we tried to go outside to look at the damage, we heard another tree come down in the neighbor's yard and quickly scurried back into the house.

We were able to sit down to a hot dinner before investigating the wreckage.



As soon as the rain let up, all the neighbors were out walking around assessing the damage. We have lived here almost 3 years and this is the first time we have met most of the people who live on our street.







One neighbor had a branch come straight down through their roof and into their living room, but no one was hurt.

This was not a great time to be without air conditioning. It was uncomfortably hot Wednesday afternoon when Blaze and DH took backpacks and went to the gas station a little over a mile away to buy ice. While they were gone, the mother of one of Blaze's friends showed up with two bags of ice, so we were able to give a bag of ice to another neighbor, as well as having more than enough for ourselves.

We had finished off the ice cream for dessert Tuesday night, before it could melt, and moved all the dairy products from the refrigerator into the freezer, so no food was lost.

The tree that fell on our car and a slightly small tree next to it, blocked the street on one side of the cul-du-sac and an enormous fallen oak tree blocked the street on the other side, so that no one could drive in or out. For almost 24 hours no help came. The tree continued to sit on our car and several people had no way of leaving, even though they had completely undamaged cars.





Finally, a city tree removal crew showed up and told us they would get the tree off of our car.







They only cut up the trees blocking one side of the cul-du-sac and they left all the logs and branches laying around. They never touched the big oak that was down, so that when the power company showed up they had trouble getting to all the houses and were only able to restore power to our side of the cul-du-sac. Our power came back on around 8:30 Wednesday night, but the people on the other side still had no electricy on Thursday morning.

A professional tree service showed up Thursday and quickly and efficiently removed all signs of the storm. They cleaned up the mess the city had left, took away all the fallen trees, removed dead branches from the trees that were still standing, and even cleaned the roofs and sidewalks. They had just finished cleaning our roof, when another storm hit. I walked out onto the porch to see what was happening and found one of the tree service guys sheltering under the eves at the corner of our house, so we talked for awhile. Just as Blaze came out to join the conversation, the power went out again and was out for about two hours.

The car has been towed away and power has been restored to everyone.



DH was given a ride to work Thursday morning and a ride to the car rental place at the airport after work, so we have a nice new Toyota Camry for the next week.

It's not supposed to rain at all today, so I'm hoping we can go out and do something fun and have a completely stress free holiday weekend.