Last Saturday night a brief, sudden rainstorm hit our area. There were high winds and heavy rain, accompanied by the ominous sounds of limbs cracking outside. Uh Oh.Then the lights flickered a few times... and went out completely. We sat in the glow of our little night-light flashlight that comes on when the power goes off and waited. And waited.
After a bit I got up and found the larger battery-operated lantern, and then we waited some more. Peering out the front window, we could catch lightning glimpses of tree limbs in the driveway and near the street. Yes, the poor pecan tree had given up still more limbs.
By about 10:30pm we began to realize that there was not going to be a quick turn around, electricity-wise, so we went to bed in the dark. Barb and I were a bit restless throughout the night, and about 5am we noticed flashing lights out back. When I came to the patio door to look, I could see that the flickering was from a fire - a brightly-burning torch of flame coming from what looked like the neighbor's towering Ash tree.
About the time I got 911 on the line I began to see men with flashlights in the neighbor's yard, and the 911 dispatch confirmed that the fire had already been reported and that firemen were on the scene. Barb and watched the strange flame for a bit, and just as I was searching (in the dark) for my phone to get some video of the fire, there was a big bang and the lights in our house came on for a second - and then went off again! Barb heard someone say, "Well, that put it out!" meaning that the crossed wires that were arcing and burning had burnt in two.
In a bit a fireman came to our door to tell us that there were lines down in the back yard and to not venture out there, because in addition to the electrical lines, a big tree was being held up only by power lines and might fall any minute!
When it got light enough to see, we could tell (by looking out the windows, of course) that there were 3 very large trees down in our backyard, including the one tangled up in the power lines. And the pecan limbs in the front were blocking the driveway. We were trapped in our dark, powerless, Internet - less, A/C - less house.
So while Barb was texting around to get someone to cover the Bible class she was scheduled to teach that morning, I was thinking about getting the driveway clear. Fortunately, I have a small chainsaw for emergencies like this. A small,
electric chainsaw. Oh well.
The adventure continued when a couple of guys came to the door a little later and asked if I wanted to hire them to get all those limbs cut up and stacked for City pick-up. I negotiated him down from $27,000 (really, that was his starting price; I guess anything after that sounded trifling) and we struck a deal. He said they would go get their chain saw and be right back.
They did return and I got them to clear a path in the driveway just barely wide enough for Barb to get her car out, so she headed off to church while I stayed to supervise Paul Bunyan and his son, Ox. Unfortunately it wasn't long before their chainsaw sputtered to a stop, so they said they had to go get another saw - be right back.
They did come back in about 30 minutes, but never got the 2nd saw started. Really, guys? You didn't check it out before you made the drive? They worked on it a long while, then they hopped in their truck and drove off. They had not come back by the time Barb got home, so we went to get something to eat. When we got back I was pretty sure I had seen the last of tweedle dee and tweedle dumber. I'm just glad that I didn't pay them up front, Especially not $27,000.
But I still needed to do something about the limbs in the street, since they stuck out about 2/3 of the width of the street. I called a friend from church who had told me back in the summer he would be happy to cut up fallen limbs for the pecan wood to use in his BBQ, but only reached his answering machine.
Meanwhile another passer-by stopped looking for quick cash (there were a number of them before the afternoon was over). He quoted me a reasonable price, but couldn't start until Monday morning. I told him I was worried about leaving the trees in the street overnight, for fear some
idiot neighbor would run into them. He told me to go to Home Depot and get some orange traffic cones and put them out and that would take care of things until he got back in the morning.
So off I went to Home Despot (which was out of gas-powered chainsaws, by the way; mine were not the only trees downed Saturday night) and when I returned with the cones, there was my church friend and his next-door neighbor trimming the branches sticking into the street. Sweet.
We were still powerless, it was getting dark, it was getting stuffy in the house and the phones needed charging, so we stuffed a couple of bags of ice in the freezer compartments, jammed everything that was perishable in with the ice and headed up the street for a motel room with A/C, electricity, lights to see to shower by, and coffee!
When we got back to the house Monday morning, the power was back on, the reasonably priced tree guy was hard at work and there were no power lines in the back yard. What we did find, however, deserves a blog post of its own.
Next: Tornado or straight line winds? Who cares.
