Sunday morning the remnants of hurricane Ike met up with a weather pattern from the West. The combination of these two resulted in severe winds blowing through Ohio, oddly enough, with little to no rain. Wind gusts were 60-70 mph, almost hurricane strength, and tore through our neighborhood. Trees, power lines, and shingles littered our road after a few hours and there was still more wind to come.
Sunday after church we noticed that it was really windy. We went to lunch and noticed several smaller trees almost bent all the way over. When we got back to our house, there were already a few leaves and limbs blowing around, but just small ones. We started watching TV and the lights flickered a few times. Around 2pm we lost our power. Thinking it would just be an hour or so, we got our books out and started reading to the howl of the wind.
Jason noticed the neighbors out walking around their houses and we started wondering if something was wrong. First I noticed that our neighbor’s shingles were blowing up and looked like they might start coming off. Jason then called my attention to the caution tape that was now blocking off our road. I went to get my shoes on so we could see for ourselves what was going on. When we went outside we saw a tree down across the road to the north of our house, with power lines on the road. Across the street, a tree had fallen on our neighbor’s garage, once again knocking down power lines. And just a couple houses south of us part of a tree had fallen across the side walk and into the road.
We also saw a neighbor’s downspout blow off the house and flashing from another’s roof beat around for awhile before blowing off. We walked around the house a few times and only saw smaller branches and a few shingles laying in the back yard. We checked our shingles and they all seemed to be in place. Our plastic patio furniture got knocked around a bit, but no damage. At one point the spa cover flew open but thankfully we were standing there when it happened and closed it again right away. (But what an awful noise when it smacked together!)
There are no trees behind our house or our neighbors’ houses except for what’s across the ally from us. A branch fell off of this tree bringing down our neighbor’s phone and cable lines. In the front each of us have one large maple tree. Amazingly, our neighbors on either side of us had no large branches fall and we didn’t lose any branches at all. There was one that was twisted around but never ended up falling off.
We saw shingles fly off our neighbor’s roof. We saw the wind push large branches down our street. We saw a lot of people moving their car into the garage, including us. It was all so surreal, branches down everywhere, neighbors standing around outside, yelling to be heard over the wind. And all of us wondering what was really going on. We’ve had hurricane systems move over us before, but it’s never been like this.
I sent out a text messages to my friends in our area and most of them were without power but a few were not. It seemed very hit or miss on who had power and who didn’t. They said close to 500,000 people in the Miami Valley area lost their electricity. However, I’ve seen this number change so often, who knows what the real number is. I’d rather not be a number anyway, so I’ll let you know how bad it is this way: it’s now Tuesday and we still don’t have power. On Sunday they said it would take a couple of days to get power back on. It’s been a couple of days and now they’re hoping they can have power restored to everyone in Dayton by this weekend.
We took care of some things on Saturday that we had no idea how glad we would be about it on Sunday. Jason cleaned out the garage and put all our camping supplies in the basement. Therefore we had room in the garage for the Vibe when the wind storm started. I also did most of the laundry on Saturday - except for one load that didn’t make it to the dryer. The clothes were hung in the basement to dry. I had also taken down the the curtains in the basement to wash them, so we had full light down there while we were working down there during the day.
I had just charged my laptop and cell phone, so those were ready to go. And I also balanced the checkbook (on the computer) and got all our bills paid (online). I had just done a spa shock on our hot tub, so the water should be okay without being run for a few days. And we didn’t go grocery shopping thankfully. We had our Coleman lantern ready and several packs of matches. We were all set to go!
Sunday night we went to a special service at church. We figured if the church didn’t have power, we could find dinner and then come home. The church didn’t have electricity, but they did have a generator. There were just enough lights to get around and some candles in the bathrooms. Most of us who were there did not have power. Others were just realizing the destruction around the Dayton area. Just a small group was there, maybe 100 people, very small for a gathering at our church.
The worship team was a group of young people from different churches and they did an excellent job of leading without overheads to follow. The speaker was from Canada and due to the wind, spoke mostly from his heart, though I’m not sure he really had an outline or an agenda when he came. I did a lot of chatting with God that night and he bonked me over the head about some issues I was having. Basically that I need to let him take care of things and stop worrying so much. I also felt like he was saying that the wind was a gift and that there was much to learn through this experience. (I’m still rolling this one around in my head, I’m not thankful for the wind at all.)
We headed home around 10:30 pm and tried to find some fast food for dinner. We picked Wendy’s but then realized the line was all the way out to the street. Then we went to Burger King and after waiting 10 minutes in line we saw a sign that said no debit/credit cards. We only had a little bit of cash on us, so we got out of line. We ended up at McDonalds (which had no line at all - surprising?) and got just enough food to take all our cash and feel like we had something of a dinner. We headed home and crashed for the night.
The next morning we got ready in the dark, thankful to have a gas water heater, and then headed to work. Both of our work places had electricity, however, Jason’s had no network. He did as much work as he could without his computer and then headed off to find gas. Originally he was going to search for ice too, but thankfully his boss sent him home with a trash bag full of ice from their kitchen. I had a full day of work but had a difficult time concentrating. Our biggest issue was the food in our fridge. We hadn’t opened it yet, but we didn’t think the food would make it. Jason got home and put what he could in our cooler and the rest ended up getting thrown out. We left the freezer shut and hoped it would last for another day.
That evening we had left over pulled pork for dinner and later made popcorn the old fashioned way - on our gas stove. We read by the light of our Coleman lantern (a wedding gift) and then watched a movie in bed with my laptop. With candles all around us, munching on popcorn, we forgot we had no electricity for a couple of hours. It was fun.
This morning we woke up and decided it was time to check on the food in the freezer. It was still cold, but no longer frozen. The meat was put in the cooler and the rest of it was thrown away. Honestly though, most of it needed to be thrown out anyway, so we didn’t lose that much stuff. We went through the items in the cooler and picked out what could go to work with us to eat the rest of the week. We threw out all the mayonnaise, which most of it we had no idea how old it was. So, not a bad thing.
We got ready in the dark again. This time I had to wash my hair and ended up going to work without makeup and wet hair. Thankfully someone else was getting ready in the bathroom at work and had a hair dryer I could borrow. I talked to several people at work and it seems that there were three groups of people. Those who didn’t lose power at all. (And actually had the nerve of complaining about not having cable to me.) Those who lost power but then got it back Sunday night. And the rest of us who still didn’t have power. Today’s hot topic of conversation was the amount of food we had to throw out.
Jason headed home and I worked late. I anxiously waited for Jason to call and let me know if we had power or not. Not. Jason made spaghetti with tons of meat sauce (not tons of sauce, tons of meat in the sauce). It was good and we didn’t have to throw away most of the meat. We sat outside and enjoyed the evening and decided to let the kitties out for some entertainment. Lenny is skittish and takes off, so we have to put him on a leash. After some reading (and blogging) we’re getting ready to watch another candle-lit movie.
Movies of the wind (after the worst was over)...
A view from the front of the house:
From the back of the house...
And one more from across the ally behind our house:
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