Troubles:
Back from Ohio yesterday afternoon late only to have:
A. Blogger unable to access using Firefox. (Still out, finally forced this AM to use Google Chrome. Is that the whole point?)
B. Yet another storm move through, with lightning striking a large tree about ten feet from the house right on the property line, which:
1. Apparently fried the air conditioner outside unit and
2. Blew the tree apart about three feet up from the ground as efficiently as a cutting charge of plastic explosive and dropped its tall, full upper structure into my neighbor's driveway and the street beyond. This:
(a.) Snatched his power line from the street pole and put it onto the ground, ripping the electrical box off his house.
(b.) Wiped out several cable and phone lines, yet, strangely,
(c.) Did not knock out power to either his house or mine.
Big Blessings:
1. No one was hurt. When the tree dropped on the road, no one was under it or subsequently ran into it. My daughter Hannah was sitting on the couch in the front room. Had the tree fallen in the direction the winds were pushing it, it would have crushed that end of the house and her. The power company responded quickly to my downed power line call and no one was hurt, either by the tree or by "disaster tourism" as neighbors (and their kids) came to "see what happened" and actually ventured into the foliage of the downed tree -- power line still humming -- in the rain, with standing water everywhere. Kids I can understand, but adults? One mother and son ignored my warnings, poking further into the tree fall until I got verbally rough with her and she finally backed away and took her kid with her. Sheesh.
2. Property damage was minimal. The tree fell into, not away from, the direction of the stiff straight-line winds, which took its considerable top bulk away from both our houses in the only compass bearing possible for minimum damage. There were no cars in the driveway. Our neighbor had his power disconnected by the linesmen in order for them to restring the line. Unfortunately he will be off the grid until he can have an electrician remount the box and reconnect it. I left a note on his door (he wasn't home at the time) offering to provide an outlet for an extension cord, but as he doesn't get home until after I go to bed, I haven't heard from him yet.
3. The county came quickly after the power company finished and efficiently deconstructed the upper works of the tree blocking the road with chainsaws and hauled it away, so full traffic has resumed on Womack Road.
The Lord alone knows how my neighbor and I are going to get the rest of the destroyed tree off our property (and out of his driveway). Since it was on the property line, we both own a piece of it. I guess that's what insurance is for.
Still, it could have been far worse and I thank the Lord for our many blessings.
Mike
III
10 comments:
Apparently God looks out for His fools and saints. Which are you?
And about that ersatz woman and her son poking around in the tree. Too bad you had to interfere with Darwin's Natural (de)Selection process. Yes, I would have felt obligated to give the first warning. After that, if they continue & get zapped, it's on them. The gene pool needs cleaning out.
B Woodman
III-per
A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. PS 91:7
I am glad to hear you escaped the tree fall.
:^)
MALTHUS
Mike, I got Firefox to work with Blogger again after playing with cookies. One specific thing I did was enable 3rd party cookies (not really a recommended procedure, but sorta-somewhat better than using IE, which also worked).
Prayers for you, your family, and your computer.
Mike, you "sell" the tree to someone who harvests trees to sell to someone else. The price, removal of the tree and the trash from it. This person will have the machinery to handle that.
Mike, I use Firefox with no problem. Used to have a lot of advertising crowding my screen and while doing some right clicking to try to remove it discovered that it was all from the Adobe people. Removed all the Adobe Acrobat programs and in doing so discovered that to have Adobe would allow them to turn on both my camera & microphone on the 'puter as well as allow them to see what is on my screen. I used to think Big Brother was bad but Adobe is even more intrusive. Just my 2 cents worth.
My daughter Hannah was sitting on the couch in the front room. Had the tree fallen in the direction the winds were pushing it, it would have crushed that end of the house and her.
A big blessing, indeed.
Glad everyone is ok. Miracles do happen!
And any word on the status of "Absolved?"
"and no one was hurt, either by the tree or by "disaster tourism" as neighbors (and their kids) came to "see what happened" and actually ventured into the foliage of the downed tree -- power line still humming -- in the rain, with standing water everywhere. Kids I can understand, but adults? One mother and son ignored my warnings, poking further into the tree fall until I got verbally rough with her and she finally backed away and took her kid with her. Sheesh."
Mike, some people are just dense. Had a situation here with a shorted insulator and burning power pole next to the county road. Folks could not seem to get it through their heads what would happen when the pole broke and the 3 phase lines wrapped around each other — and they were under it.
There is a terrible lack of common sense in this country.
That sounds like an episode we had a few years back. When we got home from church, I went upstairs to change, and afterward, I looked out the bedroom window into the backyard. Something was different... new skyline. Our big pine tree was gone.
I looked down to see it in the yard. It had fallen in the only 5 degree arc possible that avoided damage to 3 homes and 2 fences.
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