What a Storm!

Maybe you've already heard about the huge storm that hit Seattle Wa, and Vancouver, BC early this morning. We probably haven't heard as much as you have because our power is still out. Read about the storm here:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N15374451.htm

I can't fully describe the storm, and these pictures do not do justice to what we saw today. The storm hit at 3:00 am, and the power went out about ten minutes later. My daughter H showed up about 3:30 to cuddle with Doug and I for the next two and a half hours. Somehow C slept through, but the three of us could not. We listened to the wind howl and slam things around. We felt the house shake. We were sure that a tree was going to fall on our house, but it didn't happen.

We were lucky. This morning, Doug and I drove around our neighborhood and within an area of about ten miles around us. We saw multiple houses with large trees down on their roofs or crushing their cars. We saw power lines down with trees tangled in them, huge trees uprooted across roads and yards. Debris everywhere. Our area was one of the hardest hit, but they say that 250,000 houses are without power in the greater Vancouver area. They did not expect our power to be back until sometime late tonight or tomorrow. I am writing from Doug's folks' place in Chilliwack.

This skinny tree is suspended between two sets of lines about half a block from our house. It is a pretty low priority at this point. Crews were working on two much larger power hazards within a mile of our house.



One of our neighbours has these two uprooted trees leaning against their house.



A lot of us have blown-out fences.



This is my daughter's schoolyard where they have more than seven huge trees down, completely uprooted. Crews have already begun to clear them away. Most of the schools in our district were closed today with power out and hazardous debris around.



This tree came down right in front of the apartment building where H's best friend lives. It is blocking the path H and I walk to go to her school every day.



My kids are standing in front of the root system of the tree from the above picture to show you the scale of the thing.



We lost a lot of large sections of our fence. The gates on both sides were ripped right off. Our fence has been in need of replacing for a few years, guess we can't put it off any longer!



We were very lucky. We lost some sleep, some fence, and our power. We saw some very sad sights in our neighborhood that we did not photograph out of respect for the people who were hard at work at clearing up the damage. If you happen to know any out-of-work roofers, send them our way. They'll have all the work they could want.