The Gigantic Blow

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Here in the Spokane area, actually the whole Pacific Northwest, we had a huge wind storm. In some places we had hurricane force winds. The wind toppled several trees. Spokane had 167 tree blow over the roads. Many more crashed into houses, parked cars and power lines. Several tiles brew off many roofs including some of my neighbor’s. There are several stories from people who had trees plummeted through their houses. One woman put her baby in her body harness while she was cooking dinner. Something she said she never did while cooking. A tree crashed through her house, going through the nursery all the way into the basement. Normally the woman would have left the baby in the nursery. Some people were trapped in their houses and cars. Some badly injured. A couple senior citizens died because their electricity went off leaving them no power to operate their oxygen machines. There were nearly 200,000 homes without electricity after the storm blew through the Spokane area and many more throughout the entire area. The local electric company said this storm created the worst power outage in its 126 years in business. Power companies from San Diego, California; New Mexico; Montana and the Seattle area have all come to help our local electric company get the power back on. News stations have been comparing this storm to the ice storm we had 19 years ago almost to the day. That storm was caused by freezing rain. There wasn’t as many power outages after that storm. When that storm hit my electricity was out for five days. At that time the temperatures drop down to the teens (-7º to -10º C). When that storm hit I had a portable kerosene heater which kept my house around 40º F (4º C). It was a livable temperature as long as I wore heavy clothing. I was one of the lucky ones this time. (Notice I didn’t say super-lucky, which I’ll explain later.) I have five trees that line the road next to my house. None of them blew over. I believe there were two reasons why they didn’t. 1. All the leaves were gone making less resistance, and, 2. they are not pine trees. Almost all the trees that toppled were pine trees. That is because pine tree roots do not go very deep into the ground. I do have a pine tree next to my house but it is on the opposite side. It did not blow over. If it would have it would have missed houses and landed in the neighborhood street. My electricity did go out at about six in the evening. When my electricity went off I grabbed my old rotary phone and plugged it in since my other phone needed electricity to operate. I still had my landline telephone. I took my cellphone out of its case and found the battery was dead so I was thankful I still had landline. For light I have a flashlight that has a fluorescent light on it which lit up the living room fairly well. Since there was nothing to do I went to bed at eight-thirty. I woke up around eleven to my phone ringing. It was my brother checking in. I assured him I was fine and he assured me he was fine. I then went back to bed. I awoke around six-thirty to a 60º F (15º C) house. I dressed then glanced out my windows to see if any trees blew down. The only thing I saw was the leaves in my yard, which I was waiting to use a friends leaf vacuum to pick them up, had all blown into two big piles. One was up the side of my porch and onto my porch. Next to my house the pile was about five feet deep. On the porch it was about two feet deep. The other pile blew up against the neighbor’s pickup. That pile almost reach the driver’s side window. Thank goodness my neighbor wasn’t using it. The next thing I noticed was roof tiles in my yard. I quickly put on my shoes and went out and check my roof. There was no damage to my roof. Then I looked at my neighbor’s. Half the tiles were gone. I decided I had better rake the leave away from my neighbor’s vehicle because I figured he would not be happy about his roof and not getting the leaves removed from his pickup would not make him any happier. I came back into the house to get a pair of gloves and discovered my electricity had come back on. I decided to disconnect my rotary phone and hook up my regular phone. That’s when I noticed my landline went down sometime after I talked to my brother. I plugged my cellphone in to charge. Then I went out to rake up the leaves. Since my landline was down that meant no internet. I have DSL. Even though I had electricity I could not get online until around ten o’clock this morning. According to the news last night there is still about 70,000 people in the Spokane area without electricity and almost 12,000 in the Post Falls/Coeur d’Alene, Idaho area without electricity. I stated earlier that I was not super-lucky. The super-lucky ones did not lose their electricity at all. I could see lights on in the houses on a hill about five miles away while my lights were off. The other problem came about because of school closures. There were kids running around the neighborhood bored with nothing to do except get into trouble. I had raked up about ten bags of leaves when I came into the house to fix something to eat. As I sat at the kitchen table I heard something strange. I looked out the window just in time to see two kids crawling off my bags of leaves, laughing. I raced to the door, flung it open and yelled, “I hope you kids are having fun!” Both kid had crossed the street and was running full bore towards my bags. They stopped cold just before making their leap. One kid asked, “What?” I told them to not be doing that. I did not want them busting the bags open. The kid that asked, "what" said, "sorry" and they wandered off. So that was my great adventure during and after the gigantic blow.