in the wee hours of Monday (4/16) we had a nor'easter. Now nor'easters aren't uncommong for us New Englanders but this one 'oy!
3am our power went out to not return until 3pm Thursday 4/19, and no phones yet.
5am on 4/16 forty trees fell at the beginning of our dead-end road leaving the 8 residents stranded and isolated.
My son and I were bored and curious as we couldn't see beyond the stack of trees closest to our house, so we went for a walk.
We spent 15-20 minutes climbing over/under/around fallen trees (had no idea that many fell until we got in there). We knew the entire grid had been shut off so there were no live wires. And the wires were all tangled up in the trees.
We got out onto the main road and it was like a war zone!!!!
I'm 48 years old and have always lived in this area and have never seen a storm like this one. My boss' mother is 82 and she has never seen such devastation from a nor'easter.
Monday evening a tree crew came and chainsawed us free but we still couldn't go anywhere as the entire main road looked a lot like ours did! They spent 10 hours cutting their way to our road. I did call the tree crew and thanked them. They were speechless!!! It was funny when I called...the guy's wife told me no one ever calls to thank them. I said they should. These guys worked in rain, high winds to get everyone out while their families were in the same situation.
Tuesday evening the utitlity crews started to show up - Michigan (I know Glenda sent them [
] her Molly needed electricity), Indiana, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Alabama. I stopped and thanked any I could see who weren't busy.
Life is starting to return to normal, I find I don't miss a phone although having Verizon DSL I can only go online at work.
I simply don't know how those of you who live in tornado or hurricane country can live with this year after year. I couldn't do it!! To keep my stress levels down I kept telling myself "others have it worse, others have it worse", which of course they do. But I couldn't live with that chaos and damage every year. The clean up is horrible...I have weeks of raking and limb moving ahead of me. But no injuries and we got lucky and had no house damage
fallen trees end of our road
neighbor house
cleaning up the trees - 1/2 way through the mess
next morning...and this stuff is still sitting there.
