A Serious Storm

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Hi again everyone!

So, this last break from Spacehey was about as unplanned as it gets. We lost power for two days in the wind storm. Honestly, we were some of the lucky ones. Some other homes did not get theirs back for 6 days! My state was not prepared for how bad this wind storm got. There were so many downed trees and fallen power lines that crews from out of state needed to be brought in to help. Thankfully, everyone I knew came out of it fine. They either got their power back quickly, or (more common, and more scary) they had a large tree fall and JUST miss their house. I promise I wasn't burning black candles this time, they just got lucky. 

We did not come out of this completely unscathed, though. For some context: We are the only apartment over a store, owned and run by our family friend. We have a large storm door downstairs, and then a regular door upstairs into the entryway, and then one more door into the apartment itself. The storm door obviously closes snuggly, but none of the rest do. The storm door has not properly latched for about a year and a half.  It gets blown open occasionally, but it is so heavy that this is not normally a problem. On the first day of this storm, this changed. We lost power fairly early in the morning (after my work lost it midway through our virtual inter-department meeting) and then I noticed that the door in our living room kept blowing open slightly. This door does not latch either actually...we keep our tool box in front of it to keep my evil genius cat from opening it and running out into the entryway, or worse down the stairs and out the door. Anyway, I keep checking the entryway and see nothing is wrong. Our cats are perplexed by the door, and our dog, already tense, is having a hard time with it. Takeshi, our dog, already gets scared of storms, and he is very protective, so he was assuming every blow open was a potential break in.

Thanks to Takeshi, I found the source of the problem. I was about to take him when I stumbled on the sight below:

Why yes, that is our outside door...blown right off of most of its hinges. (Please pardon the random things around there, normally it's clear but we have been helping my mom prepare to move. When there isn't a wind storm, there is still a clear path.) This door was hanging on by the top hinges, and somehow the wind was still tilting it over the fence, towards traffic. After clearing the way, I carefully took the dog out and tried to get ahold of our family friend (I've called him our landlord in previous posts, but he's more like the building manager). I was unsuccessful, because he had already lost power. I could not leave this heavy door tilted towards traffic, and there was no saving it, so I took matters into my own hands. I grabbed our drill, moved the door away from traffic the best I could, and unscrewed the last of it. They were pretty old and warped, so this took a minute. There were a few moments I had to stop to hold it in place because of some serious gusts. Between the weight of the door and the wind almost knocking me over, I could not carry it far, so I set it down in our yard and weighed it down with our salt bags and bucket. I hated doing that, but they were the only things heavy enough to hold it down.

The door is mostly fixed now. The frame needs to be replaced for it to close properly. Needless to say, that did not make being without power easier. The first day of no power it was oddly warm for this time of year (hence the rain), but the second day the temperature dropped closer to normal. we both read a lot on the first day. I also practiced ASL and braille, then played my DS. We charged our devices in the car that evening. We folded down the back seats and put down blankets so Takeshi could be comfortable. We watched 'Holiday Wars' on M's Kindle while we waited for our phones to charge. I broke into all of our candles, and even put tea lights in all of our free mason jars.

The next morning we charged my hearing aids in the car (which I found funny for some reason) while we took a drive looking for hot water for tea and coffee. That was really all we wanted. XD we got lucky, our friends had power. We charged more devices and had tea for most of the day. When we returned home, we saw we still did not have power. And it was getting colder. Our friends had offered to let us stay with them. It was nice of them, and if we got too cold we were going to take them up on it, but we wanted to be home in our own space. I lit all of the candles we had and tried the terracotta flowerpot trick* with the one pot we had. Fun fact, it does kind of work! It wasn't enough to make the room warm, but it was enough to keep it from being dangerously cold when combined with me putting towels and extra blankets over the crack under every door. Was it safe enough to sleep though? Right after making sure we could go to our friend's at any point, our power came back. We almost cried. We really did not want to leave home and sleep somewhere else.

We did leave home right after though. My little brothers did not have power, and because they had nothing to do, they both went to bed early. Here was the problem: they both turned their phones off to conserve battery life. We had to just drive to them. This is normally a 5 minute drive, but so many bridges were closed that it took half an hour. We pounded on their door and yelled until they woke up. They were very happy to pack some things and come to our warm house.

The next day was the best day ever for our dog. He got to see his uncles who stayed the night, a friend who came by to shower, and another friend who had holiday gifts. My brothers and friends got their power back that evening, but by the end of the week Takeshi got to see all of his friends and my side of the family. He was a happy dog.

At this point, everyone has power back. It's a relief. M and I were taking daily trips to my mum's home to refill her generator and check on her cats. You can still see some signs of the storm around town, but the roads are no longer lined with debris and downed lines. The water levels are still fairly high, but all of our bridges are open. This is not typical weather for my area, and I'm just glad everyone in our lives is alright.

*Please take all safety precautions possible when doing any fire-related DIY. I am not responsible for anything anyone else builds.