Hurricane Irene

Well, I can now say I have survived both an earthquake and hurricane!  We are very, very fortunate to have escaped without any obvious damage.  That being said the amount of destruction caused by hurricane Irene in our area is amazing and awful.

Everywhere you look there are fallen trees -- hundreds of them within a mile radius of our house.  Our neighborhood was left with a few flooded basements, damaged roofs, and fallen trees but no houses had trees on top of them or in them.

The neighborhoods surrounding us were older though with lots of mature trees and almost every lot had at least one large tree down frequently on top of their roof or through the roof.  I personally know 3 families who had trees crash on their house.  One family had to be rescued from their house because they couldn't safely exit (4 trees fell on their house). Another family had a large tree crash through their kitchen window.  Other people had their windows blown out.  Our neighbors (at the bottom of the hill behind our house) had 3-4 inches of standing water in their newly finished basement.

Erik and Lainey's gymnastics class has been canceled indefinitely because there are holes in the roof of the building and the building is flooded.  Schools are still canceled.

Erik and I went up to DC yesterday afternoon to see Austin and Terri who are visiting (fun!).  On the way we saw 6 large trees toppled onto powerlines dangling over the highway - all within a 5 mile span.

It was an interesting experience.  Saturday morning we woke to light rain.  By the afternoon there were fierce winds and heavier rain but it wasn't terrifying yet.  We lost power around 6 pm.  By 9 pm the winds picked up and until 1 AM you could here them swirling around the house, rattling it.  It almost felt like you were in a tornado that lasted 4-5 hours.  I fell asleep at some point and when I got up to feed Carson at 3:30 AM the winds were still terrible but not like a tornado anymore!

Our power came back on at 9:30 AM on Sunday.  The sun came out around noon.

Again, we are so lucky as many people are still without power not to mention all the people who are flooded or digging out from being buried by trees.  I told my Dad on Sunday morning that if I had realized how much damage the storm was causing I would have been much more frightened.  Good thing I was somewhat naive!

Large trees were knocked over like toothpicks!