We're back online!

We're back!  After the powerful storm hit us overnight on 29Jun12, we lost power and water.  5 days later the power was restored, 3 weeks and 3 days later the phone service and internet service was restored at our house. 

The power was restored on the 4th of July in the morning.  That gave us something to celebrate!  In the afternoon on the 4th the power trucks all came ambling down my dirt driveway.  I ran out and told them power was restored, all was good in the world again.  However, they informed me that our electricity had been routed over power lines that could not hold the load for long, that we had power lines down which serviced our property that had to be repaired.  They wanted to attempt to drive some dirt roads on our property to get to the scene of the downed lines.

I gave them permission to drive on our property and followed them about a mile down the road to the scene.

In no time they had numerous crews out there removing the trees and replacing the electric lines.  They worked until late in the day on the 4th of July in 100 degree temperatures.  No celebrating for them!  One of their trucks got stuck in the mud on our property and they found another way to get out to the scene without driving through our woods.   

In addition to those power lines that were down, the electric and phone cables that directly service just our house were down.  They ran through deep woods and often we lost electric and phones in the past when a branch fell in the woods.  Once the woods even caught on fire from downed power lines.  And so we got new telephone poles with all new power cable.  This time the poles ran beside our driveway, avoiding the deep woods.

previous power lines running thru deep woods

new telephone pole

The phone cable was previously strung up on those same old poles in the deep woods, and eventually, 3 weeks later, new phone cable was run on the new power poles beside the driveway.

My thanks to the dedicated men who work behind the scenes doing thankless jobs like recabling power and phone lines! 

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Both our house and the other house which we rent out sustained much damage from the storm.  Below is a photo of the driveway of the other house after the storm.

A huge tree hit the roof - you can see the roof is buckled and punctured.

Let the house repairs begin!