Whew! You may have heard that we have had hurricane force winds here on the West Coast. Well it is true – they were as high as 100 – 150 km/hour. They were certainly the highest winds we have ever experienced. With windows the size of ours and no curtains I lay in bed watching the huge trees swinging around till I couldn’t stand it any longer and about 2:30 am we moved downstairs to sleep on the floor next to the stone fireplace. We had the grandbabies over so we moved them onto a mattress on the floor next to the fireplace too, well away from any windows. The wind howled and screamed all night. Needless to say while the children slept on undisturbed I didn’t sleep at all, and Lorne had a short nap. I was busy planning what we would do if one of the windows blew in or a tree came down on the house. Of course the kids were up at the crack of dawn – yawn.
The devastation outside was shocking. We were so fortunate that no trees hit our house or vehicles or the cabin, although some came very close! The tree with the lightning rod on it next to the big deck snapped in half, falling about 2 feet from the generator shed. One tree fell directly in front of one of our cars yet it remained undamaged. Branches big and small carpeted all the decks and the roofs. The roadway was completely green with branches and needles and huge trees.
Speaking of the road – there were 6 very large Douglas firs and Lodge Pole pine across the driveway right in front of the house. Once Lorne cut these away and we cleared them off the road so we could drive down the first part of the hill we rounded the corner to find another 5 trees on the next part of the hill! Two of these had fallen down in the middle of the roadway so he had to cut all the branches, carry them off the road AND buck up the trees before we could move the car down any further.
It was at this point that the grandbabies lost interest in hauling branches. At age 2 and 4 they did very well to have lasted that long. So while the kids and I trundled back to the warmth of the house, Lorne continued cutting trees off the road until past dark, by the headlights of the car! This only brought us down the first km of our road and the next km which is shared with our neighbors was also covered with trees down on their power lines. They were very busy for days clearing these trees off. The snow from the previous week had knocked several trees down and they had just had their power and telephone restored. This wind damage was very discouraging and an expensive proposition for them as they have about 2 km of power poles that they are responsible for.
We are very glad that we are off the grid!
Lorne has been busy every day since the storm cleaning up the debris. I have been helping too, as has Mike and Kate, and our friends Ian and Debi. We are very concerned about fire with all the trees down in the forest around us. As Lorne says, it looks like a bomb has gone off the way so many trees have fallen. We are not talking about small trees either! Some of them are so big around that both of us together can’t put our arms around their trunks. We used to have a thick forest view, now we can see right through the trees to the hills and water beyond.
We have done as much as we can for now, the rest will have to wait till we return from Mexico in the spring. We plan on leaving the 8th, 9th or 10th of January, after Lorne returns from helping his dad move into a seniors’ center. Hopefully this blog will work for my travel journal. Looking forward to receiving some feedback from you dear readers……
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