April 25, 2008

On Wednesday night we had a bad storm come through our area. There was high wind and blinding rain with a small amount of hail. About 7:30 pm the electricity went out. Rebecca and Drew had gone to Burleson a little earlier and had a difficult time getting home because of the hard rain. Emily called Rachel to see how they were doing and Rachel said that they still had electricity. Since our power comes off the same line as Rachels down in the woods, I figured that our problem must be local. Sure enough, when I got a flashlight and went outside to survey the situation I found that the ceder tree west of our trailer had blown down and fallen across the power line to our houses. The line had been pulled loose from the transformer. Several other trees were also down and one had fallen across the line that runs to our trailer, the water well and the shop.

Rebecca and the girls made it okay getting ready for school and Emily and I had to go to Fort Worth for my follow up at my doctor's. Drew got out and cut the tree off of the power line. We used our neighbor's portable welder to provide power to three refrigerators and two freezers all day Thursday so we didn't lose any food. The electric people came late yesterday and replaced the transformer and re-attached the lines. Drew and I still had to re-connect the lines to the well and our trailer. Since all of the poles were broken down, we just left the line temporarily laying on the ground. We will have to put in new poles and hook up the shop later. We are thinking about going ahead and burying the wires.

My checkup was good. The doctor said that I was progressing normally but would have to continue doing nothing for nine more days and then I would be able to do whatever I wanted (just in case my doctor is reading this, I should point out that I just supervised Drew's work on the wires).

Here are a few more pictures of some of the damage.