Another Storm, Another Mess

Last Tuesday, a windstorm came through, cutting our power early afternoon and the school’s an hour later. 

Ironically, I had spent time and effort earlier this autumn getting quotes for felling a few trees on our privately-owned neighborhood islands.  Two were especially concerning, and we called in the county to see if they were technically on county land or not.  One was, and it was immediately yellow-taped and white-painted to be removed ASAP…almost 2 months ago. And during the storm, this giant twin tree fell right across the road, the stump’s roots sticking up in the air like my kids standing on their heads.  

Besides obstructing the road, it covered the walkway across from our street with trunks and branches several feet deep.  It also slapped off our street sign from its post and whacked away at a few other trees.

The sidewalk is the part that you can’t see under all those branches!

More than half of the schools in our district lost power so schools were closed on Wednesday. 

The rumors, straight from county officials who came out right away Tuesday night to clear the road, was that they wouldn’t be back for months to clear all logs left on the side of the main street and our street, let alone deal with the stump and all the branches.   So, that Saturday, our neighborhood (okay, Dwayne and a half-dozen others) brought out chainsaws, wheelbarrows, rakes and blowers to clean up our street and the sidewalk so kids could safely walk to school. 

Hours, my friend, hours.  Two guys worked all day just on getting the enormous stump out and dragged down the street to the country graveyard. 

I was feeling pretty smug about all this work we did.  No more would our friend’s kids have to walk on the road with cars coming to get to school.  We weren’t whiney people waiting for our government to come and make our world better (you can barely tell I’m a flaming liberal with that last statement).  We saw a need for ourselves and others and with a lot of time and hard work, did the job.

…And by noon that Monday, the county had come out and cleared out our log lengths, heaping branch piles, and the rest of our hard work with their super-efficient and powerful machines and trucks.  Sigh. 

Though I do comfort myself that the woman and police officer I saw in deep discussion next to the stump we had relocated *may* have had something to do with the quick clean up.  I guess we’ll count it as a win.