Blow Day 2006

A few weeks ago the school district treated us to some snow days. Today, they tried a variation on that theme and called a Blow Day. 90 mph wind gusts, trees down everywhere & 1 million people without power makes one rethink leaving the house.

It all began at 6:30 am when the Chairman of the North Slope Safety Committee, Jason, trekked down to our intersection and began clearing some big tree limbs from the street so cars could get through. It was very cold and still a bit windy. He would occasionally look up during a big gust to see if more was coming down to clean up.



Yikes! There’s a tree in my backyard! Actually, this pine was here long before I moved in, just more vertical and less horizontal. I lost the top 30 feet of this 75 ft. tree in the middle of the night.



Why did we build the fence with ironwood??? I must admit that at the time it seemed like a little bit of over kill. This morning I realized how forward thinking this decision was. Ouch!



Now this is why I live in this neighborhood. Sure there are fancier houses with better views and better locations. But none of them can offer the neighbors I have here. Without getting too mushy, I am blessed with more than a dozen neighbors who would do anything to help out one another. Today it was Jason, his father-in-law Bruce and the mighty chainsaw that spent 1 1/2 hours cutting up my fallen tree and hauling it off to the dump. And what would possess them to do that? Just because it needed to be done. Thank you again!



It could have been worse! This is a picture of a tree about 3 blocks from our house. The wind pulled this right out of the ground, note the 12 ft. root ball, buckled the street and laid it across a car on the other side of the street. The tip of the tree landed on a garage 100 ft. from where the roots ripped out of the ground. Luckily, it went the way it did or the results could have been disastrous.