Sunday, August 28, 2011

Earthquakes, Hurricanes, What's Next?

Well we have survived our first bad storm as homeowners. We ended up with a small amount of water in the basement and a large tree limb in the backyard. No other damage. And we never lost power.

We have been in our house two weeks now. But what an eventful two weeks it's been. We were here a week when Bob went on vacation. He had planned this trip for a year with a group of friends. And they had paid for the whole trip already so he couldn't really get out of it very easily. So with boxes stacked everywhere and some things still in the apartment, he left last Sunday. On Monday I hired two day laborers to help move the rest of the things out of the apartment. They helped with some of the work in the apartment and then came over here and helped sort through some of the boxes. That went pretty well.

On Tuesday I stayed home to work on unpacking. I was working away not really thinking of anything. Dakota had been out playing with the neighbors across the street. Suddenly he came in and said, "Did you feel the earthquake?" I thought he was just playing around. But when I stopped working and went on facebook, that was all they were talking about. Apparently there was a huge earthquake in Virgina that was felt all the way up here. Apparently it did some damage in New York City. I didn't feel a thing. I guess because I was walking back and worth I didn't notice it. I did notice a cabinet door that kept coming open. I guess if you were sitting down you noticed it more. I'm so unsteady on my feet that it would take a pretty big earthquake for me to notice.

Then on Thursday they started talking about a hurricane. By Friday, that was all they talked about on the news. A big hurricane was coming and it was gonna be bad. I sent a text to Bob to tell him that they may want to head home a bit earlier than they planned. Late Friday night I told Dakota that we needed to bring in all the things that had been sitting on the front porch. He was great about helping with all of that.

When I got up Saturday morning I turned on the news to see what the updates were about the hurricane. One of the first things I heard was that all mass transit was going to close down at noon. And that the bridges were going to close as soon as the wind speed got up to 60 mph. They didn't know how early that was going to happen. Now Bob and his friends had to cross the George Washington Bridge to get home. I sent him another text that the bride might close soon. He told me they were leaving New Hampshire then. Usually when they go on this trip they hang out until late in the afternoon before they start driving home. This time they left at 9 in the morning. All day long he would text for updates and let me know where they were at. The news kept getting worse and worse. But when I looked outside it was a beautiful calm day. It was cloudy but no breeze at all.

He finally got home around 4:00 in the afternoon. The skys were still calm. Well, the first thing that happened while he was unloading his stuff from the car, we got locked out of the house. The latch on the screen door decided to quit working on Friday. I had put a lego piece in the latch so it wouldn't lock us out but Dakota saw one of his precious legos in the door and pulled it out. We were locked out of the house. Bob had to put Kai through one of the windows that I knew was unlocked. (Because the neighbor had put Dakota through it the day before when the lock stopped working.) He then walked around to the back of the house to put his camping gear in the basement. That's when he noticed all the stuff in the backyard. While I had cleaned off the front porch, I had left three coolers, a watering can, two trash cans, a recycling can, and numerous flower pots in the back yard. So after driving all day, he had to bring all of this stuff into the house. He was not happy.

After watching the news, Bob decided that he needed to go get a pump for the basement. We called Home Depot to make sure they were open before he went out. But it was a waste of time. They were totally sold out of pumps. They were out of water also.

We kept watching the news all evening. But by the time we went to bed there was only a gentle rain and no wind. We kept waiting for the power to go out. We got up this morning to find that the rain had ended. But the wind was really bad. We put some of the bigger things back outside. But the small things will have to wait until tomorrow. He went down to check the basement and found one area had about an inch of water in it. He used the pump that we use in the fish tank to pump the water outside. It was small but worked great to pump out the basement. I'm really glad there wasn't any more water than that.

While Bob was putting the trash cans back outside, he noticed a large limb laying across the neighbors fence behind our house. He went out and pulled it off the fence. Fortunately it didn't really do any damage. The fence could be straightened back out pretty easily. So we now have our first supply of firewood. Yes I know, it will have to dry for months before it will burn. But hey, it's firewood.

I feel really lucky that our damage was so minimal. A lot of people that we know had a lot worse damage. So we have survived our first two weeks as homeowners. We have survived an earthquake. And we survived a hurricane. I guess we will do alright as homeowners.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, what a homecoming from Mother Nature! Glad there was so little damage there.

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  2. Yes, you will indeed do alright as homeowners. I am so very happy for you!

    You were lucky not to lose power. We just got our power back yesterday evening. But it was an adventure!

    Donna

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