Sunday, August 15, 2004

Damage Update

The bad news is that there was some damage around the house (but not to it, amazingly enough). The good news is that there wasn't a lot of it, and we still have power, unlike the majority of Seminole County. We've been taking pictures and video taping over the past couple days (between cleaning everything and then collapsing indoors) and so I've got a few shots to share with you guys. What you'll see here is probably the average - some houses had only a few stray branches and leaves to rake up, while others had trees fall on roofs, on cars, and into pools (all three of which happened to my friend). The morning after, probably around 9:30 or so. That's our house in the background. This is after we swept all the leaves out of our driveway, to the left. As you can see, everyone's yards were littered with this kind of debree. The guy in the little blue moving chair thing is my neighbor (his house is towards the left), and the girl in black is also a neighbor, who lives across the street. You can kind of see my sister behind her. A tree next to our house. While a lot of trees didn't go down, they lost a lot of branches. The wind was at pretty steady, at around 90 mph or so during the hurricane, with gusts up to 105 mph. You can imagine that a lot of branches just snapped at that kind of force. (By the way, the one hanging branch to the left is not on the van, heh. Thankfully, we were spared any sort of vehicle damage.) The tree we did lose, and are still currently cutting down. It fell over onto my neighbor's fence, but no real damage was done. Had it fallen the other way, it would be in my brother's bedroom. It was, however, a gorgeous tree, and I'm sad we lost it. You can see where the roots were pulled up; it actually brought most of the ground around it with it, including the big (and heavy) square stones that we used as a make-shift sidewalk. I'm amazed that the wood table next to it (on the right) didn't fly off somewhere. My mom checking out the entrance to our neighborhood. (On a personal note, this is one of my favorite pictures.) Another toppled tree. Although this one technically isn't on our property (which is past the chain link fence on the right), we had a special attachment to this tree. It's in what formerly used to be a cow field, and is now going to be another subdivision. My parents went and fought with the people to keep this from being torn down. We won that battle, and you can see that it was fenced off. But unfortunately, Charley knocked it over anyway. The same tree, different angle. You can see here how big the damn thing was - it not only took out a section of our back fence, but it also snapped one of the wires off of the big electricity pole there. We called it in, obviously, and they think it's just a tension wire and not an actual live wire. But the tree has completely blocked the entire sidewalk - you seriously can't get passed this thing without walking into the street. Close up of the same picture. What's kind of funny about this is that the neighborhood was in negotiations to buy a new fence anyway (although it screws us over because we lose that big hedge against it, but that's another story for another time). Me, doing some raking.All those leaves are from our driveway, believe it or not. It started to rain, which was absolutely wonderful because it was so hot and humid before. It's been like that today, too - it's horrible all morning long, and then we get some afternoon showers, and it cools down a little. From earlier today - still cleaning up after Charley. All those branches are from the tree that fell behind it. My dad and this other Trinidadian guy named Marcus had been using an electric saw on it all morning. You have no idea how big a tree actually is until it falls and you have to cut it up and move it. Which is why my mother looks like she's going insane, lol. My mom again, clipping the branches down to a "managable size" for the guys who are coming around to collect it Monday. After she cut them down, we dragged them out to the neighborhood entrance, which is one house down from us. We were doing this all day. My hands are blistered and dry and my legs and arms are all scratched up. Joy. My neighbor, in a sea of tree branches. That's all from the one tree. Bits and pieces of our beloved tree. As they cut off the branches to take it down entirely, we dragged them all out here. This was taken when we were only half way done sawing - that's a ton of tree, and really, the one that fell was a relatively younger one. That's all the pictures I've got right now, but I think it's plenty enough to give you a perspective on what's going on in my life right now, heh. It's been a rough two days, and if you think about what's happened in other places in Florida, we got off easy. As I mentioned before, my friend had about five trees fall on her house. Her pool enclosure is completely destroyed, the backyard is now officially a jungle, the roof of one of their rooms is cracked and falling in a little, the front of her house is dented, her mom's car is totalled, her dad's has a cracked windshield (the last three were all from the same couple trees - they also blocked their front entry way, so they had to climb through a side garden to get out) and they have no power. I don't think I can fully express the full horror of not having air conditioning in August in Florida. It's humid and hot and you're constantly sweating. There aren't a lot of places to go because the roads are still being cleaned, street lights are still being fixed, and really, most stores and restaurants don't have any power, either. When they say that Florida is a disaster zone, they aren't joking. I think it's going to be a few more days before I can actually resume some semblance of normalcy on the internet. There's still a lot of cleaning to do, as well as packing, so it'll probably be Wednesday before I can get back to the boards. Hopefully all is well on that front. Until then, though.

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