I have my weekly fetal echo this afternoon, and I'm hoping all is well. I'm a little nervous because I had a huge uninvited adrenalin jolt this weekend.
We had snow here in CT this weekend. They predicted we'd get a couple inches, tops. Until it started way earlier than predicted, and the storm came packing it's own cold air mass. We got probably 5 or 6 heavy, wet inches of snow. This shouldn't of been a huge problem. Our biggest issue should have been "The shovel is still in the attic - drat!" Instead, it is much much more complicated.
Issue 1: Tree in the Road
A tree fell across our road, right in our front yard. We actually had a small advantage to start, since we were out running errands (yes, we fell into the "It'll be a dusting" category). This put our car on the other side of the tree - allowing us to get out of the street. Had we hunkered down, we'd have been trapped in our house with no power or water.
Issue 2: Tree in the Kitchen
We came around the tree in the road to see branches sticking out over our house. Quickly, Mark realized those branches were attached to a whole tree. Once in the house, we had a huge mess on our hands. One shattered skylight. Broken rafters, holes in ceiling. And much of the storm was still to come. We called insurance, our tree guy, and our construction guy (this has happened before...it wasn't pretty, but at least we knew the drill) before high-tailing it to a hotel for the night. In the middle of this high-risk pregnancy, we weren't about to sit around terrified all night that another tree would drop.
Issue 3: CL&P or the State of CT?
This third issue came later. It's directly related to Issue 1. CL&P was planning on restoring power to our neighborhood, to everyone on the OTHER side of the tree. Then coming back and clearing the tree later, ya know, when they had a few extra minutes. Meanwhile, snow continues to melt and saturate our walls and ceiling - create more and more damage the longer it sits there. Our tree guys can't get to our house to take the tree off our house until CL&P clears the road. Someone hacked a car-sized chunk of the tree away so trapped families could get out. The CL&P crew Mark spoke to said it wasn't them (really, why would it be?), so they can't do anything more. I can't help but be angry at the power company and the state. Clearly CL&P planned on no big storms ever occurring again, so took no lessons learned out of the Irene debacle (we lost power & water for 6 days). And the state just leaves it entirely up to the utilities. Can't we send out the National Guard or DOT workers to assist?
So now we wait.
I can't help but wonder what we've done to get this disaster-on-disaster action. I've never maliciously went after someone purely out of spite. I've never tried to manipulate anyone into doing my bidding. I stand by honesty and hard work. We give to charity regularly. I'm having a hard time just sucking it all up. It's taking a great deal of effort to dust myself off. Hopefully this process moves easier and faster than the last time we had a tree fall on our house (it took 6+ months to fix the entire roof, gut our bedroom and repair and re-insulate everything).
The next move is to sink some cash into tree removal. We've got some really big trees hanging out near our house. Ones that I'm less worrried about breaking, but just falling over from over saturated soil. One of these trees would probably end us if it were to fall. Who can sleep knowing that? Not me!
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