DAY 67 - WE HAVE ELECTRIC POWER!!

Our electric power is finally back on after 6 days! Hurricane Ike’s winds hit SE Ohio on Sunday afternoon and really did a number on the whole state. We lost power on Sunday about 6:00 and finally got it back on Saturday about 1:00 thanks to the wonderful guys from Pike Electric out of North Carolina! Wind gusts of up to 70 mph took out trees, which then fell on power and telephone lines. There are still over 1000 customers without power just in our county.

We have a huge 100-year-old sycamore tree -- just lost one large limb out of it, and lotsa leaves. . .

Our neighbor's tall, skinny pine tree was snapped off about 4 feet or so from the ground and fell into the road. When it fell it caught the main electric line running to a neighbor's house and practically tore it off the house. It was still attached to the meter on the house blocking the road. Neighbor's put up the yellow caution tape to block the road to traffic, but that line stayed down for three days until a private electrician finally came out and got it off the house and repaired the damage. But that line still layed curled up by the pole until Saturday when the power company finally repaired the line and turned on the power to the neighborhood.

Poor Susan, the pine tree neighbor, also lost a huge limb off her lovely old maple tree in her back yard. It missed the house, thank goodness, but destroyed the kids play station/swings. That tree will have to be taken out, too.

The only other tree damage in the neighbor was a large limb that fell on the front of Steve's house. Luckily it just bent the spouting and dented a couple shingles.

Our neighborhood was lucky. Many homes were severaly damaged by large trees falling on top of them. We had a man in from a local tree service in to inspect our sycamore. He showed us a picture of a tree they were working on Saturday that fell onto the center of a house and literally chopped the house in half! Below is the aftermath from a huge, huge tree that blocked Blue Avenue in town -- it fell across the road and took down electric and telephone poles with it. It took 3 days to get that mess cleaned up and utilities repaired and back on. Luckily for the home owner, some industrious men offered to clean up the tree in exchange for the firewood!