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December 7, 2007

ITS FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Let me tell you, it's been quite a week! I really have gained a lot of respect for people who have been through a hurricane!

Saturday we started out with wind and rain and by Sunday we had wind gusts up to 40 mph. The power flickered on and off a couple of times during the day but that night around 8:00 p.m. we lost our power for good. Sitting in the living room with all the windows surrounding us on three sides, we felt like we were in a fish bowl. We watched the wind gauge on our weather station clock 60 mph before it finally broke and since it was dark, we decided to call it a night. That night was pretty scary with the unrelenting wind blowing even more and waking us up every time something hit the house. We heard this huge crash around 1:30 a.m. and Dave got up to investigate. He could hardly walk around in the yard because the wind was so strong. I headed for the downstairs basement where I figured it would be a lot safer. We were both up most of the night just listening to the roar of the wind. We expected a tree to hit the house or at least go through a window. Luckily, that didn't happen. By the time the dawn came, we could finally see all of the damage. The island in Nehalem Bay was completely covered and the spray from the water was strong. We also watched a parade of logs and other debris go rushing by towards the ocean. On Tuesday things calmed down enough for us to get outside to really see the damage that we had heard all night. There were huge three-inch branches and other debris all over the yard and against the house, the small fishing boat that was parked on a trailer in our driveway was tipped over on it's side against the greenhouse with the trailer still strapped to it, the fence had been blown over and we lost two birch trees along the side of the house. My greenhouse lost part of its roof too. After the wind and rain died down we were outside cleaning up the mess. Dave had to get the chainsaw out and cut up the fallen trees because they were down across the driveway and we couldn't get the car out. All our neighbors were outside and one of them told us that their wind gauge clocked the gusts at 79 mph.

Our friends, Des and Donna Kahrs who live down by the river lost about 40 trees on their property and their fishing boat that was up on their dock got blown off and is nowhere to be seen. We had been talking to them throughout the storm and they were worried that it was going to take forever to get the mess cleaned up, but when we left on Tuesday, we went by and saw that there were about a dozen guys down there with chainsaws helping them clean up the trees. It seems that several of Des' former students had heard about their situation and they all came up and went to work. It was an amazing sight!

We felt we were luckier that most as some people had trees on top of and even through their house. We at least had the warmth of our gas fireplace and although the power was out, we had our motorhome to rely on for heating up our food. The biggest problem was that when the wind was blowing, we couldn't make the 50 feet between the back door and the boat barn to get to the motorhome! Believe me, I don't like "roughing it" that much and I hope I never had to go through that again.

The most frightening thing was that we were completely isolated and had no way of contacting our loved ones to let them know that we were okay. We had no power, no long-distance telephone service, no cell service and all the roads were blocked with fallen trees, landslides or flooding. When we found out that one of the main access roads to the west was open, we grabbed our belongings and hit the road. I brought most of the big stuff out of the freezer with us as we don't know when we will have power again and food in the freezer was beginning to thaw. So for now, we are in West Linn appreciating the simple things in life like electricity and warm water!

The last we heard, there was still only one road open to the coast, there is no power down there, and they still don't have phone service. We've been told that long-distance service has been restored, but we haven't been able to contact anyone down there. We did hear that Des and Donna got their boat back. Someone found it beached on the other side of the bay - three miles away!

More on this next week, and maybe some pictures too!