WIND STORM Dec. 2018
I got my electric power back this morning after spending 3 cold nights in the dark without heat or light. It gets dark around 4 PM this time of the year, so the nights were very long and boring!
Since I had no access to the Internet, I decided to walk around my area to see what kind of damage I could find. I first came across a wire down that carries 4,400 Volts (according to the guys that came out to repair it). There was a guy from the city stationed at the end of the street all day long trying to keep pedestrians and cyclists from getting too close to the wire.
My guess is that the large branch on the lawn was either a contributor to breaking the wire or the reason the wire broke.
With the wire directly on the sidewalk like that, I'm surprised that it took an entire day before the city person was stationed there. Before that they had simply put danger tape across the street; which some motorist soon took down so that they could take their normal route! It wasn't until the next morning that they placed wood barricades along with the tape and stationed the worker to keep watch.
A couple houses farther along the street there were some small trees leaning on the 220 volt wires and telephone and cablevision cables. These trees are tall enough that they may have broken that top electric wire, or were leaning against it until that other branch I mentioned earlier fell. Either way, the electrical wire seemed to have snapped somewhere in this location.
The electrical crew cut the tops off these trees but left the remainder of them leaning against the telephone and cablevision cables because they didn't want to risk damaging the vehicle below. Besides, those cables are not their responsibility and they didn't have equipment to hold the trunks off the car in order to cut more of the trees. On top of that, this crew had been travelling since 6 AM from another part of the province and were not allowed to work more hours, so had to pack it up after repairing the electrical cable.
Before starting to repair the broken wire, the crew had to cut the wire drapped over this car using heavy rubber gloves and a special wire cutter so that the owner of the car could move it out of the way.
At the end of the street was a house where a tree snapped and fell on their deck. They were lucky! I was told that others had trees land on the roof and actually puncture holes in the roof!
Around the corner, another property had their fence blown down.
Around the next corner I found a large tree had smashed someone's trampoline.
A little farther down the street, a chunk of tree (I didn't see any of this until after the fallers had already cut down most of the offending tree) came down on the neighbour's car and damaged the gutter and garage door.
Whatever piece of the tree came down also took down the power lines to this house, and this street was also taped off.
Here the faller is cutting the notch to drop the last part of the tree trunk of the offending tree.
And finally, a wide-angle shot of the offending tree stump in the neighbour's yard and a wide view of the damaged property.
As predicted, another storm has reached us and I can hear the wind howling outside as I type. I hope I can get this posted and pray that we don't need to suffer though another black-out.
Be well, everyone!
I sincerely thank you for your interest!
