Well, I'm back finally. What a day...
First, I am VERY grateful we're safe here - it's our 22nd anniversary. Great day for a hurricane, eh?
That said, the entire region has been inundated with truly record-breaking rainfall and damage from winds.
There are multiple dam failures, mandatory evacuations of entire towns, power outages everywhere....
We lost power this morning and when I checked into reporting the outage, the system informed me that
pretty much the entire county was also out! To make matters even worse, the repair crews of our co-op
(the best crews are right here) were out there in full force in driving rain trying to fix everything - and one
casualty amongst their ranks resulted, unforunately.
Verizon had already declared a loss of service to the area before today and of course, Spectrum cable soon
followed suit as well, so communications from the home base was basically zero - so I headed out to town.
The carnage along the way was truly depressing - 200 year old trees uprooted, multiple roads blocked, houses
damaged, vehicles crushed and ALL the interstates and highways between us and North Carolina closed!!
(A chunk of I-40 actually collapsed into the Pigeon River - looked like a scene out of a movie).
I made sure the wife was ok at work and reported the power outage in person at the co-op, then headed back
home to start my own repairs...
The Trent Lane Highway Department (me) cleared trees, dug new trenches for drainage, repaired the gravel roads
and got drowned by more monsoons whilst doing so.
I got up the ridge finally and not having much faith in the restoring of power, proceeded to lay out all the power
cords in the house for fridges, computers, lights, etc. and got the generator fired up and running.
I just got sat down, soaked from both rain and sweat, with a cold drink, generator chugging away....
and the power came back on.
Sumbeech....of course it did.
It was a two shower day for me for sure, but again - wife and I are blessed and fine up here on the ridge.
No significant damage to anything, too. Just really fortunate - there's so many suffering right now.
Y'all see that hospital in Erwin, TN that had to be evacuated by HELICOPTER from the rooftop?
Holy Snikeys!