This week got shot to shit.
I am unsure as to how to describe this. Looking back, over all, we were fairly lucky as far as the Derecho ripped across the state, for the most part, I didn’t notice. I was working, and had a power blip, started to reconnect, then lost power. I headed upstairs to see what was going on and discovered that the tree in our front yard had fallen.
First Picture, through door window, You can see the repairs already starting as a MidAmerican truck drives by
I didn’t hear it fall, at least I think not. Shortly after that I heard the sirens come up.
As a note, the tree fell about as perfectly as a tree could. It hit no wires, any houses, other trees, or cars, just covered up about half the street, meaning you can still get in and out of the street.
This started a ~55 hour period where we were without power. During that time I reported my tree fell into the street to the city, I tried to go to work on Monday (after the outage) but gave up. We drove around on Monday evening (partially to recharge our phones), where we found a way to make it to work. We also discovered that the entry point for power, two blocks to west or so had a tree tangled up in it. With further driving about, still charging our devices, we saw a few houses that were clearly damaged by trees, we discovered another entry point for power to our house, a couple blocks east and a few blocks south, was also mangled.
We returned home, ended up in separate bedrooms (no power, no CPAP, snoring like a rhino and lack of sleep for me).
Tuesday, I got up, got dressed to go into the office (the first time in other then the 6 hours to re-setup my MacBook pro (2 three hour sessions), since the pandemic was started to be taken seriously). My plan was to pick up some monger sandwiches at the cheese shop on my way home. When I started to plan my route home, I discovered the Cheese Shop was out of power, though they got some dry ice to keep their cheese refrigerated, which is good for them. We ended up getting delivery…from somewhere. This was the beginning of my exhaustion. During the day, the City, I think, came and chopped up the center of the tree to pull most of the tree out of the street. This is due to me following my father’s advice and reporting it to the city.
I had started calling around to tree companies to try to get someone to come out, I should have probably started during the storm. However I did end up getting a couple of touch backs, but as we started cleaning things up, it became apparent that we could, after the city cut up the tree, do it ourselves. I carried the large chunks to the wood pile, then between us doing it a few evenings of effort, and me swapping my morning exercise, using a hedge trimmer (after power was restored), a hand saw, and a lopper (I guess that’s what it’s called) we were able to get this accomplished and have piles of wood for the city to pick up.
Wednesday, I went to work again at the office. More tired. Unlike the first night where I got up several times, tossed and turned a lot, this night I mostly slept through the night in a black dreamless exhausting nothingness. I was worried about getting to the point where I’d have to toss all the meat, and after a discussion with my manager, I ran off to Burtek Dry Ice, who sold dry ice to the public for a bit, ended up with 50 pounds (22.6 kilos), put two ten pound bags in the upstairs freezer, and 3 in deep freeze. There was still ice in the ice maker upstairs, though it was starting to get a bit watery, but still icy. I headed back to work and did some more work as best as I could being exhausted. On my way home I stopped at a grocery store to picked up another 20 pound (~9 kilos) bag of ice on my way home.
I was very hopeful on as I started to travel home. Unlike Tuesday, where 80% of the stoplights were out, driving Wednesday 80% of them were on. I drove into the neighborhood, and it was looking good, as far as electricity was concerned, lights on here and there. I noticed the elementary school’s sign was on. I got home and was a bit despondent, because no lights were on in our house. Then I heard the neighbor’s air conditioning unit kicked on, I still didn’t see any movement in the house. I may have yelled in frustration. As I put my key in the lock, lights came on (or very close to it). As thing started to warm up and reconnect, I went and checked on the air conditioner, the internet came on and things started to feel normal.
It felt good to sleep, next to my wife, with fans and my CPAP machine. It felt nice to be able to watch the bees in my mint garden, from my workspace, though it appears as if the Painted Lady Butterflies had suffered from the derecho, or moved on (hoping for the latter).
This all being said. There are still people without power, having blocked streets and sporadic cell coverage, especially in Cedar Rapids. While the local media seems to be covering it well, the national media has completed failed at coverage, since, I suspect, the pictures aren’t dramatic enough (no storm to catch, just clean up). There’s so much going on.