Last night Doug and I spent the evening at the Northwood High School tennis courts. We had a lot of fun watching Cameron play, especially when he was paired with Breece at number one doubles. We were a little disappointed when the match ended early due to lightening. The good news was that Cameron and Breece won, the bad news was the storm that followed the lightening.
The three of us arrived home about five minutes ahead of the predicted severe thunderstorm. As we walked in the house, the power flipped on and off. I had heard a transformer blow miles from our house and was glad that it hadn't affected us. That all changed several minutes later. As Doug was looking out the back window, he saw sparks fly. A large tree in our backyard had come down on the power line. My excitement about having electricity was gone and we started to make plans for what to do next.
The storm stayed strong until 10:30 p.m. Cameron had an early morning tee time at Meadowvalley, so he and I decided to stay at Grandma's. It was hard getting up at 6 a.m. after all of the excitement last night. Cameron decided to play, however. I was glad to hear that. I had planned on meeting him after nine and walking the back with him. Once I saw the damage in our backyard, I asked my Dad if he could go to Middlebury instead. It was extremely hot out today and I wanted to make sure that someone checked on Cameron. I was glad that he and Grandma could make the trip.
Doug waited until I got home at 7:30 a.m. this morning to leave. Not only was a big tree down, but two others were as well. Dozens of big branches had fallen as well as hundreds of sticks. The biggest tree was hanging on the Mediacom cable line. It looked as those the tree just missed the electric line, but we found out later from our neighbor that REMC had fixed the line late last night. Doug had slept through the noise. Before Doug left for work, he called Hoosier Tree Service, REMC, Mediacom and Farm Bureau Insurance. Once he pulled out of the drive, I started working on the yard. I took a break at 10:30 and felt like I hadn't even made a dent in the cleanup effort.
Cameron arrived home in the mid-afternoon. He was absolutely exhausted, but pleased with his second place finish. He was even happier that he got to play with one of his long time friends on the junior tour circuit. Grandma and Grandpa took him to lunch at Essen Haus to celebrate. He spent the evening at Samuel's making good use of their swimming pool.
REMC arrived around 3:30 this afternoon. They made plans to come out and take down the tree hanging on the cable line as well as a few others that might cause damage in the future. I was glad to hear that. Doug arrived shortly after they left and started work on the tree that fell in Kyle's yard. Thankfully, Josh was able to help. He had a bigger chainsaw than Doug. I spent another hour picking up branches and sticks. We did hear back from our insurance. Our deductible for wind damage was too high to help with the tree clean up and they wouldn't pay for the downed fence as it was on Kyle's property. Thus, they closed our claim. Kyle's insurance would pay for the fence, but he thought that he could fix it without much issue.
It was definitely a long day of clean up from the storm last night. We would still have plenty to do for the next week or two. We knew from the estimate from our tree guy that it would cost about $2500 to clear away the debris, stumps and take down a few more trees that look precarious. Even with the long hours, hard work and extra costs ahead of us, Doug and I didn't really have any complaints. We were just thankful that no one was hurt in the worst storm of the twenty-four years that we had lived here.
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