Hurricane Irene - A Slight Inconvenience

Calm before the storm, a nice sunset and trees over the pond the night before Hurricane Irene arrived.

One of the drains on our apartment building.  You can see that it is putting down a LOT of water.  We got somewhere around 12 inches of rain in 24 hours.

The level of the drainage "lake" behind our apartment rose 5-6 feet during the storm.  The edge of the water is normally on the other side of those trees.  It could have gone up a few more feet before we would have been in danger of getting flooded.

In the afternoon the windows in the study began to spring leaks. We soaked up the steady rain with towels around the windows. Evidently the seal wasn’t adequate for this kind of torrential rain. We changed the towels often and wrung them out as they got soaked. We were grateful that I had thought to remove all papers and a small filing cabinet away from that side of the room, away from the windows, and also that we had decided to stay home. The carpet would have been very soggy and in need of being replaced, not to mention the mold which is a problem in this area. Eventually one window in the bedroom sprang a leak as well, but not till the rain had slowed down quite a bit.

This crawdad walked across the lawn and visited our patio.  I guess he was evacuating from the pond out back.

This was the landscape pretty much everywhere along with lots of branches and a few trees down.

Our power quit at 1:00pm on Saturday and came back on at 4:00pm on Monday.  We stayed away from the roads for 2 days because people don't know what do to without traffic lights and there were many accidents. We were disappointed that our land-line telephone quit working a few hours after the power went off.  We thought that would keep working and found out that the current technology only supplies battery power for a few hours.  Even the cell phones didn't work.  We were able to finally get a couple text messages out to let people know that we were  OK.

The entrance to our apartment complex is usually immaculate.  It took a few days to get back to normal.

This is just one small branch that broke off. All roads were lined with broken trees and branches.

On the army post, this used to be a covered area (gazebo) where the soldiers could get out of the sun when they were outside doing field exercises.  The tree that took it out is lying there.

Some of the smaller trees had problems too.

The top broke off of this poor tree.

On Sunday all church services were cancelled in the area.  We were encouraged to go out and help our neighbors with chainsaws and tools.  Since we didn't have any of those things we went outside at our complex with some bags and began picking up pinecones, branches, and debris.  One young couple saw us and asked if they could help.  We filled 6 bags in 30 minutes.

     Hurricane Irene wasn’t as fierce as expected, but it still took out enough trees to leave over 7 million homes without power along the east coast. The prediction was for a category 2 or 3 to hit our area but it was mostly a category 1 with gusts that would measure a cat. 2. We had prayed for safety and also that the hurricane would be turned away from the land. It was definitely moderated from what it could have been. The Mission President moved all of the young missionaries to the Richmond area to keep them out of the direct hit.  Richmond got as much wind and rain as we did here. We were given the choice whether to relocate or stay in our apartment for the storm. We opted to stay since we weren’t in a mandatory evacuation zone. We never felt panic or promptings to leave the area. We would have had to leave Thursday or Friday because once the storm began on Saturday, many roads were closed because of flooding and other major roads were clogged with traffic. We did know that we would likely lose power, and that came true. We had a full gas tank, batteries, flashlights, water and food. Fortunately it wasn't winter so we didn't have to worry about getting cold.  It did get hot though, without air conditioning.
     We went to Costco to print the graduation pictures on Friday and were amazed at the feeling of panic in the air as people grabbed armloads of batteries, bread, cases of water, and other provisions. I thought to myself, “Where have these people been? Haven’t they been aware of this hurricane for several days? Don’t they LIVE in a hurricane prone area?”  I heard one news reporter saying that she was in Walmart buying water and saw a lady put her hand over her ears and exclaim, “I just can’t deal with this!”                       IF YE ARE PREPARED YE SHALL NOT FEAR.
     We felt blessed during and after the hurricane.  We were a little inconvenienced by the loss of power, but knew that it could have been much worse.  We also missed meeting with the soldiers on Sunday because all services were cancelled on the base.  Our poor chapel building had some roof leaks and seriously needs repair. (They knew this long before the hurricane.) 

     We continue to pray for those up the coast who have been devastated much more than our inconvenience.