Friday, August 13, 2004, we received an uninvited visitor. Hurricane Charley. Charley was not on his best behavior. In my neighbor's backyard, he knocked over the oak tree. With a height of over 50 feet, the top managed to land on the back of my house. The good news, the bushy part cushioned its landing. However, it did manage to do some roof damage.
In the process of rotating, abut 60 - 75 degrees; it had to pass the 7200 volt electric feed for the houses. This feed was along the rear property line. Unfortunately, the utility lines and pole were not strong enough to prevent the fall so the top 8 - 10 feet of the utility pole broke. The two transformers hit the ground. As all this was making its way to the ground, the telephone terminal box was hit. Electric lines, telephone lines and cable TV lines then had the burden of trying to support some of this weight. Again, the lines were never designed to do this and collapsed in a valiant effort to slow the descent of the falling tree and equipment
If the weather service has a sense of humor, this would have been named Clyde. After Bonnie, then Clyde in a few days.
There are some photos available -
http://fstone.smugmug.com
Other folks photos can be seen by doing a google search -
"Hurricane charley" smugmug
Prior to the tree falling, the lights had blinked a few times then out about 9:26 PM. The tree fell about 9:35 PM. I was on the phone when it went dead. At some point, there were some surges into the phone system because the insulation on the conductors for my service was melted. In fact, it got so hot that it also came thought the outer black covering. In looking inside the box on the back, there is black soot. I don't know when the "fire" took place. There are also photos.
Just a few other comments. When have I ever been brief?
We had a new 3000-watt generator left over from Hurricane Floyd in 1999 that never made it here. Saturday morning, it was placed in service and operated any of the 120-volt equipment needed. The house remained comfortable for a couple of days. The hot water heater retained enough hot/warm water for showers through Wednesday. With my experience on cold showers, a technique was developed to mitigate some of the shock. If interested, I'll be happy to share it. About Thursday, we had come to the realization that the dishes really needed to be washed. Fortunately, the dishwasher has the ability to heat its own water. That worked very well. In an environment with temperatures 80 -90 degrees and humidity 72% and higher, there can be some issues. This is especially true to creatures that have become accustomed to living in a controlled environment. Homeowners insurance - We'll see. Around 1992/1993, the legislature allowed the insurance companies to change the deductibles from $100 or $500 to 2% or 5% of insured value for hurricane losses. That is over 10 times more deductible than we had previously. We'll see how this works out.
FEMA - I was told to apply. So far, it appears that if you had only "standard" damage, the process needs to be pursued further to see if there is any assistance. This past Wednesday, the cable TV folks came around and ran a temporary cable. This got service back. However, I was not up because along the failure process, several splitters were blown. Now that they have been replaced, we've got TV. Well, no TV is not the end of the world. At this point, having the cable connection allows me to borrow my brother's cable modem to connect to the Internet. After my e-mail client was reconfigured to use the cable server for sending e-mail that aspect of "Internet life" was back to normal.
Telephone Service - the phone company has moved the estimate of phone service restoration from September 8 to September 4. We'll see. One guy did come out last Sunday (a week later) and said the terminal box was so badly damaged that they could not connect a line and let it lie on the ground like the cable TV folks.
Tree Removal - Several days after Charley did his thing, a company out of Virginia gave me an estimate of $2,500 to remove everything. An insurance representative indicated that was about the going rate under the circumstances. Well, I did not move on it. Friday a week later, a tree company came out and did a "Cut and Drop" to free the utility lines. They did significantly more roof damage than the tree. Sunday, 8/22/04, we got my dad's chain saw - Poulan PRO - to start cutting the Tree. The user guide says "For occasional use.” It died and by Sunday evening, a replacement was purchased. However, the store was very good about the situation. Because the first had "failed" so soon, they refunded the first after the second was purchased. Monday, a guy came buy and indicated he would cut what was left for $2,200. When I pointed out that, I had a $2,500 estimate for cut and removal before the utility tree company, he dropped it to $1,800. For $1,800, he indicated he was doing me a favor. That Monday, I went[