Western WA - damage report

Glad to see you here Deb and glad you guys are ok. I was wondering how you weathered through it. I work with a gal from there and she called out Mon cause she had no power. The lights flickered here and lots of trash limbs in the yard but otherwise good.
Do you two need another dog?

Glo

Hey Stranger!

Another dog? We just got Jake, half Blue Heeler, half Australian Shepard in August - he's almost 6 months old and a handful! I think we are up to our eyeballs in dogs around here!

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We are too. We kept one of the puppies and now are in the same boat. Sad part is, he's the best one of the three.
Sorry I haven't been in touch. Life goes by so fast.

Glo

We missed this one, thankfully! I heard the wind outside, but never even lost a limb that I can tell. No trees down at all through any of the storms. Roofs stayed on the barns and house. Nothing much outside even left it's original place.

DH was working down at the refinery in Anacortes the night it was so bad. He said the doppler showed steady winds at 40 and gusts at 73 there on the water. Perhaps it was because it all happened while I was asleep, but aside from the wind howling, there really seemed to be nothing much here in my little pocket of a valley.

Jen...llamas? When did this happen?

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Mustang Diaries

"It's called a lance...hellooo!"

The llamas came last Tuesday.

We got a call from the Humane Society that these two needed a home. Went out to look at them -- no hay in their enclosure, only the standing dead stuff to eat (and a bag of chicken scratch someone had tossed into the place). The vet gave them a clean bill of health, and they're here now in our back pasture. They're sweethearts. I go outside and they run up so they can touch noses with me.

They'll stay in the back pasture for a month or so so we can get used to them, they can get used to us (and the idea that this is home), and the other critters can all get used to each other. From there, we'll play it by ear.

What can I say? I'm a sucker.

Jen, with all your hiking I'm sure you'll enjoy them. Any clue if they pack or not? Any pics? You know...I sold a couple of brown llamas a few years back. Think they're the same one?

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Mustang Diaries

"It's called a lance...hellooo!"

They haven't been trained to pack, that I know of. Their 3 and 1. Both have been haltered before, but the 1 year old doesn't walk well on a lead yet. The 3 year old walks like a dream on lead - following me around like a tame horse. (except when it came time to get in the trailer - that got "interesting")

They're soooooo soft!

The 3 year old is red with white socks, neck, and head. And one black eye patch. The 1 year old is white with ginger spots and black eye patches. We haven't had a chance to get pics yet.

Well, no damage to our property thankfully. Power,phone,DSL all out. Just got Power Sun night,Phone and DSL around 3AM this morning. Extensive damages around here. Many people may not even have power by Christmas. Was glad to have heat that didnt require much work. Many down trees over power lines,phone lines. The utilities ahve been working many HARD hours trying to get everyone live.
We managed to stay at home without going to the Red Cross shelter(first time in 35 years we have ever had one setup out here). Oil lanterns,flashlight,and candles for light. Propane for cookstove and lantern for cooking outside. Firepit and collected firewood from down trees for warmth outside. Place hot rocks from fire in metal planter container then placed on metal grate in middle of livingroom for heat in house(old indian sweat lodge trick).We managed to survive but, was glad to have supplies on hand for when it hit many people were not prepared out here. Kids had fun and luckily will not count against their snow days at school as they are on vacation.
DH has been going out collecting down wood for low income in our area that he knows in our area trying to keep them warm.
Funny our power side of our roads did fine. Our power company trims every year trees to avoid damages. The phone side of the road caused most of the damages due to LARGE trees falling across roads and breaking lines on both sides. Many lines still down throughout areas.
Hope everyone is safe!

We didn't have any damage to our property, but lots of downed trees around the neighborhood took out the power lines and phone and cable! We were OK for food, lighting and cooking (good old Coleman camp stove), but discovered a big hole in my disaster preparedness for heating. Fortunately I have wonderful neighbors who shared their generator with me to keep the fridge going and to run a couple of ceramic electric heaters. Didn't really keep the place warm (55 degrees is not warm!) but it was tolerable. I am seriously thinking of buying a generator and possible having a propane tank installed and buying a propane stove. Only problem is.... they cost money, which I don't currently have any excess of! I guess I know what my tax refund will go toward. Glad no-one in this forum had major damage or injury.

I had a couple of trees downed over the driveway, but it wasn't that bad. However, as I just posted on another thread, I am still without power. Working on DAY 7 here. The half of the road that gets its power from the east never lost power, while we who get our electricity from the west lost it a 3pm -- before the storm hit. Only the 5th time the power has gone out since Halloween...

Grumble, grumble...

Power off 6 days here, just came on. Peeled a lot of metal roofing off house and barn. That's what blue tarps are for, right? No generator, donated it to local Red Cross to keep unprepared idiots warm during storm, didn't lose any meat in freezers all stayed frozen solid. Lost about 20 big doug firs, cedars, and a gigantic maple, guess it's not really a loss when you consider that cut up that will be enough firewood for 2 years.

We just came out of the Dark Ages at 3:16 this morning. Lost power at about 7PM the night the storm came in (last Thursday night). Lost the phone shortly thereafter. We live in a 1960's mobile home and are 100% electric. We had not bought a generator as we are saving our pennies for a creek turbine and some batteries (which we don't have yet). So no well water, no furnace, no lights. We have a tiny woodstove in the living room.

We were pretty well prepared with minimal effort. When we learned of the approaching storm we filled barrels with drinking water, split a bunch of firewood, cranked up the chest freezer in the barn. I am a compulsive candle/lantern hoarder so we had several cans of lantern fuel, a few lanterns, several oil lamps, lots of jugs of lamp oil, several flashlights and hundreds of candles of all descriptions.

When we lost power we closed off the bedrooms and the bathroom, dragged our bedding into the living room and stapled wool blankets over the entrance to the hallway. Covered the floor registers with books and cardboard. Emptied the fridge into the outdoor chest freezer. Plugged the bathtub and filled it with water from the creek for flushing the toilet. Heated water on the woodstove. Made coffee in the camp perk on the woodstove. Fed the stove every two or three hours. Set the travel alarm clock to feed the stove in the night. Bathed with baby wipes. Hauled a lot of water from the creek over the course of the outage - mostly for the horses, since the pasture is done for the year and they are eating hay.

We were pretty cozy but the crummy mobile home insulation really made us slaves to the tiny woodstove. Would have been nice to have some kind of lanai or mudroom or wanigan or whatever they call it in your neck of the woods. An airlock to keep frigid air from blowing in the front door every time you bring in more firewood. The water in the closed-off bathroom developed a crust of ice on top one night. The (indoor) cat became a heat-seeking device. The dogs were fine of course.

During the storm DH and I stood in the middle of the corral (the only place where absolutely no trees could reach us if they fell) and watched the trees around us sway in the wind. No lights in our neighborhood, as we lost power early on, but the surrounding towns in the distance still had power. The lights from town gave the night sky an orange glow. The trees stood out plainly visible against the sky. Continual cracking and snapping and crunching came from the woods around us, punctuated by the occasional bass thump of a big tree hitting the ground.

As we stood in the corral in the violent wind and rain, we named the huge cottonwoods that we feared the most, out of respect. There was Lunchmeat, Colossus, Big Bertha and The Leaning Tower of Pisa (leaning AWAY from the house). Pisa went over just after 1AM, taking with it a huge old cedar that used to make such a lovely cool dell next to the creek in the summer. Now there is a new pool of water where there used to be a creek. The pulled-up roots of Pisa and the cedar have made a natural dam. The water is probably five feet deep there. We are really sad about the cedar. I will have to make a garland from some of the greenery and add it to the bonfire on solstice.

Yesterday DH said "This is no longer 'like camping'." and I agreed that it was definitely time for electricity again. My mother is in town for the holidays, visiting from Alaska. Since our living conditions were somewhat primitive and cramped (and my dear mother snores like a sawmill in full swing) I volunteered my sister to put up Mom for a few nights. Now that power is restored, Mom is once again welcome to come stay in our camper. The camper is small but appointed luxuriously - better than the house. Mom is glad because my sister keeps her house too warm for Mom's tastes.

The most annoying part of the extended power outage was having to endure the across-the-street neighbors' ceaseless generator. They had it sitting in the mouth of their garage, with the roll-up doors open. The garage points at the side of our house. It was like a little generator-noise amphitheater. Oh joy.

Now that the power is back on we get to return to "enjoying" their 24-hour security lights instead. Not sure which I'd rather have. Sure is nice to have hot water come out of the faucet again, though.

Back to washing laundry and dishes. Hooray for electricity!

One sister in Black Diamond and another in Ashford lost power for several days. Black Diamond is back on after 4 days but Ashford hasn't called in yet...

HOORAY! The power just came on...after 6.5 days. I was getting very cranky driving around looking at all the Haves extravagantly lighting up all their Christmas lighting and using up this finite commodity ("Hey, that's my electricity you're gobbling up!...") while those of us Have-nots spend our time in candlelight trying to figure out more ways to strategize water and heat and energy...

NOW I'm one of THEM and I'm going to light up the house!! Hee hee ha ha! :baby04:

Yay, our power just came on a couple of hours ago. Long enough to take showers and wash some clothes and I hope the power stays on since the workmen are still on my street with the line still on the road and the winds are picking up again.

Glad you folks are finally getting your lives back! I heard on the radio as I was coming home this evening that there was a convoy of PSE trucks out on the road; the caller said "Someone's getting their power back tonight!" I guess that was y'all, eh?

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Mustang Diaries

"It's called a lance...hellooo!"

Weather Channel says there's still 200K people without power, mostly in King County.

Any thoughts why you folk have power lines above ground instead of buried like we do in California? It's a lot safer after disasters when the lines are underground.

We had three trees come down the night of the storm. Two tall firs landed about 15 feet from our "tin cabin" and one foot away from my car!! The third is actually about two thirds of a big pine. It stopped just short of the henhouse. We just got our power back this early evening. Glad to be able to clean with hot water now! Still saying prayers for those without power tonight. Toni

Yes: PSE is too cheap to invest in switching over to underground lines. It's a private company. It only has its eye on immediate profits, not on longterm benefits. These outtages are getting more and more frequent. This was the 5th time since Halloween that my power has gone out. It was also the longest outtage I have seen in my almost 9 years out here.

However, if the choice were "live without trees but have no outtages" or "live with trees + power outtages", I would certainly take trees. But of course, there is that other option: underground lines.

Thursday morning, working on day 7 here with no power, although other neighborhoods in the area (just south of Issaquah) have been back on for days now. Thank goodness for a woodstove with a BIG firebox, and a 2 burner propane camping stove. With those 2 things, we've been able to heat water for bathing and washing dishes. Our neighborhood of 16 house seems to always be the last to get power back on Relativily no damage except for the loss of a LOT of roof shingles during the storm. We had it real bad in 2003 with horrific winds combined with freezing rain. That storm took out so many trees, I think the survivors were all strong enough to withstand this storm. It was like we got some mini/isolated tornados that year, and our power was only off for 5 days.

If we were living in our off grid house we are planning to build, we'd be way better off than now!