Here in the "South Sound" we didn't have it so bad. The power went out for
about 20 hours Thursday night to Friday evening. Jami and I have gas
fireplaces and gas hot water, so we were not cold. We cooked on my propane
camp stove and used propanre lanterns for light, also. The greatest hardship
was internet service being down until yesterday, so I have just now completed
wading through 400 emails. And driving around is scary since all the traffic
lights are/were out. If you find 4 way stops confusing, imagine them with 6
lanes of traffic. Kinda hard to remember who has the right of way!
Lots of wiring got done on my layout once the soldering iron began cooking
again, since shopping and internet was put on hold.
Roger Nulton
North East Tacoma
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Karnes
To: s-scale
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 5:15 PM
Subject: {S-Scale List} Seattle storm
OK, maybe some of you are interested in this off-topic topic.
Last Wednesday night a 100' Douglas fir toppled onto my south living
room bearing wall and came to rest on the end of the ridge beam. No
internal house damage -- the tree just sheared off the 3' overhanging
eave. The root ball was at the back of our property, which is 95'
deep. The top of the tree overhung my neighbor's driveway, which is
about ten feet from the front of our house.
This tree was removed on Thursday; a crane was required. Thursday night
my neighbor's 70' Douglas fir fell straight north, alighting atop the
end of my garage's ridge beam. On its way down it knocked the tops off
three of his alders; these sheared the gutter off my garage. The fir
also knocked over his 50' spruce, sending it down at 45 degrees across
our cul-de-sac and blocking access for three of the six residents.
Our neighbor up the hill had half of a madrona tree fall across the
driveway on Thursday night, winding up atop another neighbor's bedroom.
This sort of finished off any hope of getting a car in or out.
Fortunately we had parked our car up on the street so the crane could
get in on Thursday, so we at least had transportation -- such as it
was. Most roads here on Mercer Island were blocked with trees, downed
wires, smashed utility poles and transformers, and wires holding up
trees precariously. We took a drive around to survey the damage. It
was like finding our way through a maze full of unexpected dead ends.
No railroading got done in the last four days. (Note the obligatory
e-list topic here...) There were no lights (except battery-powered) and
no heat. Can't build models with bare fingers in a 40-degree room. We
stayed warm with three layers of clothing, earmuffs, scarves, and heavy
bathrobes. Reminded me of my Boy Scout days, sleeping in a tent pitched
on a frozen lake near High Point NJ. Didn't like it then, didn't like
it now...
We got power back last night. Before that, we cooked over Sterno and on
the charcoal grill outside. And we ate out a lot! As of today, the
trees blocking our residential access have been cut and moved. But
there are still massive piles of branches and tree-trunk sections lying
around here. Fortunately our frozen food stayed frozen and our electric
hot-water heater retained its heat. We used the outdoors to store the
contents of our refrigerator -- it got down to 29 degrees here.
Dick Karnes
Mercer Island, WA (2 miles from Seattle)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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