When the lights go out...

A lot can happen in a few days.  And sometimes a lot of nothin' happens.  And the difference can be just a few miles (or blocks, or even feet, as the case may be).  In the storms that tore across the country on March 31st and April 1st, we were fortunate to only lose our power for 48 hours - and with the loss of power we also lost running water.  Fortunately, we had about 10 gallon-size containers filled with water for just such an occasion.

In town, a lot of trees were toppled.  Some were uprooted; some were snapped off in the winds.  And in the smaller town a few miles further north, a  tornado ripped through, completely destroying many homes and buildings that housed businesses - including some newly built warehouses near the interstate.  The interstate was brought to a standstill several times over the weekend.  At first because the building materials of those new (and maybe unfinished) warehouses were littering all six lanes, but the next day, we didn't really know what was causing the traffic jam.   Maybe they were still cleaning the mess up.  And I have no clue how the farmland on either side of the interstate that was strewn for miles with drywall and insulation gets cleaned up. 

I find it amazing that to date no deaths have been reported in that town.  According to emergency services, "all have been accounted for".  It may have helped that many people were probably gone for spring break - many who in the next day or two would make the trek home to start school and work on Monday (today).  Can you imagine coming home from a vacation to find out your home no longer existed?

In comparison, our being without power for 48 hours was merely an inconvenience.  Without power we decided to take a drive on Saturday and charge our phones in the process.  The toppled trees I took pictures of don't begin to capture the number that we passed, but all are minor compared to the devastation experienced a few miles north of here.

Stories have been coming out since Saturday.  Some make it on the evening news, some just get spread word of mouth - like...  A man at church told how his daughter was in her car (with a passenger) when two trees crashed down on the car pinning them inside.  The trees needed to be cut off the car before they could get out, and miraculously, neither the driver nor the passenger were injured.

It took many workers a number of days to get everyone back online in this area.  We are so thankful for their skill, and that day in and day out they do a dangerous job just so we all can have the luxury of turning lights on, or watching TV, or perusing the internet.

It was exciting at about 1:20 am this morning, being still awake, I got to witness the lights pop on.  I immediately set to work washing dishes (in the dishwasher and in the sink) so we could wake up to a fresher house than we'd spent the previous two days in.  It's been a pleasure to do laundry today, catching up on all that was left undone over the weekend.  And I was super happy to find that little food was lost in the power outage.  The freezer was packed full, so I supposed that helped everything to stay frozen over two days.  We enjoyed some very soft ice cream on Saturday, before throwing out the rest.  The power came on in plenty of time for me to survey the freezer's contents and decide if anything should be pitched into this week's garbage.  It turns out very little ended up in the garbage can that is now sitting at the end of our driveway ready to be hauled away in the morning.  The timing of everything couldn't have been better for us.

And yet I am not callous, nor am I gleeful over our blessings knowing there are people a few miles north who have lost their homes, and some have lost all that they own.  As a weather man noted tonight, "weather may be somewhat predictable, but it is not rational".  Two houses stand side by side.  One is flattened, one is completely untouched.  A garage is destroyed, yet tools sit on the workbench right where the owner placed them.  A child's outdoor playhouse finds its resting place in what was the living room or kitchen or some indoor room, while the walls of the house have completely disappeared.  Those kinds of pictures just silence me. 

And today we hear another set of storms is coming in this week.  I'm not overly concerned, but we might just fill the tub up with water this time.

The top of the tree above ended up in the yard across the street:

This is as close as we were allowed to get to the warehouses:

Approximately where the torn-up warehouse is, once stood a farmhouse that friends of ours used to live in.  Considering the possibilities is sobering.

And back home to lights-out.  The worst part of it all for us truly was being bored out of our gourds occasionally over the course of two days, and cooking in a kitchen lit with flashlights.   That said, I am very thankful for a gas stove.  And it was kind of nice to read for as long as I wanted without interruption.   And, I was happily surprised to find I didn't really miss the TV.  In fact, except for tonight's evening news, I haven't watched anything since the power went out after midnight Saturday morning.   We even played an old fashioned game of Twenty Questions and had some good laughs over our guesses.  

By the way, I possibly knew this before, but I was reminded...  when the lights go out inside and one needs to rely on flashlights, one gets a better view of things by pointing the flashlight up toward the ceiling.  If the ceiling is white (or light colored), it will bounce the flashlight's light back down and spread it out further than the beam does that comes out of the flashlight.  Ideally, one has two flashlights.  One to point upward creating a somewhat lightened space overall, and one to point at specific items in order to see something more brightly.  

One of the nicest things was having this gas fireplace to enjoy, and the fact that it wasn't bitterly cold. If it had been bitterly cold, this fireplace would have been a lifesaver.   I heated up some water on the gas stove and washed my hair in a sink on Sunday and I felt like a new person.  It truly made the difference in the last day being pretty decent vs something to simply tolerate.  

Drying my hair by the the heat of the fireplace was pretty nice, too.  Sometimes it truly is the little things...

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