no? don't think so?
thursday, as i was watching my new favorite show (rescue me) on netflix instant stream and michael was watching scarface (isn't that the name of it?) in the other room....all was peaceful. until we heard a loud boom!, followed by pretty instant flickering of our lights. we run to the back door to find one limb of our beautiful 50+ year old oak tree lying across our backyard. then we notice sparking...from the roof where the electrical wires feed into our house. then small flames. of course, our electricity is out so, no land line. and we can't find our phones because we can't find flashlights. michael quickly gets his phone & calls 911. our doorbell starts ringing and our wonderful neighbor is slightly freaking out "your house is on fire! your house is on fire!". of course, mr. cool (aka daddy) is calming everyone down. and in what was only seconds but seemed like several minutes, i've changed from my pajamas, grabbed elle & have headed next door....all with the sound of fire engines in the background.
did you know with a house fire, the city of D sends 3 fire engines, a chief and an ambulance? and let me tell you, they move quickly. they were there in what seems like less than 2 minutes. amazing.
yep, we were those neighbors. it was quite the spectacle. there were people standing in my driveway i've never even spoken to. i finally got elle & jack calmed enough to go back to the house to see a slew of firemen watching as two others went to my roof with a chainsaw and ax. nice. but, at least our home didn't burn to the ground.
when the light of day hit on friday, we were able to see a little better what happened. the crazy thing is that the tree didn't look nearly as rotted as we were expecting. we're really not sure what exactly caused it to come crashing down but our guess is the drought conditions mixed with what rot we did have (which really wasn't a lot) was just too much for our tree to bear.
we have a hole in our roof, about 2-3' square-ish. we have zero electricity (of course) & our house has a lovely fragrance of...smoke. i'm so grateful that our insurance company has moved quickly on this situation. they got us into temporary housing the very next morning (a hotel down the way...elle thinks we're on vacation...that takes dogs (yay!)). we've had the restoration crew stop by early friday morning. those two guys are my heroes (besides the firefighters). no electricity meant no garage door opening, which is the only way into our garage. they were able to macguyver the door open so we could get our cars out (which meant we were able to get to school by 9). they secured the hole in our roof so none of our 200 squirrels could set up home in our attic, they got a tree crew out to remove the tree limb & they got an electrician out - all before 11 am. amazing. granted, it will be a few days before we hear from the insurance adjuster...which is the one person we need to get the ball rolling.
it's an adventure i don't care to ever experience again but it's safe to say we're beyond grateful we were home & awake when this happened so we could call 911 quickly.
1 comment:
WOW! Terrifying! So glad you are all ok! Please let us know if you need anything!
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