Tuesday, August 21

. . clean up, clean up ~ everybody, do your share ~

. . .our neighborhood will be cleaning up from last night's storm for a while today and probably some will be at it for a few days.  We had a crazy big storm last night and I am now aware of how fortunate we were to only have a very young tree that was uprooted and easily pushed back into place...

This was what I saw on my walk with the pups earlier ~ big old palm fronds were laying in the streets and in front of houses EVERYWHERE ~ but three very tall palms on a street couple over from us in the community must have been top heavy because they hadn't been pruned lately, or were particularly shallow rooted, because and they had completely toppled over like our tree... [in those cases the neighbors across the street from them were probably scared witless in the storm last night, because the trees were so tall they reached all the way across the street and the houses opposite had roof and window damage from being hit when they fell ~ clean up crews were already working on that damage...]

A few other different houses had what looked like enclosed patios that had been ripped off the back and were either sitting in pieces in front yards, neighbor's yards or the street.. some were draped over fences like fabric or over the roofs of the houses they had previously been attached to.  It was bizarre...

A LOT of people lost gutters and those temporary car ports that you see used for shade... I saw several older homes that were built before safety glass was the standard which lost plate glass windows ~ unfortunately most of those looked like they were also owned by snowbirds because the drapes were still hanging out of windows and were a shredded mess... I made note of addressed and called those in to the local PD.

I'm not sure why I didn't think to take a picture with my phone... but at the park we love to take the pups over to run at, there are a couple large eucalyptus stands and both were terribly damaged... I suspect a really bad micro-burst went through there and down the street from it, because a few trees were uprooted, stripped and tossed around the park... a couple trees were simply stripped and the trunks were left standing there looking sadly as though the giant from Jack in the Bean Stalk had walked through in an angry fit taking his frustration out on them ~ but then continued down the street that comes out from the park... nearly all the trash cans [which were no doubt taken out last night before the storm] were still topsy turvy at 5:30 am, and trash bags were laying every which way... many loose items that were probably safely stored most evenings on a porch for the night [strollers, tricycles, bikes and balls for small children] had been toss around too... I even saw one car on it's side and in the front yard of a house on that street.  Nearly everyone on that street also lost a few roof shingles or tiles, and quite a few lost Satellite TV receivers which were generally hanging from the wires for nearly the whole block I walked... and two house lost solar panels off roofs on that street... that was the worst whole street I saw, on all the other streets it was just a house here or there that seemed to take the brunt of the storm... but on that one street both side had damage ~ still the houses facing the south had the worst.  The craziest thing was possibly the pretty significant flag pole that was bent over flat too, a good reminder to take your flag down at night and/or during storms..

There were already the sounds of chain saws when I was coming home, so the clean up was starting early, but I'll bet it'll be a busy day for LOTS of insurance adjustors for a while...

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