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| Blue sky disappeared the day before she hit. |
We experienced our first hurricane on August 27th when Irene came barreling through. She made landfall as just a category 1 but after 24 hours of hovering over the outer banks of NC she destroyed homes, toppled thousands of trees, and sent insurance adjusters scrambling to handle all the claims.
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| Our office ceiling had water leak through the sheet rock seems and the nail holes. |
We lost a few shingles on our roof and have a lot ripped loose but hanging all cockeyed. Our insurance company sent an adjuster out who said we qualify to get a new roof put on, new sheet rock ceilings in the office and kitchen and to have our hard wood floors sanded and refinished due to all the water damage.
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| Our driveway is barely visible. |
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| There shouldn't be trees that close to that garage back there. |
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| The kids could roam the street at lulls in the storm. It was the only way to travel because trees had toppled over every road allowing no access to anywhere. |
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| A few houses down and the domino effect had house after house with huge trees on the lines blocking power to everyone. |
We lost power right after the storm hit. We figured it would be back soon but when Irene just hung over us for 24 long hours, the trees couldn't take those sustained winds for that long and just started to topple taking down lines everywhere.
We got power back ofter three days. It's amazing we got it back so soon because so many were without and the damage was so significant. But the power companies, ahead of the storm, brought in crews to get everyone back up as soon as possible.
Liam cant stand the heat and going those nights without it was restless for him. Luckily Irene sucked all the humidity out with her so it was tolerable, but not enjoyable.
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| Loose, broken and tangled wires were everywhere. |
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| People with chainsaws would show up and trim just a bit off the trees in order to make a small clear path. Many roads remained one lane for days. |
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| Ian's tree fort was destroyed when the tree he built it in fell. |
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| Three trees came down just to the edge of the garage and over our hauler trailer. Luckily they didn't have any damage. |
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| We decided pool season was over after Irene came through. The storm sucked the cover off and buried it at the bottom of the pool with huge branches and leaves over it. |
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| Ian and Shawn spent an entire day just chopping the water soaked wood from our tree that fell over onto our neighbors property, blocking him in. |
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| Huge branches are hauled off to the front of the property where someday crews will come and pick it up. They have a huge job ahead with hardly a house to spare that doesn't have large debris sitting along side the road. |
We also lost phone, cable and internet for a whole week. After much convincing to our cable company that it wasn't just us and a single problem with our home, they started searching the claims and saw that they were many of us out in our area. The numerous trees in a row a few doors down were what had damaged our lines.
Life is back to normal for us. We still have more clean up and at some point the repairs need to be made, but we were fortunate the water table was low and flooding in our area was not a problem. A lot of people have been displaced.
From living in the midwest, to the west coast, and now on the east coast, we have been through tornadoes, earthquakes, and now a hurricane. This is the first experience to damage our home. But I'm not sure which one I prefer.
