Tuesday Sep 21, 2010

Hurricane Igor hit NL today. A few weeks earlier we had another hurricane which hit mostly Nova Scotia and we had hardly anything. So I was expecting the same thing of Hurrican Igor. So I went out right after lunch to do some much needed laundry at some friends. It was raining pretty hard and there was a good wind but nothing that I hadn't been in before. While at my friends the rain stopped and the wind started picking up and I mean picked up. I finished my load of laundry and was just about ready to go when the power went out. My friend quickly went in to survival mode and started collecting the various things her and her husband had for times like these. I suggested filling her bathtub as we could see that things were starting to get pretty serious outside. Trees were swaying aggresivly, a small shed a few doors down had a roof flapping in the wind and in the house you could hear the wind howling with a vengence. I was getting pretty nervous. I tried calling Kent and couldn't reach him. He eventually ended up calling the cell. I wasn't sure if I should brave the weather and come back to the hotel or stay with my friend and her boys.
She was having the missionaries over for dinner and was trying to come up with a back up plan to cook the dinner she had made.  She had a butane stove but in order to cook on it we needed to do it in a vented area. So with no power we opened the emergency pull lever on the garage door but then were almost blown over with the wind coming through the 2 inch crack. We tried closing it but it wouldn't catch. Uh-oh! We spent the next 20 min trying to figure out how to get the door closed again and the wind was shaking the door like crazy. Just outside the garage window you could see that the tree in the neighbors yard had snapped and half the tree had blown against the house.
Kent had called and said he was being sent home from work. They still had power but it was cutting out. He kept track of the news and eventually called and said it wasn't going to get any better and I should probably come home now if I was going to.  It was nerve racking and made me really anxious to not be together as a family. It's times like these that you just want to be with family and nothing else really matters. I loaded up the car with great difficulty. I had a hard time standing up against the wind and the doors on the car were almost ripped off when I opened them. Once all the stuff was in, I brought C-dawg out and I thought for sure he was going to freak out. He already could sense something was wrong with how we were acting and behaving and was upset and crying a little bit.  He was actually really good and didn't freak like I thought.
Once in the car I prayed I would make it safely back to Kent. The car was rocking and it was very freaky. My fear was having a tree fall on the car or right in front of me. I took it slow and was overly cautious. Once we got down closer to down town the wind wasn't nearly as bad and although trees and power lines were down I felt a little better. I was very happy to see Kent and be with him.  We hunkered down in the hotel and for the rest of the night we really didn't feel anything. I thought for sure we would at least hear the howling wind but I think because there are mountains/hills all around us we were really protected.

Just a few doors down from my friends place. Can you tell what is wrong with this pic?

Some of the trees that fell were huge.

More of the damage done from the trees. Not the best pic,sorry.

The road back to the hotel was blocked due to trees and a powerline down.

My friend was such a saint and she sent me home with bags of food just in case this became a disaster and we didn't have any access to food at the hotel. We never ended up needing it but I was grateful to have it and I appreciated her concern. I felt bad for her and her boys as her husband was and had been out of town for a total of 2 weeks. I think she felt vulnerable but she did awesome.  Her power was finally restored on Friday (3 days later). I am glad we are all ok. There are others who could not say the same. NL was hit really hard with lots of flooding, roads, including the TCH being washed out and sewer back ups in homes etc.