Surviving the Storm

As many have heard, our area of Provo was hit with a pretty good storm on Tuesday, August 1st. Now that things have settled down, and the majority of the cleanup is done, I thought I would take a moment and write about it.

I was at work when the clouds rolled in (about 11:30 am) and the rain started to come down. After a minute or so, the rain quit coming down -- it came across. I've been in rain before with wind strong enough to blow it sideways, but this was rediculous. In just a few minutes, I couldn't see more than 15 feet outside my office window because the rain was so thick. Next came the hail, which fortunately lasted only a couple of minutes.


This is a shot from the north end of 2050 West (Geneva Road) looking South. With few exceptions, almost every power pole was knocked over onto the houses on the East side of the street. This is our ward's West boundary.




All in all the storm came and went fairly quickly, which is why I didn't think much more of it at the time. The power went out in our building at work, but all the computers stayed on because of the UPS system (Uninteruptible Power Supply). We just kept right on working and didn't give it a second thought. I talked to Jennifer on the phone to make sure things were all right, and she said the power was out and the wind had blown they boys' playset over, but that was it.






This is from the South end of 2050 West. The green van shown belongs to a sweet elderly couple in our ward.






I called home again around 4:30, and Jennifer said the power was still out, so I ordered pizza and headed home about 5:00. It wasn't until I got into the car and heard reports on the radio that I realized how bad the storm had been. Many buildings and small planes at the Provo airport had been damaged, including several planes that were flipped completely upside down! Fortunately, there was very little damage in our subdivision. All of our power and phone lines are underground, and the neighborhood is young enough that there are no large trees. Our backyard neighbors lost one tree from their easment, and out financial clerk had the siding torn from the West side of his house.




The siding was torn from our financial clerk's house. Pieces of siding were found as far away as the freeway!







Other parts of the ward were not as lucky as we were. It seemed that the microburst picked the most vulernable part of our ward upon which to really let loose. On 1600 West, between 600 South and 1150 South, powerpolls not only went down, most of them were snapped like toothpicks. This is the oldest part of the ward, both in building age and average resident age. The lots are filled with giant trees, many of which are more than 60 years old. No less than six widows live along this road, and the ward came together marvellously to make sure they had what they needed. Despite the number of downed trees, broken branches, etc., there was no property damage, and not one single injury.



Every single power pole on 1600 West went down. As shown in this photo, many of them snapped in half. Residents on this street didn't get power back until Friday night -- more than 72 hours after the storm.






On Wednesday morning, one of our neighbors from the cul-de-sac behind us knocked on the door and asked if we had power for our refrigerator. We didn't , so our neighbor ran an extension cord over the back fence and plugged our fridge in. Even though it had been almost 24 hours since the power went out, we didn't lose any food -- not even the milk! Since nobody could cook dinner Wednesday evening, a couple of us wheeled our barbecue grills into a neighbor's front yard, and everybody brought out what they had for an impromptu neighborhood block party. Everyone ate, the adults visited and the kids played together on a big blow-up slide. When the evening was over, everyone agreed that we shouldn't wait until the next storm to get together like this again.

Our power came back on about 1:30 am on Thursday. We had been without electricity for about 38 hours. It was a good experience being without power for a little while. It turns out that we can entertain ourselves the "old fashioned" way. The boys were a little wound up at night when it was time for bed, because they knew that it was not a "normal" night. But over all they were very well behaved. They didn't even try to set anything on fire when we got the candles out!

Of course, there have been lots of service projects throughout Provo. Members in our ward have contributed literally hundreds of hours to cleanup efforts, both organized and spontaneous. I'm not sure how many homes received help clearing out tree branches and pulling out stumps, but it was quite a few. Even though this was a bad storm that caused a lot of damage, it could have been a lot worse. It was a clear reminder to all of us that we need to heed the counsel of the Prophets when they tell us we need to be prepared. Already the ward and stake has begun to develop plans for the next emergency.

On the lighter side, when a smaller storm came through a week or so later, Nathan turned to Jennifer and said, "Mom, I don't like storms. I like to be able to watch TV!"