Natural Disasters

Natural Disaster -- you think of Hurricane Katrina, an earthquake, BIG things right?

Well, last Friday, the 8th, we had a big storm. It rained, yes, but the big thing was the wind. It got up to 80mph at some points in time. And a tornado, not at our house, but touching down here and there about ten miles from us. Of course the power went out, at our house, and at the two law offices, one being 15 minutes away and the other 30. Altogether the storm was probably 2-3 hours long. Jaired and Pop driving home saw downed trees and power lines everywhere, but upon getting home there was almost no damage, some trees down, but no power lines broken or down. So we figured it wouldn't be long before the power came back on.

Saturday afternoon came and still no power. We called the power company and found out that initially about 10,000 people were out of power, but by the evening the number was down to 2500. Sunday, still no power and the power company was telling people it could be at least a week and to have a back up plan. Great, so what are we going to do?

Fortunately, both the offices had power again by Monday. Jaired brought water home with him in the evenings to supplement what we had stored during the storm. He has a full kitchen at his office so was able to take all the perishable food there and even took a tub of dirty dishes and washed them in his dishwasher. The hardest things about being out of power were the limited water supply and cooking. We have an electric stove. We cooked some both in our fireplace and outside on our firepit, Jaired's parents, who live just through the woods, have a gas stove, so we were also able to go over and cook at their house.

The power came on right before supper last night and it is definitely nice to be able to wash our hands and flush the toilet normally, not to mention shower and wash dishes and laundry. We really take our electricity for granted.