Aftermath

I thought this was a gentle reminder from the universe to me. I needed it as I was feeling a bit out of sorts this morning. Meditation, two runs to hardware stores with Joe, a Taco Bell Supreme Burrito for lunch, and a nap have recharged me.

Last night during a severe storm the electric transmitter or the top of a tree on the property line behind our home was struck by lightning. The tree caught fire, one of the electric lines came down, and the power was off for several hours.

View of the burning tree from the sunroom.

I suddenly had no phone service as well. The neighbors to the north of us saw the lightning strike and the fire, so thankfully called the fire department. The fire department were on standby for the next hour or so as the tree top and the transformer burnt, they kept watch over the fallen embers to make sure the fire did not spread. There is something surreal about watching a tree near your house going up in flames.

The electric company sent out a crew around 10:00 pm to cut back the tree branches from the power lines and to make the repair. Power for our block was restored before midnight. That was a blessing.

Since we moved into the house in April, Joe has cleaned up the property of dead limbs and underbrush, we had sick and dying trees removed. The professional tree people we had quotes from all told us the same thing, as did the firefighters last night, “It is the power company’s responsibility to prune the trees near the power lines.”

This morning our property, and the neighbor sharing the property line with us, has branches from seven trees laying under the power lines. Joe moved the branches onto the yard as they were laying on our freshly planted trees and shrubs. The electric company people had also removed every branch on two trees and left just the trunks. One trunk was about twenty feet tall, and the other about twelve feet tall. I called the electric company to ask about when the crew would be back to clean up and dispose of their work.

The customer service representative read to me the “policy” which says any work done by the electric company to restore power as a result of weather conditions is the property owner’s responsibility. My comment was that had they fulfilled their duty to keep the trees trimmed from the power lines it would not have been a weather issue. Also note that one tree was involved – not the seven trees they trimmed and the destruction of two trees. The trees should have been trimmed long ago.

Joe has been working most of the day on the clean-up. He has the smaller of the two smaller stripped trunks down and the second one is about to come down. He hasn’t started cutting the other branches up to take to the compost location. He expects it to take two entire days to clean the yard and get back to planting shrubs.

Ah, thank goodness for neighbors. One of the neighbors arrived to lend a guiding hand as Joe cut the larger tree trunk down.

Another bright spot in my day was a thank you card from one of the neighbor youths who left for college yesterday. The card cover is a photo of him with Joe and me the day of his party. This young man has a terrific smile, and his aura is sunshine. Looking at the card makes my spirit happy.