In our area, they've done a lot more clean-up than in Midtown, which really irritates me. I'm happy that the debris along the major suburban throughfares has been swept out of the way, but it's disheartening that the City hasn't done the same with some of the major streets in Midtown. Last night, there was a massive tree laying across half of 16th street, right near the lightrail, and there still was no working traffic light at P & 16th. Later in the night, I saw a cop car with flashers on, somewhat alerting people to the sitution, but there was no actual officer directing traffic, and it was a hot mess there on a stormy and busy Saturday night.
In our little corner of the world though, we're still dealing with the aftermath. Anyone who's been to our place knows that we have two massive, beautiful trees in front of our house. One of the two 60-year-old mulberries was already leaning toward to driveway and I knew that the root system on one side of tree was quite weak. When that wind started to blow like hell, I ran out to move my car so the tree would have unfettered access in smashing the shit out of our garage. I then ordered the kids to move to the back of the house and got the video camera out to film the insanity.
I wish I could post the footage of that one tree swinging back and forth in the wind. It looked like the tree was a monster (or an Ent) trying to break free of the yard. I just watched that ground get looser and looser, and tilt more and more toward the driveway. Then, suddenly, the wind came howling up and blew that mother all the way in the other direction, into the other giant tree, pushing the both into what I thought were the power lines. That's when I grabbed the kids and ran to my neighbors' house. From their house, we watched as the wind pushed the one tree further and further into the road, until it finally seemed to be stuck in the branches of the other stable tree.
Whe you look at the pics below, keep in mind that before all of this, the tree in question was leaning over our entire house and into the driveway, so that was some strong f&*ing wind.
End of story is that the tree didn't do any damage to any power, telephone, cable lines, so the county came out and cut a tiny bit of the tree that was hanging in the street, but the rest of the tree is still cocked halfway across our yard and we are going to have to remove it ourselves. In all of this, I've neglected to state that I am really heartbroken about losing this tree. It's beautiful and I've refused to remove it since it was suggest we do so nearly three years ago. Well, at least we'll have a f*&kload of fire wood!
