Gone with the WIND!

Well, we just had one heck of a wind storm. Here are the events from my perspective.

On Wednesday I noticed on the news that our area was going to have “strong winds”. It was also the evening of Wendy’s surprise 60^th birthday party. I wanted to be sure to get home before the wind started and I wanted to bring in some little trees that I had put on my front porch to decorate. I had added rocks to weigh down the trees, but thought I ought to bring them in just in case the rocks didn’t hold and they tipped over.

Around 2 a.m. I woke up to howling wind. It was the loudest wind I’d ever heard. At Wendy’s birthday party, Hilary had made a DVD of Wendy life and played the song “Everyone Knows it’s Wendy” at the party. Now that the wind outside was keeping me awake, that song played over and over in my mind only with an “I” instead of an “E” having it be “Everyone knows it’s windy.” The wind howled and howled. Around 4 a.m. our bed started to shake and I realized that our whole house was shaking in the wind. Our house is built three inches above street level and therefore stands very high. The entire second story was shaking and vibrating our walls, floors, windows and even our bed! By 5 a.m. I was wide awake. Ben and I started talking and trying to sleep but just couldn’t. By 7 a.m. our whole family was up and worried about the wind. I looked out the window and everything looked normal, it was just SO windy. My sister, Stephanie, called at 7:15. She said that she was worried about the wind where she lived in Bountiful. She said trees were falling. We wondered if we should send the kids to school or not. While I was on the phone with Steph I looked out my window just in time to see our big, fancy, metal, Lifetime swingset tumble through our yard!!! It is BIG and HEAVY and was expensive. The name brand Lifetime means it is suppose to last a LIFETIME. The wind just tossed it like a tumbleweed and it literally tumbled across our yard! I was shocked.

As the morning progressed the wind got stronger and louder. It was a beautiful sunny day, with this amazingly powerful wind. Our neighbor’s had just installed a vinyl fence. It blew into our yard in bits and pieces. Pretty soon shingles were flying everywhere! I sat and watched at the neighbor across the street lost most of their shingles off their entire roof. It was amazing. I clearly decided NOT to send Hailey and Aubrey to school. Hailey especially, because her classroom is a portable and I wasn’t going to risk it. We just hunkered down and watched the wind blow the neighborhood apart. At 9:30a.m. the power went out. By 10 a.m. the school called our cell phones to say it was closing for the day. Luckily I already had my children with me. Now, without power and with the wind so loud it was hard to do anything to keep our minds off the situation. The freeways were closed so Ben couldn’t go to work, but I didn’t want him to leave us anyway. We all just sat and stewed. Ashley wouldn’t even take a nap, the wind was so loud. I moved her crib to the middle of the room (incase a window broke) but she would not nap. With Ashley crying, the girls scared, me scared the power out and the wind howling, around noon, I decided I couldn’t take it any longer. We piled in the car to drive to Sandy to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. The freeway had opened going south. When we were on the freeway the two miles between Farmington and Centerville we witnessed 11 semi’s tipped over on the road. It was insane! I couldn’t believe it. Once in Salt Lake City it was a beautiful, calm afternoon. It was hard to believe the destruction that was in Davis County. We got to Powell’s and I was a bundle of nerves. I couldn’t even enjoy being there. We decided to take the girls to see “The Muppets” at the theatre. Then we went to Walmart to get flashlights and kerosene lamps. When we got back to Powell’s we saw on the news that the winds were still strong in Davis County and the power was still out. Schools had been canceled for Friday. We decided that Ben would go home to “protect” it and be there, while the girls and I stayed at Powell’s. I was still uptight about the whole thing and couldn’t relax. By 9p.m. Ben called and said that the power was on and the wind had stopped. He drove back to Sandy to get us.

The next morning the cities of Bountiful, Centerville and Farmington looked like war zones. Shingles and fence bits were EVERYWHERE!!! In Bountiful, most of the HUGE pine trees had blown down. It really was an amazing site. Saturday was spent cleaning the yard. It was also Bronson’s baptism. Stephanie had two huge pines blow down. All the men brought their chain saws to help cut up the trees after the baptism. Sunday morning we received word that another wind storm was coming that night. Bountiful and Centerville canceled their church services to clean the city. Everyone was out chopping trees and clearing them away before the next storm. We had church but then we went to work helping neighbors and cleaning up and bringing in everything that was outside. We took in garbage cans, lawn chairs and even put our BBQ in the basement.  Even though it was a Sunday, Ben went and bought a generator. The number one complaint of people we heard was that their homes got so cold. I didn’t dare risk it with Ashley. Stephanie had a neighbor that had their house get down to 36 degrees!!! When night time came we were ready for the next hit . . . we waited and waited, very nervous. Nothing ever happened.

Although it was a little anticlimactic, I’m glad that nothing happened, my nerves where shot after this weekend! Hailey had a rough time going to school this morning. She didn’t want to leave us and was afraid of going to school (we had heard it was damaged.) I’ll be happy to get back into our routine. I really firmly feel that this was the Lord’s way of saying, “I’m not joking about food storage and emergency preparedness.” I think this was the dress rehearsal for the real show. We’d better get ready . . .

This is a bad picture, but this used to be three lights and a ceiling fan.  

Some of our house hanging off.

I wish you could see where the playground used to be. Here is it bent in half. 

More damage.

Missing shingles

I duct taped this paper sign to the doorbell about a month ago. It stayed through the whole storm! I guess our whole house should be made of this stuff!!!