Lost power from the storm

I had lost power from last Saturday's storm.  Our power was out from about 6 pm until almost 10 am the next day.   The reason - other than over 10,000 customers losing power - was that the trees that went down in my yard fell on the power lines which caused the power pole to break.

I had called in to the electric co-op about my loss of power but only got their automated outage service and not a real person.  So I couldn't give the power company a heads up about the broken power pole.

The electric co-op company workers arrived at 11:45 pm.  I was sleeping on the loveseat so I noticed their arrival as they flashed their spotlights all around in an effort to figure out the situation..  I went outside when they stopped at the power pole and explained the situation to them, where the lines on my property were located, the gate they could use, and that I had horses in the pasture.

After checking everything out they left one vehicle behind to watch over the broken power pole and lines.  I went back to sleep on the loveseat.  I woke up around 4 am when they walked in to fix the broken lines by the house.  They had put the new pole in the ground and attached the lines running along the road.  They were ready to work on the lines to my house.

Each of the two lines had two breaks which they needed to patch.  Then from the road they pulled the line back up into place.

While they worked on reconnecting the lines at the power pole I explained the tree grazed the top of the three lines that run from the house to the small power pole that feeds into my well's pump.  The insulator for the top line was broken and the line pulled away from the pole.  Amazingly this very old line did not break. It did hang down.

While this is my line and not the electric company's line, I explained to the foreman that when they re-energized their lines this line would be re-energized.  They didn't want to handle my line and wanted to turn the breaker off to this line.  Ummm...  I have a very old electrical system.  While the house has breakers for the lines that go into the house, I showed him there was no breaker on the line until after it reached the small power pole.  The foreman then decided it would be quicker and safer to have one of his men fix my wire as it looked to be a simple quick fix.  No sense chancing that my line could short and take out the electricity when the other lines were re-energized.

Initially the guy assigned to fix my wire thought he would have to drive his bucket truck to the power pole.  He was concerned about fitting under my driveway sign.  After looking he thought his truck would fit.  But he then thought of checking the pole and wire out.  He found that he could climb the pole and pull the wire to re-attach it.  Making the task easier was that the affected wire turned out to be the neutral wire.  A simple quick 5 minute fix for someone with electrical experience.

Someday I will replace these wires as they are very old.


Here is how the new pole looks now.  The electric co-op workers are hard working and did an excellent job in fixing the power lines.

Storm damaged fiberglass

This week I repaired several sections of fiberglass that were damaged from last Saturday's storm.

First were the sheets on the patio roof. Two sheets were blown off the patio roof.  I had put the sheet on the right side back on the patio before I thought of taking this photo.

The other fiberglass affected was on the hayshed.  The 'yellow' sections to the left of the ladder were barely attached as the wind blew the sheets 'through' many of the nail heads.  I re-nailed the sheets before the wind blew the sheets completely off.  I didn't want to have to carry the sheets back up the ladder then nail them.

Neighbor's trees: cut

Today my neighbor had his two damaged trees cut down.  He was worried some day they would fall on his garage, especially as one of the trees lost the branches on one side of the the tree when the second tree fell against it.  The remaining branches could cause the tree to fall towards the garage.

For $400 a tree service came and cut the two trees down.

They had a limited area in which to drop the tree - between the garage and road while missing the pile of logs from what had snapped off from the storm.  To ensure the tree fell correctly the tree cutters cut off all the tree's limbs prior to felling the tree.  One man climbed the tree trunk using spikes on his feet along with a chainsaw hooked to his belt.  As he climbed the tree he cut the branches.

Here is a 21 second video of a branch being cut.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFW3XZwLjBk

When it came time to fell the tree the workers stopped traffic on the road. Right before they did a guy pulled in and stopped right where the tree was going to fall.  He was interested in the pile of logs and wanted to know if they were available. The owner had promised the logs for me so he quickly waved the guy in the car off so the tree workers could fell the tree.

11 second video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsp7MJYgkA&feature=youtu.be

The tree fell perfectly.  The top fell just short of the road.

The ground shook when the tree fell and its fall dented the ground.

Neighbors' trees

Not only were some of my trees toppled from the storm, the neighbors trees also took a hit.

A couple of trees lost their tops.  The neighbor was very lucky for two reasons:

1. the trees missed their garage for the most part and caused no damage, and
2. the neighbors were at church when the storm hit so their vehicle wasn't trapped in the garage.

Another neighbor's tree fell across the road.  The guy in the truck attempted to cut through with his chainsaw, but gave up.  The neighbor had a chainsaw and I volunteered to cut the tree.  However she couldn't get the chainsaw started.  I offered to use my chainsaw but didn't have any gas for it.  She had gas but it was a 50:1 mixture and my chainsaw takes a 16:1 mixture.  We let the county handle the tree.  I heard someone (the county?) cutting on the tree at 5 am.

Here is the road after the tree had been cut.

With only a few trees to handle, the neighbors got their trees mostly cleared up before me.  I'm still working on cutting and cleaning up after my trees.

Sudden bad storm

Saturday a bad storm came up out of nowhere.  Tammy and I were taking naps on the couch and loveseat when the storm hit around 6 pm.  The bedroom window was open and the strong wind blew the bedroom door violently shut waking me.  The next we knew we lost power.

I had other doors open outside and and I ran outside in the storm to close them.  I got soaked even though I was only outside for a minute. I never seen it rain so hard here. I also noticed the reason for the lost of power.  Several trees in the front yard were snapped off and went down on the power lines.
 
The top third or more of this tree snapped off.  It is located near the house above my well shed.  Fortunately the wind blew the tree away from the house and garage.  Other than the power lines the fence is the only other thing trashed.

This is the very large tree in the front yard by the road.  I really liked this tree and am sad to lose it.

Just after the storm and the view again this morning.

The wind blew this humongous tree a good distance from the tree stump!  The top of this tree also hit the power lines!

 The power pole by the road was broken when the power lines in my yard were taken down. 

The electric company worked all night on replacing the pole.  They arrived at 11:45 pm.  After I explained everything and showed them the damage, etc., they left to go get a pole and more equipment.  The pole was in place by 4 am and their work was done by 5 am.  We (and all others along the road) finally got power back a little before 10 am this morning.

All the horses and cattle are ok.  From my initial survey it appears I lost six more large trees in the pastures with more trees partially snapped off.

I have to get gasoline for my chainsaw.  Tammy and I have our work cut out for us!


The news from the Daily-Interlake paper about the storm was this:

More than 10,600 members of Flathead Electric Co-op lost power Saturday evening after a brief but violent storm ripped through the valley. 

“At about 6 p.m. we had this big storm come in from the southeast and we had trees through transmission lines.” said Wendy Ostrom-Price, the power company’s public relations officer.

Ostrom-Price said that all of Flathead Electric’s crews began working as soon as the storm hit. Despite that full mobilization, however, she said some members would be without power through the night and into Sunday.

The bulk of the outages were in Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls, while Evergreen was the hardest hit.

“When storms come through like this, it’s best if you don’t have to travel because law enforcement officers and the crews are dealing with trees down everywhere,” she said. “If you see a line on the road, avoid it. Don’t cross it. Consider all downed lines live and energized.”

According to Dan Zumpfe with the National Weather Service in Missoula, Kalispell received .77 inches of rain in just 22 minutes Saturday evening, with only trace amounts falling after 6:40. Of that, .64 inches fell in just 10 minutes.

That pushes the total amount of rainfall in June to a new record at 5.73 inches. The prior record was set in 2005 with 5.66 inches.

“It was a very strong thunderstorm,” Zumpfe said. “The top wind speed gusts that we found, at Glacier Park International Airport, were 61 miles per hour.”

 Here are the weather stats from when the storm hit at 6 pm Saturday.

Look  at how freaky the wind was for the 22 minutes the storm lasted.

New toilet

As I had mentioned earlier, on May 6 after a full day of demolition, we installed the new toilet.

This is the toilet Tammy and I bought: American Standard Clean Cadet 3 dual flush.   Even though I have my own well for water, it is always good to save water. Another feature that we like is that the toilet is an inch taller than a typical toilet.   We have used this toilet a month now and it works great.  Even though the toilet uses less water than my old toilet it flushes everything away. 

Here is the old toilet.  Not only did it deserve to be replaced because of its pink color, after 47 years it was wearing out and struggled to flush everything away the first time.

Here is a better view of my new toilet:

More horses

I have horses in the pasture again.  Sunday they arrived.  Four of them.  Today the owners took one of the horses out.  A granddaughter from out of state was here to get one of the horses.  You should have seen her.  Once it was decided she could have the horse she was 'over the moon' and was beaming and smiling from ear to ear.  It looked like she had her greatest wish fulfilled.

The horse taken is the tall whiteish mare.

This young stallion is upset.  He claimed the mare as his girlfriend and did not want her to leave.  Once the mare was loaded into the horse trailer the stallion paced the corral and violently shook his head as if to say "NO!".

Occasionally he would whiny to call her.  Over time he did this less and less.  The other horses were not as affected, though at times his antics would stir them up.  For several hours I kept them in the corral.  Once they calmed down I let them back out into the NE pasture.

Here is a one minute video of the young stallion after his girlfriend left.  He is pretty calm by now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2qgMxaZdVY&feature=youtu.be

Horns

A few weeks ago I noticed that one of my heifers started to grow horns. That's not a good thing as they get docked on their selling price for having horns.  This heifer is one of two I sometimes call "Heckle and Jeckle" as they are all black, hang around together most of the time, and are skittish and never warmed up to me.

May 6 bathroom remodel

May 6 was the first full day of the bathroom remodel after my uncles arrived from Washington state.  Curt brought some of his tools and we got down to some serious bathroom demolition!

Once my uncles got done with this wall this is what it looked like!

Middle of the day - and the end of the day.

At the end of the day...

Left photo is the south view. (Notice we replaced the toilet at the end of the day).  Right photo is the north view.

Uncle Curt with a reciprocating saw:  (47 seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67vUCUoYQPw&feature=youtu.be


Uncle Larry using a reciprocating saw to cut my sink's vanity:  (47 seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSdvb6g9R8U&feature=youtu.be


Larry soldering one of the shower pipes to cap it for now:  (1:14 long)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeQOS8ELJIA&feature=youtu.be