Hurricane strikes Louisville....film at 11.

So we were sitting in church on Sunday and my friend Heather and I were elbowing each other and pointing at the window. Pieces of trees kept flying past along with anything not nailed down. In the parking lot someone did a Marilyn Monroe with their skirt over their head but it was nothing to write home about. We went about our day and noticed that it was getting more and more windy. Scott left to do some visiting with people from church and the kids were playing in the basement. Our lights were flickering and my neighbor called me to ask if my power was flashing (it was). She was saying that she hoped the electricity didn't go out because she had just gone to the store. As soon as she finished that thought the lights went out and the phone went dead. After a couple of hours we ventured outside to survey the damage. One neighbor had their gutter banging against their roof, another had their chimney folded onto the top of the house, two were missing all the siding from the gables and I found one of our shutters on the side of our house. About a third of the houses were missing shingles. We inherited two watering cans and several frisbees that ended up in our yard.
The damage to the city is unreal. 301,000 were without power on Sunday night. Basically the city shut down. You could not sell your soul for a generator and the lines for gas and ice looked like something on CNN when they were showing Galveston. We got several bags of ice to throw into the freezer and then headed to some friends who still had power. We were lucky that we could get there with all the downed trees. Luckily we live in a new neighborhood where all the lines are buried so we didn't have to worry about the danger of live wires (there were at least 5300 lines down). At about 9:30 we ventured home to find out that we had power and the kids had no school the next day because the city's infrastructure was needing some serious repair. Also the schools had no power and so many roads and highways were closed because of downed lines and trees.
By the next day about 250,000 people still did not have power and the superintendent said that parents needed to make plans for the rest of the week because the possibility of school this week was "dire". And if that isn't enough they announced that if you don't have power right now you need to expect that your power will be out for 10-14 days!!! The kids are thrilled of course. It is like a mini-summer break. A snow day without snow if you will.

I digress as usual. People seem to be making the best of it. Some have gone out of town, some are having block parties and some are just cleaning up what they can. We have since found out that the winds were 75-80mph which is the equivalent of a category 1 hurricane. So here in the Ohio valley which is landlocked by 1000 miles or so kinda had a hurricane.

So Tuesday rolls around and the Ryder Cup starts in Louisville. You just know that the mayor is horrified by the timing of this storm. Here we have one of the biggest golf tournaments in the world that was four years in the making and you can't even go to the grocery store because the food spoiled. Luckily the golf course escaped most of the storm so GO USA!!! Another press conference, 215,000 people without power, no school on Wednesday (why don't they just call it off for the whole week now when we know they have no chance of holding classes until next week at the earliest?), worst power outage in Kentucky history, 300+ power poles are snapped, utility crews are in Texas but coming back, could be 10-14 days from now but the golf tournament seems to be going well. Sounds dire but the fatalities have been minimal.

I can't even begin to describe all the damage here. The above is just a taste. Everytime they show pictures of all the huge trees laying across the roads I just cannot believe how widespread this is. I grew up in Oklahoma City which is called tornado alley (I swear it really is) so this is not unusual for for me but it is unusual for Louisville. It has helped us see how prepared/unprepared we are for a disaster. Luckily we have a gas stove and oven and knew where the flashlights, batteries, candles and matches were. We also had a corded phone just in case. Noah was actually scared of the phone. I guess he couldn't figure out why I was attached to the wall.
I didn't go to the store until tonight and that was just because the kids had a sleepover so I went for provisions and Diet Coke (I need a one year supply). We would have been fine for awhile except we ran out of propane. I also could not find the crank radio so I need to locate that. It was a great test run for us unfortunately some people are still in the midst of it.

We had a family come over tonight who still has no power. They were dying for a hot shower and an outlet to charge the computer. We were happy to let them soak up as much electricity as they wanted. I feel very blessed to have power with the kids being home. The older two are fine outside unsupervised for awhile but the younger two cannot just take off to their friends house. Having the television has been a lifesaver. I also realize how small this is compared to those in Texas. It is like watching New Orleans all over. Entire neighborhoods are just somewhere in the bay as if they never existed. Who knows how many people were in those homes?