Goodnight Irene

Hurricane Irene blew into Connecticut just before midnight on August 27th.  We lost power around 6:20 am on August 28th and got it back at 1:03 pm on September 1st.  Life without power was certainly different, but we have city water and sewer and so were so much more fortunate than others in our area, including some of our close friends.  I also think that, as the children of utility workers, Lee and I really have a different perspective on what it takes to restore power, so from the outset, we were very realistic and very patient.  The girls definitely took their cues from us but as I mentioned before, they were troopers - not a complaint from them.  And the entire experience was certainly educational as they now have a very clear understanding about what needs electricity to work and what does not.
As I've mentioned before, the storm damage was severe in our area of town.  There was some discussion that a microburst may have occurred in the south end of Middletown early Sunday morning due to the number of trees felled in a very short period of time.  While we did not see any damaged houses, there were so many downed trees in our neighborhood, including our neighbors' beautiful red dogwood.
When I started writing this post, I was trying to think what - besides photos of damage - would be interesting to our family.  After thinking about it for a bit, I realized that every one of our immediate family, including Lee and I, spent all or part of their working life at either Northeast Utilities or New England Telephone/Verizon.  My dad, brothers and Lee's dad were linemen and cable splicers - you know, the guys that work through the storm and for the days and weeks that follow; and my sister and I both worked through many storms as customer service representatives for Northeast Utilities.  So here is my attempt to put things into perspective for those members of our family:  in the area of the state serviced by CL&P (about 2/3), there were 943 broken poles, 623 damaged transformers, 3433 sections of downed wires, and 2045 closed roads.  Yet by some miracle, as of Saturday morning, only 6% of all CL&P customers, or 80,000 homes, remained without power.

Making the most of day one without power.  Emily served tea to the winners of board games that Elizabeth, Lee and I played. 

Working on her doll head while Emily reluctantly napped. 

After the storm - heading out to survey the neighborhood. 

Sarah & Rohan's beautiful red dogwood went down during the storm - and the noise of it falling was so loud, it brought us right out of bed to see what had happened.

Sunday evening dinner on the grill. 

One of two trees that fell on lines near our house - and was a reason that it took so many days for our electricity to be restored.

This tree fell around the corner from the one above - knocking out power to hundreds of houses and blocking the road for five days. 

Some of the trees that fell at the Wadsworth Arboretum, early Sunday morning. 

This huge pine split in half - the part that fell took out the portico and gutters on this house; the part that remained cause the rest of the neighborhood to be evacuated.  This is across the street from our friends' Brian and Ninette's house.

This tree fell about a 1/2 mile from our house (notice the transformer in the background).... 

...taking out the transmission lines leading to the transformer.