Lest you think that just because the smoke was gone the excitement ended. And silly me. Why would I think it would? Just because my heart rate had slowed down did that mean our worries were over for the time being? Apparently not. Because on September 18th, six days after we’d gotten home, we had a major windstorm, complete with hour-long rolls of thunder, during which, this happened:

That tree landed on some auxiliary wires from our cable and power boxes. We lost power for several hours but that was due to a downed tree around the hill from us. I called Portland General Electric to let them know about the tree on the wires; obviously it wasn’t an emergency since we had power, but still. They asked me questions to make sure that nothing was sparking or a threat to our wellbeing, and assured us that they’d get a crew out there as soon as possible, but understandably had to restore power to those without it first. They also told me that crews were working around the clock and could come at any time.

A couple of nights later, at 1:00 a.m., I heard the back-up beeping of a truck and went outside, and there was the crew already hard at work. They figured we were asleep so didn’t use any power tools. The guys got the limb off the roof, and then cut down the bottom of it. Fortunately, our roof wasn’t damaged.

These guys were great! I had some zucchini bread ready to take out to them for treats, and they were very grateful. It had already been a long night for them, and they still weren’t pau. They said I could take their photo…so there we all were at almost 2 a.m. The second guy from the left had been here before cutting tree limbs from lines as a part of PGE maintenance and it was good to see him again.

Then they headed back down the driveway to their next job. I so appreciated these guys; they were polite and friendly, and did their jobs well.

The next morning we realized that our troubles weren’t over yet. We’d noticed an Alder tree that looked pretty precarious, leaning towards our garage, that had been right next to the one that came down. That one wasn’t PGE’s responsibility. See that dead branch at about 10 o’clock? That’s the one.

And that is a story for another day.