Monday, September 15, 2008

Hurricane Ike in Cincinnati

Sunday afternoon we heard a loud windstorm start up. High winds were interrupted by terrible gusts (think 70-80 mph). The tree in our backyard lost a huge limb. The neighbors across the street lost a huge tree. The electricity went in and out (and quickly back in). Electrical wires fell, some of them onto our driveway. Two blocks down, a large tree fell down and totally blocked off our street.
The whole thing lasted maybe two or three hours.
This evening, the large tree is still in the street. Hundreds of thousands of our neighbors are without electricity. Most of my classmates don't have power (unfortunately, there was power at the law school and at April's work). Numerous traffic lights are out.
The hurricane didn't reach us, but the winds it created did. They say it will take another week until everyone in the Cincinnati area has power again.
We're lucky. Our power is still on. Our house is undamaged (minus some shingles and a little bit of siding).
There's a possibility that we might lose electricity sometime in the next few days. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

3 comments:

Brentwell said...

Sounds like what we experienced in Louisville, except that it occurred during church (we missed the last hour of church so the roads didn't get blocked going both ways). There are trees down, 300,000+ without power, and U of L is still in session.

Tim said...

Not surprised.
What we thought were electrical lines ended up being unused cable lines, so we didn't have anything to fear from them.
Still, when trees totally block off roads for more than a day, you know something big went down.
Ike combined with Lehman going bankrupt, and we might just have an economic problem here.
We'll have to wait and see.

Tim said...

New update--tree is still totally blocking off road (as of Tuesday night).
Most people have power back but a couple of my friends at the law school are still without electricity.
The energy company brought in a couple hundred employees from North Carolina to help get electricity back to the city.