There Was This Tree On Fire In My Backyard
Yesterday we had a pretty major thunderstorm in Minneapolis and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it from the conference room at work. I had no inclination that the storm would directly affect me. I drove home from work and tried to pull into the alley to get into my driveway, when I saw lots of that yellow tape everywhere and the tree formerly in my backyard neighbors yard resting on their garage and many power lines. I could see smoke drifting up from the lines and thought "wow, that must have just happened." I parked in front of my house and did the normal things one does when returning from work. Bring in the mail, release the dog from jail, feed the dog.... I looked out the window to check out the tree and I thought I saw lights which I assumed was the electric company fixing the situation. Well, as soon as I opened my front door to take Lily for a walk, the neighbor on the corner was just walking up my walkway telling me he had called 911 because the tree was on fire and since it was right over my garage, he thought he should come and tell me. So the lights I saw where actually flames. Sweet.
Lily and I walked around to the alley to get a better look - yes, I'm a gawker. I try to be secret agent about it, but I totally am. I want to know just as much as the next person. Also I like fire and my actual house was not near the fire, so I felt ok. Plus, the firemen were there. I was slightly disconcerted when the firemen said they couldn't do anything until Xcel energy came to turn off the lines and we all sat there watching the fire get worse, then better, then worse again. My neighbor (in his mid 80's started yelling at the fire crew and walking toward them (aka past the do not pass yellow tape) yelling that this was his property and not theirs. That's all I heard, but I'm guessing he was demanding that they put the fire out before it took out his garage.
Xcel came and turned off the power and the tree guys came and cut the tree out of the lines. There is a whole tree in the driveway of my house and a call to Xcel this morning revealed that there would most likely not be power until tomorrow afternoon. Thinking I had lost everything in the refrigerator by this morning, I opened it to start the clean out to find that everything was still cold. So I packed it all up and brought it to work because it's not going to stay cold. I'm just happy not everything was lost.
Lily and I took a walk through the alley this morning because I could hear a buzzing noise from my block and thought Xcel had come early. Nope. Just a couple of homes running on generators. Either those people have jobs that require a generator, or they are happy to finally be using the generators they bought for the end of the world in 2000. It would have been nice to plug the refrigerator into a generator instead of hauling all that food to work, but I'm sure I'll survive. I spent a quiet evening reading until it got too dark to do so and then going to bed early which was good because I had gotten up at 4:30am to volunteer at MPR during their membership drive and so catching up on sleep was a nice thing. The battery powered alarm clock scared the crap out of Lily this morning, but otherwise we are doing well in my overly quiet home. As you can tell the quiet is starting to unnerve me.
Lily and I walked around to the alley to get a better look - yes, I'm a gawker. I try to be secret agent about it, but I totally am. I want to know just as much as the next person. Also I like fire and my actual house was not near the fire, so I felt ok. Plus, the firemen were there. I was slightly disconcerted when the firemen said they couldn't do anything until Xcel energy came to turn off the lines and we all sat there watching the fire get worse, then better, then worse again. My neighbor (in his mid 80's started yelling at the fire crew and walking toward them (aka past the do not pass yellow tape) yelling that this was his property and not theirs. That's all I heard, but I'm guessing he was demanding that they put the fire out before it took out his garage.
Xcel came and turned off the power and the tree guys came and cut the tree out of the lines. There is a whole tree in the driveway of my house and a call to Xcel this morning revealed that there would most likely not be power until tomorrow afternoon. Thinking I had lost everything in the refrigerator by this morning, I opened it to start the clean out to find that everything was still cold. So I packed it all up and brought it to work because it's not going to stay cold. I'm just happy not everything was lost.
Lily and I took a walk through the alley this morning because I could hear a buzzing noise from my block and thought Xcel had come early. Nope. Just a couple of homes running on generators. Either those people have jobs that require a generator, or they are happy to finally be using the generators they bought for the end of the world in 2000. It would have been nice to plug the refrigerator into a generator instead of hauling all that food to work, but I'm sure I'll survive. I spent a quiet evening reading until it got too dark to do so and then going to bed early which was good because I had gotten up at 4:30am to volunteer at MPR during their membership drive and so catching up on sleep was a nice thing. The battery powered alarm clock scared the crap out of Lily this morning, but otherwise we are doing well in my overly quiet home. As you can tell the quiet is starting to unnerve me.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home