Our derecho in photos

I've been working on a new craft project, a tiny basket made of pine needles. 

I learned how to do this from watching a YouTube video that appeared in my Facebook feed a few days ago. After I watched the video, I knew I needed to make a basket.

The needles came from the huge white pines that used to stand along the eastern side of our home, the pines that were snapped off about ten feet up their two-foot diameter trunks in the derecho that passed through Cedar Rapids one month ago. I consider the basket to be a small memorial to those pines.

It's been exactly one month since the derecho, and I haven't posted on this blog the whole time. I've been a writer not writing, which seems odd for me. In most times of stress in my life, I've used writing as a way to process what's going on, to ease my mind, to sort through my own thoughts. But I haven't been able to write since the storm, even though I kept thinking I should.

By now, the story of the August 10 derecho has been shared by many people, reporters, bloggers, photographers. And at this point, it's probably been eclipsed by the story of Hurricane Laura and the California wildfires. But we're still living the derecho here in Cedar Rapids. More than 1000 homes were placarded as unsafe to enter after the storm. Businesses, already stressed from the pandemic, have closed. Some residents still don't have internet or landline phone service.

And our streets are still lined with debris: fences, insulation, pieces of shingles, and trees, trees, trees. Piles of branches, now crisp and brown. Eight-foot-long logs, chain-sawed at each end. Uprooted monsters with trunks at one end and slices of lawn and black Iowa soil at the other. It's hard not to think about the destruction when I'm reminded of it every time I go somewhere.

Here are some photos from the time of the derecho; I'm just going to park them here in this blog because I'm not sure I want to make a derecho scrapbook.

So here's a video of what the derecho was like:

Bruce and I were both working from home. We watched from the main floor for a while. I looked out, willing the trees to "bend, not break!" but eventually, the terrifying sounds of wind and of things hitting the house drove us to the basement. 

Eventually, we came out to this.

Our majestic blue spruce toppled over onto the house. Branches broke through the siding and roof. As of today, September 12, we still have holes in our roof, covered by blue tarp. Thanks to our friend Justin for patching the roof!

Our backyard in the moments after the storm passed through, August 10, 2020.

Cars were trapped in the garage for several days, but a bunch of colleagues and friends came with saws and pruned away enough branches to let us out! Thanks Jon, Wes, and Nathan!

Everyone said "don't get taken advantage of by out-of-town storm-chasers! Hire local people!" but that was impossible. Local crews weren't answering their phones--I'm sure they were completely overwhelmed. So we hired a crew from Atlanta, who took the trees off our house and garage.

At one point, the National Guard arrived! That's the view from our front door. Under all those trees is a power pole . . . 

Here's a photo with me for scale.

We were without power for one week, which was actually not bad. Robbie and Aubrey's outage lasted almost 2 weeks. So they stayed with us, which was a bright spot!

Playing Yahtzee and working on wood projects.

Our internet came back on after 2 weeks, and the insurance adjuster arrived September 3. Our contractor is ready to start working on the roof, but we've had rain all week, so they've been on hold while we worked on strategic placement of buckets in our leaking attic. Weather is supposed to be nicer this week, so we hope the roof will get repaired.

We'd already been working with a local nursery to redo our front plantings, and they plan to get them in this fall. 

Through all this, we've had to readjust work plans; the derecho put power and internet out at Coe, too, and many beautiful trees on campus came down. So the college postponed classes for a week. Oh, and that's right: there's still a global pandemic, so we got Covid tests and are teaching in socially-distanced ways. . . . overlapping crises: it's all so 2020.