Pictures from Ivan
Here are some pictures my next-door neighbor took just after Hurricane Ivan. Now that things have calmed down a bit and I've gotten the chance (and the required Internet connection), I figured I'd let everyone know what we've been dealing with. There's a brief description below each picture.
This is my church here in P'cola, St. Anne's. The picture is facing the back of the church; the crucifix visible is part of the outdoor altar we use for the Easter sunrise service. You can see that the church itself is fine, but the small nativity shelter and some of the trees have been knocked over.
Also at St. Anne's. The blue truck is my neighbor's--they were there helping clean up.
Begin the pictures of our house and our neighbors' house. This is my Dad helping to chop up a big pine tree that fell in our neighbors' yard. Go Dad!
Two friends from Mobile who came to help clean up. They're piling brush up on the right-of-way in our neighbors' yard. Yes, those are all branches we hauled up to the street from the yard. They're still there, too.
My mom decided before the hurricane that she would put her flower pots under the azalea bushes lining our driveway, thinking that they'd be out of the wind and, thus, safe. Good idea, in theory; however, the tree behind her in the picture was one of four to fall on said azalea bushes and crushed everything underneath it. Needless to say, the flowers in the flower pot were edited in by my neighbor, as was the butterfly and flower on Mom's hat.
So begin the pictures of our house. This is the corner on the front that is part of the garage. The branch protruding from the eave went directly through the roof, through the vent, and hung down a good four feet, perfectly straight. Strangest thing I've seen in a long while.
This is the front corner of the house on the opposite side from the garage, also known as Directly Over My Room. Yes, these were the infamous branches that awoke me at 2:00 AM as I was laying in bed almost directly under where they hit. On the ground on the other side of the holly bush in the bottom corner of the picture is the rest of the pine tree that snapped about 30 feet up and fell within five feet of the house.
Better picture of the same corner of the house.
Same corner again, only from the side of the house. The branch sticking out over the top of the roof was embedded in the roof itself, with about four feet of it inside the crawlspace. That was what knocked loose the nails that are still sticking through my ceiling.
Begin yard pictures. This is from our front yard looking over into our neighbors' yard (looking left, as you walk out of the front door and up the lawn a bit).
Possibly the best picture our neighbor took of our yard. This is facing our house from the street, taken directly after the winds died. No, our yard is not usually that green; most of that is branced that have been blown down. The snapped pine on the right side of the picture was one of four that fell over our driveway, blocking in all three of our vehicles. My uncle showed up at 10:30 that morning after having cut his way down three miles of road that had trees down every 30 yards or so, pulled out his chainsaw, and said, "I'm here to get you out of your driveway." I think that was the most badass I've ever seen my uncle. It was cool.
Our driveway is under there, somewhere.
Same corner of the house where the stick went through the eave vent. The two snapped trees visible fell on the driveway and Mom's flowers.
Our back yard. I think that's my mom coming out of Dad's workroom door, and the other woman is our neighbor. There is absolutely no grass growing in this part of our yard, so every bit of green you see is leaves. If you look carefully, you can see the huge limb dangling right next to the big oak tree in the right of the picture. It was broken about 25 feet up, right next to the trunk, and was at least as big around as my leg, if not bigger.
Taken from the same spot as the last picture, only turned to the right instead of the left. The big "branch" on the ground in the bottom of the picture is actually the top half of the oak tree trunk in the middle of the picture. There is actually grass in this part of the yard, but you can't see it. It's all leaves.
Back to the front yard. This was taken just to the left of our driveway. The corner of the house visible is the same corner that had the stick through the eave vent (again). You can see my dad's truck, the only vehicle parked outside the garage. He usually parks it right in the middle of this picture.
Great father-daughter picture, right here. Dad and I are working on patching the roof over the garage. I have a cousin who runs a roofing business, so we gave him a call after the hurricane and he showed up a day or so later with two rolls of tar paper (15- and 30-weight), a bundle of shingles, and a 55-gallon drum of gasoline, which was a Godsend. We were having to siphon gas out of the truck for our generator.
Huge-ass banana spider that made its home on our front porch just days before Ivan hit. We were fairly sure it wouldn't be there after the hurricane, but lo and behold, we opened the front door, and there he was! Tenacious little bastard.
Another picture of our awesome spider. For reference, she's about four inches from tip to tip.
Our neighbors' yard, from the end of their driveway.
Correction: large trees down over our driveway. I last posted this as a pine tree in our neighbors' yard. I was wrong--see the little bit of picket fence in the bottom of the picture? You're actually looking almost directly at our driveway in this picture.
Neighbors' back yard. That's one of two pine trees down over their pond.
Remember the badass uncle with the chainsaw? This is his house. There were two dry rooms in the entire house after Ivan. Thankfully, he stayed with a neighbor. His front door blew open in the hurricane, and the floor in his living room collapsed due to the water damage. Monetary reference: the insurance company gave us $18k to fix up just his house. (My mom actually owns the house.)
As for our house...the roofers came today (the 16th of October) to pull off our roof and completely replace it. Beyond the holes it had in it, there was enough water damage that it was a little spongier than it should've been, and it's at least 10 years old, if not 15 or 20. They should be done tomorrow, sometime. I still think it's ludicrous that we can get our yard in decent shape and get a new roof on our house, maybe even get my ceiling replaced, in the time it's taking the phone company to reconnect our service. That's right, we got cable back before we got our phone back. The only estimate we have on how long it'll take is the 28th of this month. I figure it'll probably be longer than that.