When hurricanes hit Ohio

Ohio was not made for hurricanes. We’re made for flooding and snow. So when the last parts of Hurricane Ike came through we were very unprepared, and not just us personally, but us as a city. (I know this tale pales in comparison to the real disaster along the southern coast, but hey, I’m allowed to bitch too)

It started off like any other Sunday morning. We got up late, the wife left to do weekly shopping, and I was left to mind the pups and whatever else. That morning I chose to keep working on my Hot Wheels race track and got it done and ready for it’s first runs. It was somewhere around two in the afternoon and the garage opened as Jen came back from shopping. By this point the wind had been getting pretty heavy, but it was only that, wind. I went outside the dogs and Jen was bringing in groceries. I turn around and come back in to meet her inside to find one of the giant plate glass patio windows had blown out and shattered all over the floor.

I didn’t even hear the window fall or shatter. And as I entered the house to tell Jen not to go in the sun room because of all the glass, the power goes out. The power had been flickering all morning but now it was out, and out it would stay for the next four days. In the midst of all the shattered glass and things magically turning off, the wind really picked up. It blew through again and knocked the other patio windows out of their tracks but thankfully not to the ground. I was convinced another window was going to fly out, but none did. But one window was enough…the kicker is that the one window fell on my Hot Wheels track and broke the damn thing. Not even 3 hours old and already broken…bastards!

There ended up being no rain with the wind, but at the time we had no idea what was coming so I taped up my patented trash bag window replacement. Trees were blowing in half and getting uprooted. Our front lawn looked like a tree exploded. I was minding windows and glass out in the patio room and heard a clanging thud. “Oh great,” I thought, something else landing on my house. I checked and didn’t see anything…then it clanged again, and then again. I went out into the yard and saw the neighbors looking for something too…a glance down the way saw someone’s siding tumbling down the street. That really had me worried and I circled my house making sure it wasn’t mine. But while scanning for missing siding I did see something else that had be scared - my shingles flipping up.

Shingles on at the tip top of my roof were flapping in the breeze. But I wasn’t alone there, everyone’s shingles were coming loose. We were fortunate to have our house facing the right direction so the smallest amount of roof was going against the wind. The wind just kept coming and blowing anything and everything to anywhere. We had seat cushions from three blocks away and all sorts of other crap all over the place. The weirdest part about the whole ordeal is that I could and was standing in the middle of it all.

There I was standing in the backyard with the dogs while 60 MPH winds were blowing by. The dogs loved it and it was quite a spectacle, but as I said, Ohio is not made for hurricanes. Sure, we expect 7-foot floods and 4-feet of snow, but 83 MPH wind gusts…no way. The damage on a local scale was just like nothing I’ve ever seen having lived here my entire life. And I can’t tell you any time in my life when the power was out for days on end.

Our power came back early Wednesday morning after being out since Sunday afternoon. We had to throw out all the food in the fridge and with every candle out and burning, the house smelled like Halloween, Christmas, and a berry patch all at the same time. It was one of those times when having a house that is fully electric is very, very bad. On top of no electricity, we had no hot water. Tuesday’s shower was barely lukewarm. The worst part was just the sheer inconvenience of not having things like hot water and a fridge. One a personal-entertainment level, not having power didn’t bother me that much. Granted, I had my DS to keep me occupied and a few books, but I honestly had no burning desire to have access to my e-mail or web site or anything.

Perhaps the worst part of having no power was that some people around us did have power. Two houses down had power, and folks across the street had power. But not us or our immediate neighbors. Talk about suck. Now we know how Edison’s neighbors felt…

But there is power at work - sorta. I work for a radio station and radio stations HAVE to be on all the time, which means my office building has a back-up generator. That’s great for the essentials, but it’s all the non-essentials that make work unbearable. No AC, for one. Thankfully it has been mid-70s all week, but when you have 100 people on one floor plus dozens of computers and no open windows, it got to about 88 degrees in certain places. It was one of those times where having your own office was not a good thing. I spent more time out of my office than in, or at least I tried. As of writing this, work is still with “half” power and I’ll be sweating balls until Friday. Ug.

I think right now there’s still about a third of the county without power and many schools have been canceled for the entire week. The whole city is still a mess after almost five days. But when I was driving to Home Depot for roofing nails it hit me just how shitty a job the power company has. I was going down a back road and passed no less than four places were trees had landed on power lines. Here’s a no name back road that is responsible for who knows how many people without power (possibly my own house). It hit me just how hard it is for the power company to hit every road and check every power line. How do you prioritize and organize that?! And while being without power for a week sucks, I just think about how many days we DO have power. Sure, we’re out for a few days but we’re usually on for hundreds of days without any problems…statistically speaking, that’s damn good.

Our subdivision looks entirely different now. With trees gone there is now sky where there was never sky before. I can see the moon a little better in certain places while the gentle whir of generators continues for those still without power. All in all for us it’s really not that bad. A real inconvenience, but nothing serious. So we lost a window and a few shingles, big deal. Our house didn’t blow away…but that’s why I live in Ohio and not along the coast. We don’t do hurricanes here…or so we thought.