Needles to say, the city was INSTANTLY there to cut it down because it was laying on power lines and blocking the road. It was pretty surreal to see these grown men holding on to each other just so they could stand in place! When I first sat down and the wind hadn't quite picked up I saw one of our garbage cans in our front lawn, so I took it back to the parking lot. The rest of them were laying down along the fence (except the one on the neighbors' car!) so I lied them all down and hoped for the best. When the wind really picked up one of them started going down our sidewalk, so I went out to get it, and it literally blew down the street faster than I could run to catch it! I figured it wasn't worth risking an injury! I was being PELTED with all kinds of debris: shingles, branches, trash, etc.
And one of the light poles:
We had pretty minimal damage to our apartment. Just a few pieces of the roof were torn off.
And one of the porch dividers was shattered (not ours). I tried to lift up this BBQ, but it was so heavy!! I couldn't do it!
This is the apartment building right next to ours. We share a parking lot that this tree is now laying in. If you can tell, half of it is still standing, and the other half is where cars SHOULD be parked, but miraculously everyone had left because the power was out.
I ended up heading to my grandma's house later that day with my family. She had a HUGE pine tree that fell on her neighbor's shed (that little building in the middle). We were SO grateful it was the shed and NEITHER house was damaged. There were about 15 people cutting it down and hauling off the branches and we were there like 4 hours! It was crazy, and she lost 3 other trees too!
This is just a FRACTION of the mess they cut down.
But my parents' neighborhood was by far the worst damage we saw. Here is just a TINY sampling of the damage.
The strongest wind gusts were recorded in Centerville at 102 MPH!
We were pretty lucky because my parents' neighborhood still had power, so we spent the night on Thursday, and our power came back on around 11:45 Thursday night.
So we spent Thursday through Saturday helping wherever we could, and we were pretty shocked when we got a call that church was cancelled on Sunday morning for more clean up. They were expecting another storm Sunday night and didn't want all the debris that was piled on every one's parkways to cause more damage, so we worked for hours going around our ward and clearing more debris. Davis county even opened temporary drop areas for all the STUFF people needed to clear out. It was pretty crazy. Such an awesome thing to witness our ward (and all the wards around) pitching in and getting everything done in about 4 hours. Even some of the people who couldn't do the manual labor were out passing out hot chocolate and fresh baked rolls, bread, and brownies! It was quite a sight to see. I love our church!!
PS, the storm on Sunday ended up not happening, which we were very grateful for!
