If you’re like me then you’re probably so over talking, thinking and listening to weather related stories. On that note, here’s the second - and thankfully final - installment of my snow story.
Sunday morning I was up early, the only one awake. I got Cannon on his leash and pulled on my boots. We went out the door and took a long walk in the snowy streets of Manassas. A plow was finally taking some turns around Russ’s neighborhood, which made the trek a lot easier than the day before. I was anxious to head back to my house but there was an amazing breakfast between me and the ride home. Um… scrambled eggs with cheese, toast, and avocados & dices tomatoes – yes sir, may I have another!!
The roads between here and there were still a mess! And there it was, the tree still lying up on my roof and power still out. Dan and I grabbed our shovels and started another round of clearing out the driveway. We only had to wait about 30 minutes before the power came back on. What an amazing moment – electric means light and heat and water! We wrapped up our work on the driveway as quick as we could. Dan headed back out to retrieve our things from our temporary shelter. I headed to the shed to grab a space heater to thaw out the pipes in the well pump house (is that PW county or what!). Things were looking up and fortunately so did I. I glanced up at the tree on the power lines and saw threads of smoke making their way through the branches. Our tree was on fire. Grr!
What to do? I headed back inside, grabbed my cell and dialed 911. I mean really, you just can’t make this stuff up. It only took a couple minutes before I heard the sirens, so out to the end of my driveway I went. My phone rings. It’s the fire department and they can’t find my house. I told them to just keep coming down the road and stop when they came to the woman in green earmuffs.
They had to shut down the road. Fortunately, having talked to Dan after the 911 dispatcher he’d turned around and come home. He beat the road closure and was just in time to see all the neighbors coming out to view the spectacle. He was also on time to see the sparks and the fire start. The fire department called the electric company. They arrived quickly and shut off the power to our house. Nooooooooo! That took care of the fire. The electric company then called a contracted crew and told them to come out to take down the tree. It was a couple hours until they showed up and another hour before they got the tree off the power lines. We were glad that the power went on immediately following that.
The crew told us they couldn’t take the tree of the house and as punishment they proceeded to drive off our driveway and get stuck in our yard… for four hours.
That night we enjoyed some pizza delivery, watched the Super Bowl and got warm – all with the circling yellow lights of the power-crew truck outside our window. We made a plan for the next day and for getting that tree off our roof before the next, impending storm.
Flash forward: we were lucky not to have any damage from the trees and after a couple hours the pipes thawed and we had water. We were fortunate to not get much snow (5”) from the next storm and now we’re just like the rest of the folks in Prince William County – we’re waiting for all this snow to melt.
Kate
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