Great Coastal Gale of 2007

My wife and I have had an interesting week and half. The bigstorm that hit the Oregon and Washington coast a week ago last Sunday night hit us full force. The winds started about 10 pm on Dec. 1 by 11 pm the power went out. At midnight on Dec. 2 the high winds blew down the first big tree that fell on our house. Once I heard the noise I went outside to check the damage, while I was standing outside in the wind, rain and the dark the second tree came crashing down on the roof about 10 feet from where I was standing. Thankfully Jenny and I were unhurt.

That's when I said okay it's time to get the heck out of here. We grabbed a few things and went across the street to Jenny's Brothers house and spent the night there. The next day we got up only to see the wind was still blowing outside. We went to the house to see what damage had happened, it turns out 3 more trees hit the house so we had 5 total resting on the roof.

The strange thing was the when the first tree landed it fell right in the middle of the house were the kitchen cabinets were. It was the strongest reinforced part of the house. The other 4 trees landed on top of the first tree like pickup sticks and by some miracle the roof didn't cave in. It did punch a good sized hole in the roof but it held.

Frankly the second day was the most terrifying. We went back to the house to grab a few clothes so we could go to Long Beach, WA to get a motel room. The wind was blowing so hard I thought that at any minute more trees could fall on us while we were inside the house. It's was the single craziest weather event I'd ever seen in my life.

Thankfully we got our stuff out and some nice guy had carved a path down our road were all the trees had fallen so we could get out and get to Long Beach. Once in Long Beach we got a room and some shelter. We ended up staying there for 4 days. The third day we finally got power. On Thursday cell and phone service came back.

Thankfully we were able to find a place to rent in Astoria, OR which is where we will live until the insurance company comes out and looks at the house and tells us what they will do. Living in Astoria will be a good thing because we both work here so now we won't have to commute 45 minutes one way to get to work.

We've really been very blessed and grateful to God that he protected us from harm and helped us find a place to live so quickly. We just lost our home most of our personal items we were able to save but some others who had the terrible flooding weren't so lucky. It's been a very emotional and trying week for us but with faith in our higher power we believe all things will work out for the best and in his time.

It's been very humbling experience to say the least. You see these things happened to other people but you never think it'll happen to you. It was like a disaster movie except it was real and you couldn't escape it.

We won't have Internet service until Dec. 17. Once we get that hooked up we'll let you all know how things end up going for us. The adjuster looks at our house on Dec. 20 so hopefully then we'll know more about future.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas; we miss you and cherish the love and friendship of our family and friends.

I'll be back sometime next week once we get wired up on the net. To read all the information about the storm click on the link below.

Great Coastal Gale of 2007

Sincerely;

Jeff