We had a big storm come through Grand Rapids last Monday night. It had been in the 90s and I knew there were storms west of us. We were watching them strengthen as they came closer, and we had the radios on listening to skywarn. We started hearing reports of "80 MPH winds", "trees down all over Deer River", and "power lines down". At this point it was dark as night out, and we were starting to hear thunder. We got a close lightening strike, and the boys looked at me wide eyed. I told them they could hang out in the basement if they wanted, and they both quickly took me up on the offer. With the kids comfortable in the basement, Kyle and I took a peek outside. The pictures don't show how dark the clouds were, but this is what we saw:
I could here sirens in the distance, and at this point I decided to head inside. I was watching out the window, when Kyle (who is a trained weather spotter) came inside and said to get in the basement. We were only in the basement about a minute when we started hearing thuds in the yard and stuff hitting the house. We opened the curtains of a basement window and were shocked at what we could see of the neighbors trees. Kyle went upstairs to check things out quickly and headed back down again. He told me "we have a tree down in back, and a very large branch down in front. But I think it missed your car." At this point the lights went out. Then we started hearing electrical zapping outside and flashes that certainly didn't seem like lightening. All in all the storm lasted about 20 minutes.
We emerged from the basement to find a mess! We had one very large tree and part of another down in the back, and very large branches down all over the place. We could hear sirens all over town. All our neighbors were gathering outside and checking on each other. All the while being very careful as we didn't know if and where the power lines were down. Thankfully though my car (which was parked outside the garage) only had a couple small scratches on it, and nothing had hit the house.
The following morning we were still without power, and you could hear chainsaws all over the neighborhood as the clean up began. Here are some picture I took before heading to work:
Here is a picture of the tree in the back, it was pulled up roots and all:
When I got to Deer River, I quickly realized they were hit even worse!! Very large trees were down everywhere, I had a hard time getting to the hospital because the roads were all blocked by trees, and there were a lot of homes with major damage. There was still no power at the hospital, except for the critical areas (ER, OR, hospital rooms, and our assisted living rooms). The rehab dept had no power, so we started calling patients to cancel their appointments. The entire hospital was in disaster operations mode. Power was out at the hospital for about 24 hours. We were without power at our house for 36 hours (even though our neighbors across the street had power back the same evening as the storm. Some people are still without power almost a week later.
The boys elementary school (about 2 miles away from our house) and the area around it was also hit hard. These pictures are of the playground which had a very large area shaded by beautiful pines, they look like toppled toothpicks. Again, the pictures don't do the damage justice.
We are slowly making our way though all the debris. We have the tree mostly taken care of. We just need to get some more piles out to the curb for the city to pick up. All the curbs throughout Grand Rapids look the same....piles of trees, sticks, etc. We do have a widow maker above our garage we need to have taken care of.
All in all though, we are very thankful that we weathered the storm as well as we did. There are many in the area who were not so fortunate.
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