Tuesday, September 9, 2008

A Visit from the Fire Department!

Last night, we had the Fire Department over for a tour of our home.

Doug was home; rare for a Monday night but he had some business to do earlier in the day. We’d had a good evening; he’d walked the dog and we both took her to Puppy Kindergarten. He took bunches of pix of Denali while she practiced her tricks.

But after we got home, Denali was wiped out, and we were pretty tired, too. So we planned on an early bed-time. Off in the distance, I heard the grumbling of thunder, so I took Denali out to do her business before putting her in her crate for the night. My neighbors across the street, D1 & G, were sitting out on their front porch, watching the lightning storm roll in.

Few, but BIG raindrops were beginning to fall and when I brought Denali in, I told Doug he needed to go ahead out and close the window on his car. He headed out to do so (and have one last smoke for the night) as I put Denali up and corralled the cats into their room. I was turning off some lights, leaving on just a few so Doug could find his way upstairs when all of a sudden I heard a lot of popping, crackling and zapping and everything went quiet and dark. There must have been a flash of light and the loud crash of the thunder, but my brain is not remembering either of those two events. I headed straight for the garage door and called out, “Doug?!? Are you OK?” A pause, too long for my comfort, then, “yeah. I’m alright.” So I went back inside and grabbed the closest flashlight. (We have three, rechargeable LED flashlights that automatically come on when the power goes out; we keep one on each level of our home for times like these.) I headed back out to the garage and we grabbed a second flashlight and headed out of the garage to see what was up.

My next door neighbors, D2 & J still had power. D1 & G still had power. We were dark.

G was headed down my driveway, flashlight in hand, “Are you guys OK?” D2 came across the side yard, “Are you guys OK? Do you need us to call Duke Power?” And a third neighbor materialized from somewhere, “Are you guys OK?” We got to the main electrical panel and flipped the switch with no results. So D2 verified our house address and headed back home to call the power company. Lightning was still flashing all around us and we didn’t feel safe outside; but, we didn’t feel comfortable inside, either as we weren’t sure what happened. G said, “We were just sitting out on the porch when the thing struck! My wife ran back in the house.” I asked him where he saw it strike. He waved his hand around in a circle and pointed toward our chimney, “I think it struck somewhere around that chimney or around there somewhere.” We shined our flashlights around and didn’t see any smoke or flames or any other signs of a lightning strike. We had an invite from a neighbor to come to their place if we needed to; we explained that we had been headed to bed early and we’d just continue with that plan. But as we were headed past our front door, we heard knocking. It was D2; “just wanted to give you a heads-up. J, instead of calling Duke Power, called 9-1-1. So you are probably going to get a visit from the fire department. I told her to call the power company, but that’s not what she did…”

Sure enough, as he headed back down our front porch steps, a lone SUV pulled up in front of our house and someone with a chirping, beeping radio headed down our driveway toward our house. We tried to tell him we were OK, but he was more interested in our roof line. Then a few more SUV’s and cars showed up (we live in an area with a very active Volunteer Fire department as well as being covered by county service.) We talked some to the guys that had shown up… all were pre-occupied with looking at our roof. One radioed the engine and we could hear the sirens off in the distance, as well as in stereo over the radios. All the flashing lights, all the “visitors;” we almost felt like celebrities! Once the county Fire Department arrived, I heard one get on a radio and call for Duke Power to get out here right away to restore power. At the same time, a bunch of these guys in full gear explained that they wanted to enter the house and investigate our crawl space and attic spaces. Of course, I showed them the way upstairs to our attic access… a very tight, 18” x18” (or maybe 24” x24”) access hole in the linen closet in the hall bath. I shined the flashlight up to the access point; these guys were big! And in their fire suits, they were bulky, too. I didn’t have a clue if any of them could get up in that hole. One of the guys called for an attic ladder and while we waited for it to arrive, one of the firemen and I unloaded the linen closed and removed the shelving. The ladder ended up being much too long for the tight space of the hall bath so the smallest of the firemen said, “you want me to go up?” So, one of the big guys hoisted up the little guy and up he went. The handed him the heat-sensing camera and he looked around. I don’t think he’d been adequately trained on that camera, but he didn’t see anything that jumped out at him as being a problem. They did ask me if we had ductwork in the attic, which we do since our air vents for the upper level are in the ceilings. I had been somewhat trapped in the small hall bath while the firemen waited for the small guy to finish his assessment, so I don’t know what all happened through the rest of the house. Though, Doug does think that one of Ian’s former school-mates (who is active in the fire department) was also at our house.

By the time they finished in my attic, the rest of the firemen were finished in the remainder of the house and they were headed back to the truck. They lingered out in the street for a good 15 minutes before the “party” began to break up. The chief for c-shift needed to get some info from us for his report; just a name and home phone number. And he needed to warn us that he’s seen it where a lightning strike could smolder for a few hours before any flames show up. “I don’t wanna scare you, but I just need to let you know. If, after the power comes back on, or even later, if you smell something out of the ordinary or something just doesn’t seem right, like the power only comes back on to part of your house, DO NOT HESITATE to call us back. We’ll be right back out. Better for us to be here and you not need us than for us to not be here and you need us.”

We headed in to the house, the fire department left. Just five minutes later, the power company showed up. I noticed I had a missed call from another neighbor on my cell phone, so I called her back to let her know that we were fine. Doug and I then sat on the front porch and watched the power guy do his thing. But once we saw him put ear plugs in his ears, we decided we’d be safer inside the house. There were things he did out at the power pole with the transformer that he was VERY cautious about and that made us a little nervous. So, around 11:00, we decided there was nothing more we could watch and climbed in the bed. I texted my son to let him know what happened and that we were OK. He phoned me right back to find out the details and we talked for about 6 minutes. We heard the power company truck leave, yet we still had no power… I called the power company’s automated service to find out when they thought our power would be back on… “September 9, approximately 1 AM.” And we fell asleep. I heard a large truck arrive back at 1:05 am. I looked out the window and there were two trucks… one backed into the driveway across the street, with its headlights beaming straight into our bedroom windows. So I lay there, and listened. Some minutes later, “Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!” Nothing. More minutes later, some ratcheting, “Brrraaaaaacccccckkkkkk! Brrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacccccckkkkkk!” Nothing. At 1:40 am, the ceiling fan lights on my bedroom ceiling were blazing in my face! POWER!!! Doug slept through it all. I got up and investigated to see if we’d had any damage and to make sure we had power to ALL areas of the house. Upstairs: lights, fans, A/C good. First floor: fridge running, lights, fans, TV, satellite box, good. Basement: Light at top of stairs, good. Everything else in basement, dark and quiet. Uh-oh. So I went back upstairs to give Doug the update. I think he just wanted to sleep through it all, but I kind of made him get up to help me get it all figured out. He ended up having to go back out to the main power panel (outside) and flip a switch for the basement. VOILA! Lights, fans, fridge, de-humidifier, good! But the lower level A/C still was not running. Turns out, that, while I had turned it down for a week and a ½ to help dry out the basement from our recent flood, I had just turned it back up the day before. And the first floor was not warm enough to trip the thermostat; so, when I adjusted the thermostat, the A/C fired right up… CHECK! Everything good, we turned off any remaining lights and headed back to bed.

This morning, I had issues with the garage door opener. And we found that one lamp in the bedroom, a brass touch lamp, seems to be fried. Doug tried the garage door and while the motor sounds like it’s running, it’s not moving the chain for the garage door.

We are lucky. We are blessed. The fire department responded in about 5 minutes. Our home is safe. And we have very little damage! I’ll sleep very well tonight!

Now, since we’ve been in the house, we’ve had a tornado, a flood and a lightning strike. That’s three, right? Nothing else can happen, right???

3 comments:

Mistress of the Dorkness said...

lol... I know what you mean about the natural disasters.

In the year we've been in our house, we've had severe thunderstorms (tornadoes passed us by), a couple of ice storms, two floods and a handful of earthquakes.

My husband was ready to head for the hills... ;-p

Unknown said...

Leanne my love, this is your mom. You forgot to count the drought last year. First year in your dream house on Lake Norman and you couldn't even float your boat!

Have you seen "The Money Pit?"

Love and glad you are safe. How did Denali come through all the excitement?

Leanne said...

UPDATE 9/25:
We noticed within a couple of days after the lightning strike that our phone line to the house is also malfunctioning... the DSL portion is working fine, but the voice portion is not. We still have no home phone, nor do we have a working garage door opener. I have a feeling both the phone company and the garage door opener technician have been trying to call our home phone to make appointments... Doug gave both companies his cell phone number when logging the outages. (sigh) Maybe this weekend we'll get somewhere.