My Thanksgiving...

Mak 2.0

Mod...WAFFLES!?!?
Staff member
The metal bar on the inside no less. The wire was there. The connectors were still there. But the insides were all melted. All GONE. Uploading pics now of the damage.

DSCF3102.jpg


DSCF3111.jpg


That is the 2 towers that were holding the wire. Notice how the 1 bar is bent down. Yeah that is the wire that decided to bounce and come down in my back yard.

DSCF3103.jpg


DSCF3107.jpg


There you can see the mark it left on the ground. There are a coule patches dug up. That is where the wire arced on the ground it left those divots in our back yard.

DSCF3104.jpg


DSCF3108.jpg


There they are up close. That is what it looks like close up by them. Here is where the dirt got charred itself. DIRT!

DSCF3106.jpg


If you look real close to the piece that is under the single blade of grass you will see the char marks.

DSCF3112.jpg


That is the tree that the wire was on. My daughters swing was hanging from that tree all summer....

DSCF3110.jpg


That is where the internet and cable came in from. Nice char marks on them.

So time for the full story. Yesterday at about 9:45am EST i am just about to get ready to go over my sisters house for Thanksgiving. I am doing a final check on email.

All of a sudden i see a bright *** flash. Like lightning but worse. Then i hear a boom that is so loud it sounds like a anti aircraft missle just hit my ears. I RUN downstairs cause the baby was down there and she was scared...

Wife is still out like a light. That didnt wake her. As i get to my daughter and pick her up yet another flash and BOOM. So i look outside and the wire that would eventually end up on my tree and across my backyard is dancing in midair like it was alive. It was bouncing like the ropes of the WWE do when people are thrown against them. This thing is just going OFF.

I get upstairs and change the baby's diaper. Get the wife up and tell her to get baby ready and i dial the Power Companies Emergency Number. IT IS A FRAKING AUTOMATED SERVICE!!!

I flip out. I cant get anyone on the line and as soon as i end the call there is another flash and BOOM. So i dial 911 Emergency Services. This one just made my morning. Talk to this chick. Now i am not sexist but this chick was dumb.

First i try to explain what was going on. I tell her that there is a power line down in my back yard. That last big boom finally bent the supports and dropped the line. She then proceeds to start typing something on the PC console she is at and then asks me again "What is your emergency"

So i tell her again that there is a power line down in my back yard. She tells me that she has already notified NYSEG (The power company over here). She then proceeds to say "Is there anything Emergency Services can do for you today?"

Right then another BOOM. Now i see smoke coming from somewhere in my backyard. I am a.) ****ed at the power company for their lack of emergency service numbers and b.) ****ed at this ***** on 911 telling me that the power company was notified and everything was under control. I am sorry but WTF did you jsut say to me lady?

So now i go off. I know it is being recorded. I proceed to tell this idiot on the phone that i have a baby in this house, that there is smoke raising from my backyard from this power line that has come down and that she may want to think about notifying the State Police (No locals Cops here) and the Fire Department cause of the smoke coming from MY BACKYARD. Not from the neighbors MY HOUSE.

At this time the Wife was downstairs and hysterical. I tell her to call her father and see if she can go crash there. I run back up stairs and change my clothes to the first thing i can find. A pair of shorts and a T Shirt. I grab the babies diaper bag, juice, some snacks and get the wife organized for the stuff she needs.

We get out the door and are loading up the car when the first set of Volunteer Fire Fighters get there. I tell them what i know, wish them luck cause i was getting my family away from it.

Dropped the wife off at her dads place to sleep for the day before she went to work. I went off to my sisters house where we stayed there for the day and then went to dinner together.

Sadly the cat was left in the master bedroom. Just no way to get the kitty and everyone else. I had to much goin thru my mind to worry about kitty. but she had food water and her litter box with her in the room.

I had basically shut down the main power to the house. Just in case. I didnt know what else to do with that.

Got a call from the wife at 7PM as she was at work and said that she stopped home to see that the wire was off the ground and being put back up and that power was on. Sadly after the wire dropped to the ground it had arced a few times and fired, literally fried the wires, ground box and the splitter i had for my cable/internet hook up. That was all replaced today.

So that is my story.
 
We don't do Thanksgiving here of course, but I've seen enough episodes of "Friends" and US movies to know that it's traditionally miserable, but that's going a bit far !
 
Well usually it is quite calm for me. This has been the 2nd worst one behind the first thanksgiving after my mother died like 2 weeks before the holiday back when i was a teen.

But yeah. not fun at all.....
 
I think it's a little late in the season for a barbeque for sure! At least no one was hurt.

A neighbor had some fun when an ajoining property had a lifeless tree with branches about a meter thick! A swift short lived thunder shower came through and one of the two main branches came down on one car! Crash! through the windshield!

A few weeks later since the property owner hadn't done anything about the dead tree still to this day even 6 months later the second large branch not only crashed through the roof of his garage but crushed the roof down on the car inside! Fortunately no one was in either car since this happened late at night, And the home owners insurance will see the garage rebuilt new.

After all these years of living in one place you now see a large hole where a garage once stood. I'm surprised no power lines have also been knocked down here since there are a number of old tree seeing branches breaking off with any high wind.
 
Wow... you're wife can sleep through anything :smile: I get nervous about the powerlines hanging over my backyard too. What a quick way to cook the turkey !!
 
Where I live now, we lost an old dead Elm tree (killed by Dutch Elm disease) in a gale, which crushed a fence and hedgerow, and coincidentally occured the same night as our power failed due to a blown 100Amp suply fuse on the transformer pole nearby. (the former didn't cause the latter).
In our previous home in Wales, a gale brought down a 20metre high 3metre circumference Ash tree, which hit the 40,000v supply line and took out the entire neighbourhood for 4 days.
In the home before that, in Hampshire, the "great storm" of October 1987 (one of the unimaginably rare hurricane force winds in this part of the globe which brought down several million trees in southern England and changed the landscape for a generation) uprooted several ancient (and wonderful) apple trees in one of the orchards, and tore a limb from a large healthy Oak, which of course, fell across the village power supply cable, and took out all the neighbours for 2 days.
Keep your fingers crossed I don't move in next to you in future !
 
Well it is still unknown why the wire came down. There has been no communication from any company about it to us. Go figure.....

But that tree is dead and i am talking to the landlord about getting it removed next summer. Even if i have to get a chain saw and do it myself. It serves no purpose being there. Other than it prvented the wire from being all teh way on the ground.

Thankfully the neighbors were away and their dog was at a family members house. So no one there was affected. Didnt know about it till last night when i finally got a chance to talk to them.

But for the most part it was a eventful 15 minutes. That is how long it too me to react and get the family out.

Yeah my wife can sleep thru anything. She knew i was up with the baby so she just conks out like the dead. :lol:
 
What likely happened if you can look around close to where the wire came down you might just spot a large branch that fell on the line itself. With a soft wood tree when dead any bramch can snap off at any time when any strong winds kick up. On the other hand a good ole oak or spruce will hang in there even if the tree is completely doa and not lose any left and right.

The first thing you however would be contacting the local power company if no truch has already been sent out to let them know what happened. The line is certainly their problem and needs to be taken care of rather fast. If the tree gets in the way they may do something about that who knows.
 
Ohh there were people here till like 8pm fixing the line. I jsut dont know what happened or why it fell. It is back up now.
 
Apparently they were alerted to or detected at their end that there was a line down "finally"?! It certainly took them long enough to send someone out wouldn't you say. good grief!
 
Apparently they were alerted to or detected at their end that there was a line down "finally"?! It certainly took them long enough to send someone out wouldn't you say. good grief!

They were notified immediately after the line was down. I had called 911 and they said they notified the company. It jsut took them that long to get the line back up.

I left right away. So i dont know when they came around to get the line up and working again. I know that the Fire Department had blocked some people from going into my back yard and had evacuated some others cause they were not sure what the line would do.

So it is quite possible that the Fire Department prevented them from working on the line any sooner than when they did cause of safety reasons.

Either way by 8pm that night the line was back up and everyone gone. Yeah 12 hours later. But still it was the Fire Department that had stopped people from going back there before noon cause they wanted to make sure it was safe.

Hey Sarge,

Yeah serious stress. But got out before it got to be too much. I didnt wait for the invitation to leave by the FD. I was gone even before the first truck showed up.:??
 
At least it is no longer anything to worry about. Generally the Fire Dept. would want to have them get to any downed wire while keeping everyone else out period while the utility company's road crew is on the scene.

Don't forget this was during a holiday were there would be only limited personal at work. That may not have been the only problem they ended up dealing with either?! The Fire Dept. personal there were simply taking all precautions explaining the delay. But that is their job besides putting fires out and cleaning up spills.
 
sorry aboutthe crummy thanksgiving
something likethat happened across the street from us before but the flash of light was green dunno why
 
Around here everybody got whaled with a rotten head cold that spread like wild fire. sneeze, sneeze, cough, cough give us a break today!
 
Scary experience, glad you are all OK. Obviously intelligence isn't a qualification to staff the emergency switchboard.

All the best and good luck!!
 
I' glad to see that the utility company got to it before anyone could get zzzzzzzzzapped! despite the Fire dept. slowing things down a bit for safety reasons. It will certainly will make that holiday a little more memorable to say the least!
 
Back
Top