Blowing in the wind

In case you missed it, it's pretty windy in central and southern California today.  So windy that the 75 foot tall tree in oldest daughter's front yard blew down.  Fortunately it aimed right for the street and didn't hit anything.  The back of her house didn't fare as well.  A branch from the olive tree broke her bedroom window at 3:30 this morning.  Good thing she and her husband don't have their bed under the window.  Most Californians know that you don't place your bed under the window or below a picture, just in case there's an earthquake, or in this case the wind breaking tree limbs and throwing them through your window. 

We fared much better here at my house.  One of the sheds shed a portion of its roof.  I thought I had spare metal roofing but I forgot it was used up when building the addition to the chicken coop.  I can't buy any right now. It's too windy to get it home.

I haven't heard yet how the bug out place fared.  While I'm hoping they were spared from the high winds (in some places 100 mph) a part of me was hoping the whole house would be picked up off the foundation and tossed about.  I'm sure all's fine.

I brought the trailer over to oldest daughter's so they could buck up the tree and stack the limbs in the trailer.  Just last week they were helping a neighbor of theirs cut down some of the neighbors trees so they already had two of my three chainsaws.  That's good because their tree was blocking the road so they were able to get that part cleared before the neighborhood tried to get kids off to school.  Looking at the size of the tree I'm going to get several cords of wood out of the deal.  They have a fire place but they don't use it more than once or twice a year. 

Several people have stopped by their house and asked if they can have wood.  I suggested to son-in-law that instead of just giving it out to whomever drives by and asks, that he should suggest that they come out and help and then they can take whatever they help with.  It's not that I want it all for myself, but unless it's for someone who isn't capable of working for it, I'd rather they work for it rather than son-in-law work for it and give it to them.  Even if that means someone raking up the leaves or picking up the dirt clods that the tree flung around the yard as it was pulling its root ball out of the ground.  Son-in-law had to take the day off work to do this clean up, others shouldn't take advantage.

Army daughter has to go to school tonight.  Since she's leaving before her husband gets off work she dropped baby off here.  It took her almost an hour and a half to drive the 17 miles because the signals were out so each signal became a four-way stop sign.  At least it wasn't during commute time.  I'm sure it would have taken another hour! 

What if there weren't supplies to be picked up at the store for the repairs?  I could rig up something to keep oldest daughter's fence up.  I don't have any spare windows but we do have cardboard, heavy plastic, and duct tape.  Good thing I have chain saws.  And extra chain, fuel, and oil.  Son-in-law bent the bar on the smaller of the two saws.  He's going to pick up a new bar today, and some new chain while he's at it. 

I need more metal roofing material.  We have about 3000 square feet of barns and sheds under this type of roofing material.  I have the roofing screws and nails for it but no panels.  Some of the panels we have are the opaque white ones to let in light while others are the metal.  I like the opaque ones except they only last about five years while the others will last a lifetime if they don't get blown off.  Perhaps I should check to see if the rest of the roofing needs additional reinforcement.  Just not today when it's windy.