Thank you, Dominion Power

Although I didn't get to have ice cream on National Ice Cream Day, it was an exciting weekend.

Late Saturday afternoon a line of thunderstorms blew through.

They were a bit stronger than expected and a dead tree covered in kudzo on the railroad's property fell.  On it's way down, it hit the electric pole, knocked it out of alighnment, knocked the transformer completely off the pole and brought down a bunch of wires into our yard and on Sarah's car.

At some point during the night, the power company came out and pulled the wires off Sarah's car, set the transformer up instead of leaving it leaning against her car and put caution tape around it all.

In the morning, we went out to inspect the damage to Sarah's car.  The tree had missed it by less than two feet and all that was on it was a few kudzo leaves.  Her license plate looks damaged but it's not. That's just how my computer blurrs things out.

Rather than falling on her car, the transformer had fallen straight down then tipped over and had been leaning against her tire.  Her tire, not even the hubcap!  The wires that had fallen across her hood hadn't done any damage either.  Her car didn't have a single scratch or ding on it!

And then we waited.  And waited and waited.  Thank goodness for generators!  Finally around 3:30 in the afternoon, just as I started to complain about how long it was taking, the first truck showed up.

And then a second truck.  And then a third and fourth plus the boss man in a pickup truck.  We felt like very important people with such a gathering in our yard.  

They got to work chain sawing the tree and kudzo vines off the power lines.

And then the "grabby thing" truck set the pole back up straight and they all went back to working.  I think there were about 15 guys 14 guys and a girl working.  They were like ants, all scurrying around doing their job.  By 7:00 or 7:30 p.m., we had power once again. 

And by 8:00 p.m., the environmental recovery team showed up to remove the brush that had had oil spilled on it.  I'm still not sure where the oil came from.  I'm assuming either the chain saw (they did break one cutting the kudzo) or maybe the transformer had oil in it.  I have no idea, but the crew showed up and while they didn't clear all the debris, they cleared what was oily.  

All in all and despite my whining about how long it took them to get here (there were 10,000's of thousands without power due to the storm and there were only 4 customers affected by our line problem  so we were the last service call of their day,) I was very pleased and entertained by the events.  And I can not express how thankful we all are that Sarah's car sustained zero damage.  That girl must be living right!