A LADY BY THE SEA

A LADY BY THE SEA

Monday 16 February 2009

After 5 days of constant rain I will be happy to see the sunshine again. and it looks like it may continued until the end of this week

Tomorrow an Arborist (tree surgeon) is coming to check out about 4 trees in my yard. In June 2007 we had strong winds and torrential rain and causing flooding in some areas. I live on a main road and the winds were recorded at about 100km/h, a Red gum in my front yard and cocos palms in the back yard ended up a little crooked.
Cocos Palm01

I wasn't too worried but after more high winds and torrential rain this last week I am a little concerned as the Red gum has lifted the driveway about 3" and one of the cocos palms is leaning over the neighbour's fence above his rotary clothes line. If the gum falls it will fall across two neighbours front yards and the palm will demolish the adjoining fence and clothes-line.

Plus there is a huge palm (Majestic!) that is against the back of the house and in high winds it is hitting the guttering of the house and by the looks of it I may need new guttering.
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More on the winter storm in June 2007, on the first Thursday of the month I headed off to work but only got as far as the first roundabout from my place, the rain was shocking and was falling horizontal, my car aqua-planed through the roundabout luckily not hitting anything. When I regained control I turned around and headed back home, the reason being that further down the road there was a dip which I knew would be flooded. I rang the office and explained he situation and they were quite concerned and agreed it would be too dangerous for me to work that day. I checked on the animals making sure they had enough to eat but my cat wouldn't stay inside as she preferred to be in the garage with the dogs.

The next day Friday, I lost power ie no lights and heating, also no telephone which was unusual, battled out on Saturday for batteries, that afternoon my mobile phone died (apparently the mobile phone towers had been damaged). I couldn't go to stay with relatives as the storm was so vicious and I would have been (in my little car) blown off the expressway. My sons were experiencing the same conditions and my sister had floods in her town.

On Sunday the power came back on and by that afternoon the rain finally eased enough for me to check out the yard and animals, luckily I have a secure garage and my dogs,Bailey and Kahlua were nice and snug and warm but my elderly cat, Feral Beryl (aka Bear) was not so good, she was limping when I found her, the Vet said it was only bruising but unfortunately 'Bear' only survived another couple of months.

Later, I was walking back to the house and noticed a stream of water in the yard and found that my hot water system had burst. I wasn't able to get someone in to replace it until five days later. So I had to wash in very cold water each morning before going to work.

After this storm, there were new guidelines drawn up for any future situations like this, as some of our clients are frail, aged, as well as the quadraplegics, paralegics, amputees and other disabilites. Generators for running machines like hoists and oxygen machines.

It's late, too tired to continue.


3 comments:

val said...

And we thought we were in a bad way in 1987 when we had a severe overnight storm! It sounds absolutely terrifying.

Fizzgig said...

we had some wind storms here, my back door broke almost in half, but my power only flickered! eek!

Ching Ya said...

Dreadful.. I wouldn't have known the exact happenings if not through some AUS bloggers' point of view. Hope the problems could be resolved as quick, especially for the bush fire & flooding.