Storms and floods

I haven't posted in the last week because I have been cleaning up after the intense storms we had here last Thursday. I was out with mom, Carla and Sio when the first one hit, we were having a late lunch. The power flickered in the restaurant a couple of times but never went out, but the rain was blowing sideways. I can't remember a storm like that in years, it was pretty scary. By the time we finished lunch, it was over, so we took mom to the grocery store. The power had been out there but was back on, Carla kept trying to call Jimmy and Rich, but all the circuits were busy. Sio finally reached her Chris who said it had been pretty bad by their house, and part of a tree had come down on the hot tub room. Their power was out, too. Carla finally reached Rich, who said the power was out up Main Street, and there were a lot of trees down. He suggested that we go home on all the back streets, stay off of Roosevelt, Main and Westmore. I tried to reach John, but couldn't. It wasn't til we got about 6 blocks from the grocery store that we began to realize how bad the storm actually had been. There were trees and branches down all over the place, no one had power and some of the power lines had been taken down by trees. Some of the streets were just not passable. We stopped at Jimmys mom on the way to make sure they were ok, she and Kevin were outside, and they were ok but there street was blocked by a tree. We saw several houses that had trees and/or big branches that had fallen on them. Carla drove by Chris and Sio's on the way here, and there maple was leaning against the hot tub room with part on the roof. Chris had already been up there and said he didn't think anything was damaged. We came here next, and John was sitting on the front porch. A third of the 55 year old maple was down and filling up the side yard; it had taken out my clothes line, and the garden. It bent the fence, and was on the power line but didn't actually break it. If it had been a foot further to the left it would have hit the house. John had already been out looking for us to make sure we were all ok; he said there was a car over by Rich's work that was squished from a tree, I saw it later and it was squished.Thank God no one was in it. Anyway, we got our power back in about 18 hours, but mom, Rich and Chris, and Sio didn't get theirs back til Saturday night. Because the sump pumps stopped, we ended up with an inch of water in the front part of the basement. I'm so glad I took the back part for my sewing room! None of that stuff got wet. Chris and Sio had water too.Anyway, the kids came over and cut the tree up and we have a lot of firewood. As soon as we have a chance we are taking them all out to dinner, maybe next week.