September 23, 2003

We survived Isabel. Nearly everyone did, but it didn't always seem like it was going to work out that way.

Before the storm, I was sure that it wasn't going to be a big deal. Ooops! It was, and we're grateful to have gotten by virtually unscathed. By now you've read the paper or seen the news on TV - it was bad - very bad. We got lucky, yep.

Throughout Thursday we hunkered down in the house. There was a lot more wind than I expected. A whole lot more! Every thump scared the heck out of me, but most of them were the kids fooling around. I couldn't do much for them except to make them wear shoes.

I went out a few times: Once to check on the parents (they didn't answer the phone when I called, because they were painting the utility room and couldn't hear over the noise of the lantern and rollers), once to pull a pine branch off the house (and refit the downspout it had knocked loose), and later in the day to try to drain the backyard. I kept one eye on the trees the whole time - I was scared.

We saw mud flowing in the gutter across the street. On the way home from Mom and Dad's, I found the source. A neighbor's elm was rocking violently, and pumping mud up from around it's roots. It never fell. But soon after that we noticed that the 60 foot sycamore in our backyard was also pumping mud, as it swayed. It's still standing too.

The electricity lasted until almost 3:00 PM. Naomi made cookies and boiled eggs. Nina and I surfed the web - she was snarfing doll pics, and I was tracking the storm. The last update I got showed that we were getting hammered. Duh!

Around 8:00 PM things started to slack off a little. By 11:00 we were able to get the kids to go to bed. Naomi and I went for a walk around the block. carrying the kerosene lantern (around the 3500 block of  Tidewater Drive, and back.) There were no lights. None.

We saw that the Ace Hardware sign had lost it's wires, and the dentist's office had lost a window. There were tree branches everywhere. Believe it or not, there was some car traffic - SUV owners were out testing the limits. My legs got scratched up. We stumbled a lot in the pitch dark. When we rounded the corner of Cromwell and Elmore we discovered that Tarrall Avenue (all two blocks) was a lake. Rather that walk through it (knowing there was probably raw sewage in it) we crossed a lot of front yards - way up close to the houses. We even met a few other neighbors out there. It seemed to be mostly over.

When we got home we found the kids engaged in a lively grab-ass session. Serious horseplay. A pillow fight even. Eventually, we got everyone to bed for real. The wind howled a bit, but it was much less than before.

Friday morning was glorious. Clear sunny skies, and cooler temperatures. I woke at about 7:00 AM, and promptly dressed and began walking around the neighborhood to see what had happened. There was a lot of activity - saws and rakes. Naomi wasn't far behind me, and she caught up to me while I jawed with a neighbor I had never spoken to before. We all agreed that we were fortunate to be jawing.

She made a hearty breakfast that morning - fried canned corned beef hash and hardboiled eggs. And toast. We drank all the milk we had. And we had coffee. Thank God for the little percolator! By noon we had cleaned up our yard. There was about a cubic yard of tree limbs to saw and pile up, and a dozen bags of leaves and pine cones and straw. Once we were finished though, we realized that we had nothing else to do. There was nothing to do but sit. So I traveled around the neighborhood and talked to the neighbors some more. And some more later, and even more later.

It was inspiring to see others helping the old lady trapped in her house by the tree that had fallen against it. A guy who runs a lawn care service spearheaded the effort to free her. Everyone was chipper, yet everyone wished they had a chipper. There was a lot of debris.

That evening, Joe and I rode around on our bicycles - mostly in the dark - trying to find which neighborhoods had electricity. It didn't do any good, but it gave us something to do. And it's a rush trying to navigate in the dark, with fallen trees and junk all over. We only got clotheslined once.

Saturday we did a better job when we toured the upper west side of Norfolk on bikes. And we saw a lot of devastation. But we also saw human will imposed on that nightmare of fallen trees. We saw a street in Colonial Place where a tree had fallen across it - but residents had sawed off all the hanging branches so that you could drive under it. We also saw a street in Lochaven where a tree had blocked a street, but it's trunk had been chopped out to allow traffic - the root ball and the upper trunk still pointed at each other. All this work was being done by residents.

That night, Naomi and I drank the Apple Schnapps she had thoughtfully stashed in the freezer. We listened to the talk shows on the radio, as people related their personal versions of the destruction. The local radio stations did a great job of keeping us informed.

On Sunday morning I toured Lakewood. Where all the streets had been blocked, the city crews had begun clearing them. Power restoration is still a long way off.

We went to the Navy Base that afternoon. We went as a family, with nothing better to do. We shopped for a wider variety of canned goods at the commisary. We ate a late lunch at the Food Court. And we even went to the movies! We spent about 4 hours in "civilization", before we returned to our third world home. But we did make an impulse buy - we bought cold beer at the package store. That night we sat out in the street on the hood of the car, drinking our "cool" beer and chatting with the neighbors, while the kids ran wild in the dark. The highlight of the evening came when they announced the area closings on the radio. Everything would be closed Monday, but the kids were happy. The neighbors was getting to know each other. And nobody cared if you tossed empty beer cans into the yard.

Having seen much of Norfolk in the last few days, I recognize how lucky we were. In just our little 3 by 2 block neighborhood 6 trees fell. Three of them hit houses, and 2 blocked streets. Yep - we were lucky. Every street in the Lakewood neighborhood was blocked by trees. Some homes there had several trees down in their yards.

Power poles snapped, and countless wires were brought down. A quick tour of some of the bigger streets (Granby Street, Little Creek Road, Hampton Boulevard) shows that telephone trunk lines came down. A lot of folks get to look forward to busy signals for a while.

Ice is in short supply. Gas is getting easier to find, though. We had sufficient lamp oil and propane for light and cooking, but we could have used a wider variety of canned goods. Feeling lucky, I bought lotto tickets. Who knows?

I've already assembled the best of all my flower pictures. Now I've added some Isabel pictures too. Go to the pictures pages and ogle them for yourself. If you want a copy of anything, just ask.