When a tree falls

When a tree falls in our woods, not only do we hear it, we lose power.

About 12:20 AM on Wednesday morning, I heard a sound that sounded like a tree falling in a movie soundtrack. The crackling of branches, the swoosh in the air, followed by a loud thud, combined with the crash of glass and metal, and a quick, violent shake of the ground. The only thing missing was someone yelling “Timber.” Seems one or two of these trees, Monterey Pines, fall every year now when the wind blows. They have a 100 year life span, they are now about 120+ years old.

I had JUST gotten into bed when I heard the start of the sound, saw a bright flash (the tree taking out the 25KV lines on the pole), followed by the ground shaking thud, and then the power went out. Damn, that was really close by!

I had my iPod touch in my hand as I was reading email at the time, and quickly launched Flashlight as the house went silent and dark.

I jumped out of bed, tossed on some clothes, and headed downstairs to turn off my computers and equipment. The house was in total blackness and almost complete silence. The only sound to be heard was the soft “beep .. beep” of several UPSs telling me that I no longer had power, the hum of a few hard disks as I entered my office, followed by the sound of our alarm system warning that main AC power was now off line. No, really?

I did a quick shutdown of my Windows computer and waited a LONG time for it to decide that it was done, and then powered off the two UPSs driving it, the drives, and the monitor.

My network was still live, the phone lines survived the fall, and the UPS driving all my networks hummed along just fine. I shut it down by hand, as well as my MacBook and my wife’s Powerbook as well, running on batteries. All was now silent. And also now quite dark. Now where was my flashlight? I picked up my iPod touch and launched Flashlight again, and found my way back upstairs to the bedroom. There was my flashlight. Now what?

But what did I hear was close. Within minutes there were three or four fire trucks on the street from all directions. The house was now lit with red and yellow flashing lights. Well, time to go see what happened. They were JUST outside my house, this must have been REALLY close!

Here is what I saw. Yes, a very tall Monterey Pine decided that in the light wind, it was done standing. It came up by the roots and all, and luckily for everyone around, fell into the street and intersection, and not into a house.

Seems the fire department was there to stop people from running over the sill live 25KV lines, and shortly went away as the lines were powered down. I went to back to bed and fell asleep.

The next morning, I decided to get a better look. I went out front and this is what I now saw:

As I was looking, the guy who owned the car walked up. He took a picture with his cell phone. I asked if it was his car, he said yes. He was sending the picture to his boss. I guess he had a good excuse for not being at work today.

As for the neighborhood? We are still without power, now 18 hours later, and our power company says it could be another 24 hours before all is back to normal.

So here I sit, in Starbucks, thinking about what tree will fall next, and if it will be even closer.