Alaska Hurricane 2012

During Fall, here in Alaska...South Central Alaska in particular, we’ve been know to have a decent wind storm or two.  A few miles from my house there are neighborhoods built onto the side of the mountains, which are aptly referred to as Hillside homes.  Usually these homes take the brunt of the storms, fielding gusts that can often top 80 miles per hour.  Homeowners there tend to lose trees and roofs on a yearly basis.

Two weeks ago, the news gave us some warning about an impending wind storm and I went about the usual tasks of cleaning up the yard, clearing toys, securing lawn chairs and the stack of swimming pool noodles we had randomly laying around.

We all settled in for a normal evening and barely noticed as the winds begin to pick up.  We put the kids in bed at the usual time and stayed up to mess on the computer and watch TV.  Oddly, the power started to flicker, which is somewhat unusual for us, and just as I finished saving an entire edited photo session and shut down my computer, the power went out.  So we went to bed a little early.

Something woke me at around 10:30pm and in the blackness and stillness of a house without power, I stumbled around to check on kids.  I crashed into a door jam and tripped and fell over a bag of clothes, all completely silently.  Ninja.  Clumsy Ninja.

I could hear the wind whipping outside and took a glance out the front window.  I was completely shocked to see our trees down.  One was ripped out by the roots with the ball of roots and dirt sticking up out of the ground.  The other tree, the biggest one, was split right up the middle of the trunk.  Thankfully, they didn’t fall on anything.

I was told this was the biggest windstorm since the 80s, possibly even worse than that one.  We had gusts ranging from 70 to 130 miles per hour.  Those are hurricane force winds.

The next morning I again looked out the windows.  In my backyard, my deck furniture was rearranged.

This flower pot was sitting in that overturned chair.  The plant survived.  Until I tossed it over the side of the deck.

My pathetic little flag, which actually broke during a previous windstorm, fell through it’s loops but otherwise stayed up. God bless America.

Our tree fort was torn out of it’s hinges and then slammed back together so that it was wedged tight, but just sort of accidentally attached.  Darrin fixed it.

The top of the tree fort that supports the swings was also pulled apart.  When I watched the wind blowing through here the previous night, those two trees were blown WAY over in opposite directions,  making that cross bar pull apart like tug-of-war.

Our back fence toppled, which isn’t really a surprise as we’ve lost portions of it before in other windstorms.

Most of the carnage was reserved for the front yard, where two spruce trees fell and the others were leaning loosely and precariously toward our house.  Darrin pulled the big one out with the car and cut down the others.  Now we have lots of firewood!

Our power came back on at about 6:30am but still no phone, internet or cell service. The kids and Darrin got up and went to school.  Only to return twenty minutes later because it was closed.  Darrin decided to go back to work and the kids and I enjoyed the unexpected mid-week day off by taking a tour around our neighborhood. The following is a collection of photos we took around our block.

This red tree had fallen right into our neighbor’s front door.  She was fighting her way through the branches to get out when we showed up.  She was thrilled with the idea of taking some pictures of it.

This is the root ball of that same tree.

And a wider shot.

The next neighbor, who was out of town, narrowly avoided a crushed car, as the main part of the tree fell inches from the bumper.  Got a few scratches though.

There was debris all over the place.

Lots of neighbors lost their fences.

This tree fell on this house and root ball popped the fence straight up.

These neighbors had some house damage as well.  They were out cutting things up.  It amazed me how cheerful everyone was.  It was a bummer that things got damaged but what an exciting thing!  That was pretty much everyone’s attitude.

Back from around the block, the kids played on our new playground for a bit before we decided to really check things out by walking to the lake.

We walked out through our newly opened back fence and noticed that quite a bit of the fence along the main road had not survived.

At the corner of our neighborhood, this tree snapped right off.

There were tons of trees ripped out by the roots along the muddy bank of Campbell Creek where it runs behind our church.

The sidewalk to the lake was covered in debris because the road crews had already been through and hauled all the trees out of the street and onto the sidewalk.

It took us quite awhile to make it to the lake and as we started walking around, we found a huge tree down across the trail.  I was actually on the phone with my mom (cell service at the lake!) when I took these pictures.

We couldn’t get very far around the lake so we turned around and walked through another neighborhood.  This was the only roof damage I ever saw.

A power pole snapped in half.

Meanwhile, back at the church...

The storm occurred on a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and most of the people in town lost power.  We were lucky enough to have ours restored the following morning, a LOT of friends lost power for several days.  There was a lot of freezer hopping going on as folks did their best to preserve their moose and carribu meat and what-not.