An Act of God

A couple of months ago we were victim to very high winds. I mean 100 mile an hour gusts that were cyclonic. Literally cement lamp posts were snapped in half. Trees were down everywhere. During the storm, there was nothing that could be done. The wind sounded like a freight train bearing down on you. The house shook. The power went out and I went to bed and put the pillow over my head. We have two commercial apartment buildings in the area and a duplex and a triplex. It was going to be a mess.

The next morning did not disappoint. The power outage was wide spread and Edison had no estimated repair time frame. They lost 17 transformers in my area alone.  My 1st call was from my newest tenant. He is a nice baptist preacher and today was his move in day. He was moving into a sweet little one bedroom bungalow. He sounded very distressed on the phone.  He had a moving truck filled and was out of his old place. A giant tree fell on the front of his new bungalow. The problem was he could not get anywhere close to the front door. The tree was that big. In fact, you could hardly see the front door.

“Hum”, I said hoping a thought would come to me. “Well it is an act of God”. I was hoping that he would appreciate that more than anyone. While he didn’t laugh, we did manage to get his stuff moved in through the french windows and by afternoon everyone seemed in good spirits. We got most of the tree down in the next day and the window glass replaced. There was no power so the preacher opted to stay in a hotel at his expense.

Over the next few days we assessed the rest of the damage. A set of garage doors were blown off the hinges. An electrical masthead was bent like a pretzel. A gate was blown of the hinges. Three roofs were damaged. The biggest pain was the massive amount of tree and leaf debris. We had tractor truck loads to move. It took weeks to clean up and we were moving fast.

Fortunately all the tenants were patient about the loss of power. It was cold and the power was out for days. It took forever to get anywhere because you had to stop at every intersection because the stop lights were out. Every other street was blocked by a downed tree.

A month later we got a letter from our insurance company asking for us to trim back the trees from the roofs. Before the storm they had done an inspection and seen limbs touching the roof. Not anymore! The wind blew away the limbs and the leaves. The trees were now trim and bare! We sent photos off of the newly manicured trees to the insurance company.

There is a bright side to everything.

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