our excitement from last night

[winterbadger]

-----Original Message-----
From: Cathy Plevy [mailto:CathyP@takomagov.org]
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 11:05 PM
To: Cathy Plevy
Subject: COMMUNITY ADVISORY - Avoid Road Closures Due to Trees andWires Down

Due to a quick forming storm, with high winds, several trees and wires have
fallen. Please avoid using Flower Avenue and Jackson Avenue as the roads
are being temporarily blocked off. A tree has fallen on a house in the 7400
block of Flower Avenue and wires are down. No one was hurt.

Also, the northbound and southbound lanes of Carroll Avenue near Long Branch
Parkway have been temporarily shut down due to a tree that has fallen across
the roadway.

Pepco has been called in to take care of the wires and the State Highway
Administration has been called to remove the trees.

Updates will follow.

Catherine E. Plevy
Executive Assistant
Police Information Officer (PIO)
Office of the Chief of Police
7500 Maple Avenue
Takoma Park, Maryland 20912
(301) 891-7142

Well, we live on Long Branch right near the intersection with Carroll. And when our lights all went out in the midst of lightning bursts and thunder, we decided to check on our downstairs neighbor, N's friend C, whose BF is out of town. Then, seeing flashing lights down on Carroll, we wandered out to see what was going on.

Sure enough, a big limb from a large cherry tree had been blown, or struck, off and hit a tree on the opposite side of the road. The cheery tree limb was in the middle of the road, but the other tree had contributed a limb too, which was bowing down a selection of power lines. A policeman was just leaving, having put up some flares on either side of the tree.

We, and some teenage boys from the neighbors', wandered out to look at the limb and see if it could be moved. Some fellows with a tow truck came along and started to move it, but when they had gotten it sufficiently out of the way to drive past it (still leaving it in the middle of the road) they left. A householder from further up Carroll came out and started hectoring us to move away from the power lines, so we wandered back towards our street and met up with a few more neighbors who had come to see the fun. Someone went home for a saw, and another of our housemates turned up who (unbeknownst to us) is a carpenter, so he and the saw person began energetically cutting off the smaller branches. N and some of the others carried the cuttings to the side of the road, and the rest of us stood about with flashlights (as the flares died down fairly fast) explaining to people coming up the street that, no, they couldn't go through because there was a tree down, and, no, they didn't want to go down our street because it is a cul de sac. A number of people just ignored us, drove very fast down our street, then came driving back in annoyance. Gee, did you think we were trying to dissuade you from driving down the street for some personal reason?

Another policeman showed up and supervised the cutting activities for a while. He decided that even if the limb could be moved, it would be advisable to keep the street blocked because of the branch on the power lines, which looked as if it might bring them down at any minute. He put up some more flares, then had to respond to another call.

A bus had arrived at the far side and been turned around with great difficulty. Now a pedestrian came up to our side and told us that there were a dozen people waiting at main intersection in the next neighborhood up the street, wondering why there wasn't any bus coming through! We debated sending someone down to tell them, but given the unsavoury nature of the neighborhood (and my lack of shoes) we decided to pass.

The woodcutting people took off after a while, as the general consensus was that, though we might be able to move it, the remaining large section of tree was doing a good job of persuading people not to drive under the bit of power lines that were in danger of being brought down. Neta and I and our housemate Christy stayed, as did a neighbor of ours who we now met, name Mary Sue. We'd observed that the flares were burning down rather fast, and she suggested that we organise into watches so as to make sure that there was someone to warn drivers about the tree if the flares went out, and to get another police to come and put more flares. We started to all go home (except for the person who had the first watch), but then more people came trying to drive down our street, so we stayed and redirected people and chatted more.

Mary Sue, it turns out, is a keen birder and was able to tell me about all sorts of cool birds I didn't know we had in the neighborhood. She is also a folk DJ on XM Radio (as well as an accomplished and well-recognised local singer-songwriter, though she modestly didn't mention that), and she dished me some tasty gossip on our favourite folk musicians.

Another policeman came by at this point, who put out yet more flares (the current set were close to gone, and seemed prepared to stay for a while. A bus came down from the opposite direction from the last one, and I talked to the driver for a while. The policeman decided that he would clear a path for the bus--one lane for it to get by--which of course then meant he was there for the night, as all the other cars who arrived felt they needed to cruise through past him, his cruiser, and the tree-limb-surrounded-by-flares at 40-50 mph. We ascertained that there was nothing further we could do to help him or supply him with, and went on our way home. About an hour later (or less), the state highway and power company trucks arrived and cut up and removed the remaining debris and fixed up the lines so that power came back on. In the meantime, an *awful* lot of cars came racing down our street, turned around when they got to the dead end in frustration, and raced out again. A few made the mistake of turning up the street that makes the corner of Long Branch our house is on and racing up that to try to get out that way. In fact, that street is just barely a block long and ends in another cul de sac, so I found that effort rather amusing.

All seems to be well today, with alternate bright sunny sky, grey cloudy coolness, and periods of heavy rain.

Comments

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Glad everyone was okay!

And amused by the annoyed drivers. *bad Pisica*

[winterbadger]

Yeah, I kept being vastly entertained by the people who were so mad coming back that they tried going up the hill. Then stopped. TUrned around...

Heeee.