STORM!

make sure you have time to actually read this one - i think it's going to be a long one!

so this weekend we had some crazy things happen. first for some background - we had a group of approximately 37 men between the ages of 35 and not quite dead (insert laugh here!) out here for a retreat. they are called 'via de cristo' and they are very....self sufficient, especially when a young 24 year old girl is in charge of them. i kindof just let them do their thing and stay out of their way. they are very sweet and wonderful and thankful, but just a little too know-it-all-ish.

so, on friday night, i get a call on the camp cell phone from evan, the executive director and my boss. he's very calm and collected and says something like 'sara, there's a big storm coming tonight and i just wanted to let you know. our emergency procedure would be to put everyone in the chapel (our newest and therefore ONLY building up to code onsite - anyone want to donate money to our capital campaign for new facilities??) and keep them there until the storm passes. i will let you decide when you need to make that call.' and i say something like 'ok, thanks evan' and hang up the phone. of course, since i'm a hard core mountain woman from colorado, i'm kind of thinking 'alright texas, let's see whatcha got.' my co-worker and friend milisa and i are in the office doing some office stuff and we look up the weather. i convince myself that evan is just paranoid and that the bright red weather on the radar isn't going to hit us and that we're fine.

our rv hosts are usually stationed down in the rv site to welcome the rv guests (we have 10 spots for rvs) and take care of the people there. this weekend however, mem and arnie (the rv hosts) were at their property in san antonio, so they were not there. we had a couple joining us for friday and saturday nights in the rv park. around 8:30 pm, i go down to the rv park and introduce myself, tell them about the "bad" weather that is headed our way, and give them the camp cell phone number in case they need anything. they came to la grange just for the weekend because they are pretty much groupies with this local band that is playing at the bugle boy on saturday night. they have never been in an rv before, let alone driven one or slept in one.

finally milisa and i finish our work in the office and milisa heads home to her husband and kids and i head next door to my house. i get settled in my bed and start reading this fabulous book by jodi picout (if you don't know her work, you are missing out!). right about 11 pm, i hear rain but i'm thinking that's pretty normal so no worries. well, it keeps getting worse and worse and worse. at one point, my screen doors were banging around so much, that i went outside to lock them closed. well, the wind was so strong that it took everything i had to pull the door shut and latch it. this is the point where i start to get freaked out. i was only outside for about 30 seconds, and i had to change my clothes from being on my porch because it was raining so hard that i was drenched. i go inside and then the rain gets harder - so hard that i'm worried about my two very precious cars sitting outside and my kitchen windows because it sounds like my windows are about ready to bust at any minute due to the velocity of the rain.

right about this time, i turn on the tv to see what the educated weathermen have to say about this storm i'm experiencing. i'm just learning that la grange is in the best/worst part of the storm at that exact time (about 11:20 pm) and that the storm is moving at 35 mph, so i figure we're almost in the clear. soon after i learn that, the poor, scared rv guests call me and are asking me what to do because they are scared out of their minds. their rv is decent size, but not made to withstand the wind that is rocking their rig back and forth like they are in the ocean. i tell them that i'm not moving anyone to the chapel yet, and that i will come get them if i decide that is the safest action. i then direct them to the nearest building for them to wait out the storm in. i told them that the storm should be passing shortly.

sure enough, the storm calms down dramatically in the next 10 minutes. that day, lutherhill had organized a huge golf tournament for a fundraiser in the houston area. that means that justin, the other staff member who normally lives onsite, is not at camp. luckily, justin ended up getting back to camp right about the end of the storm. he decided to stop by my house and see how everything was going, since my lights were still on. we chatted for a little bit and i heard his rendition of the storm. he got to weather the storm in his car at a nearby church because he couldn't drive anymore. after a little while, justin goes back to his house. i get all settled in my bed again, and start to read my fabulous book to calm down a little bit.

right about the time i'm about asleep, i hear a man's voice and my front door opening. one of the via de cristo men, bob, comes into my house and says 'sara? sara? there's a fire in a tree over there!' well, i jump out of bed, try to wake up enough to comprehend him, and sure enough, there's a fire in a tree about 30 yards from my house. i get some shoes on, grab my cell phone and the camp cell phone, and a rain jacket, and go check out the fire. well, about 25% of the tree had fallen on the power lines, which broke the lines, and started a fire in the tree. for you colorado folks - you need to keep in mind that these trees are very old and very big oak trees, BUT it had been pouring rain for the last 45 minutes (it's about midnight by now) so the fire is not a huge danger to anything around us, but definitely needs to be taken care of. in colorado, the fire would have engulfed the entire tree and started on the office building in about 30 seconds flat. (this is one of the few times i will say the following statement) luckily, i live in texas.

so, as a good little program director should do, i call matt, the assistant director for programming, who lives in la grange, and tell him there's a tree on fire because of the downed power line (which by the way, the other half of it is laying in the middle of the road). he (in his sleepy-eyed, cloudy brain state) says, ok call the electric company. well, i go get justin first and then i head to find the number for the electric company. on my way through the office on a search for a phone book, i discover that kristin's office is flooded - which means that her computer is sitting in water, along with some other elecrical equipment. i turn off the power strip and lift what i can out of the water. after it took me too long to located a phone book, i decided i already know the number i need - 911. i call 911, give them our address tell them the problem and they say that the fire department is on their way. then justin and i and bob are hanging out by the fire waiting on the fire department. an interesting twist to this story is that the fire extinguisher inspector is coming to (surprise surprise) inspect all the fire extinguishers. therefore, gene (our maintenance director) has collected all of the fire extinguishers from all of the buildings. he put them all in the maintenance shed, which is the closest building to the burning tree, but also the only building with live electrical wires on top of it.

justin and i are standing outside the office, waiting for the fire department to come and all of a sudden there is fizzing and sparks coming from another part of camp. being the true jumpy person that i am, i jump and scream, but luckily it was the transformer popping a fuse or something, and that killed the power to the fire, which in turn killed the fire. no reason to jump....but i didn't know that at the time! that also killed power to the entire site. soon we see headlights and justin and i get excited, thinking it's the fire department. nope, not the fire department, the via de cristo men trying to solve the world's (or at least lutherhill's) problems. i tell them very nicely that there are power lines down as well as a fire in the tree, so if they could please go back to their cabins and leave us alone, that would be great. well, keep in mind i am a 24 year old girl and they are 50-something year old men who like to be problem solvers. do i really have to say that they didn't listen to me? well they didn't. so finally matt makes his way up here, with the fire department following him. yes, matt made it to camp before the fire dept did because the fire department didn't know where we were...even though i gave them the correct address that even google maps knows. also, there was a tree across the road that matt almost ran into on his way to camp. luckily, there is another way to camp so matt (and the fire dept) avoided the downed tree.

basically, the fire department says that they are not allowed to touch the power lines, and since the power could come back on at any minute, they can't put anything on the embers to avoid the risk of electrocution. well, ok, so now what? luckily, the fire department calls fayette county electric to tell them about this situation, which is good because already their lines are so busy i can't get through. i guess the fire department has a different phone number than i do. so, the nice firemen leave. by this time, it's about 1 am.

matt, justin, and i go back into the office to help mop up kristin's office. well, the boys got tired of that pretty quickly, so we decided to go on a tour of camp to inspect the damage. we grabbed the available flashlights and head off on our adventure. we find all kinds of trees down - some on top of cabins, some just missing cars (belonging to our guests!) by less than a foot. we then get in matt's car and head down to the ropes course/rv loop area and look around down there. all the lights are off in the rvs, so we decide to check on them the next morning.

finally, i get back to my house about 2 am. justin decides to sleep in my guest room because he lives in the office, which is super close to the downed power lines and the firemen warned us that when the power comes back on, it could start another fire. so finally, i get to go to bed after a 19 hour work day...phewy!

the next morning, we head down to the dining hall to serve breakfast to our 37 via de cristo men...without power. luckily, matt had called our kitchen staff around 1 am to tell them we didn't have power. well, the kitchen is under control with eggs and ham and biscuits and gravy and most importantly - coffee. well, even though we are not on a well, we still rely on pumps to get water to most of our site. since the electricity is out, the water isn't working too well either. but, our kitchen staff is amazing and they figured out how to get coffee made without power and without any large amount of running water. i think the funniest thing that happened was that one of the leaders came up to me and said "uh, sara, did you know there are power lines down at the top of the hill and they're laying in the middle of the road?" HA! i tried really hard to not laugh and then said in my nicest polite voice "yes, i heard about that. we've been doing our best to take care of that. thanks for letting me know!" oh jeeze.

then the second funniest thing happened. this older gentleman comes up to me and says "i need the keys to the pool, do you have those?" well, i ask him why he needs keys to the pool and he says something like "well, i found some buckets, and we can use the water from the pool to fill the buckets so that we can manually flush the toilets." well, since they don't like to listen to me, i said "our maintenance director is on his way, let's wait until he gets here and see what his plan is." well that holds them off for a little while, but then another guy comes up and has another plan. he says that when the power comes back on, there is going to be a great surge of power, so we need to shut off all the air conditioners and and water heaters. um...ok? so again, i say "well, let's wait until gene gets here." but that doesn't hold them off for very long.

so finally we get everyone corralled into the dining hall and they sit down and start eating. by this time, fayette electric is onsite, working on one of the 3 problems we had onsite (i only knew of one!) unfortunately, some of the men escaped from breakfast and went down to bother the electric company, acting like they knew what was going on. luckily, gene was down there to kind of push them away, but they don't even listen to gene very much.

once breakfast is over, then the guys start getting really excited about all the trees being down. one of the guys works for some forestry department or something, so he has chain saws in his truck. well, you know boys and their toys and they can't wait to get out their toys and start cutting down some trees. well, matt and i are trying to calculate how much of an insurance risk that would be .... random men running around with chain saws being "helpful." in the end, we leave it up to gene. he ends up letting the one very experienced guy use his chain saw, and gene gets out the tractor to start dragging the trees down to the burn pile. in just a few hours, the guys have rescued all of the cabins and cars and cleared the roads. in the end, it was nice to have the extra help! matt and i went to check on the rv guests and they were just so thankful that i did as much as i did. they asked for my boss' email so that they could email him and tell them how great i am :) and i didn't even pay them! haha.

so finally the power came back on about 10 am, so just in time to get lunch started and wash the dishes from breakfast! the rest of the weekend was not nearly as eventful as friday night was, thank goodness!

on sunday morning, i heard a hissing sound coming from the bathroom. upon further inspection, it was not coming out very fast, so i just decided to let gene know and then he couldwork on it later. then it poured...and poured all morning. after lunch with the men, i took off early to go pick up mom from the airport. she flew in for about 18 hours and then took off in my jeep. my jeep just missed colorado too much and didn't feel like it fit in in texas. so now the two of them are on their way back to the promised land...i mean colorado.

when i got back from picking up mom at the airport, i walked into my bathroom and thought i was walking through a river...not a good thing. so, i called gene, but he didn't answer any of his phones. then i called arnie, and he answered and came right up to shut off the water to my shower. luckily, that solved the problem for the time being, and gene came over this morning and fixed it for good.

well, that was my weekend...how was yours?