[Trombone-l] Hurricane Winds Damage SW Ohio

[Denny Seifried]

List Members---I know there are several list-members who live in SW-Ohio, like myself. Yesterday, starting around noon, SW Ohio began being pelted by hurricane-force winds of from 60-75 miles per hour. These winds were steady, devastating and lasted until around 6 PM EDT. Most of our area is devastated, as we have never experienced such a large area of Ohio with this amount of wind-damage. We ARE used to tornado-damage, which proves even more devastating, but covers a very narrow path.

Dayton Power and Light had 200,000 customers without power, last evening. There are trees down, everywhere, power lines down, as a result of these downed trees. Quite a few large business buildings have roofs and trusses blown down and houses have tree limb damage and a lot of shingle damage. There are no schools in sessions in at least a 5 country area, around Dayton OH. Several communities have water-rationing going on, as not all pumping stations have electricity.

While all of this was going on, you could see the sun shinning! Our TV weather reporters claim this was a once-in-a-life time weather situation, which will probably never again happen, in our lifetimes. Let's hope they are correct.

I was very lucky. I had no power from around 1:00, until around 9:00. I had the candles burning and had my Coleman lantern out on the porch, ready to go. I had the top blown out of a beautiful sweet-gum tree, I had planted when I first moved into this home, in 1972. It was some big-stuff that came down, but the tree is far enough away from the house and it just landed in the yard. My son is coming over, tonight, and we will start to chain-saw it up into pieces. I will have to get a pro tree trimmer to finish the job, as several large limbs are not completely broke-off and still hang in the tree or are caught up in the tree. No-way, will I mess with these, as they are way too dangerous, without being ABOVE them, in a bucket-truck.

I have some shingle-loss on my two-story garage, out behind the house. Not bad, as this is a second layer, as I had it re-shingled two summers ago.

I went out and drove around a little. Some major intersections in town have either no power or the lights are down and damaged; so, driving is very tricky. I was lucky, as I saw some huge trees or huge branches that were into and through roofs on homes.

Hope all of you along the Gulf Coast are safe and looks like we will all be doing a lot of repairs and clean-ups, together, even though we are over 1000 miles apart in location!

Denny Seifried
Bass Trombone-Springfield (OH) Sym. & Dayton Jazz Orch.
Adjunct Trombone-Wittenberg Univ. Dept. of Music