In early January I was sitting at my computer one morning and there was a raging storm outside. The wind was wicked. I heard this sound, different from the wind; it was kind of a whoosh. My house seemed to shudder. WTF? I got up and looked out a side window and saw little bits of spruce scattered all over the yard. I thought, “That must have been some wild wind gust.” A few hours later I went out to check the mail. There was a tree on top of my house.
Holy shit! Sorry, but that's exactly what you say to yourself when you find a tree has fallen on your house. In freaking January. I didn't know what to do. I called Chuck, he didn't answer. I grabbed my camera and took pictures. I noticed that the tree had fallen very close to the electric lines that go into my roof. Shit.
This tree was a split spruce with two trunks, next to my mailbox and driveway, about 40' tall. One side fell off, the side closest to my house.
I saw a truck coming up the road. It had a plow on it and was moving slowly. A woman was driving. I waved her down and said, “Look, a tree fell on my house. It's right next to the power line. I don't know what to do. Who should I call: police, fire, electric company? Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. What do you think I should do?”
She said, “Well, if I was you I'd call my insurance company.”
Light bulb moment. “Of course! Thank you, thank you. I was so freaked out I couldn't think straight. Yes, insurance company.”
So I called them and they had someone out first thing next morning. While they were removing the tree, I was outside, watching them. Here comes Chuck. “What's going on?”
“Did you not notice that a tree had fallen on my house?”
“Nope. Never saw a thing. Did it do any damage?”
“Apparently not. They took out a wall in the front bedroom to look and we discovered that this is actually an old log cabin underneath the siding. It's all huge logs stacked up and they can withstand a lot. All the trusses and stuff in the ceiling are fine. Just a few shingles fell off.”
“You know, I would tell them not to cut that big piece that's across the yard there. You could use that as a nice fence across the front. I'll just swing it around later with my truck.”
I liked that idea. So they left the bottom part of the tree in my yard. We went back to our respective corners.
