State of Emergency

I ran the Boston Marathon on Monday, and was happy that the weather was not all doom and gloom as had been forecasted for the past couple of weeks. The doom and gloom managed to blow over the day before the race, and started clearing up in the hours before the gun went off. I called my wife an hour or two after I finished the race (I wanted to make sure she was out of class) and discovered that her classes had been cancelled and that the power had been off and on all night and all day.

When my friend dropped me off at the train station, I discovered that the tracks had been washed out and that the trains were cancelled. Thankfully, he wasn’t too far away and had his phone on him so I was able to get a ride to the bus station.

The highway was flooded in a few places, and there was no power in the Portland area. Driving through Portland is very eery when there are no stop lights, no street lights, no house lights, and temporary stop signs everywhere. One of the only places that had power was the local peeler bar (which seemed pretty busy for a Monday night) and the blocks around it.

I also had to try taking four or five different routes to get home, because the roads were all blocked off. I’d get going one way, and have to turn around and try another. When I got home, I discovered that my picnic table had been blown off of my deck and into a tree. I suppose that that is better than into the brook on the other side of the tree.

Things had not significantly improved yesterday. Roads were still closed, power lines were still lying in the street, and the area was still flooded. Things are starting to slowly get back to normal, though.

Update: A coworker sent me a link to some pictures from work before the office got closed for the rest of the day. They weren’t uploaded with a creative commons license, so I can’t post the pictures themselves here. Some of the more interesting ones include the wind blowing some trees over, the flood in the driveway (there is a four foot ditch right next to the driveway, so that is a lot of water!), and some tree trunks that broke next to some trees that were torn right out of the ground.