Well, we’ve had a weird week around here! Last Thursday we were hit with a windstorm that blew down a seriously huge number of trees and knocked out power to Gabriola and 100,000 others on Vancouver island and the gulf islands.
Thursday morning the power went out so we drove to the village to run some errands. As we were driving home along north road we passed one tree down near Silva bay, then were blocked just before Peterson by a huge tree down outside our friend’s house. We got out of the car to look with some other people then thought we should just get out of there because it was still really windy, so we got back in the car. J reversed to turn around and as we were pulling forward a man started waving his arms saying GO GO GO as a huge tree fell right where we were, taking down the power lines with it.
Here are some more shots from around the island. We were very fortunate to have had our electricity restored late Sunday evening as the estimate for repairs was for Friday the 28th and many homes on the island were still in the dark. We are so grateful to the hydro crews that worked around the clock to get things up and running again.
Here are a few shots sent to me by the friend living near where we escaped the falling tree. Thankfully their house was undamaged. I haven’t seen a broken hydro pole since I experienced Hurricane Juan in Halifax in 2003.
Wishing a speedy repair to those still without power following the storm! 🖤🖤🖤
[…] Way back in 2017 we removed the woodstove in our basement because it was not to code and we couldn’t get it certified for our home insurance. We felt uncomfortable using it because it wasn’t safe, but discovered after removing it and installing a heat pump that we suddenly had no source of heat when the power went out. Not a huge deal most of the time, but a very big deal when the power goes out for longer than a few hours, like it did when the barge tore out hydro wires to the island a few years ago and again when we had that huge windstorm in 2018. […]