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Monday, December 1st, 2008 |
| And we're glad you visited! |
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Tornado in
Center Barnstead, NH!
Click on any image on this page to view in
full size. |
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Friends, Family, Neighbors, Colleagues, Clients,
and those in between;
On Thursday, July 24, 2008 our home and office found
itself in the direct path of an F2 tornado. We are thrilled to
report that everyone here was unharmed, and our home is still in tact.
We did have some significant tree damage on our property, and have some
hard work ahead. We lost some privacy and some of our favorite
trees which made our property what it was. However, our immediate
neighbors lost so much more, it is difficult to complain.
For those we've spoken with, it's probably worth
mentioning that we couldn't possibly have expressed the drama of the
past few days. This is easily one of the most surreal events of
our lives. Even 4 days later now, we are in awe every time we see
the damage. We were all at home. We heard a major storm and
saw seconds of it. We immediately sent the kids to the basement,
but the storm was gone nearly as soon as we could send them down.
In an instant, life changed in our neighborhood. |
| In a part of the country that doesn't typically see
tornados, we had this one come right up through our back yard.
Amazingly, it came right to our house, taking down several very large
trees in it's path, dropping some inches from our house, and then took a
different path. Call it karma, call it what you will, we dodged a
bullet! |
This is one path the tornado took, directly to our house
up our back woods. This picture was taken from our back deck! |
| Our neighborhood has seen our Governor, the Red
Cross, the National Guard, firefighters, police, and a ton of other
emergency management personnel. We are officially a State of
Emergency. Our area was without power for only about 36 hours, as PSNH did an amazing job to restore power and help us begin to recover.
We regained internet access (an essential for our business) on Monday
night. And we are still without phones as of Tuesday afternoon.
By Thursday night, we had an amazing response from all appropriate
parties. By Friday, all you could hear is generators, chain saws,
helicopters, and work trucks. All of the cliches you see on tv
about how these things pull communities together are true. Our
little neighborhood was ripped apart. Some people lost nearly
everything. Yet, we heard almost no complaints. People just
got to work putting lives back together. Residents went door to
door checking on neighbors before emergency personnel could reach us.
Even as fortunate as we were, we had 2 neighbors, 1 father-in-law, and
1 previously unknown person spend full days helping us get a start on our
own recovery.
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Tornado coverage & video
Unfortunately, I can't link to the individual video pages. But
start with that link. Then, in the right/center of the page,
you'll see all of the video links. The most relevant to our area
are:"Barnstead home severely damaged in tornado"
(This home is within 100 yards of ours)
"Barnstead residents clean up after tornado"
(This footage is with a half mile of us)
and
"Helicopter tour of damaged areas" |
These pictures were all
taken on our property......
In all, we lost about 6 full-sized (50 feet?) trees. Some ripped
right from their roots. 2 that missed our home by about a foot. |
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| These pictures are from
Nutter Lane, immediately in front of our house..... |
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One of the most surreal parts for us was the constant
presence of helicopters. This one carried the Governor. |
| Many more pictures, all
within a quarter of a mile..... |
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This couple lost 3 cars and had significant damage to
their house. |
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Unfortunately, our camera
died on Thursday night, so we don't have pictures from Friday or
Saturday. The following pictures are from Sunday, 7/27/08.
It's amazing to see how much work had already been done, and also how
much work is left to do.... |
| Our home..... |
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We took some of these
pictures from our deck, so the overhead view doesn't give an accurate
picture of how big this brush pile is, or how much cord wood we already
have stacked. We estimate that we'll have 4-5 cords of wood for
next year by the time we're done. |
| More...... |
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That's it! Thank you
everyone for your concerns and help! |
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