Ida Incoming

[Hay Dude]

Sorry for the late post. I was on a 2 week hiatus for Lord knows what.
Ida ended up being the worst flood in my towns history. Personally, I lost thousands in field stored hay and there is no insurance for that.
My town saw 21’ above normal of flood water. That was 5’ higher than the record from Hurricane Floyd.
We had a skinny tornado as well. Got stuck behind it and it took me hours to find a way home.

Never seen anything like it in my 50+ years. Almost lost our railroad network here, too.



One of our local hayfields under about 12’ of water

Below- notice the car roof in the water? This picture taken many hours after water had receded. It’s was 3’ deeper at its peak.

I got caught about 2-3 minutes behind this tornado. Amazing wind & rains came with it.

I got lucky I wasn’t in one of these cars. This is the way I would have normally come home from Oxford, PA. I took an alternate way home.

I went home this way and had several trees fall in front of me. Good thing I wasn’t a few moments earlier. Took this picture while parked along the road when the emergency vehicles arrived.

These are some of the bales I lost on one of our back roads. Notice downed tree and wires. This was after the water receded about 3’. I was able to recover all of these bales, but they are worthless, soggy junk now.

 

[3930dave]

Crazy pictures.

Everything except people can be replaced.... takes Time and Money though, obviously.

Hay, Tally and everyone else working on cleanup - Please keep in mind that a lot of the serious injuries, or worse, can happen during the cleanup afterwards.

None of us are as young as "back when"..... Work Safe; Let's all keep getting older together.

Rgds, D.

 

[tallyho8]

10-7-21 8:00PM I just got my cable internet back after 40 days of traveling long distances to get internet to send orders to my customers. I'm so happy I'm going to drink 2 (maybe 4) rum and cokes right now.

So far I have repaired 150 feet of my 8' board fence with 350' to go and removed 7 of the large trees I had down and a handful of small ones. I only have 5 large trees left to remove. The one on my garage has caused a small leak when it rains but it has to wait because fixing my barn is my next project. While removing the tree from my chicken coop I found my favorite chicken smashed but I am lucky because my favorite horse was in a stall that was smashed and he is fine.

My biggest loss is my first home that I have been renting out for extra income. It had two large oak trees on top of it and is completely destroyed. The trees were so heavy the branches went through the concrete slab narrowly missing a 10 year old sleeping in the bed. Now I have to demolish it and none of my damage is covered by insurance because after Hurricane Katrina all the insurance companies cancelled wind insurance in our area.

Some say "that whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger" but I wonder if they have ever been through an Ida?

BUT, I will survive. Tractor people are tougher than BMW people..........

 

[civilian]

Sorry to hear your loss. But if I remember, no loss of life for you correct? Jon

 

[Hay Dude]

I’m very sorry for your material losses. I thank God that you and everyone else are physically ok.

We are still cleaning up to an a extent. Wooded areas full of trash, debris. I don’t think we had much loss of life or livestock which is pretty amazing considering we didn’t have a lot of time to react and the rivers rose mostly overnight.

 

[tallyho8]

The point of paying insurance is to get liability insurance. I can not get just liability without getting a homeowners policy that denies wind damage.

Without wind insurance the most I can lose is my home and structures but without liability insurance I could lose all that plus all my savings and even possibly future income.

 

[tallyho8]

After 6 months of hard work I finally got most of my repairs from the hurricane done, not counting the 16 very large trees that are down in my pasture.

I work by myself because getting help is very hard to find as all contractors are still backlogged from all the damage done by the strongest hurricane to ever hit Louisiana. Repairing my barn was the hardest part. I built my barn entirely by myself 20 years ago and I have done all the repairs on it by myself. The hardest part of the work was holding up a treated 16 foot 2 x 6 rafter with one hand while standing on a ladder using a nail gun with the other hand. It seems like the lumber is a lot heavier now than it was when I built the barn 20 years ago when I was only 56 years old.

Some before and after photos:

 

[Gale Hawkins]

After 6 months of hard work I finally got most of my repairs from the hurricane done, not counting the 16 very large trees that are down in my pasture.

I work by myself because getting help is very hard to find as all contractors are still backlogged from all the damage done by the strongest hurricane to ever hit Louisiana. Repairing my barn was the hardest part. I built my barn entirely by myself 20 years ago and I have done all the repairs on it by myself. The hardest part of the work was holding up a treated 16 foot 2 x 6 rafter with one hand while standing on a ladder using a nail gun with the other hand. It seems like the lumber is a lot heavier now than it was when I built the barn 20 years ago when I was only 56 years old.

Some before and after photos:
View attachment 739289View attachment 739290View attachment 739291

Great save on your barn. Were all your animals okay?

 

[MossRoad]

...The hardest part of the work was holding up a treated 16 foot 2 x 6 rafter with one hand while standing on a ladder using a nail gun with the other hand. It seems like the lumber is a lot heavier now than it was when I built the barn 20 years ago when I was only 56 years old.
...

Nicely done.

I hear you on the heavier lumber. We build a garage addition 2 summers ago. I figured if my dad could build a house, I could build a garage. About half way through it I realized my dad was 37 when he built his house. I was 59.

As much as we don't want to admit it, 22 years older makes a difference.

I got it done, but had to add the unexpected cost of Aleve to my budget!

 

[Diggin It]

Long time back, I leaned to sling stuff. Set a sling at one end to support the board a few feet off the ground. Set a sling at the other end to do the same, then use the two as hoists to pull the board to within inches of where it needs to be. Then get on the ladder or scaffold with the tools to bring it home and secure it.