Back in August – August 21st to be exact, there was a sudden violent summer storm in our area of Toronto and while it only lasted about ten minutes it sure caused a lot of damage to not only our house and property, but to many other peoples homes in our area as well.
As I said the storm came on suddenly – it had been looking like rain for a while, but all of a sudden the sky had that dark almost greenish look that to me means impending tornado and there was in fact a storm and tornado watch at that time. Then, just as I stepped out on to our enclosed front porch to see if my husband was home yet from getting the groceries the storm started with a violent rush of rain.
I was trying to close the windows on the enclosed porch when I saw our car pull into the driveway. I moved towards the door, thinking that maybe I’d run outside to help my husband bring the groceries inside but then the rain really started shooting in the window that I hadn’t managed to close yet … and then there was a huge bang on the roof and all of a sudden there were branches all over our lawn and the car that my husband was still inside of … or at least I was hoping my husband was still inside … because if he’d started to get out of the car he could have been hit by the huge branch!
As it turned out … my husband was still in the car being tossed and turned like he was in a car wash. He was trying to call the house but of course I was on the porch and wouldn’t have heard the phone … plus little did we know but the power went out and would be out for the better part of 7 hours!
When the rain finally slowed my husband crawled out of the car and we both counted our blessings that neither of us had been hit by the huge tree branch. It had fallen off the big maple tree on the other side of our neighbors house. It’s a city tree … but of course as it turns out because of it was storm conditions we can’t make a claim for the damaged that the huge maybe 500 pound branch did to our house evestroughs and car … we tried and were turned down. Nice eh?
Here’s a couple of pictures of what the tree branch looked like covering our small lawn and car. I figure the branch was over 20 feet in length and weighed more than 500 pounds. Most of our neighbors were stunned by what happened – one seemed to care less but that seems to be typical behavior for them. Sigh.
Now that the city has turned down our claim for damage we’re going to have to either get a quote from our insurance companies or just pay out of pocket for the damage that the big branch caused … either way we have to get the evestroughs fixed as a couple of them have dents in them that look like the lip of a measuring cup and rain water pours out of that area just like it does out of a measuring cup … so yes we have to fix it.