As luck will have it

We had a close call this weekend. But we were lucky, alot of luckys. There were severe storms in the area and a very large tree along the road came down right onto the hydro line, pulling it down. It took out all the power to the cottages. Luckily, Roger, our trusty neighbor was around, and called Hydro. Several hours later they still hadn't come to fix it, so he took the boat onto the lake to see how the other cottages were faring. While he was on the lake, he luckily noticed the power to his cottage was back on, even though no Hydro trucks had come to fix the line.

From the lake, Roger could see the whole hillside light up. The broken line was in a pine tree at the end of our driveway and had started it on fire. The juice was flowing and causing all sorts of arching and such (why it didn't trip and cause power to go out again, I don't know). But I guess it really lit up the sky.

Apparently, at the end of Green Forest Way, the hydro truck took a left onto Almost Lane (left continues with Green Forest Way where we are). Since they didn't see any downed lines, they went back and turned the power back on, never bothering to check further.

Luckily Roger was able to call 911 using his cell phone (which ironically usually does not work there, but miraculously did "just this once"). Additionally, 911 didn't have our road registered in their files and didn't know where we were or what to do with us (we don't have regular phone service out there, so no phones, no 911 service) . Eventually they patched him through to the fire department and 3 trucks came roaring out (after initially getting lost). Lucky again????

They called hydro, had them cut the power, put out the fire, cut it all up and left it. It was after 1 am before they left. When we came up on Sunday, we wondered why there was a burnt tree stump and huge cut up tree at the end of our driveway.

Rog came over when he saw us up there yesterday (Wednesday) and filled us in. The whole area had gotten lots of rain the few days before this happened. Enough to soak everything enough that even though a substantial fire started (there was luckily no wind) it did not catch in the surrounding trees. There is a alot of downed and dried trees in the woods. Had luck turned the other way for us (all) that whole side of the lake would have gone up.

And you know what else? Unbeknownst to us, all this happened Saturday. Since we didn't even have a roof yet, we had not put fire insurance on the cottage until Monday. Yup, we were lucky.