Dear Santa

Dear Santa,
For the most part, I’ve been a good boy this year. I live on Denman Island, so please bring me a generator for Christmas.
Regards, Davey.

Kari said it best, “in the city, you feel like man is in control of things, here, there’s no doubt it’s nature that’s in control”

She blew in on Sunday night with torrents of rain onto a roof with a missing gutter (thanks to the snow slide last week); then the wind picked up Monday morning and seemed to climax around 11:00 a.m. with gusts up to 70k. The power flickered for a while, and then died at 1:30. Shortly after it seemed to have blown itself out, but no, no such luck, around 4:00 p.m. she put it into overdrive and things started going sideways, literally. We went to meet Ashley at the ferry and the road was riddled with debris. Parents huddled in the waiting room to get out of the wind and stinging ice pellets. “There’s no way the ferry is going to come across in this”, I was told by an off-duty ferry employee just as the Kahloke came out of the fog. That’s when the steel street-light pole folded into the ocean and I decided being inside, looking out of a sheet glass window, while 100k+ winds hit it straight on, was not the brightest thing. The canoe that is chained at the roadside became a windsock, the cross-member of a power-pole snapped and signs bent in half. Within the 15 minutes (that I was at the ferry landing) two trees fell across the power lines along the road home. The school bus in front of me could just squeak under the power lines and tree.
Tuesday - No power! Luke warm shower & Coleman cooking.
Wednesday - No Power! Went on a reconnaissance mission around the island. McFarlan Road was a war zone. Shown in the pic with the barricade across the road, I was able to return later that night. Simply indescribable. Hundreds of trees criss-crossing the road mixed with cables, phone, and power lines in a tangled mess. By 7:00 pm the truck could squeeze through the chain saw created tunnel.... just big enough for residents to get out for provisions. Thank goodness that there were no fires as there is no way a truck could have navigated the road. These pictures are not a good indication of the real damage, but gives you an idea of what things were like between Monday and Wednesday when BC Hydro began to appear in force.
The picture of the school bus squeezing under the power lines and tree is on the main road by the ferry. The bent speed limit sign gives an idea of the power of the wind.

Thursday.... Had to get off the island for a small dose of sanity, heat and light. Walking off the ferry @ Buckley Bay I counted 14 Hydro trucks with baskets.



Power ON at 3:00 P.M. Everything in the freezer has thawed and is now being cooked and re-frozen. The washer & dryer are working full out. It began snowing about 1:00P.M. and by 7:00 there is about 5 inches on the ground. The weather forecast for tonight??? 100K winds, driving rain and no doubt a power failure. We are lucky as most of Denman and all of Hornby are still out. I beleive that the power lines for Hornby run along McFarlan Rd., so they will not have power anytime soon. Thanks to everyone that called to say they saw it on TV... BTW we have no cablevision yet, but hey, we got lights!! If we can get through tonight the Christmas dinner should be able to go ahead as planned and will be a happier topic for the next post.
Pics of the resident pheasant & rainbow were taken on Wednesday between rain squalls.






Also included a pic of our "camp kitchen"