This past week, the electricity well ran dry for a lot of us on Signal Mountain, thanks to that mighty tempest known as Irma. Outside my house at about 8 pm on Monday, I saw a 50kVA transformer blown off its pole and land in the street below. The fire intensity was half fireworks show, half bonfire. Emergency crews were on the scene within minutes.

 

For the rest of the evening, surrounded by candles and two nervous cats, I listened to a hurricane force wind blow branches into the side of my house and on the roof, mostly loaded down with acorns.

 

The next morning, I awoke to find a neighborhood that looked like a battleground of green. The power was out on my street and the street below. Tree limbs and branches, alive and dead, were scattered across lawns and covered most of the road so it was hard to tell where the lawn ended and the street began.

 

The house next door had a beautiful old oak tree uprooted and fallen across the main road, while on the other side of the street, the detached transformer lay in the ditch like a dead soldier. Two doors down, another huge oak had crushed a neighbor’s carport, along with the car parked under it.

 

The only exit from the neighborhood was toward Taft Highway, so I decided to make a run to my friend’s house whose power supply had not been affected. I was ready for some coffee and breakfast. Little did I know what lay ahead.

 

I’ll spare you the details, but trying to navigate to my friend’s house less than a mile away, I felt like a rat in a maze. Every road I took led to a dead end of another fallen tree. Finally, I stumbled my way onto Taft Highway.

 

Once on the main road, I could see the EPB crews lined up like an Army battalion ready to do battle with the forces of nature. For the next three days, the air was filled with the sounds of chain saws and the sight of bucket trucks and busy line crews.  My power came back on a 3:18 am on Wednesday. Never have I so much enjoyed being awakened so early!

 

With such a successful recovery from one of the worst storms this humble correspondent has ever experienced, I am forever grateful that such storms are rare in the mountains of Tennessee. But I am equally grateful for the men and women of Chattanooga’s EPB for their dedication and service to the community.