The Night The Lights Went Out...

Last Saturday night a big storm rolled through our fair town and managed to knock out half the city.  To give you some idea of how big this was it took out over 180,000 homes and businesses.  It was the third largest outage recorded following the great ice storm of 1994 and then what's referred to as Hurricane Elvis in 2003.  Now that one was a real bummer.
We were one of the lucky ones, no not because we didn't lose power but we had a heavy duty generator that took care of the whole house but by the time my hubby got it up and running our power came back on.  Budd's response to that was son-of-a-b*^*h.  We were only down for a couple of days.  Some people are still without power but the numbers are down to something like 20,000.
As bad as it is to be without power the real scary part was trying to get through town.  Our lovely city is packed full of huge old trees and way too many of them gave up the ghost this last round.  Between downed trees that completely blocked four and even six lane streets you also had a good deal of the street lights out so going anywhere was like the maze through hell with penalty boxes at major intersections where all you could do was hold your breath and pray that everyone followed the rules.  Of course many people didn't and you were also left dodging wrecks, vehicles with flashing lights, and irate individuals pissed off at the idiot who didn't follow the rules and the idiot who didn't follow the rules pissed off that the person or persons who got in their way because Lords knows they are special and everyone should give over to them.
One poor church around the corner from me got taken out by four behemoth trees.  This wasn't a big church so the damage really was substantial.
I also managed to lose a cat.  My daughter and her feller went out of town, oh they went camping and not far enough away from home either, and I was keeping an eye on their house and animals.  They 'had' a cat who loved being outside and no matter what I did I couldn't get the stubborn thing to come inside.  You would have had to known the cat to understand but keeping this one inside was like pulling teeth with tweezers it just wasn't happening.  Anyway it wasn't a storm that got her but a pack of wild dogs.  She did put up a fight and got her licks in.  Yes I feel like crap over it.  Rest in peace Mini.
The following pics are of a street where most of the homes had recently been taken down for an upcoming project but it will give you an idea of how bad it got.
Right now I have to go batten down the hatches before the next one rolls through here.  Keep your heads down people.