2020 had proved to be the craziest year ever. First the pandemic shut down the world, then, just to name a few, earthquakes rocked Salt Lake and surrounding areas, California has basically been on fire all summer, and now Utah experienced hurricane force winds all night. In Hyrum, we are used to the wind blowing pretty strongly out of the canyon every morning but this was different, very different. The winds reached top speeds of 80-90 plus miles an hour all night long. If we lived along a coast, this would be considered a category 1 hurricane! All night you could hear the winds howling and you just knew that there would be destruction to clean up in the morning but I don't think anyone expected this.
When we got up in the morning, we discovered downed trees everywhere! I don't mean little saplings, I'm talking 100 year old very established trees. It was insane! Because the trees fell over power lines and things, the power was out in most areas of the city for multiple hours and in some places days.
The baseball fields lost all of their huge pine trees that lined the road. It also had a few of the light poles topple over.
The Hyrum Cemetery was pretty tore up as well.
Many trees in the cemetery fell and tore up headstones and graves.
These were not the only area affected. Many trees in people's yards blew over too. Russell spent the day with his chain saw helping people chop trees and clean up the mess. Our friends. the Knoppell's. lost two huge trees. When they fell, the trees narrowly missed their house. Our other neighbor, the Allen's, were not as lucky. When their neighbor's tree fell, it landed right on the Allen's car smashing it.
We were really lucky and our trees survived the hurricane. The only damage we faced was our fence. A few of the slats in our vinyl fence blew out of place. Luckily though, we were able to find all of the pieces and fix the fence.
Many of our neighbors lost their trampolines and garbage cans because they blew away. The field behind Mountain Crest High School was like a trampoline graveyard because there were at least 10 lost and broken trampolines scattered all over the field.
This was a crazy day of clean up in the city but it was also a great day of coming together as a community and helping each other out. The neighborhood and city really came together to help everyone. People brought their chainsaws and work gloves and just went to work where they saw the need. It was pretty amazing.
What other crazy things does 2020 have in store for us?
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