Hurricane SOIL Day 4

Well it’s been 4 days since Carbondale has been hit with an ‘inland hurricane’. This area has suffered bad weather and the impact of hurricane from the gulf–most of those have turned into just a tropical depression by the time they get here. We received the full impact (I’m not sure what a 108 MPH hurricane is classified) but it has left substantial damage.

A few things I’ve noticed. I’ve limited my driving because most gas stations have limited service. When I drove around today I only saw three stations opened. Almost all banks, businesses and restaurants are closed. Power is almost totally out in Carbondale; however some outlaying areas do have power. We’re the only ones in the neighborhood to have power…don’t know why.

My drive around campus and the city showed just some incredible damage. It appears that the winds did some damage to the structures (mostly windows and awnings) but the big damage were the trees that were uprooted and thrown against buildings. In the old parts of Carbondale some homes have been completely demolished.

There is no power on campus; they’ve closed the campus for today…most likely will tomorrow. We were to start our intersession summer classes, but that has been delayed. My intersession class starts in two weeks so the chances are that this class will be held is pretty good. I’m concerned about the faculty who were to start teaching this week. It’ll be interesting to see if those classes are not taught if faculty will be given their salary (summer school is VERY important at SIU–it is one way to make up for our below average salaries).

I did a more thorough assessment on our property. We have about 4.5 acres (with about 2 acres as woods). We have 6 down in our yard (fortunately they fell away from the house) and nearly 25 in the woods (I only county major size trees). It’s just incredible the amount of destruction this storm had…trees were just shattered, snapped and uprooted…and these were big trees. When my server is back on-line I’ll post some videos of our area.

I chopped up two of the trees today. It took about 6 hours. Tomorrow I’ll plan to remove two more (they’re a little smaller) and Wednesday I’m planning on removing the other two–those will be very tricky because they’re tall trees that will need to be dropped properly.

We’ll keep you all posted as I hear things.