More Storm Damage

The storm damage continues to increase, even though the big ice storm has been over for a couple of days. Last evening, I received a call from a neighbor of one of my other properties to report that one of my trees had fallen on his shed and was pulling down his electric line (and his lights were flickering). Obviously, if the tree was pulling down the electric line, I wasn't going to touch it! Therefore, I told him that I would stop over today to see if there was anything I could do.

When I got up this morning, the temperature was ZERO DEGREES! Therefore, I decided that I would stay home until about noon to allow the temperature to warm up. Just before noon, I went to the bank to deposit a couple of rents that I collected yesterday (early). Next, I stopped at my last available apartment to show it to an applicant. As it turned out, I recognized this woman as a druggie and I won't be renting to her!

Attempting to remove the ice from the sidewalks at the Pink Elephant was my next effort. I made some progress on that, but it's still a mess as the ice is over 1 inch thick. The temperature here tomorrow is expected to be in the 40's and I'm hoping that will help get rid of the rest of it.

My final project today was to go check out the damage that the neighbor had called me about last night. As it turned out, the tree was severely leaning but had not fallen. Limbs were touching his shed but had not fallen on it or damaged it. The lines that were being stretched were the phone and cable lines. The power line was untouched and his flickering lights were probably a product of his imagination. While I was there, I did remove a bunch of limbs to lighten the leaning tree and that was that.

I almost made it home when I received a call from a tenant at one of my triplexes. He reported that he heard a loud bang and that the rain gutter on the front of the building had collapsed and was hanging just above the front door. I turned the truck around and went directly to the triplex. Sure enough, a section of gutter about 15 feet long was hanging vertically. This is a very tall building and the bottom part of the gutter was still at least 10 feet from the ground. This is a continuous gutter and the other 30 feet of the gutter was still attached to the building and looked to be firmly attached. The hanging section of the gutter was completely filled with ice as were all the other gutters on the house. With the sidewalk and the roof covered with more than an inch of ice, there was absolutely nothing I could do about the hanging gutter, so I went home. On the way home, I contacted a local contractor that I use to do all the high work on my buildings. I don't like to work that high and this is one of the few things I use contractors for.