A start on the out-door clean-up

You think that your house has been saved and
cleaned of smoke and soot that it should be over.
It is not. We had 3 out buildings destroyed.
That means they have to be cleaned up, the
area around the house which is covered with
burned debris must be cleaned up and the
woods above the house must be controlled
for erosion.

The solar hut is deemed a hazardous site and
we have hired ECOS to take care of that. They
said they would do it a week ago...now it is on
for Monday. They did take the Nickle-hydride
batteries and put then in sealed containers,
but over-looked the melted lead-alkali
batteries. Now, supposedly they will take care
of that and the rest on Monday.

Today our dry-cleaned drapes, bed quilts, etc
were returned. We have the living room and
dining room drapes cleaned and reinstalled, BUT
none of the tie-backs came back. We are also
waiting for the hand-knit afghans, pillows,etc
to be returned. Upstairs, we have one set of
curtains in the guest room, the other window
has tie-backs, but no curtains. The quilt and
pillow shams did come back. The hall curtains
are not back, only the tie-backs. All the
stuff for Roberts's office is back.

We shall start on the clean-up of the patio
(covered with burned material and ash) and
the old horse barn site (car port) tomorrow.
That requires wearing
masks and wetting down the ash before
we start. Robert spent the last few days
getting the necessary so we can use the
trailer hitched to the Crown V. to transport
the stuff to the lined dumpsters the county
is providing. They consider all this stuff
to be hazardous waste?!? because of asbestos.
The horse barn did not have asbestos, but
we must still treat it as hazardous. We
know the solar hut has hazardous material
so we have a hazmat team taking care of
that.

We went to a meeting on Wednesday for folks
who have lost structures. 169 families lost
their homes. The County folks still don't
seem to understand the magnitude of the
problem for mountain folks. One of the
things they kept dwelling on was the necessity
for the home-owners to wet down the debris
and ash so it doesn't blow around. Finally,
after a number of questions of "where do we
get the water?" did they ask the question
of what was the problem...when they were
informed that none of these former homes
had power nor any way to pump water from
their wells did the County folk finally
realize that there is no way to wet down
the debris..


And so it goes. We still have the concern
about erosion in the "back 40." The county
is tyring to get 1.7 million dollars to have
helicopters drop mulch on the burn sites, but
they must first get permission of all the
property owners before they can drop the
mulch..they are thinking next spring. I'm
sure that is the time of the biggest concerns.

A bit of levity..yesterday was Russell's
75th birthday so I organized a party at the
schoolhouse in his honor. I was pleased that
30 or more people showed up. He was presented
with a birthday cake, balloons, a new wheelbarrow
and a number of gift cards. The shed he stored
his gardening tools was burned...he has to
start over on that front.

It was a fun party and Russell was really pleased,
teared up when we all sang the Happy Birthday
song to him.