Neighbors helping neighbors

Sometimes there's nothing like trouble to bring a neighborhood together.

A little more than a week ago, 1 a.m.-ish or so, some sort of weather event roared through our east-side neighborhood. There was lightning, there was thunder, there was lots and lots of rain.

And there was wind. A microburst perhaps? Straight-line winds of incredible power? No one seems to know.

But it was wind. Destructive, incredible wind that tore whole trees from the ground and toppled light poles. Wind that flung those trees, or huge limbs and branches, hither and yon, against homes, on top of power and phone lines, atop poor unsuspecting automobiles, into streets. Wind that blew out the lights.

And that next Friday morning, the sun's light welcomed us to a whole lot of damage.

Frankly, with the power out my first concern was coffee. So off I set - after getting my husband to release the garage door (no power, remember) - for White Hen.

Beyond my immediate neighborhood was an absolutely ordinary world. No twigs in the street. Electricity. No big limbs leaning crazily against other trees, or homes, or on the ground.

Returning, I finally turned down the side street near my own house and saw the extent of the destruction, far worse than I'd realized earlier. There were trees and limbs down everywhere, and plenty of neighbors out dragging branches from wherever they weren't supposed to be to the curb. It was hard to get through but that gave me a chance to marvel at the huge tree that had landed across a driveway and front lawn.

It was a surreal day. I walked outside to survey the damage and immediately came across neighbor Bill Hogan taking pictures of his now uprooted parkway tree, the top of which was resting on his son's car. He wondered at the capriciousness of a wind that could tear the tree from the ground, yet leave his rickety mailbox unscathed.

I joined up with Linda LaPorte from across the street and Kathy Hogan from next door. We traded stories about hearing the wind. (I think I'm the only person in the whole neighborhood who did not hear its freight-train sound. And I am the biggest weather wuss of all time.) We asked each other if we knew when the power would come back on.

Soon we were joined by Larry Patrick, looking at the spruce tree that until a year or so ago he decorated in spectacular fashion for Christmas. "Well," he said, "I always said it was getting too hard to decorate." He relayed the story of the concrete bench - 150 to 200 pounds - in his backyard. "It's in the swimming pool," he said.

More conversation with more neighbors. We checked out Karen Ferraro's back yard, bare spots where trees used to be, trees now ... elsewhere. With a generator in place, she offered coffee. Since my White Hen supply was gone, I accepted gladly.

The wind blew through a several-block-square area, bordered roughly by Chalmers Street and Route 25, Route 38 and Sandholm Street. Some streets were hit far worse than others. For example, it was as though the wind skipped right over our house on its way to Sandholm Woods and Sandholm Street, where trees downed a power pole and power line, and others hit houses or blocked the street. Sandholm Woods park lived up to its name, with some of the woods now on the ground, not in the ground.

The damage on Chalmers Street was even more impressive, with a massive tree smack dab in the middle of the road.

And all through the area, neighbors were out and about, not only surveying the damage (cameras in hand), but also dragging tree limbs from backyards and wondering if damaged trees would survive or would need to be cut down. People worked together, as they do in times of trouble, to clean up yards and streets.

A friend loaned us a portable generator. We plugged in our refrigerator and deep freeze and gladly encouraged our neighbor to hook up his pump, too.

And despite the devastation, the landscape forever altered, despite the monetary damages many suffered, we all realized that day that it could have been so much worse. One young man was injured. He and friends were in a garage, heard the wind and headed for the home. A branch snapped off a tree, swung around and thankfully hit a car before striking the man in the head. He required stitches.

Overall, though, damage seemed to be for property only. A few houses were damaged, but all that all of us could say, over and over again, was what a miracle it was that no trees smashed down into homes, no one was seriously injured.

It was kind of a day out of time. People were everywhere - unusual for a weekday. Certainly I don't normally see all these people out and about.

And I guess that's the point. We were all out together, trading war tales, talking together and, in may cases, working together to deal with the havoc Mother Nature had wrought.

I also cannot praise the city of Geneva highly enough. (I know I'm biased, as my husband works for the city and was, by the way, out most of that Thursday night on emergency calls.) But our employees were out there in force, working to assess the damage, clear the streets, and get us up and illuminated once again. They were out in force all day and well into the evening; we didn't get power back until 8 or 8:30 that evening. What a bunch of pros.

What a great neighborhood - and town - we live in.