Is it "fall" yet?

If a tree falls on your house and you’re not home at the time, do you still have to pay your deductible?

Saturday afternoon, yesterday, Kathy asked, “Do you want to go to church tonight or should we go in the morning?” “Let’s go tonight!” I said, “That way we can get out to your sister’s house for swimming in the morning.”

So off we went to 4:30 Mass. At about 5 o’clock the sky looked black and scary and it started to pour. It was still raining when we left the building at 5:30, and people were getting soaked running to their cars. We drove the few blocks back to our house and noticed some small tree branches in the streets and saw that our neighbor’s flag had been torn from his front porch.

As we pulled into our driveway, we were shocked to see the big maple from our neighbor’s backyard stretched across our back porch, blocking the garage. The big old tree had snapped at its base and crashed into the porch roof, splintering the frame and crushing the gutters. The top came to rest on the roof of the back room. Live electrical wires were splayed around the backyard. Miraculously, the phones still worked since the line hadn’t snapped, but was straining under the weight of the trunk.

The series of phone calls started then, as I got on the cell to the insurance company and Kathy used the kitchen wall phone to spread the word of our disaster to her sisters. I called the electric company and there began a comedy of errors.

Various utility workers made six trips to the house beginning last night. Some came to look, some came to restore power, and still others came to fix what the others had already fixed. Each crew disparaged the work of the previous group, saying things like, “They never should have left hot wires lying in the grass like that” and “They never should have run wires over your garage like that.” Really quite confidence inspiring. These visits were made at 10:30pm, 11:00pm, 4:00am, 1:00pm the next day, 1:30pm and finally at about 5:00pm today. Evidently we reached the top of the pyramid, since the last crew set us up properly and told us to call once the tree had been removed.

So who takes care of that? A call to the electric company and we were told, don’t worry about it—we’re working with the tree companies. One crew said no, it’s your problem. Another call to the company office, and sure enough, the first person was wrong and we were the ones who had to arrange removal.

I called seven tree companies and only one answered the phone today—not surprising since other towns were also hit hard by the weather. So the guy who picked up the phone got the job. He should be here tomorrow (Monday).

So of course, if we had decided to go to church on Sunday morning, we would have been home when the tree fell onto the house, the car would have been in the garage and hopelessly blocked in, and most importantly of all, Kathy would have been forever traumatized, her worst fears realized.