Thursday, June 18, 2026
The first morning we were able to get a better look at the damage. We were also able to start contacting people for repairs and cleanup. Power was still out as we found out that most poles were down and even the high tension wires a hundred yards north of our house had lost several of the large metal towers. It didn’t look like power would be on anytime soon.
I contacted my friend who is a PA (Public Adjuster) to get the ball rolling with State Farm, which he did. I filed a claim to get things going and he took off running with it. Since there were no trees on the house (the one that hit the garage broke as it hit and fell off), the main task was to tarp the hole in the roof and the tree damage on the other end of the house that had damaged the bottom of a roof valley. Spencer (the PA) got a local roofing crew over right away and they placed the tarps. With that, we were at least safe from any further water damage and could hold out for the rest of it.
One of the first priorities was to clear the driveway of debris so that we could get in and out, so we did that and at least made it passable.
Since we had been through this before, we knew that things take a while and that patience is a virtue you must possess if you want to get through it.
Spencer told me to list everything we lost (personal property) and gave me a spreadsheet to use. Of course, I didn’t want to do it on my phone, so I figured I’d wait until the power came back on and do it on my desktop computer. We weren’t aware how long it would take to get power, so we left two fridges and a freezer closed, hoping it would come back on before all the food spoiled.
Later in the evening, we decided to toss all perishable food, as trash pickup was the next morning. Still no power, so working by flashlight.
About this time, we needed to charge my battery backups so that we could get through the night and also charge up our phones, so I took the big one over to someone’s house and charged it back up (it’s an EcoFlow that will charge fully in an hour on turbo mode). Now we were good for another night. Fortunately, the weather was cool, so the temps in the house were okay for sleeping. Forecasts were for rising temps in the next couple of days, though.
One more day down, and hoping for a better day on Friday.