Storm Damage In Tampa

Many areas are crawling out from under a HUGE mess from Frances. I hear from my good friend Rick McDaniel (Chef Rick) up in Asheville that they have been hit hard. He was without power and water for a number of days last week, and a good deal of the town of was flooded to some degree or another. I don’t believe anyone up there expected this sort of event, so they were all largely unprepared. My Mom said they got some wind and lots of rain, but she only had a little debris down in the yard, and no really huge limbs.

As I have previously noted, we had a lot of yard debris around, and there were a number of trees and lots of limbs that came down. My street is piled high on both sides with yard waste. I had bagged 23 bags of stuff, so mine was removed yesterday, and I’d previously paid a tree removal service working in the neighbor’s yard to haul away my larger limbs.

Here are a couple of pictures of probably the worse damage I’ve seen in our neighborhood. This is just about two blocks from the house. That was a motor home, and a lot of the branches have already been trimmed back. The pictures just don’t really do justice to the amount of "mess" these poor people have to deal with.

Yes, that is two trees you see down. Its hard to make out, but to the left a big oak was uprooted. On the right another big oak snapped about six feet up.

There is some very serious flooding along most every river in the area. People are reporting water higher than its been in over 20 years. Most of the flooded rivers crested Thursday or Friday, but more rain is on the way with Ivan.

Below is a picture of Bayshore Blvd. looking north towards downtown shortly after Frances. I was too late to get it, but that entire north bound lane was under water at one point, and near downtown, both lanes were completely submerged. The news showed a clip of two guys riding Sea Doos on Bayshore.