Well, Hurricane Irene showed her wrath and took the building down! Unfortunately Cody had to work the day the hurricane came through, so I was here by myself. To be honest, I really wasn't worried that anything was going to happen...maybe I was a little naive. I had just looked out our back door at the flooding that was taking place in our back yard, and the building looked fine. (There is a drainage area in our back yard, so we get the run-off from the houses up and down our street, which usually creates a little river at the edge of our back yard anytime it rains pretty hard.)
About 15 minutes later, I looked outside again, and the doors to the storage building had come open from the strong wind. The building was looking a little unsteady due to the wind flow that was now allowed to come inside the building. The rain was blowing inside too, so naturally I was worried about all of our stuff we had stored in there. I started to panic a little, so I paged Cody to see what I needed to do. Naturally, he said not to worry about it and that I should stay inside and stay safe. But my pregnancy hormones must have kicked in, because I all but lost it! I couldn't stand to see Cody's building get destroyed, and I knew we had lots of things in storage that could potentially get messed up in the rain. Meanwhile, Cody is trying his best to calm me down. About that time, our neighbor had noticed the doors on our building, and he was walking over to tie them shut. (I'm not really sure what good that would have done, considering Cody had them locked before the wind blew them open.) However, he was just a little too late--the doors ended up blowing off the building, leaving the building even more unsteady than before. He brought the cornhole game inside for me, since I seemed to be most worried about it (once again, pregnancy hormones going crazy!), and then he and another neighbor attempted to tie the roof of the building to our tree to keep it from blowing away completely. No sooner than they had it tied down, a piece of the roof came off, then a wall, and then it pretty much just fell completely apart. Oh, it was so sad! I felt so bad for Cody!
Pictures of the building during Hurricane Irene (sorry about the fuzziness; I couldn't get them any clearer because of the pouring rain):
Right after our neighbor tied it down (notice the rope stretching to the tree and the part of the roof that has already come off)
The building blowing away
Cody and his building the day after Hurricane Irene:
Our damage does not meet our deductible for our homeowners insurance, so a new building will unfortunately not be paid for by our insurance. However, we are both so thankful that it was just our building....not our house....not us! We are also reminded in times like this how lucky we are to have such good neighbors who are willing to help no matter what, even if that means standing in hurricane with pouring rain and 60+ mph winds!
