The last North American winter has been quite damaging. Dua, Wanee and Jeab's son were adversely affected. Photos around Dua's home may look beautiful but they hide no doubt a lot of damages.
With Wanee's assessment of damages to her home, Phongsak also share his experiences both in Darwin and more recently in Perth.
On 15 March 2010 00:31, A.J. Stuper
Dear friends,
I just want to update you about the damage of the worst winter storm we had. For me, the cost of having the snow removed is about 3 times the cost incurred in a regular season. We had 2 big trees fell down and had to be removed. Our gutters were damage because of the weight of the ice/snow. Yesterday a heavy rain storm hit us and another tree fell down. Because the gutters were leaking we got some water into the basement. No damage except we had to clean up the wet spots. We will need a new set of gutters or repair asap. Overall the winter storm will cost us over $5,000. The gas line to the outdoor Bar BQ was damage either by the weight of the ice or the water leaked in and froze. We were lucky that we closed this valve before we left home. We had the valve replaced and we will install another cut off valve indoor.
Overall we considered ourselves lucky that the damage was not too serious and fixable. Dua and Jeab how are you faring?
Cheers,
Wanee
Dear Wanee and other CP69 friends
I can share some similar experience of trees falling, not from snow, just from pure rainwater when we were living in Darwin. Down there we get cyclone threats every year. We did not have a cyclone actually passing through Darwin when we were there but we were told to board up windows a few times when a clyclone came very close.
Heavy rains with thunderstorms were normal in the wet season. We had a huge African mahogany in front of the house. One quiet morning after a heavy night rain, without any warning, it crashed down with thunder flatten the front fence, the gate, smaller trees and our Camry. A big branch fell across the top pf the car, flatten it. The car was a total write off. An expert said the tree fell because of the weight of rain water collected by the leaves which could have been a few extra tons.
Luckily no one was hurt although my mum-in-law was about to go out the door a few feet from the car. My wife became a celebrity having her photo with the scene in a local newspaper. We couldn't get out of the house for a few days until the tree was removed.
The tree loppers came with a big crane. They hoisted large sections of the tree up 20 meters in the sky across the road into a park in front of our house where they chopped the tree into smaller pieces before carting them away. It was an amazing sight to see a big tree hoisted up that high across the road. It cost over $3000 just to remove that one tree. The insurance covered most of the damages and market value of the car. We had to spend a lot more to get a new car and new landscaping.
Natural disasters seem to be around the corners these days. I don't know if they are related to global warming or the monster dam in China. We in Thailand are fortunate that after the tsunami we haven't faced the bad ones like those in Indonesia, Haiti and Chile. At present the dangers seem to be more from our people!
May lucks still be with us all.
Phongsak
