Hurricane Irma Aftermath · · PAGE 47.

September 11, 2017:  The initial walk around photos after the storm continue on this page.   All the smaller dead limbs seen here came down from the big oak tree near the southwest corner of the lot.  I am standing on the sidewalk adjacent to the speed limit sign and looking EAST in this image below.  The bottle brush tree survived with no apparent damage.  Like the leaning tower of Pisa, the tree is still there as seen beyond the lamp post that is also leaning.

The curb gutters on the street were filled on both sides with smaller debris piles that were moved toward the storm drains by the rain water.

The tree philodendrons at the front of the house did not fare as well as those at the rear of the lot.  The wind was blowing from the EAST as you can see all these plants are now leaning way over to the WEST.  I hoped these plants would straighten up in a few days, but that did not happen and they were pruned as needed later.

The sidewalk that goes to the front door did not get any real amount of fallen debris out front.

Behind the hedge in front of the living room is a different story.  We heard this limb come down with no damage to the gutter.  I pulled this limb out to the sidewalk and used my pruning shear to take off the little limbs when it went on the pile near the speed limit sign.

Here is the debris on and close to the patio area behind the Florida room.

The largest of the tree trunks that fell near the northeast corner of the house shows signs of a smaller limbs being broken off during the fall.

This is the pointy end of the large tree trunk which hit the ground first to make a divot in the ground several inches deep.  After the chain saw cut this thing down to manageable pieces, we could get a better idea of how it broke up when landing.

This is the other end of the big tree trunk that is about three feet from the corner of the house.  I was standing by the bedroom window looking north to take this photo.  You can see this part of the limb in the second image above this one.  It is close to the downspout from the gutter.

The limb of interest centered in this image is just north of the big tree trunk featured in the images above.  This limb may have been torn down by the big tree trunk on the left side of the photo.

Here is the heavy end of the tree limb from the image above.  There is no DIVOT in the ground telling me this limb landed flat, not on the exposed end seen here.

These next two images of smaller limbs fell near the big tree about 20 feet north of the northeast corner of the house.

This is part of the big tree trunk near the corner of the house.

This is the same trunk seen above but looking south and at a wide angle.

My aluminum extension ladder was stored close to the house and was not hit by the falling tree trunk.

This is the last photo taken at 9:29 AM before the chain saw started cutting up this monster tree trunk and its smaller neighbors.  Electric service was restored before lunch time.  The windows and doors were closed and the air conditioner resumed its normal temperature settings.

This image taken at 6:52 PM shows how much closer to the ground the main tree trunk is now along with some missing side limbs that are laying around it on the ground.  The windows are all closed again as you can see here.

This last image from today is looking from the south side of the tree trunk about two minutes after the image seen above.

September 15, 2017:  Much of the tree is piled on the ground adjacent to the access road.  The other storm debris is piled on the grass between the sidewalk from the speed limit sign about 30 feet toward the mail box.  We got extra help from our lawn care guy who brought his family to make the work go quickly.  That pile out front eventually grew to be about FOUR feet high as the pile seen in this photo below was moved to the front street after I learned the recovery trucks would only pick up on the street in front of the house.