Friday, August 15, 2008

Assessing the damage

At about 11.30 today we were telephoned to say that the energy division wanted to get into the house to assess the situation. They wanted Nick to be there too, so we all went into town. The road is still closed, so we parked close and Nick walked up the road to the police line. They let him through, and pretty soon he went in to the house with two officials. After some time Nick whistled down the road for me to come up. Meanwhile though, Harry had arrived on the scene, so I left the boys with him (we didn’t think it would be a good idea for them to be running around the house in its present condition – not for their psyche, just for safety!) and went in. We were told that we had 5 minutes. That wasn’t much time to gather clothing for the next few days, camera cable, all our pillows (we didn’t sleep well last night), toiletries, schoolbooks, toys, the rest of the freezer stuff (alas, there is fresh broccoli going bad in the fridge still which we forgot to bring), and for Nick to move his music equipment to a safe spot in his office, under the desk. We brought two suitcases and a few bags. No doubt we will still be able to get back into the house tomorrow, but for now at least we can set up camp in Steve and Maureen’s home. We had lunch at Sally’s, did a bit of shopping and then came back ‘home’. There is still a lot of disorganization in Jamestown as the main road running through town is closed, so to get from lower Jamestown to upper Jamestown, you have to go quite a way around on the mountain road, which is, as you can imagine, quite congested. We were nearly in a car accident as an oncoming Jeep was looking at the damage in the valley while driving, and only managed to correct at the last minute.

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