T H A T was  hurricane HELENE.  It arrived slightly later than predicted because we all got to sleep through Thursday night.  However, very early Friday morning, September 27 we all awakened to a great deal of “activity” going on outside.  We gathered our “puppy” Pancho in the office with us, we knew that the cats were safe in the “Vault” (future wine room in the basement and our true hurricane shelter) and we watched the storm play out.

With coffee in hand and the pup quite comfortable in the cats' office beds, (the cats were not happy about that afterwards) we rode out the morning.  The storm was coming from the other side of the house, so we were secure in our windowed room, and we got a “birds eye view” of the event.  As the tall pines swayed hazardously back and forth we kept wondering just how long they could tolerate that type of abuse.  Well, then it happened.  One pine exploded from the ground and started it's fall down the ravine, collecting first one, then two, then three and finally four and five trees on it's way down.  

That was early in the day, and we witnessed many more cascades like that all morning.  At one point we experienced a large BUMP on the house, and yes we had a huge pine land on one of the upper porches, thankfully gently.

By Friday afternoon the worst had passed and we went out to “survey the damage”.  But we couldn't go far.   There was as solid wall of fallen trees criss crossing our driveway.  We tried climbing the hill parallel to the drive and encountered the same thing.  Going the other way down the ravine was NOT an option.  We were TOTALLY blocked in with downed trees.  Out came our two chain saws and we started our search for our driveway, which we literally could not see.

Amazingly we heard chain saws in the distance and thought that the power company had started to clear our road.  Yeah!

We quit late afternoon on Friday as did the sound of other chainsaws.  Next morning we were out there early and so were they!  I heard a woman's voice and remarked “They've got a female on that crew”.  Then by noon we heard them coming down our road and driveway.  By then my assumption had changed from a power company crew on Roy F. Jones Highway to the Vineyards Road Committee Crew in Eastatoe Parkway. 

Meanwhile we had managed with our two chainsaws to clear a meager 5 trees going up the driveway.  Little did we know that there were 30 more to go.  We simply could not see past the next tree.

The finale  to this story is how relieved and grateful we felt when we saw the first person emerge through the solid jungle of downed pine and oak early that afternoon.  That was the face of O.K. Colson who had managed to climb thru and over the remaining downed trees and debris between us and the approaching crew to see if we were alright.  Then came the chainsaws with Dave Sargent and Kyle Lawler, Stephen  Kelke and his son Stephan plus Steffan Burns, Bob Stangroom and Pat Anderson followed by the debris pitching crew of  Paula Nesbit, (the voice of the “woman on the crew”) along with Warren Nesbitt, Dick Bollman, and Pat Anderson's high powered blower and we found our driveway again!!!

But wait, this isn't the Vineyards Road Committee.  These are all Eastatoe Park residents.......our neighbors.  Their goal was to clear the road and the driveways so everyone could get out in an emergency.  They began on Friday afternoon with three chainsaws at the far end of Easatoe Parkway and as each driveway was cleared that resident added another chainsaw to the crew.

The bottom line here is in two days they removed about 75 trees throughout the Eastatoe Park neighborhood including 35 on our drive alone.  It took 80 man hours to get us open enough to get a car out in case of an emergency, and that was done by the super neighbors on Eastatoe Parkway.  This community was nicknamed “The Highlanders” more than 10 years ago by Kin Heyward and we have been a close group ever since.  Dave Sargent called the exhausted Helene cleanup team “The Eastatoe Park Posse.”   Regardless of the name, they are wonderful neighbors who have always worked together to help each other.  And this is just one of the reasons we love living in the Vineyards.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.