07/30/2024
Holy moly....
Missoula got a storm burst that left us with Category 2 Hurricane level of wind velocity last Wednesday. It was a quick one, but it packed a wallop. I've seen estimates of 12,000 people without power, and we're still getting the area back online. I personally saw around 12 roofs smashed by trees and 20+ cars smashed... and that was just from the random roads I've been down.
Thanks to all the crews that came in from neighboring communities/states to clear trees, restore power, and provide cleanup. And thanks to the national guard who showed up with drinking water and ice for folks to try and save their groceries. I saw neighbors helping each-other with power, clearing trees, helping with generators, food/water... it was heartwarming to see communities and fellow human beings pulling together. It was actually pretty damn impressive to see what a group of people could do when they were working together.
We just got power back Monday the 29th (and I can't tell you how nice that hot shower was). But there are plenty of folks who had it so much worse. Insurance companies are sticking it to people, not paying for tree-fall situations, arborists (as far as I can tell) gouging folks at $6K per tree removed... there are a lot of people taking out small loans or pulling from their HELOC loans to pay for it all, and it's F'ing depressing that we've let our systems become this callous when they literally couldn't be in business without us.
Missoula has been pretty sheltered from extreme weather events, but this has been an eye-opening insight to what so many of our fellow citizens are forced to deal with every year. And with warming trends making more frequent and more extreme events, we're going to be in for an interesting trajectory if we can't get our national/corporate systems to be more inline with our local networks.
