Neighborhood bands together in storm cleanup
Published 10:59 pm Monday, June 21, 2010
By AARON MUELLER
Niles Daily Star
Niles resident Bob Baird is pictured here, where last weekend's storm left significant damage to his home.
Marlynne Bonne was relaxing in a chair next to the front window of her house when the black clouds rolled in Friday night.
Moment later, she heard a crack above her head that caused her to leap out of her chair and run across the room.
“I won’t tell you what I yelled,” she said.
She soon discovered that a tree limb had crashed into her roof, causing some minor damage. WNDU reported wind gusts of 68 to 90 miles per hour in Michiana that night.
Her neighbor, Bob Baird, pulled into his driveway just in time to see a large tree in his yard collapse into the road, completely blocking traffic on Ironwood Drive.
“It wasn’t scary because it fell away from us,” Baird said. “It was kind of cool to see.”
What wasn’t cool was the obstruction in the middle of the road.
But before the rain even came to an end, Baird and several of his neighbors were out on the street with chain saws clearing the way.
The neighbors also banded together to remove the tree limb from Bonne’s home and put a temporary patch on her roof.
“You can hardly tell anything happened here,” Baird said, pointing to Bonne’s home. “It just says something about the quality of people in our neighborhood and in Niles.”
Bonne’s neighbors came over to her house again the next day to remove brush and fallen limbs from around her house.
“I just thank God for my neighbors,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done without them.”
Bonne, Baird and their entire neighborhood was still without power at press time.
As of 4:15 p.m. on Monday, Indiana Michigan Power reported restoring power to more than 80 percent of its customers who had lost service due to the storm. I&M is still working to restore power to about 17,400 customers throughout Michiana. The company hopes to have full restoration of power by 8 p.m. Wednesday.
An estimated 80,000 customers in southwest Michigan and northwest Indiana experienced power interruptions during Friday’s storm, I&M also reported.
More wet weather and storms could be on the way this week, according to the National Weather Service. Heavy showers and thunderstorms are likely during the day Tuesday with a 50 percent chance of more showers and thunderstorms in the evening.
