Declared a Disaster Area

Stardate 010408

McKuster Rental Properties, LLC

The winds came in from the southeast last Friday morning, right down the Walla Walla River hitting McKuster Ranch, and moving on through Milton-Freewater, College Place, and Walla Walla, WA. By mid-day most of our world was without power, water, was somewhat blown apart by winds, and there was overall darkness throughout the night. Darkness after sunset is not a bad thing, when living in the country. No glaring night lights, wonderful outdoor stillness and quite, indoors living by a warm crackling fire in NE Oregon.

One of the stories posted that day in the Walla Walla U-B newspaper read "The wind started at about 8 a.m. at about 30 mph, initiating a high wind warning, and reached 78 mph at the airport at about 10 a.m." said weather service spokesman Robert Cramp. About 10 a.m. is when the power went out and no one knows what the wind speeds were after that.

Most of the pictures out of Walla Walla looked like a garbage truck had blown over on the way to the dump, and trash was everywhere. There was also fallen tree/limb damage there. In Milton-Freewater we really got hit hard, roofing laying everywhere and we were without power most of Friday and Saturday.


Here at the ranch, Friday we watched some of the barn sheet metal roofing blow off, and most of our fencing electric hot tape was blown apart, probably lost a couple dozen shingles from the ranch house roof, blew the astro-turf carpet from the front and back steps, but not a lot of real structural damage to house or barn. The horses were not happy with that much wind on them. Our temperatures were in the low 40's this day, so this weather wasn't painful, mostly annoying.














Saturday morning we were having our morning eggnog lattes, planning our day's work when our dear friend Miriam called and told us that we were officially in a "disaster area". She had heard on the news broadcast in western WA that Milton-Freewater (she knows where that is) and Umatilla County were nearly blown away the day before.

Unable to fire up our stove for breakfast, we fed the horses, headed to town for our breakfast, and check on our rental units. In town we did have a tree fall on one of our rental units, that resulted in roof damage (the above pic).

Before, during and yes after breakfast, Kittee and I went to our local farm supply PGG store and bought fencing repair "stuff". After returning home we spent the rest of the day working on electric fence repairs until dark. Fortunately our Honda gas generator kept power to the refrigerators, freezer, microwave oven, and well pump. After darkness, sitting by the fire we were quite snug, cooking our camp sausages for dinner... when the power came back on. Well this meant that not only were we living in a disaster area, but now we would be able to watch a James Bond 007 VHS video in the comforts of home. This is not a bad thing for a January '08 night. Feel kinda bad about those folks in town that have had their homes and vehicles smashed.























Sunday we had our usual horseback riding plans called off as we ended up spending the entire day pulling down damaged hot tape fencing, and reinstalling 4000' of TurboEquiBraid electric rope for the top strand of most our horse pasture fencing. Hopefully this stuff will not succumb to the winds as we have found the hot tape doing over the past few years.

Now it is time to call the insurance companies, pull out the chainsaw and finish cleaning up the mess the winds blew apart last weekend.

All is well at McKuster Ranch, Happy New Year --- Dale