Some pictures of the situation on Holbrook Road right outside our house. A large pine tree had fallen across the road and onto power lines, bringing them down, hitting a utility pole and putting enough tension on the other utility poles to make them lean significantly. That’s our mailbox you see in the foreground.

Here you can see the tree across the power lines.


A view across the largest fallen pine tree. In the background are a couple of smaller trees, which also fell but without hitting the power lines. At the top right of the picture there’s a utility pole leaning at about a 45 degree angle. This caused Holbrook Road to remain closed even after they’d removed the trees.


A Con Edison crew discusses what to do about the power lines. They had to remove the tree gently so that the power lines didn’t snap up and bring the other utility poles down. They managed to do this by gradually raising the tree while lopping off a little piece at a time. Little by little the power lines rose up again until they almost looked normal.


Once they had the tree off the wires it was very quickly removed. A huge chain saw cut it into four/five foot lengths then this machine picked each of the pieces up and dropped them into the back of a truck. Note the wires. You’d hardly think that a few minutes ago a large tree was lying across them.


Some of the debris being added to the truck.


Seemed like a good opportunity to take some portraits. This first one is a member of the team removing the tree.


Another member of the tree removing team.

So now the trees have been removed. Several teams have been down Holbrook Road stabiliziing/replacing utility poles and restringing wires. The situation now looks pretty normal. We can now go both ways on Holbrook Road. Unfortunately, a week after Sandy, we still don’t have power. Among other things a transformer has to be replaced and they’re apparently in short supply.

And another storm is on the way tomorrow……..