Fayte gives Daddy the high heat
Though her favorite catcher is Otis
Update 4/18: We're still powerless. We got the trees cut up and moved, fixed the brick and had the roofer come out and patch up the hole just in time because we received more severe weather and hail last night. Insurance has been giving us the runaround and we had to cut our losses and fire our electrician this morning because he has been ignoring our calls and downright unresponsive this week. Luckily, we've got another one who is ready to work this weekend at the fraction of the cost. Don't go with McBride Electric in Dallas! After he completes work, a city inspector has to come out before we can schedule the infamous Oncor to come out and hook us up again; not to mention the fact that we still have to fight for money with our insurance company and replace our entire roof. It's been tough being at the mercy of others who don't care about the well-being of a pregnant woman and her 2 year old, but that's the way things go sometime. We are happy however, about the support we have been offered. A fellow teacher even offered to start a fund for us, though we could never accept it. Fayte's been a trooper through all of this as well and she understands what's happened. Ask her and she'll say "That stupid storm messed up my TV!" Guess there's some silver lining to this after all.
----
The media's caught on to our plight and we are happy that our side of the story is being told. Here's a story printed in today's Dallas Morning News:
Homes still without electricity because of Dallas-Fort Worth area storms
05:24 PM CDT on Sunday, April 13, 2008
Desiree Le is feeling powerless.
Her family has been without electricity since Thursday morning's storms, when a tree fell on their northwest Dallas house, damaging the roof and an exterior wall and leaving a live electrical wire on the ground.
"It's one thing to be without power," Ms. Le said Sunday afternoon. "It's another to have a live wire down."
While Oncor was working Sunday to restore power to the last 150 homes affected by the storms, the Le family could hold the distinction of being the last to get their electricity turned back on.
Here's why:
Ms. Le said a repair crew came out Saturday and turned off power to the downed line in the back yard. But the crew said it couldn't restore power to the house until the Les had an electrician replace a damaged electrical box.
An electrician can't replace the box until a contractor repairs damage to the wall and patches a hole in the roof, which is temporarily covered with plastic.
And, finally, before any repairs can begin, an insurance adjuster has to inspect the damage, and Ms. Le, who is five months' pregnant, said she doesn't know when that will happen.
Megan Wright, a spokeswoman for Oncor, said the downed wire is a service line that carries electricity into the house.
"It is the homeowner's responsibility. The crews can't restore service until those repairs are taken care of," she said.
Ms. Le, a middle school history teacher in the Dallas school district, said she, her husband, Khoa, and their 2-year-old daughter have lived in the house about a month.
They moved to Dallas from Austin, where she thinks the weather is milder.
"This is our first natural disaster," she said.
Since Thursday morning, the Les have eaten way too much takeout, burned a lot of candles and kept coolers stocked with ice.
"It's like camping out in your own home," Ms. Le said.
Living without all the creature comforts has made her realize that people take electricity for granted.
"Even when my daughter just wants juice or milk, we have to run out and buy these little juice boxes," she said.
In the meantime, Ms. Le is hoping creatures don't find comfort in her home.
"I'm really hoping a squirrel doesn't try to get in," she said.
Ms. Wright said Sunday that of the 150 homes that remained without electricity, most were in the mid-cities and Fort Worth.
She said repair crews expected to have all service restored by the end of the day Sunday.
"We had about 250,000 outages at the peak early Thursday morning," Ms. Wright said.
No out-of-state crews were called in, Ms. Wright said, but Oncor had about 4,500 employees and contractors working in the aftermath of the storm.
No comments:
Post a Comment