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Here's a view of our backyard, mostly untouched, by the storm. We had several large limbs fall -- one of which is visible just in front of the shed. I took this picture just before leaving for school.
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Our banana tree took a beating. It's still standing but look at the shredded banana leaves.
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Here's some of the debris in our driveway.
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This was my first surprise for the day. As I biked down from our house, there was a good bit of leaves on the ground, but it was still somewhat sporadic. As I started to climb out of our neighborhood on Teton Road, the amount of debris really started to increase.
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You can see a layer of pine straw here coating almost the entire road, even after probably 20-25 cars have driven over it!
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Here is a picture of even more debris further up Teton Road. This was a major theme for the day -- the higher the elevation, the larger the amount of debris and fallen trees!
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Part of this tree fell and was resting on a power line.
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This large tree fell on the house just visible to the left. I didn't get a very good picture of the tree resting on the house, but that was the only thing that was keeping it from falling all the way to the ground.
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Is the house for sale ... or the fallen tree???
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Here's the roots for the large pine fallen in the front yard of the house for sale.
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This large pine fell directly onto the house in this picture -- splitting from the impact with the house. This must have been a very well built house! And the homeowners are very lucky this tree didn't wind up in their living room.
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Here you can just see the head of someone who was up on the roof using a chainsaw to get this tree off the house.
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It's rare to find an empty lot in this old Vestavia neighborhood. You can see the gas light and driveway from the house that used to be there. I hope it wasn't Katrina that blew this house away!
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This large tree must have been blocking the road earlier in the day.
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Look how thick the grass was around this tree. The grass and dirt alone pulled up by this tree probably weighed at least 200-300 pounds. Imagine the force of the wind that knocked this over -- and yet the gust of wind was probably only half or less than half of the winds that hit the gulf coast.
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This was a smaller tree that was knocked over. I hope the homeowner's here take the time to replant this tree. I would think it could grow back if staked up properly.
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Here's a view off the top of Shades Mountain looking down at Samford University. Note the large limb that had fallen and was blocking a good part of the road. I was headed to school to participate in the Fall semester convocation ceremony.
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As I was taking pictures on the top of the mountain, it was so amazing to see how fast the clouds were moving. These dark clouds had me thinking twice about what I was doing.
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This is not so good a picture of the vulcan, but the clouds in this picture were moving very fast from west to east.
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This is a better picture of the Vulcan and downtown Birmingham barely visible through the gap in Red Mountain.
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This is the first picture from the area on my bike route that was hit hardest by the hurricane. This picture shows a tree that had cracked in half and was resting across the road. After biking under this tree as you will see in the next few pictures, I was in for a surprise!
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Here is a closeup of the tree that had split.
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Looking back up the road at the tree that was drooping across the road, you can see that another large tree had fallen too. It's roots are visible in the yard on the left. As I was taking this picture, I didn't realize that I was not actually standing in a very safe spot! Look at the next picture to see why.
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Immediately above me and to the right, this large tree was resting on several power/telephone lines. Note that the tree is not resting on the big thick cable lines, but rather the smaller lines just barely visible higher up. If the lines had snapped, part of the tree might have hit me ... and the loose wires also might have flung across the road in my direction.
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Here's another view of the large tree resting on the power lines.
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Here is a smaller tree cracked in half. This tree was located in a small, approximately two-block area where 10 to 15 trees had been blown over. What stood out to me about this tree is how shattered was the tall stump still left standing.
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At this intersection of Shades Crest Road and Smyre Road, there were four trees down. As you can see in the next picture, Vestavia Hills had people out their clearing roads very early in the morning.
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Here is the sign marking the intersection of Shades Crest Road and Smyre Road which heads down the mountain towards Samford on my bike route. Just visible in the distance is the cleanup crew that had cleared the area shown in the previous picture just a little bit earlier.
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This picture shows debris and remnants of a tree that had fallen down here at the top of Smyre Road as it starts down the mountain.
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Here is the tree that had fallen down (just visible in the last picture).
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This picture shows the mudslide from Hurricane Ivan (last September) that destroyed the road on which I was standing as I took this picture. This illustrates the huge difference between Katrina and Ivan. We got just under 9 inches of rain with Ivan, but only a little bit over 1 inch with Katrina.
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This picture shows my favorite section of Smyre Road covered in debris from the Hurricane. The tiny bit of red visible on the righthand side of this picture is someone's brake light as they braked for what is shown on the next picture.
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This was probably the most dangerous situation I encountered on my bike commute into work. This tree was resting on some power lines and blocking a good portion of the road. Also, this tree is down in between two blind corners with only an area of maybe 50 yards on either side from which this tree would be visible.
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These pictures were taken at about 4:30PM on my return trip home from Samford. Here you see that cars have made a driveway underneath this tree blocking the road.
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Note that the tree is still down on the power lines. This area on my bike commute route was without power for the longest -- some of the homes still didn't have power by Thursday.
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Here is the three-tree area in the afternoon.
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You can see the trees tangled up in the power lines here.
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Just on the other side of these trees, you can see some people who were there to work on the trees. I am not sure what happened though, as these trees were still here on Thursday, two days later!
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This is looking back up the road at the pine trees resting on the power lines shown in the next picture.
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A thick bunch of pine trees rested here on the power lines near Vestavia Hills Baptist Church.
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Hurricane Katrina left a mark here in Birmingham, but not nearly as intense a mark as what is (in)visible in the foreground of this picture showing beautiful Shades Valley. Here where the thick green grass is growing, I am told that a tornado in a previous storm blew down trees for about 50-100 yards laterally across the top of this ridge towards Vestavia Hills Baptist Church (not visible in this picture). I took this picture on my afternoon commute home. The Hurricane cleared out the air a bit and left this amazing view considering our typical hot, hazy, and humid summer days here in Alabama.
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Almost seventy-two hours after the hurricane came through, several places on my bike route were still without power. Here, three power trucks attempt to put back a tree downed by the storm.
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