Arthur

Around 10:00 on Saturday (5 July), Security insisted the university close. As I left the SUB, I noticed a tree in the Quad uprooted and blown down. Once home, I actually started to download the new version of Kaspersky, a process that was interrupted at 11:08 when the power failed. Shortly after, I headed back into town with jerrycans to pick up gasoline. I took highway 8, but near Killarney Road Hill, I was stopped by water bursting out of the hillside and flooding the road. I crossed at Durham Bridge and tried again, fording some ominously flooded stretches until I was again forced to a stop: a great tangle of trees and power poles had fallen, and the lines were broken. I made my way back to Stanley, took the Royal Road in, gassed up at Costco (about a 15-minute wait), and started home once more. This time I made it most of the way down the Limekiln before running into a major barricade of fallen trees. Many had covered one lane of the road, but this was more extensive. One truck simply drove into the ditch the get around the trees, but it had to return shortly after, burning his way back up onto the road to report that there was another  blockade ahead, and another. I headed back south, hoping that highway 8 might be clear, but I came upon a road crew with a chainsaw, and so I followed them back, helping to drag boughs off the road. They got me close enough to take a run at it--over branches and and through someone's yard. At last I was home, and I brought out the generator. It ran surprisingly well, considering how long it had sat idle in the workshop. This was its first ever use--it didn't even have oil in it! On Saturday and Sunday, I just used extension cords to keep the fridges and the freezer going. On Monday, we made our way into town, and I tried to get a 220V twist-lock plug at Harris & Roome. They very kindly phoned down to Liteco on Carleton, and we hurried down to buy what turned out to be the very last such plug in Fredericton. I used Lucy's 12/2 welding line in reverse to run the well pump, and I ran a new line to run the hotwater heater. We continued to use extension cords for the two fridges and the freezer. The only problem was with the Noma cord reel's breaker, which popped several times when we plugged in battery chargers. The generator itself handled the load without complaint.

In the end, we had only three trees leaning badly, at least one of which will have to come down--the balsam fir. The maple on the west side of the driveway may eventually come down as well. I think the elm by the workshop may have to go also; it split at the main fork. 

Photos to follow.