Obdachlos

Obdachlos is my German word for the day. It is used to mean "homeless", but literally it means something like "without a roof." "The roof" ist "das Dach" auf Deutsch. After a brief storm yesterday many of my neighbors are now obdachlos.


I was back at the apartment Friday night eating some soup and bread in the living/dining room. Clouds had come in and quickly made the sky darker. At one point it started raining heavily and got very windy. I glanced outside and the lake was white from the wind blowing over it. Whiter than I had ever seen it. I realized I had left the door to the balcony open and went to go close it so the rain wouldn't blow in. As I walked down the hallway I could hear the wind, which was already very strong, suddenly increase blowing around the building and whistling very loudly. It seemed like every edge, pipe and corner in the building was making noise. I got to the balcony door and had to push it closed against the wind with rain blowing in all over me; I got soaked in seconds. As soon as the door was closed I saw the roof of the building opposite me lift up into the air, like someone opening the lid on a box, it was a huge black shape through the rain and seemed impossibly tall on its side like it had doubled the height of the building, then it suddenly dropped straight down into the street in front of me. It looked just like one of the commercials for the weather channel except this was real and right in front of me. Being from the US, the first thing that entered my mind was "tornado" and that my apartment, which is the top floor and built in the roof of our building, was next. I ran down the stairwell into the basement of the building only slowing to grab my keys and the phone on the way out. I didn't even have shoes or a coat on. I waited in the basement and called V in the US. She happened to be at her mother's house when I called and I must have sounded nuts telling her the roof had just come off the building next to us. The wind quickly died down and I went outside to see if anyone was hurt. Some other people were looking out as well and I got some stares in my soaking wet, barefoot, t-shirt ensemble holding a phone and keys in my hands. (I was careful not to step on nails sticking up from debris.) Fortunately there were no yells for help or anything obvious, but the roof spanned the entire road, a car was under it, but it didn't look like any people were. I looked down the road and a tree had fallen across the road a few blocks down in the other direction. I went back up into the apartment and a pool of water was in the floor in front of the balcony. Then the sirens came and police and firemen were working their way down the road clearing the trees and got to the roof. They set up a lift and work lights and cut the pieces of the roof off that were still hanging, and started working through the street with chainsaws clearing sections of the roof out of the way. They used a different chainsaw for cutting though the roof and had a hard time getting it started. It looked like the chain was covered except for the very end. Sparks kept flying up as they hit nails and metal while cutting. The lights and chainsaws were going late into the night.

The next morning the road was clear, but everything smelled like roofing tar. They put a tarp up over the building's missing roof section. I walked to town and couldn't see any other areas that were affected. It seemed to be just localized to our road. People were walking by and acted surprised when they got to the destruction. Craning their heads and looking around to try to see what had happened. The land-line phone for the apartment wasn't working today, the line might have been disrupted by the clearing work, but the power was still on.

I grabbed my camera to snap some photos. The card was full so I had to delete some spring wildflower pictures to make room (I'll catch them again next spring.)


First Photo


The mailbox survived! It punched a hole through the roof.


It's a good thing we don't have a car yet, or it would have been parked out here.