FLORIDA -- While most of Hurricane Sandy's damage Monday came in the form of downed trees falling into electrical wires or blocking roads, one Florida resident lost her car to the storm.
"I heard a crack, a boom and a bash," Kathy Keeser, of Florida, said Tuesday.
The noise she heard from inside her home, just before 5:30 p.m. on Monday, was that of a 70-foot-tall spruce being uprooted by high winds, cracking and smashing into her red 2006 Subaru. The tree struck the roof, pushing it down into the passenger side seat, and shattered the front windshield.
"It was a healthy tree. It's not like it was dead," she said. "When I came home last night, I tried to figure out the best place to park. I didn't want to park too far into the driveway, because it got washed out during Irene. I looked at all the trees in my yard -- this was the one I wasn't worried about. The ground must have been just wet enough for it to uproot."
Even though she just finished paying off the loan on the car last week, Keeser says it could have been worse.
"The tree could have hit the house. It could have hit me and my dog," she said. "I was getting ready to walk over to my neighbor's house. I was prepared for my electricity and heat to go off, but not this. It just tells you that you don't know what to prepare for."
Keeser said she filed a claim with her insurance company right away and expects the car to be totaled.
Florida Town
"We had a couple of downed trees and a few lines go down. Our power went on and off in the early afternoon," she said. "It wasn't as bad as Irene was. It wasn't as bad as the ice storm."
Residents of Moores, Monroe, Central Shaft and Savoy roads were still without power Tuesday afternoon, as crews from National Grid replaced poles that had snapped in half.
As of 1:30 p.m., National Grid listed a total of 4,219 customers in Berkshire County without power. Of the 784 customers without power in North County, 13 were listed in Florida. The company also listed 379 in Hancock, 131 in Cheshire, 104 in North Adams, 76 in Williamstown, 75 in Clarksburg and six in Adams as still being without power.
A spokeswoman from National Grid said the company hoped to have power restored by the end of Tuesday.
"We have crews working simultaneously to assess the damage -- which is a lengthy and widespread problem -- and then pinpoint and repair it," she said. "We have until [Wednesday] to restore power around the state. That's a worst-case scenario."
Dobbert said that while the town did not declare a state of emergency Monday, she will attempt to have one declared post-storm.
"We're hoping to have it go back to Friday, so we can be reimbursed for all the pre-storm prep," she said. "We had crews out setting up and testing generators. We also installed a generator at [Gabriel Abbot Memorial School] over the weekend and put out cement blocks along the culverts. We wanted to make sure that if the water came up over the culverts again, as it did during Irene, that our roads wouldn't be damaged."
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