So There I Was....

So there I was was, minding my own business. Next thing I know, State Rep. Ron Wyden is in the checkout lane right next to mine. Somewhere in the store is another senator shopping around. I guess it was a snack run in the middle of touring areas hardest hit by the triple play storms we got hit by last weekend. The hardest hit areas around here finally got power back yesterday after no power for many areas on the coast for a week. We were lucky here, no damage to the house, only small outages lasting less than a few hours and the river stayed back from the house by a foot or two. Our neighbors were not so lucky. They lost parts of their roofs, many trees on their property and a set of hearing aids. Several towns in our county lost power, had sever wind damage and flooding damage from the rising rivers. By last Tuesday, all there was in town was our store being open and tons of mud and muck to clean up. But we were all blessed. No storm related deaths or sever injuries. In one town over the mountain they are cleaning up everything and even knocking down some of the buildings. The whole town had to be evacuated, everything was destroyed. At last count there was over 14 tons of damaged items to be disposed of. It is all piled up at a central location in town.

So here is my question......Why are politicians touring our town when so many other places are so much more worse off than we were? The news was reporting how our town so bad off, not so true. Many outlining communities were out of power for anywhere from 2 to 7 days, but we all pulled through it. Many of the mud packed areas were cleaned up by Wednesday. There are a few small towns close by that did have pretty bad wind damage and several families have lost crops, but we will pull through it, just like the flooding last year or in 1996. So all is well here. There are places out there much worse off, but here...we are okay.