The Trees Come Off

A crane removed the giant trees from the Hinkle's roof.


The crane was stuck in the hole that it made of the driveway. It took two semi wreckers pulling together and the extending of the crane's boom to distribute the weight to finally get unstuck.



Someone could've sold popcorn and hot dogs. Why didn't we think of that?




Cutting the tree while the crane lends help.



And.....falling into the hole.


The stump with its massive root ball plunking back where it was for about 100 years.



Just to give you some idea of how big that root ball was, check out the roots sticking up around the stump that fell back into the hole.



Going Up!


Big, big tree!
Can you believe they are saying this house isn't a total loss????

The Storm

Sometimes God saves you from the storms of life. Sometimes He takes you through them, out the other side, safely.
Our friends survived, praising God for the safety of their whole family after the storm that came through Wednesday evening.
Three enormous, Tulip Poplar trees were blown over, one flattening their home. The hallway were they were with their six children remained relatively undamaged.



It isn't known at this time whether the damage was due to straight line winds, or if a tornado touched down, but the Hinkle family felt their roof lift a little right before the largest of the trees fell and opened their ceiling to the down pouring of rain and some rather large hail.
(Now they are saying it was a microburst.)




There has been an outpouring of help from fellow homeschool families, church friends, neighbors and others. Jodie said she felt that an army had helped them clear what was salvageable from their home. She also mentioned the kindness of neighbors who lent their homes, and food to the family, and a police officer who stayed all night in their back yard the night looters tried to take what was left. Even Garrett Lewis, meteorologist for channel 5 KFSM gets some credit. When they heard him say he felt like the studio roof lifted a little, the family knew it was headed straight for them and hunkered down closer into their small space.