Back yard.
Staircase.
Here are some pictures of the rental house. I had better get used to it, apparently. I found some damage at the house yesterday that really set me back on my heels. I was all prepared to move in early next week. The guys were taking the old insulation out of the attic and vacuuming, getting ready to put in the new insulation. I insisted on going up there myself to make sure it was clean enough. I want *all* the dust out of there, as long as we are going to all this trouble. They called me and said it was time. I climbed up the ladder and hoisted myself into the attic. Balancing on the rafter beams, I crab-walked over to an open space and wiped my hand over the dry-wall/ceiling. It was still dirty. The guys were using a shop vac, but it wasn't doing a great job. As I inched my way back to the opening, I noticed that a crossbeam right in front of my face was cracked in the middle, near a knothole. I thought, hmmm, that's odd. I pointed it out to the guys. Then we started looking around at the beams, and found that there were 4 truss beams in a row, snapped in the middle, and bowed out to the side. Strange, almost as if a giant had stepped on the roof and squashed the house. There may be more broken trusses. I didn't even look at any other areas of the attic. I called the insurance agent; I was lucky he answered his phone at 5pm on New Year's Eve. He told me that our contractor needed to get an engineer up there to see what was going on. So I left a message for my contractor. He is taking the weekend off.
My theory is that the helicopter water drops caused this damage. After the fire, the neighbor said that there were 3 water drops directly onto our house.
Later I spoke to a fire captain who told me that helicopter water drops were dangerous, and that they needed to be careful not to drop them onto houses with people in them, because folks can get hurt. I did a search online and found that the helicopters carry 700 to 2000 gallons, so at the very least, that is 2.5 tons of weight being dropped onto the roof from a height.
I'm bummed. I was all set to move back in. Now I have a house with no insulation; I had to turn the heat off again. I have to call the mattress company to tell them to delay delivery again. I have to call ServPro to tell them not to bother coming out to clean the attic now. And I have to gear up for more weeks in a rental house with no good internet connection. I'm regretting not signing up for the cable internet. Blah.
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