At 9pm last night, Alex and I were sitting on the couch, having just finished watching Alex’s friend Megan try to outrun the sun.

I was telling Alex that planned to clean some leaves off our road in the morning when we heard the sound, the familiar sound, of a tree falling down. Alex instinctively leant over to protect me as the tree fell.

It didn’t hit the house.

We rushed outside. Alex could see a small fire burning at the bottom of the yard near George’s place. I put some clothes on and ran down to see if George was OK. He was, but our power lines weren’t.

One of our big oak trees, that the power company had tagged back in September, had fallen over the road, taking out the power lines.

The fire was caused by the high voltage wires, which had been ripped off the power pole, arcing against another oak tree by the trampoline.

Alex called the fire dept and they turned up pretty quickly. They couldn’t do anything until the power company arrived an later and cut the lines. By then the fire was out.

This morning our neighbour, Mike, who owns a truck and has a big chainsaw, commenced clearing. As a fellow chainsaw owner, I, and my adventurous assistant Sienna went down to help. It was a big community effort to clear the road. The downed tree was at least 20 m tall with about a metre diameter.

To give him his due, Mike did most of the work, with awkward encouragement from the nerds, chefs, and artists who make up the rest of this lane.

The Lane is clear to drive at this moment. The power company is here now, and with at least two spilt power poles, they may be here for a while.