Yes, we got hit very hard. I'm just 3 mi. north of Flat Rock. We got power last night at 6pm.
I started out on Fri. at 9am with sustained winds still around 20 mph. It took two hours to make the 7 mile trip into town knowing all the short cuts and back roads between here and there. Things finally slowed down slightly for me this morning. I don't have any more customers with trees on their house. Now the clean-up begins.
Never in my life have I seen so many uprooted White Oaks. Yep, White. I know of a particular WO just off 25S in Flat Rock that had a 5 ft. dbh. It was an enormous tree. I think the wind was just enough to shift the center of gravity so that the weight of the canopy pulled it down. The cottage it fell on is a total loss. A 20 ft. section that came from 50 ft. up the main stem weighed 12,600 lb.
I personally was involved with taking 34 trees (avg. of 20 in. dbh) off people's houses just on Fri., Sat., and half of Sun. I know of three other companies that took 126 off of houses between them in the last four days. Even the old timers don't recall a storm (winter or otherwise) that did as much damage as Ivan did here.
As far as storm chasers go, there's not gonna be much left to do after this week other than attending to leaners and clean-ups.
I've seen a little bit of gouging, but the overall damage doesn't seem to have been bad enough for people to lose their common sense. The biggest problem is the lack of cranes or their sudden increase in pricing. One company went from $100 to $150 overnight. Not to say that's gouging, but it's getting awfully close in my book.
TT
