Riordan Family Relief & Rebuild

WHAT HAPPENED

Last Saturday on 1/13/24, our power went out at about 7:30pm, well after dark. Then a massive Doug fir tree landed right on the neighbors house cracking open their roof.

We decided to sleep on the ground floor with two floors above us.

Thank god we did.

A huge doug fir hit our house directly, splintering on the peak of the highest roofline and sending a thick branch all the way through the living room wood ceiling.

Then one came down and cut the deck in half. We decided to get outta there so we loaded my wife and my 6'4" 230lb teenage son plus a pitbull, a chihuaua, two brand new kittens and a tortoise into my truck and we slept in the local grocery store parking lot that night with temps dipping to 24 degrees.

Sunday, the town was shut down. No power or internet from Cottage Grove to Eugene. No gas stations, no traffic lights no nothing.

We went back to our neighborhood and it was a war zone. Couldn't even get up my road due to ice and fallen trees. I walked up the hill with widowmakers falling all around and saw the house was thrashed even more. My son’s car was flattened under our crushed carport.

After that we went north a bit to the only gas station operating for 40 miles in either direction.

We saw so many neighbors staying in their homes earlier and clearing the fallen trees from the road that day we decided to head home to see if we could "sleep" in the basement Monday night. Trying to pull into my driveway, luckily with my family out of the truck watching, I lost all traction on my steep road and slid sideways toward a steep drop that would have rolled my truck several times into a grove of trees below. I literally had to jump out, jamming the ebrake as I bailed, and it miraculously stopped itself right on the ledge. Then I had to get BACK IN AND PUNCH IT ALONG THAT LEDGE to squirrel my way up and into my neighbors driveway. We were stuck so we stayed in the basement again. It was terrifying. Trees exploding like train wrecks a hundred feet in the air, wondering where they will land.

Leaving on Monday was harrowing (slammed my truck into a downed tree) but we got about an hour south and into a Motel 6 full of… shall we say… questionable clientele.

Two nights there was too much. We went back to the house today - Wed 1/17 - and several more massive trees have fallen in our yard and into our house. You can see one leaning on the roof in the cover photo.

Freak/record ice storm that our region never gets wasn't supposed to get so far south. But it did.

My local tree guy quoted me $20k+ just for tree removal and cleanup. He is ready to order an excavator and a crane to get started.

We have homeowners and auto insurance but you know how they love to take your money in the good times and deny you exist in the bad times. Well, these are bad times for us.

I have never asked anyone for anything other than a paycheck for a job well done but we need help now.

Our entire state is wrecked. We will not have power or water running to our house for at least a week. Rain is coming through the damaged roof as I type. I don’t know when or even if we will be able to go home.

If you can help at all, it will be forever appreciated as I try to get my wife (a nurse) back to work, and my son back to school.

With love,

The Riordan Family