Oak Lawn IL Real Estate News

I am trying to catch up after cleaning up the bad damage my house suffered from Monday’s vicious storm.  Part of our roof blew off which caused it to actually “rain” in 3 of our rooms.  Lots of damage and I’m surprised more wasn’t written about it although I might have missed it since trying to save my home.

I heard it hit parts of Oak Lawn, Hickory Hills and Bridgeview hard.  We had a huge tree limb (the size of many trees), fall almost right in front of our back door and spanning our entire deck width & into our yard.  I originally thought the tree had fallen on our roof and caused the damage but my husband said the wind blew part of the roof off.  Of course, we had many large & small tree limbs all over as we have lots of huge old trees on our block.

I’m surprised there wasn’t quicker clean-up from Oak Lawn public works.  We still have a mass of cut tree limbs in our backyard to join the ones in the front and alley.  We had to haul soaking wet carpet & padding outside.  Last time I checked it was all still out there.

We’re also waiting for an insurance adjuster to come by from State Farm.  I’m surprised that it’s four days since the storm and no one has inspected our damage.  My husband patched the roof as best as he could but if another storm hits we don’t know how it will hold up.  Oh well, the rooms & furniture are already damaged so I guess we won’t lose much else.

I can’t describe the odors wet wood emits (smells like a garbage dump) and my granddaughter’s bedroom has a fallen ceiling with loose blown-in insulation that is wet and smells awful!  We cleaned it off the floor but there is still some in the remaining parts of the ceiling.  I am really worried about future mold and wish we could get someone out here so we can start ripping things apart and getting back to normal, which I know will take a long time.

I was a teenager when Oak Lawn suffered their tornado of 1968 but it didn’t hit our subdivision.  My best friend was visiting relatives in a different subdivision and the house she was in was totaled (the house even appeared in a local paper on the front page although it was just rubble).  Everyone survived which was unbelievable.  Because it didn’t cause us personal damage I couldn’t understand what it feels like to actually be hit by nature like we were with this last storm.

I simply can’t imagine what the Katrina & other hurricane victims went through.  In fact, what bothered me the most was the loss of electricity for 10+ hours.  I have since heard of people who are still out and hopefully will get it back today.  I’d have to move in with my son if I hadn’t gotten my electricity back when I did.

Funny thing is that I was painting my kitchen with a 3 step process (venetian plaster) & Tuesday would have been putting the last step on that.  Now my entire house is a mess with boxes of stuff from the other rooms spaced throughout the rest of the house.  On the bright side, everything that was damaged will be new and shiny when we’re finished.

I’ve heard other stories about people who were hit even worse (with trees falling right into their homes), so even though you think you have it bad, there is usually someone else that is suffering more.  I hope we all get back to normal as soon as possible.  

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