North Idahoans work to restore homes, properties

"We got a hell of a mess here," Mike Hohensee said Thursday afternoon as he walked around the side of his garage, the ground littered with pine boughs and tree chunks.

Hohensee, who lives south of Lancaster Road on Government Way in Hayden, was in his garage when a 100-plus-foot pine landed on the garage early Wednesday morning as the winds whipped through North Idaho at nearly hurricane-level speeds.

"I got hit with a piece of drywall when the tree came down," he said. "It knocked me off the bench and threw me on the floor."

It was 4:10 a.m.

"I was reading. I had my cup of coffee and my first cigarette in the morning," he said with a slight grin. "Maybe God was trying to tell me something, right? Maybe it's time to quit."

Hohensee bought his home brand new in 1984 and replaced the roof just a few years ago.

Now, he's looking at a minimum of $50,000 to repair his smashed roof and car.

"The trusses are completely gone," he said, gesturing to pieces dangling from the garage ceiling.

"It's major, and it's the wrong time of year for this to happen, too," he said. "We're going to have snow here, and I've got so much damage right now. But we'll see what happens."

Hohensee and residents across the region are assessing damage, working with insurance adjustors, recruiting cleanup crews and just trying to put the pieces back together after Windstorm '21 devastated countless homes and properties.

Throughout North Idaho, chainsaws buzzed and generators hummed as people removed trees from houses and yards and managed power outages. The smell of newly cut wood and pine carried in the air in neighborhoods where mostly coniferous giants fell to the earth, smashing everything in their way.

A sleep-deprived Teresa Parker, who lives next door to Hohensee, watched from her deck as the tree fell on her neighbor's garage.

"My husband stayed in bed during it, but I came out to the living room. I saw the transformer; we had flames coming through," she said. "As soon as I walked back into the bedroom, I heard our tree hit, and it landed above our entryway on the roof and then through our living room. Within three minutes. It went six feet in and broke the trusses."

She bemoaned the giant conifers that crashed onto the homes and properties of her block.

"My poor neighbors," she said. "All of us are just blown away."

Charlie Miller, who lives on Canyon Drive in the Fairway neighborhood near the Kroc Center, said it was "a wild storm."

A long chunk of a forked-top tree landed on the Miller residence, battering the roof and plunging branches through the ceiling in some places.

"I was born and raised in this house," Miller said. "This was the worst storm as far as this neighborhood that I've ever experienced."

He said it was just the right conditions for the tree to split apart.

"We were getting near the afternoon," he said. "I thought we were out of the worst of it. I was in the back yard and I started to hear this cracking noise, so I'm trying to figure out if I need to dive for cover.

"I had to watch it crash down on the house while my wife and kids were in the upstairs, right in that room. There was a few tense moments where I sprinted up into the house to make sure everybody was OK," he said. "Fortunately, everybody was fine."

Miller said everyone in the neighborhood was checking on each other after the storm.

"The neighborhood's coming together, trying to help each other any way we can," he said.