Museum Update

Email from the director about how our museum stood against the storm.

1. Our power went off and went to backup power on Tuesday morning. Our backup power lasted through Thursday morning. The power came back on at 4:10pm on Friday. We have a few glitches to deal with, but the power's on. We have security working on the historic buildings but they have no power for lights or heat.

2. Our historic buildings somehow managed to have very little damage. The Searcy House and garage are fine, although the wiring between the two has broken. The barn has some minor tree damage on the back side of the east shed. The general store has a major limb on its roof but apparently the roof has held up. The doctor's office has a smaller limb on its roof with no apparent damage. The outhouse, despite hardly being seen beneath the tree damage, sustained only a minor nick on its back roof. The log cabin has a plate-size nick out of the north roof overhang and several broken wood shakes from tree branches and/or ice. The Shiloh Meeting Hall is fine. The new museum building roof is in excellent shape except for some crimping of the gutter right outside the director's office.

3. The bad new is, of course, the devastation of our trees. We've lost quite a few major ones and -- like everywhere else -- there are limbs and branches everywhere, many still hung up in the trees. The worst area is in back of the general store and doctor's office and north of the outhouse, where almost every single tree has come down or will need to be taken down. That affects incredibly our interpretive area and we will be dealing with that in the coming weeks.

All in all we're glad to have weathered it so well. We reopened Saturday and actually had three visitors!