Tony Tarbert, who lives on the Old Glenn Highway south of Smith Road, said wind tore the 70-by-24-foot roof off an addition behind his house and deposited it in his front yard, smashing his 2004 Dodge three-quarter-ton pickup.
Tarbert said he was on the phone when the roof leapfrogged his house, about 2:45 p.m. Five minutes before, he had been outside playing ball with his dog and picking up things in the yard to prevent them from blowing away.
"It was kind of a close call, though I didn't know it at the time," he said, adding he's since been on the phone with his insurance provider, trying to figure out what happens next.
"I've got to get that area covered again because winter's coming," he said.
The two-story addition, 46 feet by 24 feet, will provide extra pantry space for his kitchen, as well as a bathroom and walk-in closet for the upstairs master bedroom. The roof was much larger than the addition, built to overlap a portion of the existing house and prevent runoff problems, he said.
Tarbert was building the project himself and hoped to get the siding and insulation done soon so he could work on the plumbing and wiring over winter. Now he said he's not sure he has time to get the roof back in position before the snow flies.
At least he hadn't cut open the walls of the existing house yet -- he was waiting until the insulation was in before cutting things open, he said.
"I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but I'm glad nobody was hurt," he said.
Around the Valley, between 700 and 1,000 customers in the Matanuska Electric Association service territory lost power Thursday afternoon, said MEA spokeswoman Lorali Carter. MEA serves more than 45,000 customers between Eagle River and the upper Susitna Valley north of Trapper Creek.
Carter said 15 outages had been reported throughout the area, from Wasilla to the Glenn Highway and on Knik-Goose Bay Road.
Clint Vardeman, deputy director of Mat-Su Borough Emergency Services, said emergency responders had been called out to five power line-related calls in the space of about three hours Thursday afternoon, including one call to a residence on Cumberland Circle, between Wasilla and Palmer, in which a birch tree fell, bringing power lines against a home and trapping a resident inside temporarily. No injuries were reported in that case or others, Vardeman said.
Carter requested that residents who call to report an outage do so from their non-cordless home phones, not a cell phone, so the address will be recognized instantly by the cooperative's computer system. She encouraged callers to use the automated phone system, which automatically records outage locations, rather than trying to wait on the line to speak to dispatchers.
The National Weather Service reports strong winds with gusts up to 50 mph at times are expected to continue in the Matanuska Valley through Saturday morning.
Find Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call her in Wasilla at 907-352-6709.
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