CHEVY CHASE, Md. -
Getting their electricity back on is all it took for some people to put the recent storms behind them. But for several local families, recovering won't be so easy.
Their homes were destroyed by massive trees and have to be rebuilt.
"This is the biggest casualty my wife and I have suffered in our 49 years of marriage," says Allen Beach.
Beach was at the front door of his home in Chevy Chase, Md., and his wife Martha was in the kitchen when the microburst hit on June 22.
Their home of 28 years was destroyed by one of the biggest trees on the block.
Chris Tucker, who is like family to the Beaches, rushed in that night to survey the damage.
"I got to the front room and I could see the sky, and that's when I knew the house was in pretty bad shape," Tucker says.
It was so bad that it will have to be gutted down to the foundation.
The couple has already moved to an apartment so crews can start tearing down the walls they have called home for 28 years. But this isn't the end of their life on Stuyvesant Street.
"I've lived in Chevy Chase for 70 years," Allen Beach says. "My roots are here."
And they refuse to be uprooted, anxious to return to the neighborhood of fall block parties and birthday gatherings.
"What we don't want is for some developer to come in here and build a McMansion. I don't want to do that to the neighbors," Martha Beach says. "We just want to rebuild it, the way we know it."
They know rebuilding a home that is from the 1940s won't happen overnight, but they have a specific and very special time table they're trying to beat.
"We're going to go on. Hopefully we'll be back in on our 50th anniversary. How's that sound?" Allen Beach asks.
September of 2013 - when new memories will begin for the Beaches.
