I mentioned to SheilaM yesterday that we had experienced a weather-related nightmare here too, and said I'd post about it later. Here's what happened to us;
A few weeks ago we were hit with a terrible ice storm. They say it was the worst storm to hit here in well over 100 years. It hit us during the night, fast and furious, and ended up with the ice being 2"-3" thick on everything, The power went out about 5:00AM.
We didn't think too much about it because we get power outages here in the rural areas when a bird lands on the lines (joking, but it IS often) so we just bundled up and kept peeking out the windows hoping to get a glimpse of the repair trucks.
As a few hours went by, we heard by our battery-operated radio that one by one all the towns and villages around us (and us) had CLOSED all incoming traffic and all businesses were closed as well. We still didn't think too much of it because we had just had another weather condition a few weeks earlier that closed everything down the same way, and that only lasted two days---but we didn't lose our power that time. No biggie.
More freezing rain and more ice, more problems. We feel maybe we're in for a longer run with this situation, and drag out the Kerosun heaters and sleeping bags to bunk down in the living room and close off the rooms that we can. I was glad that we had gone grocery shopping the day before, and had plenty of food and "necessary stuff" to fall back on.
One of our sons in Indiana had gotten married out there, and they had planned to come East for their Honeymoon, spending a few days at Niagara Falls, then down here for a few days. The WTS has torn our family to bits and we've been "estranged" for a few years, and this was our first meeting in about eight years. It was to be a fresh start, and we were looking forward to hopefully setting a new groundwork for a better relationship.
I had planned a small surprise wedding reception for them, and had bought ALL kinds of expensive goodies that I NEVER buy; pounds of large shrimp (peeled-cooked-deveined-no muss-no fuss) for canapes (I can't spell the other word that sounds like horses ovaries, lol) and pastrami, rolls, dinky snack crackers, cheeses, 6-8 pounds of baby back ribs, and I had ordered a gorgeous cake with pink and purple flowers that was SO beautiful you'd hate to cut into it.
My 12 year-old grand-daughter, (who lives with her nonJW grandparents) was supposed to come and spend school vacation with us as well, and I had been VERY busy preparing for all the festivities. Her birthday had just passed and I had things for her too for when she got here.
By evening, we still had no power, and it got dark VERY early it seemed! You can't REALLY do too much by candlelight, and my hubby and grandson went to bed by 10 PM. I tried to do a few things to straighten up, and noticed huge flashing red lights out the front windows. I couldn't SEE what they were because the ice had coated every window in the house because it had also gotten very windy and whipped around in every direction.
I kept hearing men's shouts, and I decided to have a look outside. ONE step out the door, and my feet did a "Bambi-on-Ice" kinda thing, and I caught the railing just in time so I didn't sail on down the steps. Standing there struggling to hang on to the doorknob and the railing, I saw several police cars and an ambulance, and lots of flares all over the road. The ice was STILL coming down.
As I came back inside, I just felt SO uneasy....we were warm, full and dry, but I felt scared and couldn't get to sleep. THEN the real fun began. CRASH! and again and again....all night long. It sounded like plate glass windows being smashed one after another- loud crashes followed by tinkling sounds and then MORE large crashes.....ALL around us...talk about unnerving. The only way I could get any sleep was by telling myself that if ANYTHING happened, that WE'D be okay---we had police and firefighters all over the place, I wouldn't have to GO very far for help!
They were there all night long, and into the morning.......they were turning back any traffic that had gotten through the roadblocks because we were now under a state of emergency by the Governor's order, and ONLY emergency traffic was allowed on the roads.
THEN we discovered what all the crashing sounds were......trees. Everywhere. Power poles down. Everywhere. We couldn't get out of the driveway because of the trees lying all over the road. We live on a hill, and every time a tree would fall, all the ice on the branches would break away like shattered glass and keep sliding downhill until it stopped. It LOOKED beautiful outside, discounting the wreckage, but the sun came out and shined through the remaining trees and bushes and DID look pretty. The ugly part was that most of the trees looked like giant toothpicks---snapped off at the middle. More and more trees fell as the sheer weight of the ice won its battle over the weakened trees. It began to look like a hurricane had gone through.
Then we heard on the radio that 13 counties had been affected by this storm, and that crews were swamped, and the 250,000 homes may be without power for a week or more, until they could get through on the roads first, and then repair the poles, and THEN the lines to individual houses!
We then hear the good news and the bad news.......that our town gas station HAS gasoline and kerosene for heaters.........but THEY have no electricity to run the pumps! They have run OUT of ice to keep food cold. THE FOOD!!!! One of the heaters is in the kitchen area and we haven't opened the fridge but once to get milk, eggs, mayo and butter out to put in the picnic cooler on the back porch, and we didn't dare open the freezer so the food (sob) would stay frozen.
By day three, some DPW trucks have picked their way down the road and cleared it out enough so we can get the van out and get to the gas station (that is now running on generators) to get kerosene and gas and ice. How IRONIC!!! We NOW have to BUY ICE to save the food that we can, when ICE is what started this whole mess in the first place! We heard that the Burger King 12 miles away was open, so we headed there and ate and had PERKED coffee!
While we were there a LOT of trucks went past and I caught a glimpse of the some of the NAMES on the side panels of these trucks.....town vehicles from ME, MA, NJ, CT, PA and downstate NY......and I just choked up. These people had come here to help us out in all this madness and in the bitter cold! I was in awe of all the states that were represented just in the little pocket of the small town where I was sitting...and there were 13 COUNTIES that needed emergency help!
We bought a "regular" telephone that doesn't need batteries, and we had to call and alert our son in Indiana and our grand-daughter in MA not to come (by the fourth day with no power), it broke my heart, but we didn't have any idea how long we'd be living like this. The radio reports were grim, and said SOME would be without power for two weeks.
It took six and a half days to restore the power. The state of emergency was lifted on the third day, but a lot of people were living in shelters set up at the Fire Stations, and many businesses had severe damage from trees falling on their roofs, etc, so it took two weeks before things even resembled anything NEAR normal operation. We also had 4" of snow come down on top of the thick ice,(on the fourth day) that added to the chaos everyone was already undergoing.
We ended up losing EVERYTHING in the freezer and the fridge, had we known how long it would last, we would have eaten everything we could, but it had thawed and the health and safety dept said "when in doubt-throw it out" and a lot of the food had thawed and we tried to keep in under bags of ice, but it was chancy at best. It went to the dump....six trash bags full. It cost a small fortune to start from scratch.
EVERY home for miles and miles, has damage...or at least their trees and bushes. We were lucky in that nothing hit the house or the van like so many others. It's pitiful just going into town for milk, to see every single property look SO sad. The town gave us two weeks to clean up the tree trunks and branches and drag them to the edge of the road. We did what we could manage, and they came by yesterday with one truck that they piled up some of the debris into and hauled off, and another that was a chipper-shredder type of thing, and left piles of woodchips along the road.
This area will take a long time to look anything near normal again, there are huge trees all along the roadside that snapped and bent over almost vertically, but didn't actually break off and fall, and they look by far, the most pitiful, and there are no "pretty woods" anywhere around any more.
People fared nicely, considering how fast it all hit and how unprepared we all were. Pulled muscles, scratches from grappling with unruly branches, and frozen fingers were the worst of the injuries, as far as I know, and that counts a LOT!
So, that's what happened up here!
Hugs,
Annie