Okay, here goes. I'll do the best I can remembering the time line of things. Life is for us, is essentially back to normal. We were lucky, we only went without power for about 30 hours or so. From 7PM on January 27th until around 11PM or so January 28th we were without electricity. I'm not exactly sure when the power went out because I was at work & my wife had the emergency cellphone. She called me at some point in the evening (on the 27th) & told me the electricity had gone off.
The ice storm actually started for us on the evening of the 26th of January. I was just getting to work about 5PM & one of the girls I work with asked me if I thought that we'd get much ice. My finely honed psychic powers tole me no...thank god I don't rely on my psychic powers to make a living.
& yeah, it was sleeting at that point, & I mean really sleeting.
1st lesson learned...pay more attention to broadcast news. Because I live most of my life in the dark (literally, not metaphorically...at least not until this damn ice storm) I tend to get most of my news from the inter-webz. I avoid broadcast news generally...turns out it's actually handy to pay attention to what the local news stations are saying. I was caught completely unaware about the humongous ice monster headed our way. What can I say, no excuse here.
So, it sleets all night the 26th & when I get up on the evening of the 27th it's still sleeting...damn, I wasn't expecting this. I'm standing in my front yard & all I'm hearing is the tick tick of the hardened ice crystals falling all around me. It's surreal, there are rare moments in our lives when everything is completely & absolutely silent. When what you hear & what you
feel are the same....you know it's not good. You know you think you're ready but that little voice in the back of your head is saying "are you really"? That's how I felt as the sleet came down all around me, it coated the trees, the yard, my Jeep & me as I stood there & wondered what would come.
Here's what I had on hand. I had plenty of food & water, I had supplemental heat in the form of a kerosene heater & a several gallons of k-1 kerosene to run the thing. I wasn't particularly worried for Tina & I. What I was worried about was how bad it would eventually get for everyone else...& how long it would last. We also had our camper which was stocked with supplies. The only problem was that it was still up at the deer lease...which may not have been a bad thing....depending.
I'm going to put up a bunch of pictures because at this point things start to get a little blurred. We basically spent from the evening of the 27th until the 31st doing what we had to do. I got very little sleep, I spent quite a lot of time ferrying Tina's colleagues back and forth from her work to their houses...there were some of them that stayed at the nursing home working for 2 or 3 days straight because people were calling in. There was only 1 family, I'm sad to say, who came & got their family member. Tina's work, which is a nursing home, was without power for a week. They basically put as many blankets as they could find on the residents & moved everybody to the halls where they could concentrate the heat (provided by a generator that they imported). At one point the administrator went to our local Walmart & K-Mart & bought every blanket the stores had in stock.
2nd lesson learned...people in general, don't really give a shit if they're not suffering. Sorry, but human nature being what it is, if you're not affected it's difficult to understand or empathize with what's going on. Unless we're directly & primarily affected we tend not to think about it. There is always someone who has it tougher or worse than you do. Remember that the next time you feel like whining about something.
On with the pics....most of these were taken from the driver's seat of my Cherokee, so I apologize if they aren't the best.
On my way home the morning of the 28th, around 4:30AM when I got off. Normally this stretch of road would be lit up like daylight, but the power was off at this point. What you can't see are all the stores & street lights around the road. This is essentially in the middle of town. The objects you do see are street signs. The white is ice. We ended up getting very little snow, maybe an inch or so at the very end of the storm.
Later on the morning of the 28th. I'd taken a colleague of my wife's home after a 48 hour shift. This is 67 N. Hwy coming in to Poplar Bluff. Only a couple of Jeeps on the road at this point, including me
. Not much else moving, not even DOT trucks....
The blob on the left is a car that is stuck in the median. I don't know how in the hell it got down there but I imagine it was a miserable walk for whoever was driving.
Some shots around town on the morning of the 28th, the third day of the storm. It was still sleeting, freezing raining & at the very end some snow....
A school playground in my neighborhood.
On the morning of the 30th (best I remember) I received an e-mail from a friend of mine that lives in St. Louis, she was concerned because her parents had been trapped inside their home since the storm started on the Monday previous. She was able to talk to them because their hard line hadn't been compromised. They said they weren't able to get out because their driveway (a 3/4 mile country driveway) was blocked by downed tress & debris. She said I was the only one she knew who might be able to get to them. She said she figured I had a chainsaw, a 4x4 & emergency heat...sometimes it sucks to be the "prepared guy". I value my friends, if you're my friend all you have to do is call. Lara did, so I did what friends do for for friends...I packed my shit, geared up & headed toward her parents place. This is what I found when I got there.
Not as bad as I thought it would be, but it took me two hours to get about 1/4 mi. down their driveway.
I got little distracted by the scenery....I love nature, in all her vicious ways.
That big tree came down because of the ice.
I got lucky, Lara's dad was just around the corner here. He'd started clearing from the house so I wouldn't have to clear much more from here.
Making the corner...headed toward the house.
I'll post more pics later & the rest of what I learned.
