Ice Storm

On January 27, a storm swept through our little town and completely turned it topsy turvy. All our appointments were cancelled due to nasty icy roads and school was cancelled too. We lost power a little after noon. We were scheduled to go on our bi-monthly grocery trip, but had to postpone it too. It's really tough to be out of bread when you're stuck home with the kids!
My HC was called in to work and I resigned myself to a very interesting afternoon/night with the kids and no power. A lot of the town runs their heat on natural gas. We do too, so we weren't worried about heating the house. We still had water. Yay for flushing toilets! But we didn't have any hot water. And none of the usual activities that engaged the kids worked. No computer, no tv, no lights!
Another big yay for camping gear! We got out our Coleman lantern (battery op) and our kerosene lamps and about a dozen tea candles. We were in business. It was so cold outside, I couldn't get the grill lit. I don't know why, if it was the cold, or the ice that was starting to accumulate on Everything, or what, but I couldn't get it lit. I was very thankful that there was still some warm water left in the water heater. We ate sandwiches and had warm stand-up baths. I let the very grateful Buddy and the "This is GREAT weather!" Berry in for the night. I lit candles in the kids' rooms and we went to bed. The next day, we woke up to this:
















I don't remember what happened every day, but I do know that it wasn't much fun. The damage was very severe to our town. At one point, Ian and I stood on the carport and listened to the almost constant crack-the-whip sounds of icy branches twisting, breaking and falling off of huge trees. They fell onto houses, cars, sheds, the street and demolished several fences. Branches and entire trees, coated in over an inch of ice, continued to fall for several days. My HC got the grill working and we cooked on it and heated pots of water for more stand up baths. We went to the EMS building for a hot meal and a couple loads of laundry. HC got a hot shower because he had to go back to work. Fire and Rescue went door to door to make sure everyone was okay and had heat. Some went to a shelter at the Assembly of God. Red Cross came after a few days, held up by the person in our town who was in charge of Crisis Management and didn't think the damage was extensive enough to call FEMA. He is not well liked at this time. FEMA and Red Cross had been in Arkansas, 15 miles away since the first day.
The Street Department worked around the clock to keep the roads cleared, though I don't know who was fool enough to drive with all the ice and snow all over the roads.


















In the meantime, we went outside to play in the snow that fell over all the ice. It was very cold and we had to keep going inside to warm up. Ray from the EMS building let us borrow his camping propane burner, so we had some hot chocolate. The kids had a blast sliding on the ice, riding in Ian's Power Wheels, and inspecting the ice. We also saw a Channel 6 helicopter, surveying the damage. We provided them with some excellent footage of booty shaking and slipping in the snow just in case they were filming us.





















In the middle of this, my dad decided to make a surprise visit. He and Nana called from Alabama. "We have a bushel of oysters and about 100 lb of deer meat!" Uh....we don't have power. "We'll get some ice," they said. Boy oh boy, did we have ice. We put all our fridge and freezer stuff outside in coolers and plastic storage boxes. I beat ice off of the fence to put in the coolers. They did just fine until Saturday, when the weather got too warm.












We had a great visit with Nana and PopPop, who got a hotel room so we could all take hot showers and baths.
Our powerline had a large branch on it and it ripped the line out of the side of our house. We were very glad that PopPop (who is also an electrician) was there to help us fix it. He also replaced our sadly outdated 1950s fuse box with a safe breaker box.













PopPop and Nana also got us a generator, because boy howdy did we have some laundry piled up! The power came back on Sunday afternoon. And we've been cleaning up ever since. The town looks much better, but there's still a lot to be done.



















On the upside, when there's no electricity, the kids learned how to do other things.