The Great 2008 Ice Storm - Day One

It was one of the worst ice storms to hit our area in 20 years. Lots of people blogged about it and somebody even started a facebook group for survivors of the 2008 ice storm so I decided to stop slacking and finally blog about it...one month later.

I woke up in the middle of the night on a Thursday/Friday morning to the sickening sound of tree limbs creaking and cracking and crashing to the ground. Before falling back to sleep, I happened to notice the power was out and hoped it wouldn't be out for long. Huh, Huh.

This beautiful but icy sight greeted us the next morning. Notice the the tree that has snapped in half, the tree bent nearly in half and all of the downed branches. Why yes, that is ice coating the overhead power lines running through our yard.

That morning we still did not have power and both of my kids were fighting colds. My brave husband had of course gone to work. In previous power outages, Jason had discovered a way to run our ancient gas boiler, circa 1970, without electricity. (I know, 1970 is not ancient.) This meant we were not cold. Some of our friends weren't so lucky. Their houses had been getting steadily colder all night. We invited anyone who wanted to come over to our house for lunch since our house was warm and we could still use our gas stove. All I had to do was first turn on the gas and then stick a match by the burner. Yikes! Some friends came over and we made some soup for the adults, and the tried-and-true stand-by mac n' cheese to appease the kids. We tried to entertain the kids without the help of TV, DVDs, and computer games. We didn't want to go play outside because limbs were still coming down and we thought it might be dangerous. Snow had fallen on top of the ice making the strain on the branches worse.

Don't worry I took these pictures from the warmth and comfort of my house. Although, it shouldn't be said that I wouldn't risk my life for this blog. Remember the thunderstorm last summer when Jason and I took the kids for their first storm-chasing outing just so I could get a picture of the tree that had fallen on that apartment. But I digress...

Jason came home at lunch time and he and his pal Mark worked to get the heat on in our friends' and neighbors' homes. They were superheroes. In fact, everybody pitched in. Everyone called and checked on everyone else. It was awesome! I felt so grateful to belong to a church and a community whose members watch out for each other. Here's a picture of our neighbors removing a downed tree from the road.

Road and power crews were so overwhelmed by the ice storm, they had to call in help from as far away as Michigan. Those guys were heroes too! On Saturday, I saw them inspecting our power lines by flashlight because it was so dark. They didn't give up just because it was nighttime. And that was the second night of the power outage. I don't know how much sleep those guys got but I don't imagine it was much.

As the Friday wore on and the power didn't come back, I started to light some candles. We'd heard from our friends who lived a little further north that they had power but there was no word from the power company about when we would get service. We decided we would head north and find some fast food for dinner. I didn't want to try to light the gas stove with a match again. I'm rather attached to my hands and arms.

Apparently everyone else had the same idea. Vehicles were swarming all the local fast food joints north of our area. To make matters worse, all the local McDonald's were experiencing intermittent power outages. No McNuggets for cabin-feverish kids and their nugget-addicted mothers. You all know my feelings on the ingredients in those things. I think my hypothesis is supported by the fact that the people at McDonald's themselves recently came up with a name for nugget addicts: Nuggnuts. But I digress again. I had a professor who always used to say that. It's awfully useful. Anyway, we were able to find a Moe's that was open and after getting our food and stocking up on their yummy tortilla chips we returned home to have a nice meal by candle and lantern light.

That night we stayed up chatting with our friend Hilliri who was staying with us since her apartment was so cold she could see her breath. I kept looking at the TV not because I expected it to turn on but out of pathetic habit. (I gotta shake up my evening routine. )We went to bed that night thinking surely the power would be on by morning. The power had been out for nearly 24 hours.