8 Days Without Power!
Ugh! It was horrible!
Monday, January 26th, we settled in for a nasty ice storm. Now we knew it was going to be bad so we stocked up well, but I had no idea just how bad it was going to be... The roads started getting bad mid-afternoon Monday. It iced overnight and everything was covered in a glaze of ice Tuesday morning.
Not too bad right? Kinda pretty even.
Well it started to make the limbs of that cedar lay down so Bryon went outside to move it off the fence and while he was out one of the neighbors came up. They don't have a phone or a car. He seemed calm, but said to Bryon that his wife had fallen the night before and laid down for a nap and now she wouldn't wake up, would he please call 911. So he did and then went down to their house. She'd apparently been dead all night. There house was also as cold outside as it was inside so it's unclear exactly what happened, but they took her husband to the hospital because he was obviously in shock and probably a little hypothermic. Poor people.
So while Bryon was down there the power went out. That was around noon on Tuesday.
So the freezing rain kept falling all day. I went outside in the rain and looked to see what I could see. It wasn't as much what I could see that was horrifying as what I could hear. Every 30 seconds to a minute you could hear a huge limb snapping or a tree falling. While I was standing outside, I saw one of the HUGE trees in the far end of our lot in the woods shift and fall. I went in after that because it was too depressing.
And it kept on and kept on and kept on and then there was a dusting of snow on top of everything. Which didn't make anything worse at least, but didn't help either.
The picture is actually part of the cedar tree lying on my patio set... Fortunately the patio set wasn't damaged. I can't say the same for the tree. Things finally started melting Friday. Which caused even more limbs to fall.
That was my favorite cedar tree right after the ice melted off...
This is what it looks like now. Obviously it is going to have to come down. It lost all of its major branches.
So we kept waiting for the lights to come back on. And waiting...and waiting... My Daddy bought us a generator on Sunday. Thanks, Daddy! Our internet and cable were still out though. I went yesterday and explained to Cox that I wasn't a stupid idiot that, in fact, if you have a generator to power your tv and modem that your cable and internet should work. They sent someone and got it fixed yesterday at about noon. Right after that I saw the first electric company trucks and the power was back on by 5ish. 8 days after it went out...
There are apparently still going to be people on Ozarks Electric without power for some time. Some people have been told several weeks!!!
The mountains don't look the same anymore. They are going to take years to heal from all the damage the trees took. Our campus has a big lawn with one of every tree in Arkansas planted on it. Lots of them are more than 100 years old. I haven't been able to bring myself to drive by and look at it yet. I hear it's bad though.
So that's how I spent my week...How about you?
Monday, January 26th, we settled in for a nasty ice storm. Now we knew it was going to be bad so we stocked up well, but I had no idea just how bad it was going to be... The roads started getting bad mid-afternoon Monday. It iced overnight and everything was covered in a glaze of ice Tuesday morning.
Not too bad right? Kinda pretty even.
Well it started to make the limbs of that cedar lay down so Bryon went outside to move it off the fence and while he was out one of the neighbors came up. They don't have a phone or a car. He seemed calm, but said to Bryon that his wife had fallen the night before and laid down for a nap and now she wouldn't wake up, would he please call 911. So he did and then went down to their house. She'd apparently been dead all night. There house was also as cold outside as it was inside so it's unclear exactly what happened, but they took her husband to the hospital because he was obviously in shock and probably a little hypothermic. Poor people.
So while Bryon was down there the power went out. That was around noon on Tuesday.
So the freezing rain kept falling all day. I went outside in the rain and looked to see what I could see. It wasn't as much what I could see that was horrifying as what I could hear. Every 30 seconds to a minute you could hear a huge limb snapping or a tree falling. While I was standing outside, I saw one of the HUGE trees in the far end of our lot in the woods shift and fall. I went in after that because it was too depressing.
And it kept on and kept on and kept on and then there was a dusting of snow on top of everything. Which didn't make anything worse at least, but didn't help either.
The picture is actually part of the cedar tree lying on my patio set... Fortunately the patio set wasn't damaged. I can't say the same for the tree. Things finally started melting Friday. Which caused even more limbs to fall.That was my favorite cedar tree right after the ice melted off...
This is what it looks like now. Obviously it is going to have to come down. It lost all of its major branches.
So we kept waiting for the lights to come back on. And waiting...and waiting... My Daddy bought us a generator on Sunday. Thanks, Daddy! Our internet and cable were still out though. I went yesterday and explained to Cox that I wasn't a stupid idiot that, in fact, if you have a generator to power your tv and modem that your cable and internet should work. They sent someone and got it fixed yesterday at about noon. Right after that I saw the first electric company trucks and the power was back on by 5ish. 8 days after it went out...
There are apparently still going to be people on Ozarks Electric without power for some time. Some people have been told several weeks!!!
The mountains don't look the same anymore. They are going to take years to heal from all the damage the trees took. Our campus has a big lawn with one of every tree in Arkansas planted on it. Lots of them are more than 100 years old. I haven't been able to bring myself to drive by and look at it yet. I hear it's bad though.
So that's how I spent my week...How about you?
Comments
If you're standing on the Arkansas Ave. side of Old Main, it is directly to the left next to Ozark Hall
Jenn: Bah it doesn't look good at all. I wonder if that hanging down branch that the photographers always use is still there...