Ice Storm

[korporate]

So just a few weeks ago the area that I lived was ravaged by an huge ice storm. There was at least an inch on ice on everything wrecking total carnage.

I personally was out of power for about two weeks and it took my internet even longer to get back online.

I live in Kentucky, and I know there are others on here that live in Kentucky also that were probably hit and some in other states.

I have a few pictures that I will upload soon, but I was wondering if anybody else had some pictures, or experiences to share

I was just wondering where you had gone. I didn't realize that you were effected by the ice storms, sorry to hear that!

[korporate]

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Yeah it was crazy.

It started earlier that day and I filled my truck up because it was almost on empty and went ahead and filled a little tank up to just in case.

About an hour before I went to work the power in my house went out. I didnt think it was going to be anything serious so I went to work.

While at work things started to get bad.

I tried to call the house but realized that our phone would only work with electricity and the cell didnt work because we live a little bit out in the country.

So left work really quick and went to wal-mart to pick up a cheap phone that would work with only a phone line. While there I picked up a few supplies. It was a mad house, but I was smart and only get the basics and went to the automotive check out where I was one of like two in line so it was quick.

Delivered the phone went back to work. Over the course of eight hours it became a mad house. I work in a restaurant and it sits on a hill that over looks the city. Slowly we could see streets, blocks an other businesses losing power. We had a million call outs and I think everybody in town was coming to our restaurant to eat because when it was all said and done we were only one of two restaurants in town that didnt lose power. We literally had to turn people away to close the store.

On the way home the road was ice and the road I live down was nearly impassable. Branches and entire trees had fallen everywhere. I managed to go around, under, over or plow through everything until I was within eyesight of my house, and there was a giant branch in the way.

I tried everything to move it but couldn't. So I walked home by the light of my cell phone. Once I made it home I had a nice coat of ice on my shoulders and head.

Kissed the wife and made sure they were all ok, changed into some dry, thicker, work cloths and some tools and headed back out to the tree. I only had a shovel and an old water hose. I tried to use the shovel for leverage, then the hose as a rope around my truck to pull the branch, but the hose just broke. Just as I was ready to give up and slam my truck through it my neighbor passed me going home with a chain and him and I moved it with his chevy. By the way, when I talk about my truck I actually mean an SUV.

That night my wife and boys sleep in the same bed to keep warm, but also to be safe. It was pitch dark outside and all you could hear was the creaking and breaking of trees, power poles, and power lines all around us. There is the big oak tree in my front yard, a few of its branches broke off close to the house, some go over the house but they didnt break thankfully. Every time one broke it sounded like thunder and then ground would shake.

That morning we woke up, I reached my arm out from under the blanket an realized it was freaking cold. So I packed up the family and we went to find a hotel.

They were all taken or without power. I managed to talk one really cool hotel manager about my age into letting me have a room as soon as it was clean. He reluctantly agreed and told me to keep it a secret. I was fortunate. We had the only hotel in town that never lost power and stayed there for five days.

During that time I worked 18 hour days since I was a manager at one of the only restaurants in a town full of hungry people without electricity and we had a skeleton staff that would show up.

Eventually the towns pumps went down and the reservoir ran dry. The entire town ran out of water. My restaurant was forced to close down for half a day. We had to take turns at the store just in case something was to happen.

My town shipped in several generators from out of state, got the pumps back on but then placed everybody on a boil water advisory. Boiling water without electricity isnt easy. So were did people go, to my restaurant.

We shipped out water in from Tenn. and pour soft drinks from two litters. and continued on the best we could.

On the fifth day the hotel tab was getting high so I moved the family back to the house as electricity was getting re-established. Again I was lucky and a friend of mines electricity came back on so he gave me the generator they were using. It kept the fridge on, some TV, electric heaters and lights, but you always had to do the math to keep from using to many watts and killing the motor. For three days we all sleep in the living room until I got a day off.

I went to visit my dad for two days and crashed at his house. The last day at his house we called the power company but our electricity was still off. I had to go back to work the next day so we headed home. On the road home we noticed some lights that were out before, and as we approached the house we saw our porch lights, I dont think I had ever been so happy to see porch lights before.

Took us a few days to clean up, due to the circumstances we left the place looking like a bunch of squatters living in our home. There are still trees and branches down in the yard, and we just recently had our internet re-established.

Overall im extremely grateful that my family and I made it through much more comfortably than many others. We had and extraordinary streak of luck, and kindheartedness shown on us, and it feels good that we were able to help alot of people get a good meal even if I was totally exhausted afterwords.

Overall I have to say that its great to be reconnected to civilization. Often its nice to go camping and get away from it all, but you never realize how great you have it until its all gone for a long period of time.

Sorry for the length, but it feels great to get that story off my chest

[DSF Guest 10]

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awesome tale. I am glad you are all okay. I had no idea how bad it was!

(as an aside THANK YOU for not putting all those words together as one giant paragraph!)

[korporate]

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Most of the areas effected by the storm were not as bad. We just got the brunt of it for some reason. The state declared it a disaster area, even our city declared a disaster, I didnt know that individual cities did that, and finally even Obama declared it a disaster and sent in FEMA. Freakin crazy


Also your welcome. I hate people that put an entire story into one paragraph. For god sake at least attempt a little bit of proper english writing. I used to do alot of writing in college, and was a member of a few other forums so typically I try to keep things legible.

[cunctanter]

Was caught up in it here, too. First day was like something out of Narnia,



Ice itself, or ice over-laden trees, took out phone and power lines,



As korporate noted, the ice was fairly thick on everything



with some unfortunate consequences for things beyond just the utility lines and poles, like this car



My house was without power for thirteen days, all told; twelve continuous, and then thanks to a wind storm it was out another day about two days after the first outage was finally restored. The cell network was down for the first several days as well. Had two trees fall on the house itself and several fall around the yard; wrecked the garage roof, punched a hole through the kitchen roof and front porch roof and one tree punched through a side door. Ton of clean-up left to do, both here and the area as a whole.

[hayoka]

We had our bad ice storm in December.
Was out of power for 3 days. They had to bring in over 1800 electrical workers from out of state to repair all of the damages to the area.

Trees were down and lost limbs just like you had it. It was eerie and surreal.

I feel for you.

[admiral]

We have had a few ice storms recently here. I also happen to live on the end of a power line in the middle of the woods so I am the last person to get power in my area.

The longest one we lost power for 46 hours which is not even close to your ordeal but it still sucked not knowing when the power is going to come back on.

My wife was home all day the second day and when I got home she bugged me to find a generator as our house was already wired for it. I told her she was crazy and that there would be no generators left at that point.

She didn't want to hear that so she made me go through the yellow pages. By the time I got to the 15 store I found one generator and dropped 2 grand on it.

Little did I know that after buying it the power was going to go on only 8 hours later.

Welcome back to the internet and I am glad that everything is ok. Hopefully you got some decent pay for all that time at work.

[korporate]

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Yeah right...im a manager, that means salary. Sometimes getting a steady paycheck sucks.



Those are some fantastic pictures of there, way better than mine...plus they are huge, I have to re-size them if I get the time.


Narnia is a great visual, thats exactly what I thought.

[jo_dile]

Absolutely amazing.....wow.