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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (43806)	12/22/1999 3:00:00 PM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

I don't really think it's at all silly to take precautions against any emergency situation... especially when you live in a harsh climate. I've mentioned this before, but we live in the area that was hit by the bad icestorms in January 1998. Our farm was without electricity for 10 days in 0 F. (and colder) weather. It was pretty miserable because we had unseasonably warm weather during the initial ice storm, so we had water everywhere, including the basement. Then it turned bitterly cold and the hydro poles broke off right at the ground for several miles in each direction along the highway because of the weight of the ice on the lines. It was an incredible mess. A lot of people tried to stay in their houses for the first 2 or 3 days because the hydro kept saying that things were under control and would be back to normal quite soon. After about 3 days of no power, people began to get pretty nasty and it soon came to light that the hydro departments didn't even have a handle on the situation at all. It ended up that the military had to be brought in to provide emergency relief at shelters in the towns, and hydro crews from across Canada and many parts of the US came to try to put up new poles and wires. Even many of the large metal "towers" fell down from the ice... It was very surreal to see them crumpled up like broken mecchano toys. We stayed in our house for most of the 10 days. The things that we found most useful were: * emergency candles (think we went through about 20 in 9 days). * a marine bilge pump which we ran off of our truck battery to pump out our basement which flooded from all of the rain before the freeze-up. * an automotive trouble lamp that could be clipped onto a spare car battery for times when we needed more light. * our woodstove, which wasn't big enough to heat the whole house, but which we used for cooking and to keep the worst of the chill off. When the temperature really dived after about day 5 (down below -10 F.) we had to move into the basement and use a big heat-reflective tarpaulin to divide the basement so that we were only trying to heat one end of it. We slept on plastic lounge chairs with foam slabs on top. * Lots of warm comforters. * Giant soup pot for melting ice for drinking water. * Battery-powered radio. I cooked mostly home-made soups and stews on the woodstove, so the best food that we made use of was vegetables from the root cellar as well as dried peas, beans, barley and that kind of thing. Actually, we ate pretty well...(-: After about Day 3, we managed to get an old pump working... one that is in an orchard out in the field behind our barn. We used that to water our animals. That was less hassle than trying to melt ice, but it was still a lot of work because it was a long walk, often through gale-force winds, carrying big buckets of water...and it was very icy footing, so there were plenty of falls and spilled buckets of water (and lots of cursing... most of it by me...;-}> I think 9 people died during the storm, most of them because they were using unsafe heating equipment in their houses. A couple of older people died from exposure because their houses got so cold. In general, it was NOT a nice experience at all. We were lucky...our hydro was restored in 9 1/2 days. Others in the area were not so lucky... some of the area farms were without power for more than 3 weeks. Emergency generators were brought in from other areas, but most of them were too small to do everything at once, so farmers were doing the milking, then pumping the water for their cattle, then hooking up the stable-cleaners to clean out the barns. Many of the farmers were sharing generators and so the routine involved a lot of moving around from place to place. Lots of real heroes in the community... farmers who shared their generators with others or took them to people's houses to get the heat going for a few hours to warm up a place for someone. Lots of people staying up to all hours trying to get barns chores done at one farm before moving on to the next. The Canadian Forces people were great too... They distributed firewood to anyone who needed it. They helped to cut away old hydro poles and assemble new ones. They did everything from helping farmers to handmilk cattle, to hauling water for people who needed help. So, there were good things and bad things about the whole experience... Kind of interesting, but I wouldn't really want to go through something like that again... at least not for awhile. ...hope the Y2K thing turns out to be a non-event...