Fire and Ice

You all know how I LOVE to brag about our beautiful weather. But I don't want to do it at the expense or mock the problems being faced all around our country with the extreme weather caused by the dreaded Polar vortex.

Hold onto your hats people. This is scary...
Today we have guest blogger and my sister, Paula telling her harrowing tale of 
Fire and Ice. 

So here’s how our free snow day off from work went at home for the last 30 hrs or so...

4:15 am Wednesday - Roger (Paula's husband)  had just put wood on the fire (they heat their house almost entirely by wood)  and was standing looking outside when he saw an orange glow across the whole front lawn. He went outside and saw 6-8 foot flames coming from the chimney! Chimney Fire!!!

He came in, yelled for me upstairs to get up and put my shoes/braces on. Called 911 and got me & Magnus (the giant dog) in the Pilot. Took my car and us next door to a sleeping neighbor’s driveway.

Called another neighbor to come help him plow our driveway to prepare for the fire trucks.

He took out all the burning logs, wrapped them up in the fiberglass fireplace rug and threw them out the back door into the snow and closed down the stove. (Firemen said that was so smart – he basically removed all the fuel so there was nothing to keep the fire burning!)

6 or 7 support vehicles and police blocked the road (lights flashing but no sirens). 

Fortunately it was contained to just the chimney. No damage, just smelly. (Oh, and scary, when your husband wakes you up by calmly telling you to get up and put on your shoes because the house is on fire!)

Police had to send for another truck to lay down salt to get fire trucks down our driveway after they inspected everything because the driveway turned to a sheet of ice. 

Later in the day, around noon, 3 large cedar trees fell, 1 right across the driveway. That's not such a big deal, unless it snaps a power line and lands on the other power line, cutting off all power.

 And... since it’s on live power lines, you’re not allowed to cut it, even if you have the equipment, which, of course, we do. 


So there we were, no wood stove. No power. No heat. No way out. Stranded in our own home.

By 5 pm , with an estimated power restoration now at  6 am, Roger setup a propane heater, running the hose out the bathroom window, to a propane tank. Closed off the family room and loaded up with blankets. We were able to keep the temp in the room to 60°. The rest of the house fell to 40° by morning (very cold getting ready upstairs to come to work). 

Meanwhile, back to the tree situation, we got a call that the tree truck was on its way - it finally arrived after 9 pm . By 11 pm , the trees that had now fallen were all cut. BUT, they asked Roger if we had front end loader (which, of course, we do) to move the wood once they took the tree down! 

A Kubuta looks something like this

After all that, they came to the top of the driveway to turn around and their giant truck snagged the telephone wires going into the house so even if we had power, we wouldn’t have had land lines - Whoopsie! Good thing for cell phones...

Next we had to get into the "queue" for the Line Men to come and reconnect the wires. We heard, "they'll be here soon, just don't know how long". We finally went to sleep at 1:30 AM, still waiting for them.

We were hoping that was the 3rd thing of the day since things happen in three’s! Actually, we were hoping the 3rd thing of the day would be for us to win the Powerball lottery, another neighbor went to get us tickets since we couldn’t leave but that, obviously, didn’t happen. 

Spent the night on the couches in family room with the propane heater and one light. Didn't hook up generator to all fuses because we were hoping they'd put power on by 11pm . 

Driveway all ice so Roger had to drive me down in the Kubota (RTV) and then drive my car down (after getting car out of garage with, hello, electric garage door opener!).

This morning the estimated restoration time changed to 1pm. Great. They showed sometime after 11 am. 

1:54 and power was restored! 

The temp inside is now up to 52°. 

Hooray!

I'm sure others have it worse than us.....

Paula

Thanks Paula!

It is what it is...

Namaste