Where I live, winter weather quite often means ice, more than snow, so when I heard it start to rain, I knew it wasn't going to be good. I just hoped it would drop below freezing quickly and more snow than ice would fall. At some point during the night, I was vaguely aware that the electricity had gone off. That wasn't too unusual, and it usually came back on within a few hours at the worst.
When I woke up, I realized it was cold in the house, and the electric was still off. Then I looked outside.... then I turned on my emergency radio. Apparently, while I was sleeping, one of the worst ice storms to ever hit this area, and quite a few other states, had occurred.
I headed out the back door to assess the situation, and fell hard onto my back steps which had transformed into an ice ramp overnight. I had a momentary thought that if I had injured myself badly no one would see me until I froze to death, because I live out in the country and only people in cars can see my house. From the looks of things no cars would be going down the road today. (Note to self: not a bad idea to stick my cell phone in my pocket when going out.) Luckily nothing happened except some monster bruises. So I got up and just stood there taking it all in. There was thick ice on everything. Large trees were broken or bent all the way to the ground. It was deadly silent, except for the hum of a lone generator running in the distance. The silence was intermittently interrupted by what sounded like small explosions and cracking sounds. They were the sounds of electrical transformers exploding and tree limbs breaking. It was erie and unreal!
My Driveway
I called in to work because there was no way I would be able to get there, and found out they were without electricity also, so no work. My house is all electric, so with no way to heat it, I turned off my water pump, ran the water out of the lines and poured the RV antifreeze I had bought for the RV down the house drains.
Then I got out the RV paperwork and user manuals and looked up how to use the generator. I still knew nothing about the propane furnace, so all I knew was that I had to heat it using the heat strip which runs on electric. I figured out the generator, and started it, turned the heat up, and turned the TV on. Turns out an RV is a pretty handy thing to have when the electric goes out. I had heat, a TV, a microwave, a bathroom, and a comfortable place to sit. After warming up, drinking a couple cups of coffee, and gaining a clear understanding of the scope of this natural disaster from the TV reports, I ventured out to see what the roads looked like.
Road to Town
Everything had ice on it! But when I got out near the road, the full impact of this disaster really hit me. Trees were boken and branches were everywhere. The roads were almost impassible because of trees, telephone poles and electric wires that were strewn about or hanging down across the roads. I dragged some of the bigger limbs out of the way that had fallen from the large oak tree in my front yard and were blocking my driveway. There was still no way I was going anywhere, so I grabbed some food from my house fridge, and made myself comfortable in the RV for the rest of the day and watched coverage of the storm damage on TV.
The next day parts of the town where I work were getting back to normal, and I had to go to work. My car was parked by my garage, which uses a different driveway, and I was able to carefully maneuver it over small branches and onto the road. The road was nearly impassable in some places, and there were a few spots where I had to drive under low-hanging power lines, but I made it to work and back. The next day went much the same, except I began to think about how I was going to get gas into the RV so that I could keep using the generator if I couldn't drive it to a gas station.
I borrowed a couple of 5 gallon gas cans and took them to work with me. The town I lived in still did not have any gas available. The stations that didn't lose electricity ran out, and all the others were still unable to pump it.
So for the next week my routine was to live in the RV, go to work, and about every other day get gas and bring it home in the gas cans. I couldn't fill them all the way to the top or they would be too heavy for me to lift and pour into the funnel. It wasn't too bad a way to live. While others were cold and without a way to cook or watch TV, I had everything I needed. Everything was going along just fine so far. That is, until I encountered another challenge.