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Great Sage of the Sea
Posts: 590
Location: Colton, NY | Subject: It has been 20 years (nsr)
The ice storm of 1998.
January.
We were smack in the middle of it. No lights. No movement for a hundred miles in each direction. Wife and I actually enjoyed it. Cooked on the wood stove. Broke ice off bush and tree limbs and melted for drinking water and coffee.
Cut our way down the drive. Tied a metal bucket on a rope and filled 5 gallon plastic containers with water from the creek. Used for flushing toilet. Added a little clorox and used for washing
.
Amazingly our land line, although pulled loose from the house and buried under a couple feet of ice and snow, still worked and we kept in touch with the outside world. After two days the fire dept. was able to provide village residents with 5 gal of potable per day.
Day five got a generator and on day 8 a crew from Pennsylvania replaced broken poles and the power was on.
Kerosene lamps. Cooking on the wood stove and listening on the portable radio to people in the dark calling in to the only station on the air and saying what they were doing.
A good archive by that station of the event:
http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/icestorm.html
20 years. Where did that time go.
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Plankowner
Posts: 9163
Location: Upper lefthand corner of the map. | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
Thanks Sid |
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Great Sage of the Sea
Posts: 606
Location: Citrus County FL | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
Bitch, bitch, bitch.... I was up there. It was not too cold, not too windy, and there was only a bit of snow here and there... It was July. |
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Crew
Posts: 70
Location: Naples, Fl | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
Good to hear from you my friend... |
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1454
| Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
I was commuting between Chicago and Philadelphia that Winter. Spent many hours sitting in O'Hare with delayed or cancelled flights. There were about a dozen ice events back home in Delaware and I swear I believe I flew in most of them. |
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1814
Location: Boydton, Virginia | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
BTDT, no Tee shirt though! May have been same storm, although ours was ice, not lot of snow. We had an old fashioned Christmas with candles and oil lamps. No electricity for about a week. County north of us was down for a MONTH. You could barely get a table at local restaurants where they did have power. I collected water from lake 2 miles away for flushing. I think I had about a dozen lined up on the porch. I carried potable water from dam office where I worked.... perk of working at a hydroelectric dam where they produce their own power! Wife and I even sneaked in and took showers in maintenance area at night.
Now, however I have a 20k emergency generator and propane space heaters upstairs and down.
Steamboat sends |
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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 2671
Location: New Jersey | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
I bet you haven't needed those generators since you got them right John? |
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1814
Location: Boydton, Virginia | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
Ha HA! Not as much as I thought I would, Joe. But still in all, it is mighty comforting to wait 10 seconds after a power outage and hear that bad puppy kick in. Especially if it is extremely cold or hot out. Couple years ago, we were waiting for friends coming to stay a week when the power went out. We are on a REA Coop power company and they do not drop power as often as the big commercial company. Ancillary to installing the generator, we converted to tankless water heater and 2 space heaters, and 2 ports for BBQ grill, all on a 500 gal propane tank. Annual propane bill is about $500.00 Well worth all of the benefits. My only disappointment was earlier this year when we had a very near lightening strike which put our all power, fried a lot of electronics AND fried the circuit board on the generator. BUMMER! insurance Co. covered everything did not raise our rates, but did send us a form letter asking us to take better precautions in the future. Precautions from lightening strike 50 ft. from house? Give me a break. I did have surge protector behind electric meter and on all electric equipment. Oh well, could have struck house and burned it down. Oh, yes, the power co. had a truck out to install new breaker on pole within an hour, and that was at midnight on a weekend. I called the company next work day and gave those boys all kind of thank you's and praise.
Steamboat sends
Edited by steamboat 2018-01-05 11:01 AM
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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 2671
Location: New Jersey | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
That's a great story John. My only involvement with lightning was when I retired to Delaware and about 2-3 years later I woke up one morning and the heat wasn't on. The thermostat didn't work and I noticed the smell of burnt rubber. Without knowing what happened I knowledgeably said, "Oh shyte". I knew something got burnt out. For heat and air cond. I have a York package outside the house. A furnace and conditioner. The closer I came to it the stronger it smelled. I opened up the side panels and every wire was fused together...solidly. Switch contacts welded together...
I knew it was lightning but had no idea where it struck. Anyway after a call to my insurance company on a friday, an agent arrived the next day on a saturday morning and said the same thing I said...Holy Shyte. I called a AC company and had a new unit installed in less then a week. I had a check for 6000.00 in 3 days. I was amazed. I got the same unit but now it had all the cute EPA certifications that I was able to write off on my state tax. A happy ending to a mysterious bolt of lightning.
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1796
Location: Albany, GA. | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
When we built the Miller plant, we kept losing Midicon Control Units to lightening strikes. They spent all sorts of money on suppressors and interrupters. You name it, we tried it. Nothing worked reliably. Then for some reason the problem stopped. I don't know if it ever returned since I left. At the Peanut Mill we had the same problem with our load cells on the truck and rail scales. Tried all sorts of things for a couple of years. Then it just stopped happening there also. Act of God??? |
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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 3666
Location: Kansas City Missouri | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
 (god nope.jpg)
Attachments
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 god nope.jpg (128KB - 560 downloads)
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1889
Location: Patterson, New York | Subject: RE: It has been 20 years (nsr)
My older son was living in Plattsburgh during that ice storm. Even when we went up a couple of weeks later, the damage was still evident.
We went to ski and the trees at the top of the lift were still covered with ice.
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It has been 20 years (nsr)
