Like much of Central Massachusetts, we found ourselves without electricity and therefore heat by 10pm on Thursday night. We were lucky to get our power back up Sunday at 2pm, lucky is relative considering there are many who are still without. All things considered, we did OK right from the beginning. Ice buildup in our area was minimal but travel a quarter mile in any direction and you would find yourself faced with serious property damage and tree loss. A mile up the road, the town of Paxton was mostly unrecognizable, still covered in ice with some parts impassable, as recently as Sunday evening.
Knowing the power was still out I grabbed eight bundles of firewood on my way home from work Friday night. That lasted us through Sat night, keeping the house at a livable 47 degrees. The funny thing about this ‘disaster’ was how fragmented the areas hit were. While we were freezing our asses off huddled around the fireplace, the availability of pizza delivery in the area made the whole experience sort of surreal. I checked my copy of the SAS Survival guide and nowhere does pizza delivery fit into a typical survival situation.
I did learn a few interesting things this weekend. The most important being there are still people who think bringing a gas grill into the house to heat the pipes is a good idea. But more useful was the idea of using an inverter to power a natural gas heating system, I may look into that as a just in case project soon. Also and more interesting, I learned that standby generators exist, not cheap, but had I known about them before this weekend I’m sure I would have bought one. Take a look if you use natural gas to heat your home; it’s an interesting setup.
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The people whose job it is to run Worcester and keep us informed really need a round of applause for the work they’ve put in thus far. The crew up at WTAG was absolutely amazing considering the station is located in one of the hardest hit regions of the state. Relying on text messages to take in data due to downed phone lines, they really did a great job keeping the region up to date and more importantly they gave people a sense that no matter how bad you thought you had it, you’re not alone. City Manager O’Brien also needs to be commended on running an extremely tight ship. We had shelters up and running day one as well as extra WPD coverage in outage areas as a security measure. All the planning in the world tends to go out the window when a real emergency hits and the Manager and his department heads more than lived up to the challenge.
But the most impressive aspect of this crazy weekend as well as the most important thank you needs to be directed at all the line crews who came in from out of state to get Worcester back up and running. On my street alone, I met men and women from Texas, Missouri and Ohio. A whole bunch of people with funny accents making fun of our funny accents, I’m sure they all had better things to do this weekend but I’m thankful they decided to spend it with us instead.
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Heh. The ultimate disaster evening scenario of sushi delivered to the house (lit by an emergency generator) by an enterprising guy on skis…
I talked to a lot of hams on the radio this weekend who were running emergency power from generators they had installed themselves. One (retired) old fart claimed a fellow electrical worker had been killed years ago, and therefore he “hated those things”… he said some idiot had been running a generator, but hadn’t disconnected the house from the mains. This, according the guy’s story, fed power back up to the nearest transformer, upconverting it to 13,000 volts. The rest of the old farts in that conversation then launched into long and technically detailed descriptions of how to not do that…
Ah well… that’s what hams do: they install emergency generators so that if the power goes out, they can get on the air and talk to other hams running generators about… how to set up generators.
The other story I heard more than once was kids calling back to the empty nest so they could come over and charge their iPods, cellphones, and other portable entertainment goodies while waiting for the power to come back on. In the middle of one of those conversations, as if by magic, I got a call from my stepson asking if he and his girlfriend could come over and charge their stuff up.
Great post! Kate Toomey has been great about using Facebook to get messages out to people.
Although I didn’t lose power or anything (feeling super lucky!), I am also thankful to all the people who have come to help our city get back on track. It’s upsetting to know so many people have been displaced. I hope everyone is home, safe and warm, very soon.
This storm really was a bit surreal. The damage was so horrible but also so spotty. And the places that got hit were massively damaged but there were places in the middle of it that looked like nothing happened. So strange to see.
There are a lot of stories from people with limited or no resources that have yet to be told. It’s far from over…
Councillor Toomey was excellent, I should have mentioned her above. Storms like this provide a great window into the real meaning of leadership; you don’t expect Kate or Mike O to be out there repairing downed lines, that’s not in their area of expertise. But keeping the machine oiled and moving takes an incredible amount of skill and dedication, we tend to take for granted real management skills on a day to day basis.
At $40+ premiums and travel costs, I’d have given up my day job to make a few bucks. Even gone to Texas if necessary.
I think what this situation points out in our economy nowadays is the fact that people have to travel mighty distances to make a few bucks.
And all the while corporate America is still sending jobs overseas.
We’re good enough to get fleeced by them, but not good enough to be employed by them.
Go figure.
Jeepers, Brendan, our fireplace was keeping our living room at 60! Never mind borrowing firewood; next time walk up the street to our living room!
On the inverters: we bought one over the weekend to keep our pipes (which drain outside) from freezing. You’ll have to check the voltage on our heating system; I know ours wasn’t big enough to power it.
High ceilings and an old Colonial floor plan makes for a tough heating job. The previous owners removed all the doors that were originally used to section off the room with the fireplace, but left them all in the attic. I’m trying to figure out a good way to get those back in service now.