The Ice Sorm of January 2009

The first adventure of 2009 turns out to have been dictated by Mother Nature. On Monday, January 26th, and Tuesday, January 27th, a massive ice storm swept through northern Arkansas and Kentucky, snapping the tops of nearly half the trees and knocking out all utilities.

A power pole snapped in half, dangling its lines down onto the small lane exiting from our cabin. (Such was also the case for perhaps hundreds of thousands of other homes in the region.) Being at the extreme end of a long arm into the lake, we could not expect to be anywhere near the top of the power company's "to do" list. As it happened, we were one of the last homes in the area to regain electricity -- and when they finally did reconnect the power 13 1/2 days later, they cut the telephone line -- leaving us without phone service or Internet for another five days.

Life without electricity is a considerable inconvenience--especially when it turns truly cold as it did for about half of the days of the outage. Of course, for the ten years from 1989 to 1999, we had no grid electricity anyway so the cabin is pretty well set-up for such situations. The wood stove provides minimally adequate heat on the coldest nights and its flat top makes cooking both possible and kind of fun. We had to figure out where we had stored our iron pan and Dutch oven, but having found them, it was fun to experiment with country cooking.

For the entire first week we had no power, no telephone, and even no cell phone access so we were truly out of contact with the world. Then the phone line started operating, which gave us access to the Internet when I was running the generator. We ran the generator a couple of hours each morning and evening to keep the refrigerator cool. During that period things were almost normal except for the irritating rumble of the generator's motor and the tangle of extension cords to the various appliances needing power.

The biggest problem, as you can imagine, was getting water for drinking, cooking, washing, and flushing the toilet. For a time I had to use buckets of pond water to flush the toilet, and on some days the ice on the pond was thick. Later I was able to fill the bathtub with water, so the bigger difficulty became filling enough jugs with drinking/cooking water.

During the first two days, the main task was to cut our way through the tangle of tree that had fallen across the roads -- and when we encountered downed power lines we could never be entirely sure that it was safe to work near them. Then, I spent a day helping the fire department check on the safety of the various elderly and sick residents. Following that, Sue and I drove to Jonesboro to check on our house there.

The spectacle on the entire drive to Jonesboro was similar to that in the area around Hand Cove -- broken trees, downed power lines, and general devastation. When we got to our house, the yard was littered with branches, but fortunately the house was OK. We spent an afternoon and the next morning cutting up the big branches and dragging the remnants to piles by the road. Then, as there was no prospect of power in Jonesboro, we headed back to the cabin where at least there were the comforts of the wood stove, the generator, and the periodic telephone/Internet connections.

Over time we grew somewhat accustomed to the simple life, but when the electricity finally came back on, it was definitely time for high-fives and hot showers.