Friday, January 4, 2008

Ice Storm 1998 - My Pics

Here we are spending the day doing what we did during the Ice Storm of January '98: chatting, reading, hanging out, listening to the radio. In our area, the radio station was the saving grace for many people. The local radio personality stayed on the air for days on end taking updates and spreading the word. Through the radio updates, we knew where there was gas, propane, firewood, food, water and emergency shelter. We knew which roads were closed, where outside help was coming from and which services were providing door-to-door checks.

This is a pic of my backyard, looking toward the back of the garage portion of the house.

A little further afield, you can see a bit of the devastated treeline. This is my dad and my favorite dog ever, Jerry Lee.

Here we are still standing by the tractor looking toward the barns.

A very dark picture looking out the front door, past Jerry's head into the yard. The structure around the tree was our tree house. The ground was littered with branches, limbs and twigs. Really, you should be able to see much more open snowy yard. Surprisingly, the branches that came down didn't damage the house or the vehicles in the drive. There was a lot of clean-up to do once things settled down after the rain and ice. The whine of chain saws became commonplace. This particular tree was taken down the next summer - after R was born and my wedding approached in August of '99. Another big maple in the front yard is still doing ok minus a number of limbs. The birch seems to be permanently bowed and a small fir tree sprang back to grow up normally.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing it's been 10 years. It's funny...even though it was the worst natural disaster our area has ever seen, I have some wonderful warm memories of sharing space with so many great people....of all the help people were willing to give each other...of playing cards, slowing down and actually *talking* with family and friends. We did more than survive it, really....

Thanks for sharing :-)

Frankie said...

brrr...looks nasty and cold.

You had (have?) a Jerry Lee, too. Ahhh.

jugglingpaynes said...

So interesting. This is why I love snow and blizzards, it brings people together. You can imagine a simpler time. I remember the year we moved to this area, 1994, when there was a huge blizzard and my parents got snowed in at our apartment. Nothing brings a family together like weather!

Peace and Laughter,
Cristina