In the dark

On Thursday night Dec. 11, a massive ice storm hit the New England area, in particular north-central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. At its height, almost 500,000 people were without power and now, 10 days later, thousands still are ... I heard on the news that it was the worst ice storm to hit the area in over 30 years. It's so bad that many school systems in the area are closed until Jan. 5 because the towns are still mostly without power and need the schools for shelters.

One town in particular, Lunenburg (which boarders our city, Fitchburg) was hit so hard and the damage so extensive that the electrical company CEO said it's taking so long to restore power because virtually the entire system has to be completely re-built.

Click here for some pictures I posted on my Facebook page of our neighborhood the day after the storm.

The power at our house went out at 9:30 that Thursday night and we stuck it out the first night, but as Kell and Joey took a nap late Friday morning, I could feel the house getting colder and colder, so we knew that with a 4-year-old in the house, we had to find some place to stay warm because it was pretty obvious the power wasn't coming back on anytime soon.

I started making calls to hotels in the area and if they did answer their phone, they either didn't have power and heat or had no rooms available. The first room I could find was at a Holiday Inn in Marlboro, MA, which is about 40 minutes south of us. So we stayed there Friday night and found many others from our area ... all without power and grateful for someplace to stay.

We checked on the house on Saturday, packed more clothes, and then headed for my mother-in-law's house in Pepperell, MA, which is about 30 minutes northeast of us. She had only been without power for about 12 hours. My brother-in-law and his girlfriend were there, too, so it was kind of fun hanging out with everyone. Still, like everyone else, we just wanted to be in our own house.

On Monday, the 15th, the power finally came back around 4:30 a.m. A few anecdotal things about the storm and its aftermath:

• It was such a creepy, disconcerting feeling lying awake Thursday night/Friday morning listening to the CRACK CRACK BOOM sound of tree branches falling in the neighborhood and wondering if something was going to hit the house. I kept getting up and going to the windows and looking out to see where branches were landing.
  
• I'm 39 years old and I've never seen anything like the extent of the damage the next morning. I tried to clear some of the branches from the street because one end of our street was completely impassible, but then I realized working under the trees was stupid because the branches were still coming down and I literally could have been killed.
  
• Our next door neighbor had no idea about the storm and I was outside when she came out onto her porch at 10:30 Friday morning. "Oh my god!" she kept saying over and over again. She had gone to bed when the power went out and had not heard any weather reports. She lost one of the pine trees in her back yard and it had just missed taking out a corner of her garage.
  
• Speaking of our neighbor, she toughed it at at her house because she has a gas stove and therefore had heat. I went to check on her at one point and her little dog greeted me at the door in her own little sweater ... very cute.
  
• On that Friday morning, Kell and I came to the realization that we couldn't make coffee and because virtually the entire city was without power, we couldn't just go to get coffee somewhere else. So, I went out to our gas grille, took off the cooking grates and put the kettle right on the flavor bars that sit on top of the gas jets. It took about 30 minutes, but we had boiling water and coffee. It's the little things, you know?
  
• Here's how odd the storm's track was ... a co-worker lives in Acton, MA, which is only about 20 minutes east of where we live. They only had rain ... it was like a completely different world.
  
• Perhaps the most unnerving thing was when we came back to the house on Saturday to check on things. I was walking up and down the street and even though it was sunny, it was the creepiest feeling because, save for a few generators running in the area, there was no noise, nothing was moving and there was no one around. Because of all the downed branches, it literally looked like a war zone you see in movies or like a tornado had plowed through the area and only affected the trees.
  
• As the clean-up effort continued in the days after the storm, electric company crews from all over the area (especially the eastern part of Massachusetts) and out-of-state started heading to our area. From what I personally saw and was told by others, crews from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia and New York were here (and some are still here).
  
• My sister-in-law's husband is a linesman for the local electrical company, Unitil, and is working shifts of 16 hours on, 8 hours off, which means he's not even getting 8 hours of sleep at a time. He was saying that recently he was working on a job and heard this other crew talking with heavy southern accents. "Man, I must be tired," he thought, "because those guys sound like they're from the south." Turns out they were a crew from Alabama.
  
• Kell is a teacher of English at a vocational high school here in Fitchburg and was told that the Superintendent was at the school when some out-of-state utility trucks pulled up and the workers asked if they could use the school's bathrooms. Of course, he let the men inside and soon there were dozens of linesmen in the school cafeteria. Being that the school was closed and they needed to do something the food there, the school fed the workers and the Superintendent gave the guys hats and t-shirts from the school.
  
• It was a strange feeling when the power went out knowing you couldn't call any relatives or friends to go and stay with because no one had power.
  
• We got our power back comparatively quickly and so friends and family were coming over to use our shower and have a hot meal. But in this day and age, another important thing was to re-charge cell phones because if the phone lines weren't down at someone's house, then most people now have cordless phones, which need power. Needless to say, cell phones were critical to keeping in touch.
  
• I understand how frustrating it is to be without power for so long (my parents are being told they likely won't have power before Christmas), but it's disappointing to hear how the linesmen out there are being cussed out by people. It's not their fault the power is out and there's only so much they can do at once. Even given the fact that Unitil apparently completely mis-managed the response to the storm (many of the linesmen who work for Unitil are saying this), the severity of the storm and the resulting damage is unprecedented.

Out of all this, the experience reminds me how powerful nature really is and how it can impact our lives.