The long night of the icy ordeal
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- December 10, 2024
- 169
Misery, thy name is freezing rain. It begins as a gentle rain from heaven and then freezes solid on everything it touches. A forecast of that icy, wet stuff strikes terror in the hearts of every one of us.
Our last such storm at our previous home was a doozy. It came with little warning, beginning early one morning, and lasted all day. By noon ice-sheathed tree limbs were wiping out power lines. The loud explosion signaled the demise of the transformer near our house and the beginning of our ordeal by ice.
A house deprived of electricity sinks rather quickly into a state of hibernation. There is no heat, no lights and, for some, no water. The refrigerator gets warm, and the water heater gets cold.
Within an hour of the transformer’s demise, our house was getting very chilly. To prevent hypothermia, we lit a fire in the fireplace. Minutes later our living room was filled with smoke. After we frantically opened the damper, the smoke rushed up the chimney and we could all breathe a bit easier.
Next we brought out the oil lamps and candles. Side note, remember to trim the
wick of oil lamps before lighting them. Untrimmed wicks produce plumes of ceiling-coating, oily smoke. The oil lamps and the candles helped with seeing each other and whatever reading material we had grabbed before heading into the living room to suffer together as a family.
After we had done all we could to make our house a bit more comfortable, we gathered around the fireplace to roast hot dogs and marshmallows. We coped very well, that first day. We woke up the next morning in a house as cold and silent as a tomb, along with the unpleasant smell of oil and wood smoke. By that afternoon our coping abilities were shrinking as fast as our wood pile.
We did then what any homeowner would do under the circumstances — we left. We abandoned our house to her fate and took refuge in the warm house of a friend. If the storm taught us anything, it was this: immediately accept the generous invitation of kind friends to stay in their warm home during a wintry power outage rather than try to “brave the elements.” The elements almost always win!