Another amazing storm... of ICE!!!
My last blog mentioned a freakish ice storm that knocked the power out of the city, but that storm was nothing. We lost a few power lines here and there, but all-in-all we had power within 7 hours of having it shut-off initially. We then left for Pennsylvania to see Megan's sister Deb and her brother-in-law Steve as well as their two kids, Joshua and Rachel. While there we heard from my parents that they lost power. My dad described it as an unbelievable scene of destruction that topped the storm we had a week ago 100 times over.
We drove back and finally made it into Kearney at 2pm yesterday. Upon entering Nebraska we slowly came across more destruction the further west we traveled. When we got into Kearney, I had found that Megan and myself had power, but our apartments heating and water was turned off. I went to visit my parents and to grab my new Digital Camera, which came in the mail. While their, I took a couple of pictures of the wreckage.
Since my parents had figured out a way to rig their homes heater to their new generator, I got to borrow a couple of heaters to plug into our apartments outlets. On the way home, I saw this wreckage completely blocking the road to a few homes in the distance.
When I got to the apartment, I plugged in the heaters and decided to test out my new camera and explore a couple of trees near our parking lot. What I saw shocked me because I wasn't expecting it. Last week, we had roughly a quarter-inch to a half-inch of ice accumulate on the branches and power lines, but this time it was 1.5 inches to 2 inches of ice. Here are a few pictures.
The pictures do not truly show what kind of damage was done to the surrounding area. Here is a blurb from the Nebraska Public Power District:
NPPD’s system experienced significant damage on every level from high-voltage
lines to individual services on the distribution level. After today’s assessment, NPPD’s transmission crews learned that more than 600 miles of high-voltage power lines remain out of service due to wires down, structures down, or both. Generating units were reduced to provide stability to the system in order to carry electricity across the fragile network to those customers and communities who either were fortunate enough to have never lost power or were restored. The assessment by air revealed that it may take Nebraska’s utilities days, weeks, or even months to completely rebuild the system. However, NPPD hopes to restore service to its end-use retail customers by the end of this week.
While we made progress in some communities like Neligh, Aurora, Meadow Grove, Minden, Doniphan, Ashton, Shelton, Ravenna, Battle Creek, and Bradshaw, there are still many customers without service yet tonight,” said Arlt. “We just can’t get to everyone at once. We will start again tomorrow. We will work the day after that. And we will work the day after that ….” The utilities’ best estimate of homes and businesses out of power Monday evening remained at 15,000. Other estimates determined that thousands of poles, hundreds of transformers, and close to 100 substations were impacted by the storm."
We have since gotten our heater and water running, but our hot water isn't accessible yet. Megan and I are going to go to the YMCA to clean up this afternoon because of our lack of hot water. We are grateful, however, because both my parents and Megan's are without power and have heard they may not receive any power for 1 to 2 weeks, possibly a month!. My parents are a little better off because of the generator, but are still experiencing the pains of losing what we have taken for granted... electricity!
Labels: interesting, story, stressed, travel, vacation, weather
