Dodging the Ice Bullet

A week ago, I was in Kentucky. Indeed, I was bebopping around Muhlenberg County with my sister, her mother-in-law, and my mother. We had quite the time, visiting antique stores and junk stores that professed to be antique stores. We lunched out in the country and enjoyed a fun day driving past fields and farms en route to our various destinations.

Now, one week later, all has changed in Muhlenberg County, in McLean County, in Daviess County--all of my stomping grounds. I got back to Colorado in the nick of time. Two days after my departure from the promised land, an ice storm hit with a vengeance. So much of the infrastrucure is above ground in Kentucky, that the effects were devastating. The governor has declared the entire state a disaster area.

A combination of broken tree branches and downed power lines has left hundreds of thousands of people without power. All businesses and schools are closed. People are being asked to stay home so as not to endanger themselves from the downed power lines. Cell phones aren't working; some landlines barely do so. It is a mess.

My family is hanging in there. My parents are lucky; they still have power in their little subdivision--one of the few places around where the power lines are underground. My sister, Karen, drove from Calhoun to Greenville on Tuesday to collect her mother-in-law who had lost power and was afraid to drive. By the time they got back home, Karen's power was gone, so they relocated to a friend's house down the road. My brother has no power, so he went to my mom and dad's house. My sister-in-law moved to her sister's house and then they lost power.

My mother actually seemed to feel it was quite an adventure--the worst outage she ever remembered. One of her biggest complaints about the whole thing was that her cable service was out for two days, so no T.V.! She thought she really needed to go to the grocery pretty soon, though.

It was good to hear that everyone was safe. They certainly have a mess that is going to take a while to clean up.