Sunday, February 15, 2009

Generators Off in Neighborhood

Would you believe that finally today there were no sounds of generators running in our neighborhool? Some of our neighbors had to have the lines rebuilt from their pole to the house and they are now getting to repair those lines.

Wayne and I have been working on picking up branches and sticks...and so far just about have the front yard done...well, if you can call two hugs piles in the front yard done. We could certainly have a gigantic wiener roast, complete with marshmallows. The county is working to get funds to come pick up the limbs...if they don't, we plan to burn them right where they sit.

Next we will have to start on the side yard where we had the most damage to our house - tore the cutters on three sides of the house on that end...and the limbs are larger than what we had in front. We also had damage to the gutter on one side of the garage, and quite a bit of damage to our garden shed in the back - one big limb broke down the double doors to the shed, and tore some siding off the front.

It will definitely be a while before we get this all cleaned up. Our insurance adjuster was here today and we should have the final report back from him in a week. The adjuster was from Montana, helping out with the storm damage in Western Kentucky.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Power is Back On

Our power came back on Monday night...wow, what a relief. Our home telephone (and Internet) are still down so if we aren't anwering your calls and messages, that's why. You can e-mail me at bbquilter@gmail.com and I can pick that up at the office when I check my messages there.

This week President O'Bama designated our ice storm a Major Disaster, which will allow the cities to get Federal funds to help with the clean-up. The Paducah fire and police have gone door-to-door checking on every household; we live in the county and the National Guard came through our neighborhood. This is the worst natural disaster ever in the state of Kentucky.

Here's a photo to give you an idea of what happened to the utility poles. This pole is located at the corner of the parking lot at the Paducah Expo Center. There are literally thousands of utility poles that have snapped in half, and in this case, thirds. There are 500 utility workers from nine states in town working with our local utility companies to help replace all of those utility lines before they can get power restored.


About half of our staff at AQS still does not have power back on at their homes. Cindy Carrico, our Assistant Show Director, counted 28 broken utility poles between her home in Fancy Farm and Mayfield, Kentucky - a distance of only 10 miles. That shows what a mammoth job these utility workers have to do to restore power. They are saying it will be March before Cindy's home has power again.

All for now...we have power and are warm again, and Tuffy has come out of hiding. GRIN
Bonnie B

Monday, February 2, 2009

Ice Storm Update

I'm taking my lunch break today to post a few of the photos I took on Thursday after the ice had stopped. There are big limbs and little limbs laying everywhere. We had some property damage to the house and shed that we know of now...and we've managed to stay warm and heat some food. This whole experience certainly makes me realize the trials that the people we visited in Bali and Turkey that do not have electricty have to go through every day to survive. We are definitely spoiled with our electronics and electricity.

Here is a close-up view of how thick the ice was on the branches - 1/2" to 3/4" all over the branches. You can see why they couldn't stand all that weight.

Wayne takes care of feeding our fine feathered friends. They didn't know what to think of this ice and snow. They really liked it when he spread sunflower seed on the ground to make it easy for them to find. I don't think I've ever seen icicles like this hanging from our clothesline before.

A big limb went through the doors to our garden shed out back. You can see how low our cable line is hanging. Telephone line had already snapped by the time I took this photo. Electrical line seems to be in tact ... when they get our grid of power going.

The view of our side yard from the back. We were lucky to only have gutter damage that we know of, so far. Still a lot of broken limbs just hanging from the trees.

Here you can see the grove of trees behind the garage and how they have broken in half or the tops have broken out of them. There is a lot of cleanup in this area.

Branches that have fallen on the garage.

The branches kept falling...the one tree in the center of this photo only has two main branches left of it. Behind it, our beautiful tall tulip poplar tree has lost many of its branches.
Stay warm...we are too now that we have our generator going.