Progress Report - Limbs & Sticks from Ice Storm

My sister, Karen Franzen, and her son, Mike, drove down from Iowa on Wednesday. They helped Andi & Dennis Affholter drive their car back to Paducah; Dennis was loading the last of their furnishings from their home in Keota. Karen and Mike spent all day Thursday and until noon on Friday helping Wayne get the last of our sticks picked up. They worked on the pine trees in the side yard, and burned several of our piles of sticks. We only have six piles in the back yard left, plus the piles in the front yard that the county is supposed to pick up. If they don't, we'll burn those too. Thanks, Karen and Mike! It would have taken Wayne and me all summer to get those sticks picked up.

Here's a photo of Mike on the dock at Kentucky Lake. The crappie were really biting. Yummmm, crappie is my favorite fresh fish. And when you catch a mess of 55 of them like these guys did, that is some good eating. And what is prettier than a view of Kentucky Lake in the late afternoon. Even the birds knew fish were being cleaned, as they hovered overhead waiting for the remains.

These are the tree piles of sticks that we burned on Thursday night. We took a break and went to Kentucky Lake and then to Catfish Kitchen in Draffenville for supper. It took until after 1:00 a.m. to get them burned down so Mike and Wayne could go to bed. We only burn two piles at a time and we keep the hose out there to water down the grass around the piles. Some parts of our grass are really. On Friday, the State ordered a "no burn ban" from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, until further notice. There have been people who started fired and it got away from them and burned whole fields or buildings down. We keep a watch on ours when we start them.

Here is what is left in the front yard. The county is supposed to come pick up piles that are next to the street. They use a piece of equipment that has a big pincher that scoops up these piles and drops them in a big truck to take to the tree disposal yard to be chipped into mulch. Do you think the price of mulch will go down because there is so much available? We'll see.

Picking Up Sticks - the BIG Cleanup

My sister, Karen Franzen, and her son, Mike, and granddaughter Kaetlin, came to Paducah to help "pick up the sticks" in our yard. She said the photos I posted earlier didn't give a true picture of how many trees and limbs had fallen. Maybe these photos will give you a better idea.

Katie (the assistant cashier), Mike (the manager), Karen (chief flunky), and Wayne (the boss - on the tractor) filled this trailer numerous times as they gathered the sticks into piles in the backyard. They decided they needed to have titles - so they came up with their own.

This is the back right corner of our yard. Several large limbs fell in this area.

We had some fun while they were here too. We went to eat at Patti's Restaurant on Thursday evening. Here Katie gets her first look at the 2-inch pork chop we all ordered. We ate about half and brought the rest home.

The side yard - several limbs fell on the roof of the house on this side. We also lost a big pine tree on this side.

The "crew" was able to get some of the sticks burned, but then the winds pick up and they couldn't do any more burning.

Central Paving is one of the sites that is accepting limbs if you haul them there. We drove by and saw this huge barrel chipper machine they are using to chop up all of these limbs.

And this is the pile that they still have to chip. To get an idea of the height of the pile, compare the pile to the large pieces of equipment sitting in front of it.

Mike starts sawing up the limbs behind the garage.

Mike used the chain saw non-stop to get it into pieces small enough for the rest of the crew to stack into piles to be burned in the back yard.

Here are some of the 25 six-foot tall piles of sticks in the backyard, all ready to be burned when the weather cooperates so Wayne can get out there to do it. On Saturday, when we wanted to get the last of the sticks picked up, it rained in the morning. So we went out to pick up some souvenir T-shirts and stopped by to visit the National Quilt Museum. By the time we arrived back home, the rain had stopped and the wind had died down so we were able to finish it. By the time we finished, snow showers started and the winds picked up again. The weather cooperated just enough for us to get the sticks all stacked and ready for burning.

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Karen, Mike, and Katie came on Wednesday and went home on Sunday. They helped us whittle this huge clean-up job down to a manageable size. Now Wayne can get his hose out there and start a couple of piles at a time to get it all burned.

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Thank you Karen, Mike, and Katie - we would have been weeks trying to get all of these sticks picked up. We had some fun, and we went to some of our favorite restaurants in the area too. We took their photo in front of the fire station in Possom Trot...and of Mike pumping gas at the Possom Trot gas station. GRIN! I guess they will have stories to tell when they get home.

Oh, and by the way, I also gave Katie and Karen some tools so they can do some quilting. Katie went home with some of my books, and some that have some good projects for her to get started. While they were here, we made a baked potato bag...and they went home with the instructions. Katie did all of the sewing to make it too.

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And now we are all exhausted...today was spent napping, watching the Nascar race, napping, napping, and napping.

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

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.

We are Hunkered Down

Hello...I am at the Paducah Library writing this note. Just wanted to let you all know that Wayne and I are fine. Our power is out and last night a limb tore the phone box off the outside of our house, so we won't have a land line for a while. Our cell phones have not been working. Today I was able to get cell service for a little while, but it is still sporadic.

Thank heavens we have our gas logs in our fireplace. We have been able to keep the kitchen fairly comfortable with that. Our neighbors have a generator and we've run a line from that to put a heater in the family room. The grocery stores are getting back open so we have been able to get some things to eat. We have a gas water heater so we do have hot water.

We are just heading home from Home Depot where we bought a generator to be able to power our heater, the refrigerator, and maybe even the microwave - so we can eat something hot. This is like camping inside your house. I covered the doorway to the living room with a wool batting and that is good insulation - helped to raise the temp in the kitchen by about 5 degrees to 68. I can't wait to tell H.D. at Hobbs that I definitely vouch for the insulation qualities of their wool batting.

If you looked at my last post of the damage in our yard, it is twice that bad now. Limbs damaged the gutters on two sides of our house, and there are limbs everywhere. It's staying in the 20's so the ice hasn't started to melt yet. I've taken pictures but can't download them to post until we get power back up. That may be several days yet. Our power comes from transmission lines in Hendersonville and there are many power poles broken along that route. Today they are doing a helicopter visual of those lines to see what is causing the problem.

Until you hear from me again...we are staying warm, finding things to eat that don't require cooking, and I'm reading some books that I bought weeks ago and had no time to read (can only read from sunrise to sunset though since we just have candles and flashlights for light after dark).

Bonnie, Wayne & Tuffy (who hates the sound of those trees falling)