The remnants of Hurricane Ike smashed into a cold front on Sunday, bringing winds up to 75 mph. Ohio's version of a hurricane, without the water. News reports said the winds were the strongest ever recorded in Ohio. Branches, trees and power lines came down all over town. No school for two days now.
The 2 million power outages in Ohio were lengthened due to 25% of our electric company workers having gone to Texas to help with the devastation there. Hats off to the big hearts of Ohioans!
We lost power around 5 p.m. Sunday, and though areas of our neighborhood were up and running several hours later, the couple of blocks around us were out for 31 hours. You can imagine the negatives of this, but we saw positives, too:
- I could do no laundry!
- for 2 evenings, as it got dark inside our houses but was still light outside, the neighbors all wandered outside to chat for an hour or two.
- by yesterday afternoon, I completely cleaned out our fridge. Spotless!
- friends and neighbors helped each other with raking, clearing and loading up piles of limbs.
- I finished the book IRELAND, by candlelight.
- thanks to our gas stove, a steaming pot of beef vegetable soup was ready by the end of the day.
I have a new perception of what hurricane victims suffer. Though we have widespread damage here, I try to imagine 30-foot waves from the Gulf of Mexico washing over us. But I really can't imagine. Horrific.
2 comments:
Wow, that is craziness!!
I don't remember any big storms like that in Delaware growing up...especially 31 hours without power! I like your positives...way to see the brighter side of things! =)
I was driving Anna and a van filled with all her earthly possessions to UC that day. We'd decided to make a mini-trip out of it and go the day before she was due to move in. We traveled via Rt.42 (headed for IKEA! which closed 30 minutes after we finally arrived because they had no electricity.) and were in XENIA!! watching for flying cows of TWISTER fame when we realized what was going on. Yikes! Spent the night in a hotel in Cinci without electricity. Spirits were high and no one was complaining. I'll not tolerate any more jokes about Kentucky hillbillies though. We finally found a restaurant open once we crossed the Ohio River and were spared starving to death by our dear neighbors to the south!
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