Thursday night, at roughly 1am I was awaken by a loud explosion type sound as a 30" diameter pine tree snapped in half in my neighbors yard and came crashing down on top of the roof of their parked car. At the time, I knew we had a pretty good ice storm going on outside, but didn't realize what the sound was exactly. I knew it was going to be a decent storm, but had no idea of the level of destruction that was happening outside. I didn't realize it was going to be quite that bad. At 5am, I jumped out of bed at the sound of what I thought was a gunshot, followed by a flash so bright I could see it in my bedroom with the shades drawn and with my eyes closed. While our power went out at roughly 2am, that flash was a transformer a few blocks away and one of the thousands of power grid transformers in the area that exploded due to the storm. I was one of about 220,000 in the Albany region without power at that point. After the disturbance that transformer created, I obviously wasn't able to sleep so I bundled up in the 10 degree weather to head outside and see what kind of damage had occurred in the neighborhood and to see if anyone needed help. Turns out we were one of the only houses without trees down on our lot in the neighborhood, and 3 of our next door neighbors had some sort of serious property damage. In addition to the above mentioned car that was flattened, the neighbor behind us had a 24" diameter pine snap in half and flatten their shed outside, go through their pool cover, and another tree top that came down and sheared the power, phone, and cable lines off their house. Lucky for us, when I got my new Stihl last summer I told Lisa (much to her disapproval) that I was going to remove all the limbs off the tree in front of our house that were hanging over the house. Because of this, we were lucky and able to avoid any property damage due to overhanging limbs. After helping a few neighbors get limbs out of the way, etc.....I decided I needed to get to a store quickly and find a temporary heat source for our house.....I knew if this many were affected that things would be going quickly. I hopped in the truck and ended up driving a good 15 miles before I could find a store with electricity.........a plaza with both a Home Depot and WalMart. I stopped in Home Depot first, and bought the second to last propane space heater, and the very last propane tank the store had to offer. There were no generators left at this point in the store. I then headed to Walmart to try and pick up more propane, since the radio reports were saying at a minimum several days before elecricity would be restored to everyone, and bought the last 2 propane tanks they had to offer and almost got into an altercation in the process when another gentleman (I use that term loosely) wasn't thrilled that I got to it before he did. According to one neighbor I talked to yesterday, at this same Home Depot there were over 100 people waiting in line yesterday for a truck that was supposed to show up with a new load of generators. Apparently every store for well over an hour from here sold out of generators. After buying up as much propane I could find within reasonable driving distance, I headed back to the house to pick up Lisa and head to her parents house (a little over an hour north of us, they got snow only) to drop her off with the dog, and to spend a night in a warm house. Yesterday morning I headed back down to our place armed with a borrowed generator from Lisa's Dad, and I spent the day/night back down here at our place alone last night heating the house on 3x ceramic space heaters (it's about 45 in here as I type). I also managed to power our TV, cable box (to watch some hunting shows :d ), cable modem, one of our chest freezers in the basement, and the lap top. It's chilly in here, but I'm a bit nervous about people breaking into houses, and I had to make sure those freezers didn't thaw out or the pipes freeze. It was down into single digits last night again, and even now is only about 20 outside. There are Red Cross w
Be careful, Matt. I heard you guys really got the brunt force of that system. We were right on the edge, and made it out with just rain and sleet. It's times like these you probably wish you had a small supplemental wood stove. We just put one back in my parents house in case we lose power for extended periods of time. On a side note, how did the new truck handle the conditions?
To be honest, the Subaru with snow specific tires was better in ice/snow than any vehicle I've ever been in if given enough clearance. That thing was like a snowmobile. The truck is pretty good, as good as any other truck I guess, but it just doesn't go around corners in the snow like the Suby did. With that said, it was nice to have a truck, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to fit this generator in my Suby.......:d . Update as well.........they are saying Wednesday the power will be restored. That will make it almost 7 days without power. Apparently the neighbor behind me who had his lines sheared off the house doesn't have good access for the truck to get in there, they need to remove some chain link fencing to let the truck close enough. Because of this, our whole neighborhood has to have the power turned off until their line is fixed, which is bottom of the priority list since we are in a small development. Right now main routes etc are still their main focus................. Right now it stays about 50 degrees in the house with the generator going and my little ceramic heaters on, so with some good quality polar weight fleece long johns under a sweatshirt and sweatpants, I'm OK for the night. Unfortunately I've gotta go to work tomorrow though........
Glad to hear you didn't get the property damage and you managed to find a genny. I'm going to pick on you about worrying about the freezers thawing and the pipes freezing. If it's cold enough for the pipes to freeze, the freezer is fine. We keep three generators on hand. Everybody should have at least one around. We had a big ice storm two years ago and the power was out for a couple of days. No property damage but it sure did hammer our fruit trees. Why can't you run the furnace off the genny? No transfer switch?
Damn Matt, sounds like you are right in the middle of it. Glad to hear you are ok and no serious damage to your place. Good thing you got the heaters in time or you would have had a real mess with the pipes. Stay safe and keep warm bro!
Well, glad to hear your property is still pretty much in tact. Sounds like you guys really got hit. Was there any snowfall up your way, or was this mostly all ice? Btw, do you drive a lot in snow/ice (dumb question...you live in Ny state :d ). You might find putting on a set of snow/ice tires on the truck like you had on the suby would do you some good, especially with the lighter rear end. I'm thinking of running some blizzaks next winter when I have more funds. They get a lot of great reviews.
Glad to here your alright Matt. On Friday night as I was laying in my bed in my dorm room, all I could hear were all the branches and trees coming down. At about 1am the power began going on and off, and finally stayed off. When I got up, the power was out for a good portion of the day, but they were able to get it going in our building by the afternoon. However, there was still several dorms that had to be evacuated because there was no power/heat. Soon thereafter they had to temporarily cancel our finals and send us home on Sunday since they had no place to keep all the "evacuees". There was really no food on campus to speak of, so my friends and I took a trip down Rt. 9 looking for something to eat. It took about 2 miles until we found something open, thank you Subway . Even though I was kinda pissed about the finals since I had spent the previous 5 days studying 7-9 hours a day, we still managed to have a fun night before leaving the next day . Hope you get your power back soon Matt, I really could not believe the destruction on Rt.9 and the areas on and off campus.
