Sunday, December 21, 2008

Ice storm in Central Massachusetts

It was midnight of Dec. 12 when we heard the loud noise from branches and trees breaking and falling. Power was off. About once a minute there'd be a loud BANG followed by a rustling sound and finally a crash as a branch or tree broke, fell through other branches and landed on the ground. It was eerily quiet between the BANGs. It was continous loud sound that made us awake the whole night. DH go out to investigate, and start a fire in the wood stove, knowing from experience that the power would not come back quickly. He investigate headlights stopped in the road.
People were stopped because of a large birch blocking the road, all was OK, sort of. They had a friend with a chainsaw coming.

In the morning, ice covered everything. No power, of course. The birch in the road was cleared, but another tree mostly blocked the road, but people could drive around it on the shoulder. DH decide to cut it enough to clear the road and get the chainsaw. The saw brought out two neighbors and they all worked to remove the tree.
Lots of large branches down in the yard.

I kept on visiting my littlegirl's bedroom because of the sound and the branches that fell off the ground made me worry so much. Our house was surrounded with trees, luckily no trees near our house fell down except the big branches close to the garage and the barn. The storm left us 8 days without electricity. Damage was severe in the city and some parts of Fitchburg still dont have power. We are lucky enough to have the firewood stocked up last summer. I am glad DH went crazy this summer cutting firewood, although the reason he did so was that he expected heating oil to cost $4-5/gallon this winter.

2 comments:

Mira said...

Dhoy I heard and saw this bad news in your area on tv. It must be hard not to have power for 8 days, geez. I hope things are back to normal now.

Anonymous said...

I was thinking of you Dhoy when I heard in the news that Fitchburg was one of the towns affected. Good to see you back. :o)

 

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