The Ice Storm (standard:non fiction, 1484 words)
Author: Everet	Added: Dec 25 2007	Views/Reads: 3587/2210	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Trials and tribulations during a winter storm and power outage

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

First out of the box was the wheels, then the axle, the  bag of nuts
bolts washers and axel clips and the instruction manual.. By this time 
the afternoon was nearly fading in the evening hours. The instructions 
said to stand the generator up on end to install the axle, but the box 
said generator is filled with oil do not tip. I decided not to stand 
the generator on end, but to tilt it up far enough to get the axle and 
the wheels in place. I held the end up while Ruth slipped the axle in 
place and put the wheels onto the axle. Then ,we had to put the 
stationary leg under the other end of the frame. Again I held it up 
while Ruth placed the leg under it and slipped the bolt and nut on to 
it. 

Now we could roll it in place just outside the garage. It was when I
discovered that I did not have enough gasoline to run it for a very 
long time so we had to go try to find a filling station that had 
electrical power to pump the gas to fill our cans 

The power cords that came with the generator were long enough to reach
through the window into the mud room and from there we had to run 
extension cords to the equipment that needed to operate which was out 
refrigerators and the forced air heating unit. The two refrigerators 
were fairly east, but the furnace was located in the basement at the 
other end of the house. This was going to need a cord over 90 feet long 
and had to be heavy duty type of cord. Luckily I had one which I had 
used when I was in the construction business, so I stretched it along 
side the house and into the mechanical room with the heater in it. 

At last we were ready to go, but it also was now very dark outside and
flashlight were needed for everything we wanted to do. We were warned 
by the generator instructions not to start everything at once so one at 
a time we plugged in the equipment, waiting a few minutes each time we 
plugged in something additional. At last we had the “friges” running 
and heat in the house. 

At 2:00A.M in the morning the generator ran out of gasoline and it had
to be filled and restarted and it was still freezing rain outside. The 
limbs of the trees were becoming overloaded with ice and were snapping 
with a loud bang that resembled a war going on outside. When it was 
daylight and we looked around the devastation was readily apparent 
trees and limbs were laying all over and indeed it looked as if the 
whole area had been hit by a tornado. 

After about four days as I had just filled the gas tank on the generator
 again. The power came back on for us, but many people did not get 
their power back for a week later and some not even then. Now it is a 
couple of weeks later and the tree people are all busy cutting  and 
hauling the brush away. Much of it  forms a fence along the streets of 
the neighbor hood waiting to be taken to a place where it can be ground 
into mulch or disposed of in some other way. 

It was the worst storm and most destructive one that we have had in many
years,but a few days later another storm was predicted that would dump 
about six inches of snow on us. Fortunately that one veered off into 
another direction and we were spared another catastrophic episode. 

We were very thankful that this adventure in our lives had come to an
end. 


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