It was January 4th of 1998 and although it was cold at 38 degrees, it wasn't 30 degrees below zero as in past winters, so we weren't complaining. Living in DePeyster Ny, is not for the faint of heart. From the time we pulled our 24 foot moving truck into the snow covered driveway in 1989 until this day, we had weathered so many hardships.
Bailing the septic tank every week, no indoor toilet for 2 years, water pump frozen so that we were without water for 3 weeks. We used frozen ice, melted and boiled, but it wasn't enough to stop all of us from contracting Beaver Fever. It hit all of us hard but because I was thin at 110 lbs, losing 20 lbs made me look like death warmed over. For 9 days, we all excreted fluids from all orifices in our bodies. I was too weak to eat or drink and became severely dehydrated. We had no medical insurance. so none of us went to the doctor. My 4 yr old and 15 yr olds were sick but not like I was. I may have already had the autoimmune that took me out 15 yrs later but I was not worried about that then. I thought I was going to die and when I started hallucinating and saw a golden dragon, my husband thought I might too, but he did not take me to the Dr.
Somehow I survived and I told my husband I was calling someone to fix the pump. He had said we weren't going to call anyone because of the money and that he would fix it but he got sick along with the rest of us and he could not fix it, so I went against the grain and called the guy who used a blow torch and we had water in a few minutes for 20 dollars. All that suffering for 20 dollars.
This was to be the framework for all of the troubles that happened over the next 18 winters in the North Country and January 1998 was going to stand out from all of those. It was slated to be the worst ice storm of the Century with icy rain falling for 80 days over Montreal and other parts of Canada and northern Ny all the way to Maine. We were hit hard, every one was and as the ice brought power lines to the ground our power went along four Million others.
One thousand transmission towers fell under the hard ice as temperatures dropping below freezing caused the rain to freeze as solid as an ice skating rink, 5 inches thick and damaging every tree, every structure that fell under the weight and the electricity was a thing of the past, as every thing literally ground to a halt
I had been skating across the parking lot to go into work the day of the ice storm but my shift ended and I made it home which was prophetic because as day turned into night, all traffic was halted except for emergency personnel and I was home for the duration. As a nurse, I was considered essential personnel so I was able to go to the little country store in DePeyster and stock up on a few things to get us through. Luckily my husband was a person that stocked up on things. Guns, ammo, canned food and water, learning from out first year and the Beaver Fever scare, so we had what we needed mostly. We took every thing out of our freezer and buried it in the snow before the ice covered every thing. It was a built in freezer and we did not lose anything from the hard work of the summer months and hunting season. If you wanted cold water, all you had to do was stick a gallon outside for a little bit and you had perfectly cold drinking water.
We did not have a furnace like most homes did in this part of the world. When ours belched black smoke into the house and died two days after our arrival in 1989, we had no jobs yet and there was no money to get another. When I started work, I wanted to get another but my husband vetoed the idea and said he would gather wood for the tiny wood stove we had in the living room. It was not one of those Amish models that heat the entire house. It was so small that we had to re-stoke it every hour or so and we went through about 60 cords of hard wood and 40 cords of pine, cedar and end cuts from the sawmill down the road.
I know that sounds like an enormous amount of wood and it was and we needed that much to provide a marginal amount of warmth in three rooms in the first level of my home. The living room, the bedroom directly above it and the dining room was warm. The rest of the house was cold, icy cold. My children could not touch the walls because ice was inside on the walls and they might stick to it. The door handles often had ice on them. All of the nails in the bathroom were white with ice. It was a cold, intolerable and miserable way of life and I did not let anyone at work know or in my personal life. I hid it all behind a smile to be strong for my children, to try and give them some semblence of a normal life but I was failing badly and not having a furnace set us up for all those winters where we froze almost to death.
Sometimes the blankets were piled so high on my daughters that I thought they might smother underneath them but it was the only way to keep them warm.
On this particular month, I came to be eternally grateful that we had that working woodstove. The temperature had warmed up and turned the rain to ice. Thick sheets of it that made it impossible to walk outside in, yet we had to, as the wood barn was a trek from the house. I can't count the times we fell in the next two weeks. We heard the branches fall underneath the weight of the ice and the beautiful pine tree in our front yard fell over but missed the car. The tires of the car were stuck in solid ice so there was no contemplating moving it. The ice covered the vehicle like a car cover and it was so thick that it looked like an ice sculpture.
We pulled mattresses into the living room and we pretty much lived in one room for the next 8 days that we were without electricity. One of my old Nursing instructors showed up the second or third day in one of the busses from the school with emergency supplies such as water, canned foods and fruit. She did this for every house on our road and I am sure many others. The people of Heuvelton came together as they always do because that is who they are. If there is one in need, the community helps. It is a wonderful way to be.
Finally the icy rain stopped and the linemen arrived on our road to try and get the electricity going. When the truck stopped at our house, I screamed with happiness and went to the front door and yelled out my thanks to them. They were from Ohio and after working in that cold for an hour, I took hot cocoa to the crew. I was so appreciative of what they were doing for all of us. They got our electricity going that day and was preparing to leave but the electricity wasn't to our water pump. I went outside as best I could and called to them before they could finish packing up and leave. They went back to work and this time before they left, they made sure we had water.
I tried to get into my car to start it to melt the ice on the windshield but the lock where the key went was solid Ice. I kicked it in an attempt to break its hold and broke my toe. I had to go to work so I slipped my Nursing shoe over it and went to work. I had been off work for 8 days and I needed to get in there to see my staff and the residents. Some of them had to stay for long shifts because they were in town and those of us in outlying areas could not make it into town until the crews were able to get the trucks on the roads to make it safe for all of us to travel.
I was thinking of all the Hurricane and all those linemen working on the Panhandle right now when I wrote this. I can't say how much it meant for me to see them on our road during the ice storm. They worked in the cold all day as long as it was light trying to bring our power back on. It was not an easy task as the ice covered every thing and some of the wires were on the ground encased in thick ice. We were only 8 days without but it took a month for some of the areas to be in the light again. I was so thankful and I know how thankful the people of Florida are right now to have them working all day trying to help.
I have never seen such an outpouring of caring than I have seen during this disaster. People coming from many counties in Florida and surrounding states to help. Unsung heroes whose names we will never know. God bless them and all of the people struggling right now. I pray for you all every day... Always, Kimmee
( I don't have photos of that time on my computer anymore. I lost my first computer that I had and many pics were gone.I have many pictures of some of the hardships we endured there. It was not for the faint of heart. Here is the article about that time for you all to see some of the devastation)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIl2FTv5tAY
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