by Wanda Stephens

During the recent ice storms in the Southeast, in Richmond, Kentucky we were without power for four days. We had all the necessities, and I felt as if I was camping. We had a kerosene stove and a small propane stove, a camping cook stove, battery-operated radios and lanterns and plenty of food.

We heated water on top of the kerosene stove for hot drinks and other needs. We used hot water to add to canned soups. The soup was just warm but it tasted very good, nevertheless. The cook stove had to be used outside, so it was on the front porch. We had hot vegetables prepared on it one day.

A War Zone

The trees in this area were greatly damaged or destroyed. A Bradford pear tree next door was very strange looking. It was a totally bare trunk sticking up in the midst of a pile of branches, which were all on the ground. A beautiful colonial house in the neighborhood with a long driveway used to have 15 to 20 identical trees on both sides. Now they were all cut down. The whole area looked like a war zone. Many large trees had the top one third of the branches missing or broken and sticking up like daggers.

My son-in-law missed three days of work. On the third day he tried to get there, using two different routes. But both were blocked with downed wires and trees.

The entire National Guard of Kentucky was called up to assist in the cleanup and restoration work. They knocked on door after door, checking to see how residents were faring; they distributed food, water and medicine to many disaster victims.

The final figures on the number of households and businesses without power at the peak of the outage was over 769,000. One-hundred and one counties were declared disaster areas. Kentucky has 120 counties. About 35% of the population of Kentucky was without power and 101 of its 120 counties applied for government assistance.

I think that this was a wake-up call for a lot of people, and I am grateful for the instructions of the masters on the necessity for preparedness. We were better prepared than some people, but we need to add much to our supply.

Wanda Stephens
Richmond, Kentucky
Feb. 8, 2009