State of Emergency: The Ice Storm of ‘07
(recommended listening while reading this post - Rademacher’s “Ice Age” - streamable mp3 at bottom of post)
You may be wondering where I’ve been these past few days. Well, if any of you caught CNN or any of the news channels lately, you probably saw Missouri getting hit hard by ice storm after ice storm. What started as a constant cold rain turned into everything covered in ice, trees falling everywhere, and what ultimately ended up as Springfield as a ghost town. Driving around immediately after the storms, we began to see the full extent of the damage. Eighty percent of the town was without power, which meant almost everything, from our huge movie theatre to Best Buy, were out of power. None of the street lights worked and trees never ceased to be a threat to fall.
I was at the girls’ house during the main part of the storm and you’d stand on their front porch, hear a crack, then move quickly closer to the house as everthing under the tree was covered in a shower of ice. We’d hear a huge crash, run outside, and see that one of our cars was now under a massive limb. The surrounding areas flashed bright blue as transformer after transformer exploded creating what looked like a lighting storm. It was quite spectacular at times.
Once everything died down, people began to emerge from their houses to get supplies, gas, etc. We waited in line for a good half hour to get gas, with the line stretching through the local bowling alley parking lot. Being the idiotic college students we were, and having one of our houses still with power, we found ourselves being the only ones at Wal-Mart with a cart full of beer and snacks while the people in line with us had ten or so jugs of water and generators. Of all the times to have your little group of college friends, this was by far the best time of all. One house with power turned to two, and our group simply hung out at those two houses until the rest got power. You can’t exactly just up and leave like we did if you have a family and a real job. But our house didn’t have power for a good four days, and since it’s old and doesn’t have good insulation, staying in our house for any extended period of time, unless you were under all your covers sleeping, was never a good idea. There was even a point when the inside of our front door, as in the side facing the inside of our house, had ice forming on it. But we battled through cold, sleepless nights, and eating a lot of fast food until we finally got power. You tend to take for granted having electricity until you realize that nearly everything in your house needs it to function. Sure, I had books I could read, but reading a book in a house that was barely twenty degrees on the inside while wearing your heaviest jacket and gloves isn’t exactly my cup of tea. So, I’m more than glad to have a warm house again and all my electronic goodies to keep me from being bored. Thankfully, we didn’t get that third wave that was predicted, which was supposed to be the worst wave of all and just missed us.
Tommorow I’ll get back to the music and hopefully most of you stuck around during the time I was without power and freezing.
Rademacher - Ice Age
The Appleseed Cast - Ice Heavy Branches
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - This Home on Ice
Ugly Cassanova - Ice on the Sheets
Man Man - Ice Dogs
