In my last post I told you about the ice storm we had. It's still a big topic of discussion around these parts.
While we were four and one-half days without power, there were those who did not get theirs back for two weeks. As you can imagine, there is much finger pointing, mainly at local government officials for lack of preparation, and at the power companies (there were two different ones involved, and customers of one seemed to regain power much more quickly than customers of the other), also for lack of preparation but also for the slowness in achieving full restoration.
We stayed at the house one night without electricity. By the time our friend came and collected us (because at the time, there were still two trees across our driveway and we could not get out), the temperature in the house was hovering around 40 degrees, with our only source of heat being our fireplace with gas logs.
We kept a steady drip going in all the faucets and I had covered the ones outdoors. I was advised by a couple of friends to shut the water off completely. The problem was, when I received that advice, the trees had been cleared and cut up and all the debris from that was in the front yard near the curb for pickup and chipping, covering the water meter where the water shutoff valve is located.
On Thursday morning (the day power was restored), one of my friends told me he was on his way over to help me get to the shutoff valve so we could shut off the water. He felt pretty strongly about it. Thankfully, before he arrived, power was back.
As for the criticism of various local officials and the power companies, I am going to sit that out and let others talk about it. The mayor of Nashville has appointed a special committee to look into it, review lessons learned and make recommendations for how this might be better handled if, God forbid, this were to happen again.
I think that is a good plan. I am sure there is room for improvement, but that is always the case. I am grateful to have had power restored and that our damage was minimal. We needed those trees down anyway, so for me, there was a silver lining.
By last week, temperatures were in the 70s. But I've been around enough to know false advertising when I see it. We were back in the low 20s last night, and snowflakes danced around for a short time this morning.
