It has been a few days to remember here in Montgomery County MD. We were without power for over 30 hours, which is a long time around here.(suburban Washington DC) I kept plenty of wood on the fire, lit the lanterns and watched as my wife became a GI. She even began a list of things to get. YES!!!!! My father-in-law now intends to buy a generator..a few months ago he thought I was crazy. My sister-in-law got home a couple of hours ago after her power came on after two and a half days. An hour later the power station in Olney MD blew up(fireball). This just put 70,000 people out. Just maybe this will alert some folks. I hope so.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), January 17, 1999

Answers

Someone has a web page with an "ice storm diary" of the major one in Quebec in January 1998. Some people there were without electricity for weeks! How did people cope? You can read it at:

http://members.aol.com/badice98/icestormtext.html

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), January 17, 1999.

Mike,

Perhaps your "trial size" outage was worth the time out if more GI.

That link Kevin provided is a fantastic keeper!! (Useful for the die- hard DWGI's in the snowbound states).

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), January 17, 1999.

Mike,

Down here south of the (MD/VA) border, it wasn't quite so bad - most stuff was back on by dinner time...on the other hand, I did run into *several* fence sitters who have finally been motivated to action by this little incident..but I wouldn't expect most of the yuppies to notice...

ARlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), January 17, 1999.

Last January we had an ice storm here in Maine (same one that hit Quebec and upstate NY). While we were out for only 3 days (it pays to live on the same circuit as a hospital), many were out longer - up to 2 weeks, in January, in Maine.

There was only one way we could have stuck it out so long in the freezing cold with only a couple of deaths attributed to it - we came together and helped each other out. That is the only way we will overcome any adversity. As some great figure in history put it: We either hang together, or we will surely hang apart.

-- Ted Markow (markow@gwi.net), January 18, 1999.