2009 Year in Review - February Ice Storm

2009 Year In Review:

Ok... so if you live anywhere close to where I live you probably hated the month of February. February is usually a good month (my mom's birthday, my wedding anniversary, Valentine's day, The Farm Machinery Show - my brother would include that, etc) but this year it really sucked. This year Western Kentucky got ice (BG didn't really, but WKY definitely did). That morning (not sure what day, maybe Tuesday??) I woke up and Mom called... Did we have power? YES. DID SHE? Nope... I ASKED HER WHEN SHE THOUGHT THEY'D GET IT BACK... Her response: Not for a long time... She saw the glow of transformers blowing out her bedroom window. AWESOME.

So I went to work and went on with my happy business until I discovered that my cell phone wasn't working and none of the land lines in WKY were working. We were out of contact until Thursday. (I need to add... Drew's parents live about 25 miles from mine in the next county over and we couldn't contact them either.) We were freaking out. We had decided that if we didn't hear from them by Friday we would go home and make sure that they were all ok.

We finally heard from them and Drew decided he needed to go home and take care of his mom. His dad works for Texas Gas and due to the power outage he was working crazy shifts to try and keep everything running leaving his mom to take care of herself. They were also without power and couldn't get out of their drive way (which is 1/4 mile long) and vehicles could not get down their road.

My parents decided to come to BG along with my grandmother, an aunt, uncle, and a cousin because they couldn't take showers and needed to wash clothes. They also needed to buy supplies since everything in Mad-Vegas was closed (Wal Mart, Lowes, gas stations... everything). They came on Friday and I ended up going back with them to help clean up the mess.

This is the mess in pictures...

Hanson Hill... Check out the power lines coated in ice.

If you look close, that brick house in my Mamaw & Papaw's....

More at Mamaw & Papaw's... Check out the trees that have all the branches snapped in half. All the trees STILL look like this.

Making the best of it :) Me & my brother having a huge time. We are lucky to have had four wheelers, two tractors, and a back hoe to help clean up. My papaw also has a multitude of chain saws that were used. By the end of this day, we had to stop working outside because everything started to melt and CHUNKS of ice were hitting us in the head. NOT COOL!

My pasture (the barn is on the top left). More broken trees.

This big cedar tree is right beside my house. As you can see, the ice basically ripped it to shreds. Mom always wanted to call our place "Three Cedar Farm" because there were three enormous (taller than the house) cedar trees that lined up beside it. Two of them looked like this and Dad cut them down about a month ago. It was sad.

You know its bad when FEMA comes to visit.

Well guys, that's the ice storm. Well not really, but those are some pictures. Mine and Drew's parents ended up not having power for 2 weeks. It was crazy. We have been working on refencing our whole property because of all the damage that was done by the ice. Luckily, we didn't have any real damage to our homes. There were several houses that burned down during this because of propane heaters. It was a very sad time but it was also nice because it showed what a great community we lived in. Everybody definitely had to take care of their neighbors.

Oh, one more thing: Good Morning America actually broadcasted from Madisonville during the ice storm... I told Mom and she was so sad that she couldn't see it!!!!