23 May
What’s the longest duration that you were w/o electricity?
Posted on 2010 under 1967 hockey | 26 CommentsHow did you handle it?
Circa 1967 (I was about age 15), the Chicago land area was hit by an ice storm (rain followed by a sudden, rapid and extreme decline in temperature). As the tree limbs froze and buckled f/ the weight of the ice, they fell on the aerial power grid leaving a gigantic area w/o power.
By day, we played hockey in the streets because there was no traffic or school. I could have ice skated f/ my suburban community of Arlington Heights 25 miles to the Chicago Loop.
By night, the family played Scrabble by candle light.
We had our power restored after day 2 and the neighbors (adjacent subdivision) used our freezer to protect their perishables while they waited another day for their service.
swmbo- What a simply delightful answer! …I took particular pleasure (in your story) by your use of "camping" as a substitute for the tragedy.
Paul N- Yeah, why is it the appetite is directly proportionate to "roughing it"?
Good answer … as are all of them … TU’s to everyone so far.
Old Fart- Oh my! …The dreaded outhouse in the face of adversity.
I remember being too young to hoist my self up onto the outhouse on my uncle’s farm. Nature called too quickly and I soiled my self before help could arrive.
Sorry, maybe this was more info than needed … lol
*outhouse seat
Grammie- How resourceful!! … I love answers like that.
Tomatohead- There were 2 historic winter weather events in the Chicagoland area when I was a kid … I may be confusing the year w/ the "Big Snow" The "Ice Storm" may have been a few years earlier.
The following was copied f/ a search.
January 23
January 23, 1965. A SEVERE ICE STORM HIT NORTHERN ILLINOIS ON THE 23RD AND 24TH. DAMAGE ESTIMATES RAN INTO MILLINOS OF DOLLARS. SUBURBS NORTH AND NORTHWEST OF CHICAGO SUFFERED GREATEST DAMAGE. PORTIONS OF THIS AREA WERE WITHOUT ELECTRIC POWER FOR SEVERAL DAYS. UTILITY COMPANIES CONSIDER THIS TO BE THE WORST STORM IN SEVENTEEN YEARS. AND AT SOME POINTS…IT MAY BE THE WORST IN HISTORY.
Oct 84 or 85. 3 days
Hurricane Gloria
Johnston, R I
I cut out a wedding dress by candle light
Had to wait for the electricity to sew it together
My son brought his motorcycle into the
livingroom and turned on the headlight
Then put a mirror in the next room.
by Riverrat, on May 23 2010 @ 5:05 pm
From Monday until about 7:30 Thursday evening. It was hot and humid and we were going nuts. That meant no water either because we have well water(runs on electric)
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by Jackie Blue, on May 23 2010 @ 5:13 pm
Blizzard of 78. I think it was almost a week before we had electricity. As cold as it was we could put much of our refrigerated foods outside in coolers and without ice! I think there was a baby boom that next year. lol
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by chica, on May 23 2010 @ 5:20 pm
september to december. 2004. hurricane ivan. Cayman islands =]
it was always hot. the roof was leaking. the sheetrock in the house came down. the house was surrounded in water. probly….hmm…10 feet? or so. but the house was high up so it didnt come inside. it SUCKED. but we had a generator. but u kno…it was loud and we didnt use it too much .
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by mydearsie Peace On Earth, on May 23 2010 @ 5:42 pm
About a month after I moved from sunny So. California to my place in Auburn, WA, we had a bad snow storm. This was in 1997. We were without electricity for about five days. I was lucky that I had a wood burning stove in my part of the house. I was not used to really cold weather and now, after a few days of snow here, I miss my California home. I cannot open my car doors. They are still frozen shut. Lucky for me that I can walk to the grocery store.
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by Ken H, on May 23 2010 @ 5:50 pm
3 days because of the 1989 earthquake.
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by Moon Raker, on May 23 2010 @ 6:06 pm
3 weeks, hurricane Hugo, we were at the end of the grid. luckily we had a pool to carry water to flush the commodes.
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by Autumn Leaves, on May 23 2010 @ 6:25 pm
3 1/2 days because of hurricane Isabel. Our stove was gas so we could still cook and we used a generator for hot water but that was it. No TV, air conditioning, etc… Had to conserve the gasoline. Did a lot of reading by candlelight.
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by NanaT, on May 23 2010 @ 7:15 pm
In Colorado, I remember one storm where it was close to two days.
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by swmbo, on May 23 2010 @ 8:00 pm
2003, Hurricane Isabel, we were out for three days and considered ourselves lucky. The mid-Atlantic states are not truly prepared for hurricanes, and most of our power lines are still above ground. There were more than a million trees down, cutting out power to most of our area. I have friends who had no power for six weeks or more. Isabel was only a cat 1 when it hit Richmond. I can’t imagine what it would have been like around here with a stronger storm.
Our schools were closed for over a week. We just pretended we were camping out. Some neighbors got together and we cooked the stuff from our freezers and had big outdoor dinners with shared food. Our local grocery store operated their cash registers manually and sold necessaries until they ran out. Those of us whose lights came back on quickly passed on our flashlights, lanterns, coolers, and batteries to those who were still in the dark.
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by Paul N, on May 23 2010 @ 8:35 pm
Only planned absences of electrical power while out camping and "roughing it ". It is very interesting to me how every ones appetite improves while out in the remote areas depending on campfire fare.
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Texan
by meerkat uno, on May 23 2010 @ 9:11 pm
My Dad was in Chicago on business when that hit and spent three days in his car. Ugh. But, in 1983 we lost power in an electrical storm. It was out for four days. We took baths in the lake we lived at and got water to flush, too.
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by Bj T, on May 23 2010 @ 9:54 pm
1 week snowstorm in southern colorado, got 3 feet, the crew did not get to my place for a while
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by old fart, on May 23 2010 @ 10:44 pm
At my present home 4 days a few years ago.
When I was a child in the 1930s we used to spend summers in a cabin in the woods that had no electric an out house and a hand pump for water. We thought it was great had to walk a mile to the lake to go swimming. There was no place to swim back in the city so we looked forward to the summers.
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by Grammie, on May 23 2010 @ 11:10 pm
Oct 84 or 85. 3 days
Hurricane Gloria
Johnston, R I
I cut out a wedding dress by candle light
Had to wait for the electricity to sew it together
My son brought his motorcycle into the
livingroom and turned on the headlight
Then put a mirror in the next room.
References :
by Momma Jo, on May 23 2010 @ 11:30 pm
About 4 days in an ice storm in SC. We had electric at work, just not at home. But our water stayed hot/warm the whole time (very quick showers) so I would shower and get dressed at home, and dry my hair at work. Cooked on the gas grill on the deck. Went to bed very early, and woke at dawn. I had to get to work first, because I looked so awful.
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by gramof6, on May 23 2010 @ 11:38 pm
Last year in early Dec. we were hit by a bad ice storm.We stayed with our newly married son and daughter-in-law for 2 weeks,my birthday present that year was getting to move back home.I was so glad. It cost us 450.00 to put the line back up,I hope I never see that much ice again.Most of our neighborhood was out, I honestly don’t know they stayed home.
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by Kembek, on May 23 2010 @ 11:57 pm
Four days in the dead of summer in Washington, DC.
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by tomatohead, on May 24 2010 @ 12:17 am
We were in Chicago in ‘67, but I don’t remember the power being out for that long. Moved to Ohio, and in ‘76-’77 living out in farmland, lost power for 32 hours. No water, heat or lights. The storm brought almost two feet of snow, then it warmed up and rained, froze, snowed again, etc….we were stuck in the middle-of-nowhere with no choice but to eat, sleep and play games by candle-light. It was actually fun!
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by Daisymae, on May 24 2010 @ 12:35 am
Three days. Everyone on our street had electricity sooner than we did. Because we were on a separate line of only ten houses, we had to wait. We loaded up the cat and went to stay with my sister until power was restored. Real bummer.
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by Dinah, on May 24 2010 @ 1:22 am
About 24 hours one ice blizzard in the South. Wrapped and surrounded myself with candles, put lanterns in other rooms. Read and wrote by candlelight. I really feel for those currently in New England, but every time a blizzard knocks electricity out across the plains and anywhere else, making do.
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by Alter Man, on May 24 2010 @ 1:53 am
About 8 years, from the time we moved to the farm in New Hampshire until I joined the army in 1944
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by Doe Woes, on May 24 2010 @ 2:19 am
1955 the levee broke and flooded the town we lived on the other side of the levee but all the telephone poles were on the flooded side we went at least 3 longgggggggg weeks without electricity
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by Pinky, on May 24 2010 @ 2:33 am
3 Days During Hurricane IKE in Houston.Texas in 2008. We had no water and no electricity with an all electric home! We were prepared but had no generator either. Everything was done during daylight hours and we sat outside at night till it cooled down and we could go to sleep. We cooked on a coleman stove and used the old peculater to make coffee. Needless to say we are avid campers so we pretended we were camping. We was glad that Ike took a Hike and went to find Tina somewhere else.
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by SandwichGeneration, on May 24 2010 @ 3:04 am
I think there will be some people from the North East U.S., especially New Hampshire, who will be able to claim some long duration power outages…..but they still don’t have power, so it is 9 days and counting for them. My heart goes out to them.
My neighborhood has numerous large oak trees; live oaks and water oaks. These trees are lovely, they provide shade which keeps our neighborhood cool in the summer, and habitat for wild critters. However; they do not mix well with power lines during tropical storms or hurricanes. We’ve had power outages lasting several hours up to a few days…..until the summer of 2004.
The "endless summer" of 2004 brought Hurricanes Charley, Francis, and Jeanne to my neighborhood. My husband and I were both at work when Charley came through (I brought my daughter to work with me). There were so many trees down that it was not possible to drive a car to my house for nearly a week after Charley. We waited until the second day after the storm before we tried. It took over an hour to get from work to my house, a distance of about 1 mile. We ended up leaving our car and walking in. The debris from trees and other other things that blew around was incredible.
Charley August 13-14- no power for 12 days
Francis September 5- no power for 7 days
Jeanne September 26- no power for 3 days
We were fairly well prepared. We got used to sleeping at night without our air conditioning. We ate well. The one thing I missed was warm water for showers; the water in our hot water heater only lasted 3 days. I ended up driving to a local YMCA after the 5th day, the Y allowed neighbors to use their showers, they had power back quickly.
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by ndnquah, on May 24 2010 @ 3:25 am
When I was drinking my lights went out constantly!!! As far as the house not over a few hours!!!
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by THEAmericanPatriot, on May 24 2010 @ 4:03 am
In 2003, hurricane Isabel hit the east coast. We were without electricity for about 2 weeks. We had lots of block parties where folks would bring food and cook it on grills and anyone could come so we would have spoiled food thrown out. One day shortly after the storm, my wife and I were out walking around our neighborhood when someone called out from a drive way "Come join us!" Several families had gotten together for a cook out. I went home and got some things. We pulled together during that time, cutting trees and branches up that had fallen down, patching/covering roofs, boarding up broken windows. We had natural gas so we could take hot showers at least.
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