This is an article published in Home Power Magazine last year, posted with permission (http://www.homepower.com). There are some good lessons to be learned from it so it's worth a read even though it's a little long. Enjoy & Learn.

The Ice Storm of 98 By Bob Ellison

January 8, 1998It Was a Dark and Stormy Night... Actually, it was rather peaceful that evening in the town of Theresa in upstate New York. But when I woke up the next morning and turned on my TV, I knew something was wrong. I was picking up Syracuse, New York (95 miles southwest of here), Ottawa, Ontario, and other distant stations, but no local stations. I looked outside towards my neighbors house about a quarter of a mile away. Usually I can see a living room light, but not this time. And there seemed to be a nice glassy coating on my car. Coolan ice storm! was my first thought.

I picked up the telephone and called my neighbor. Hey Chuck, you got power down there? That elicited a response that no one would print. So being the nice guy that I am, I asked him if he wanted to buy a cup of coffee, for say, fifty bucks (this guy drinks a lot of coffee). The response was more unprintable noise followed by a growl that sounded like he might be coming over. A short while later he came in asking if the coffee was done yet. That should have told me how bad things were, as no one would want me making coffee because I dont even drink the stuff.

Power System My power system is a diesel-wind hybrid. Solar is not very useful here for much of the year, because we are just twenty miles from Lake Ontario. We get a lot of solar shading from clouds that the lake generates due to lake effect storms. A 10 KW Chinese diesel generator charges eight Trojan L-16 batteries, running three to four hours on a gallon of fuel. A Whisper 1500 wind generator on a tilt-up tower rounds out the system. With no wind, the generator runs three hours per day, but when its windy I have gone for up to nine days without running it. One Heart Interface Freedom 2500 inverter gives us AC power, and a second one runs as a charger to cut generator run time. An E-Meter monitors the system and helps me make intelligent decisions about when I need to charge the pack.

Chuck has often discussed installing a power system at his home, but the expense is more than he can handle all at once. We decided to increase efficiency first always a smart move anyway. But the thought of replacing all of his power-hungry appliances at once was too much to bear. I mean, were talking about damn near everything in his old house that he had just spent ten years remodeling and insulating. He did it right toono cheap short cuts. Now, sitting down with his cup of coffee, we began to talk again about the wonders of inverters, battery packs, and wind generators.

Hard Traveling Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of the phone ringing. It was my girlfriend Chris saying that she was heading this way. Chris likes her hot showers daily, and she also likes her coffee. She ended up calling four more times on her way over. Every time she ran into a roadblock and the police turned her back, she called and I gave her directions around it. The normal twenty minute trip took over an hour and three quarters. When she arrived, we started to get an idea of how bad things really were.

The northern New York area was devastatedhardly a power pole was standing and many that were had the lines ripped off by the weight of the ice or toppled trees. It was becoming clear that we had a real problem including this area, parts of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire, as well as large parts of Ontario and Quebec, Canada. Early estimates were three days to a week to repair the damage. But I could see that just getting power back on my road would take at least a week.

The storm started during the night with heavy ice accumulating rapidly on power transmission lines and anything else that wasnt a heat source. It was a gentle steady rain that turned to ice on everything it touched. When I woke, there was almost an inch on the front deck of my house and on my car. The freezing rain continued for three days under a weird silence that was broken only by the sound of power poles and trees snapping like match sticks.

Reconnaissance Chuck and I went for a ride to scope out the damage. This was one mother of an ice storm and it hadnt stopped yet. We had a digital camera and a 35 mm camera with eight rolls of film, and we took a lot of photos. We took shots of road signs with twelve inch beards of ice, wire fences that were solid with ice, and power poles that were snapped like match sticks. At one point, I counted 39 broken poles in a row before I lost count. Clearly, it was going to be a while before things got near normal again.

My Whisper 1500 was a solid sculpturethe blade tips were twelve inches wide with ice before it was over. We actually had to use a hammer to break an inch and a half of ice off my car doors to open them. Then we had to hammer Chucks sixteen foot insulated wood garage door to open it. Electric garage door openers dont work when the power is out, and that beast was really heavy, but we finally got his truck out. After that first reconnaissance, we returned home to find that the phones were down. After what we had seen, that was no surprise. At least my cell phone still worked. But it turned out that emergency crews, fire departments, and other heavy hitters had tied up the linessometimes it took over two hours to get an open line, only to find the other end was busy.

Provisions At 2 PM, a New York State Police car appeared in my drivewaygood news, it was a friendly visit. Adams a state trooper and he and his wife also own a convenience store with gas, kerosene, videos, and other needed items. His wife Shauna went to Sams Club and bought the last generator they had. It was a medium quality 8 hp 3,500 watt gas rig, not enough for the whole store, but it would run a register and the gas and kerosene pumps. Chuck and I grabbed some tools, testers, and assorted goodies and left in about five minutes. On arrival, we found no cable to use for wire, so we ended up using a couple of extension cords, the only thing available. When we left it was dark but the store was open, running and lit.

The next day Adam and some friends took three trucks to Syracuse, New York to buy supplies for the store. They picked up water, propane bottles, batteries, and most of the things you need if youre not prepared (probably 95% of the people were not). At my place, the only things we almost ran out of were coffeewe used six pounds of the stuff in two daysand creamer. We had several members of the local fire department taking hot showers and doing laundry at our place. Needless to say, the battery bank took a beating. But, according to the E-Meter, we still didnt take it below 50%. My hats off to Heart Interface and Trojan Battery for building such dependable and durable equipment.

Getting Worse, Not Better Two days after the storm, Arsenal St. in Watertown the nearest place that can even pretend to be a city had power, after some false starts. The hotels and motels on Arsenal St. were housing power crews from as far away as Michigan and Georgia. Niagara Mohawk (NIMO), the local power company, had over 3,000 visiting crews helping repair the massive destruction. These crews were working nineteen hours a day for the first week. I cant say enough about these dedicated peoplethey were fantastic!

The Watertown Daily Times put out its first storm special edition. But parents of most carriers in Watertown refused to let their children deliver it because trees and lines were still falling. Over 130,000 homes and businesses in the area were still without power. Basements were flooding everywhere, without power for their sump pumps. A Red Cross official said that all city shelters were full and couldnt handle the influx of residents. NIMO said that the situation was much worse than anyone expected, and that reconnection might take several weeks. The 765 KV line that crosses northern New York had towers collapsed in several places.

Disaster Area On the third day of the storm, President Clinton declared much of upstate New York a disaster area, making some federal emergency funds available. Emergency generators started arriving, and people waited in line up to five hours for a chance to buy one. Farms with generators were dumping milk because plants couldnt process it without power. Some cows began getting sick because they couldnt all be milked by hand. Hundreds of emergency personnel swarmed into northern New York. There was no heat in the school shelters at first, but at least you could shiver with a few hundred people you didnt know! Over 5,000 state employees arrived to help in the cleanup along with 1,700 National Guard troops.

Shelters Are Open, but Supplies Are Low Before long, Jefferson county had 34 shelters in operation, St Lawrence county had 44, Franklin county 20, Essex county 13, and Clinton county 12. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) informed the Governor that a caravan would be coming from Georgia carrying needed supplies. They brought 5,000 cots, 6,000 blankets, bottled water, diapers, and batteries, none of which had been available in stores since the first day of the storm. Friday, January 9th, 1998 was the first issue the Watertown Daily Timesdid not publish in 137 years. In Jefferson and St Lawrence counties, 225,000 utility customers were without power. The latest count was 22,000 poles snapped off. Replacements came from as far away as Oregon and Washington State.

Running Water Is Not Always Good News! With heavy rains and melting ice, the Black River in Watertown crested at over sixteen feet above flood stage, washing out streets and flooding houses and cars. Some bridges had water several feet over the road bed. The Black River is normally only a quarter mile wide but reached over a mile wide due to the flooding. We went to the fire department to see if we could get Chucks basement pumped out before he lost the equipment that was too heavy for us to move. At 1 PM we got on the long list of people waiting for pumps. We called at 4:30 PM and were told it would be another hour and a half. At 11:30 PM we got a call from the Jefferson County Emergency Management Center telling us to go in and pick up a water pump. We arrived at 1:30 AM only to find out that they were only giving pumps out to fire departments. They promised to have the Theresa Fire Department stop and pump Chucks basement. They arrived at 3 AM, and it was done by 4:30. Then we decided to get some sleep. We had been up for about 24 hours straight and were getting kinda goofy. We slept until 6:30 AM. Being this short on sleep and dealing with the mess around us was no picnic. But we were warm and the house was lit, so I didnt dare complain.

All night we got to listen to the sound of huge pines snapping, one breaking and taking three or four more with it. The sound is something you have to hear and see to believe. I cant describe itits too overwhelming to see 60 to 80 foot trees and poles snap like toothpicks. When one power pole snaps, it takes a bunch with it, just like dominoes. We heard that the Governor and head of FEMA would be flying over looking at the damage. So I got four cans of bright yellow paint and put a large smiley face at the base of my Whisper 1500 and wrote Home Power in large letters. We never did hear if anyone saw it but we had a few good laughs.

Road Trip We woke up at 8 AM the next day. It felt good to get some sleep after several days of two or three hours of sleep a night. We decided to attempt to go to an Amish friends to see if he had a spare pump to pump out the basements that were flooding. We were bored and a travel ban was in placeno travel except for emergency traffic. But while pumping, we became emergency personnel. Its only a 35 mile drive to my friends place, but it took two and a half hours to get there. My Chevy Sprint has four studded snow tires and was small enough to fit under or around most of the trees and poles. A four wheel drive truck would never have fit through the holes that we went throughit would just be too big. It was like driving through tunnels of glass. Ice surrounding tree branches a quarter inch thick was three inches thick by the third day. My friend Dennis, the Amish man who owns a machine shop, was building generators and pumps out of anything he had that would generate or pump. Hes lucky he has such a collection of equipment to work with. We left with a diaphragm pump and suction hose. Dennis never charged a single dollar for a pump, generator, or labor during the storm or recovery. We returned home and set the pump up at Chucks place. We then went to the fire department to see who else in our area needed to be pumped out.

Pumping They gave us a list of four others and we started making rounds. By the time we got to the last one, the first one needed pumping again. The fire department gave us fuel and changed the oil in the pump every night, and as long as we were pumping, the travel ban didnt affect us. People were starting to get arrested for being out on foot or in cars. One couple in Watertown told the officer they had an emergency, they were out of cigarettes. They got two tickets and I hope one was for stupidity! The engine quit on the pump so we went back to Dennis, hat in hand, wondering what that Honda was worth. Dennis explained that it had previously been frozen, backed over, and generally abused plus that it was around ten years old. He put a new engine on it, sent me back with a 4400 watt generator, and wished us good luck. It was starting to look like a few hundred thousand people were going to need lots of it! After six days, only a part of the city of Watertown had power on most of the time.

Fire! The next morning at 6, Chuck pulled in the driveway at a high speed, ripped the door open, and yelled, Call 911! Ive got a fire! His dog, a huge Rotweiler/Great Dane cross, had knocked over a lantern. Fortunately, I was able to get a line on the cell phone. I gave them the info and was out the door in under two minutes. By the time I arrived, the front of the house was fully engulfed in flames. I called 911 back and advised them to send everything they had. We ended up with nine departments there before it was over. They had it almost out when they ran out of water, and when a new pumper got backed up to the tank, everything had frozen up. At 15 degrees below zero, its hard to keep the water in the pumps, hoses, and hose ends from freezing.

Within an hour we figured it was all over for Chucks house. Theresa Fire Department had a great response time, but everything else went against them and the other eight departments that responded. Several of the 46 guys had showered, drank coffee, and done laundry at my place and they felt real bad that things hadnt gone better. The fire was out by 10:30 AM, but it was a total loss. We had gotten Dennis pump and generator out before they had arrived, so we started pumping out his basement to see if we could get to his fire file (a steel wrapped concrete box, very much like a safe with drawers) that was in the basement. If you ever find one of these concrete files, buy it. They weigh several hundred pounds but they are worth it for the protection. After six hours of pumping, we got into the file. We brought the drawers to my place and Chris started peeling papers apart and drying things out.

Good NewsAt this Point Anything Was an Improvement With lower temperatures, water stopped running into basements, so we stopped pumping. Most of the fun had gone out of it by then, anyway. Much of Watertown had power part of the time by then, and it was improving daily. Outlying areas would have to wait five or six weeks for power, according to a NIMO spokesmen. No one had a clue when telephone service would be restored.

The utility companies did a fantastic job. They built an entirely new power grid from scratch in three to four weeks. On January 28th, power trucks were all over our three mile long road. By dark, they had two places connected and powered up. Then I had to help my neighbors with their frozen water pumps and pipes. One pump was cracked badly enough to need replacing. On the 29th, the power company was out at my pole looking things over. With all of the poles that were needed but fell over, this one wasnt needed but didntfall. I went out to talk to the power company crew, and asked them to disconnect the transformer because I didnt need it. That got me some strange looks!

After I explained that I had an independent power system, they agreed and unhooked the transformer and feed lines. They even asked for some cards to give to people who ask about other power choices besides the grid. Lots of people in the area are interested in having backup power systems. We have had three storms with long power outages in the past decade: an ice storm in 1991, a microburst in 1995, and this mother of all ice storms in 1998. You would think that everyone would at least own a generator by this time. A customer who had me build a 22.5 KW diesel genset to power his grocery store called me and told me that he was so happy he could kiss me. He was the only store open for 35 miles and was cooking for the Fire Departments shelter across the street. They also ran a line next door to run the furnace, and a line 200 yards to get the local bar open. I think its a law in this village that a bar has to be open no matter whatthere isnt a lot to do here, even on a good day.

Powers On! Power wasnt on in all parts of Jefferson County until twenty-five days after the start of the storm. Even after power returned, it was not stable and went off frequently. It took another two to three weeks for all telephone service to be restored. Telephone service was also unreliable for some time. After a rain there were no dependable connectionsthe lines were lying along the roads being driven over for up to seven weeks. According to a Watertown Daily Times article, on February 2nd, there were still over 1,400 customers without phone service. Bell Atlantic had over 1,100 crews working in the region to restore service, and expected to have phone service restored within a week. That was really good news for my wallet, since my cell bill was $256 for the first ten days of this mess. At this point, as many as 50,000 homes were without power in Quebec and Ontario, Canada. At the peak of the outage, about 3,000,000 people were without power.

Disaster Humor There were some things that may seem funny to Home Power readers. The power company set poles and ran wire all day on one local road. When they got to the last home on the road, they couldnt find the meter. As you may have guessed, the owner returned home and told them that he hadnt been on the grid for almost twenty years! This is only funny if you werent on the crew who did the work. Then there was Theresa Highway Superintendent Jerry Reynolds who got his power back on after days of listening to his generator. He said that on the first night with restored power, he finally went to his garage and started his lawn mower beside his porch, just so he could sleep!

There was also the FEMA rep who met Chuck to survey the damage at his home. Chuck brought him to my house to do the paperwork. I had a friends small generator we were testing under load (charging batteries) to see if it would misbehave. While the FEMA rep was here, it quit, but the lights barely flickered. He looked at the lights and at Chuck several times before he had to ask, Wasnt that the generator? We just love these questions! Chuck explained the system to the curious rep. After a while we just take it for granted that our energy systems work smoothly. Then something like the ice storm happens and it wakes you up to how lucky you are to be making your own power.

Access Author: Bob Ellison, Alternative Energy Systems & Supplies, 34642 Countryman Road, Theresa, NY 13691-2076  315-628-0601  Fax: 315-628-5797 ellison@gisco.net

-- Don Kulha (dkulha@vom.com), August 20, 1999

Answers

Here are some more links for the 98 Ice Storm

Ice Storm

Wired 7.04: Powerless
 

 Powerless

What happens at 00:00:01 on January 1? Try deadly, black, and very, very cold. A heavy ice storm is the most double-edged of natural phenomena, embodying beauty and menace in equally astonishing proportions.
 

The anatomy of Ice Storm 1998 - part 1 of 3
 

 It was the storm of the century. Damage topped $1 billion. Crippled communities shivered in sub-zero temperatures that numbed even the hardiest. But a pioneer spirit was unleashed, communities united

Montreal Ice Storm Ecological Disaster Hits Quebec Ontario New Brunswick New York Vermont New Hampshire and Maine
 

 I do not want to alarm anyone, but to simply inform you of what I saw and experienced personally. All text and images are created by me unless otherwise noted. By Patrick McDonnell 1998

-- Brian (imager@home.com), August 20, 1999.

Thank you for this, Don. The tv images coming from Ontario and Quebec during the ice storm were enough to inspire me to get a generator long before I realized y2k was a problem!

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), August 20, 1999.

Thank you for your post and experiences. Are you aware of any plans available for building a system similar to what you describe? What would be the cost? What level of expertise would be required for installing such a system or is this a job for a professional. We live in the midwest and a few of our winters have been nasty. Thank you very much. Nancy

-- Nancy (HAYSandCO@aol.com), August 20, 1999.

Even in the "south", it can get mighty coooold during an ice storm if you're power's off and you rely on a central air/heating system. A couple years ago, after about 18 hrs it was so cold in our house (even with the gas space heaters burning in the bathrooms, and the oven running a steady 3500) that we moved out to stay in a hotel for two nights.

So it's good to bring this up now. It *can* get very cold even in the south, it's just the luck of the draw whether it will this winter or not. Thanks for all the typing Don.

-- mommacarestx (harringtondesignX@earthlink.net), August 20, 1999.

Gang...don't give me too much credit for posting this (and the other stuff I've put up). I'm not the author and I didn't have to type it in. I've been pushing solar/independant power online for many years and I'm also concerned about Y2K for my son and I (I work disaster services). I produce CDROMs for Home Power magazine and have all this info on my hard drives (and have the publishers permission to post it as I see fit). I've been combing through the material I put on the CD's for stuff thats appropriate and can help us all out. Anyway all I had to do was pluck the text out of the PDF file and format it to post here.

If you need more info visit our weebsite...you'll find hundreds of links there and much info. Home Power is a print mag but we post the current issue online in PDF format for FREE download. Snag the new issue and you'll find lots of info and suppliers if you're interested.

Energetically...DCK

Don Kulha, KE6QHP Home Power Magazine http://www.homepower.com

P.S. - A Good interactive forum is the newsgroup alt.energy.homepower

-- Don Kulha (dkulha@vom.com), August 20, 1999.

Thanks from me, too, for all your valuable postings .. I bought some flourescent bulbs the other day ... only 4 but it was a start, and your clear explanation of their advantages made it natural to buy some 11W (gives light of a 60W) bulbs at IKEA for $4.00 each. Don't know what their lifespan is, but it's got to be as good as what I had in the lamps before.

Please pass on to the author that I found his writing a great, and inspirational, read ... have to know tho, Did Chuck rebuild his place off-grid? That would be the silver lining of losing so much; rebuilding with new insights at hand. Thanks much.

-- Kristi (KsaintA@aol.com), August 21, 1999.