I have to say that I would have totally enjoyed the snow and ice that hit Fort Worth this week…it would have reminded me so much of all my years of living in Virginia Beach. I’ve missed my VA winters! But this was snowmageddon…not because of the amount of snow, but because the temperature got so low, and TX shut off power!
My 2 youngest kids went for a walk in the snow that first morning, and then my adult son grabbed my teenage daughter, and they took off for his girlfriend’s house where they had power. We never saw either one of them again until Friday afternoon, long after we had power again! They were no help at all with what was to come. But it was just as well…it was easier to manage the difficult circumstances with just 3 people.
The independent TX power grid was on the brink of collapse, so ERCOT, the, energy control board. decided they had to do more than just controlled rolling blackouts…they turned us off and left us that way! It went out at 2 AM Monday morning, and they didn’t even try to turn it back on until 4:30 PM Wednesday evening. But it turned out there was a feeder line problem in our neighborhood, and Oncor had to come out and troubleshoot one street at a time. At around 6:30 PM, the other side of our street got power, but we were still in the dark. Finally, our power returned at 11:30 PM Wednesday night…after about 70 straight hours of no power. No power equals no heat, and the low temperature the first night was 3 degrees. The second night, it got down to –2 degrees…a record low in about 70 years! The wind chill was –15 degrees! It was insane. We were SOOO cold. Our house inside got down to 41 degrees.
My husband built us a makeshift shelter around the fireplace, and that was all we had for warmth. All of my fish in my kitchen fish tank died the very first night. So sad! I’ve had them since we moved here almost 4 years ago. We had the two living room couches inside our little tent. We had no idea the power outage was going to last so long. We ran out of firewood a couple of times and had to resort to trimming trees, picking up uncut logs from downed trees from generous neighbors and chopping them up, and picking up twigs from the yard. We got so we couldn’t have it burning during the day to ensure we had warmth to sleep by. I kept water boiling on the propane grill for oatmeal each morning, noodle cups for lunch, and hot beverages to keep us warm inside. I ran out of propane on the third day and had to go on a hunt for a store that still had propane for sale…everybody and their brother was out trying to buy propane! Finally found some at Ace Hardware. We ran down our van battery the first night trying to charge devices overnight. Hubby started my car parked next to it in the garage to jumpstart it, and a gasket blew out on the car and leaked oil everywhere! So he pushed my van into the driveway and jumpstarted it with his car. By the 3rd day when we couldn’t get warm with the fire any more, I spent most of the day sitting in my van with the heater on! I drove around looking for gasoline, and places were nearly out of gas. I had to get premium at the Walmart Neighborhood Market. That’s all they had left.
Also, the rehabilitation center was closed, so I missed my two physical therapy sessions for my shoulder! Not good after having surgery to remove scar tissue…not moving it afterwards means more scar tissue can form! I’d just had my stitches out and needed to remove the sterile strips and wash the incisions on Monday, but we had no way to bathe. I ended up going to a neighbor’s house on the other side of the neighborhood where they had power to wash on Tuesday night. Poor hubby and son went from Sunday until Thursday before they could bathe and change clothes!
We had put all of our refrigerator and freezer food outside to keep it cold. We lost some, but not a lot, so we were smart to keep it outside. I kept thermometers in the appliances in the garage to monitor the temperature, and those did fine.
We were on our way to sleep when the power finally came back on. I popped up screeching with joy and started cleaning up everywhere. We had broken glass on carpet and things we couldn’t even see to clean up during the week. I started laundry and ran the dishwasher. I cleaned out the fridge so it would be ready to restock with food. I rushed around long enough to wait for hot water so we can could bathe before going to bed, and at about 2:30 AM Thursday morning, we finally got to sleep in our own bed! It was funny, because our gel mattress topper had frozen solid during the week. It was as hard as a rock! We had to thaw it out with an electric blanket before getting into bed.
We only had frozen pipes during the outage in one of the master bathroom sinks. Steve was able to thaw them out with candles. When the power came on, we checked outside, and the above ground plumbing to the pool equipment had burst! Too bad…we just spent $1,000 getting all of that replumbed. Steve is hoping that he can fix it himself. We recently canceled our pool maintenance contract, so we no longer get a discount for repairs. Steve and Holden had tried to keep breaking up the ice in the pool every day to keep it from causing damage to the tile, but it was futile. The ice had gotten 3 inches thick, and you could walk on it! We are waiting for the warmer weather to come and melt everything so we can turn on the equipment and see if everything still works, but we won’t be able to keep it on until we get the plumbing fixed. I’m sure we’ll need lots of chemicals to balance the water chemistry when we finally get it all up and running again!
It was a crazy week. When things reopened on Thursday, I was able to make up my therapy appointments on Thursday morning and Saturday morning. That was great. My shoulder was tighter than we’d hoped it would be 2 weeks after surgery, but definitely something we could work with.
Even after we got power on, we found out we had to boil water to make it safe. That got lifted this weekend, so that was a relief. They said half of TX had a boil water order. There are so many water main breaks, and water treatment plants had lost power, as well. People died in burning homes trying to keep themselves warm with unconventional methods, and many people were treated for hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning in their own homes. There are so many busted pipes and damaged homes. TX has been declared a federal disaster area. Folks will definitely need help with the burden of insurance claims and deductibles. It’s a mess.
I’m so glad things are getting back to normal. The roads are a little better each day, and with the upcoming warmup, we should melt out pretty quickly. Back to typical TX early spring weather next week!
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