Ice Storm- Part 2

Soooo, literally not 2 minutes after our last post, the LaVetter house goes without power with a thunderous boom. Unfortunately, they are still without power while we snug up to the internet in the comfort of our own home. Tuesday night was really eerie. While the storm continued to pour down rain that froze to everything on contact, the trees began to give way under the tremendous weight. Limb after limb came crashing down to the ground. The higher up the limb, the more limbs it would destroy as it would hurl towards the ground. As if things couldn't get worse, at 4 a.m. wednesday morning, the winds picked up and it began to snow. The winds alone sent a chorus of limbs thundering down. In addition to limbs, trees began to uproot completely...2 to be precise. The rain/snow ended about 5 a.m.

But the day never got above freezing so limbs continued to fall all around the region. At it's worst point Wednesday, northern Arkansas reported 350,000 people without power. The main city in Northeast Arkansas, Jonesboro, reported 75% without power, with all other cities to the north reporting near 100% outages. We continued living in the dark, without heat except for a fireplace Wednesday and Thursday.

Friday, Brookland reported that they have received power to their main grid system. Honestly, I think they just decided to flip the main switch on to see who and what had power. For some reason, our power turned on and hasn't turned off since. We live on street with 16 houses or so, but only the first 4 have power, the rest are dark...even tonight. With our fortunate circumstances, we have been housing the LaVetter's and a family from down the street. 10 people, 2 of which are pregnant ladies and two cats gets very crowded around here. But we all have been very patient with one another.

Hopefully the pictures will do this monumental disaster justice. The best way I've had people describe it is a tornado. Except with a tornado, the damage is pointed at one area. But this storm path was 80 miles long (north to south) and nearly 600 miles wide! Massive power outages were reported in more than a dozen different states. There will be some without power for a month. We'll continue to serve in any way we can. The LDS Church is sending relief troops next weekend to try and do some massive cleanup projects.