According to CBC five people have died of carbon monoxide poisoning trying to keep warm.
I live in East York. We lost power from 11 p.m Saturday until 8 a.m. Monday. We watched a large part of the tree across the street fall off and hit a power line and trap the neighbour’s car. It was mostly above freezing, but I have four small children, and it was pretty miserable.
Actually, let me rephrase that- we had a weekend of epic horribleness. Our oldest kid (he’s he’s almost six) got stomach flu on Friday, and because he’s diabetic he had to be hospitalized. As soon as he and my husband left for Sick Kids Hospital our three younger kids also got it. I spent the night being vomited on. On Saturday I got, and went back and forth between throwing up, doing laundry, lying down, and comforting recovering children. While I was still sick the ice storm happened and we lost heat and power.
Sunday we spent trying to keep warm, recuperating, and talking to my husband about when he and our oldest would be coming back from hospital. We have a gas stove, and I lit some candles, so I kept the temperature in the house about 10C, which is still damn cold for being inside.
Oldest kid and husband came home Sunday evening, we dressed everyone in tons of layers and put them to bed. Three in the morning, freezing cold, Mr. Lissar gets up and throws up all over the bedroom floor.
Sigh. Clean up by flashlight. Toddler girls start waking up from cold, alternate holding them for the rest of the night. Power comes back on in the morning. Never been so grateful to turn a light on before.
Lots of people still have no power, and it’s getting really cold. They’re predicting some areas will be without power until the weekend. The number of trees down, power lines hanging, is incredible. Seems like a couple every street.
If this is incoherent I apologize. I am still pretty wiped out.
I’ll make it easy. Here’s a page of Toronto ice storm photos from the National Post, showing downed trees, blocked roads, and ice covering every exposed surface.
If you are going to have candles around for lighting, you might as well put them to use for heating as well. We made a few for the hell of it experimentally and the terra cotta does actually operate as a tiny thermal mass.
Damn, that’s really tough Lissla. I’ve done just ‘four kids chundering everywhere’ routine before, but that was WITH power, in Australia where the temps never get to the extremes you have been through. Hope you and the family are on the way to recovery.
And for the rest of you Torontians, take care…I’ll send heatwave thoughts up your way from downunder if it’ll help?
First went out at 8pm Saturday night and I’m sitting in a hotel room right now topping up the charges on everything before I check out.
Hydro 1 still has no estimate one when we’ll have power back and the temperature in the house has now equalized and is exactly as cold as it is outside.
Christmas was an entertaining mess of disorganization but thanks to our amazing friends who locked up their cat in a bedroom so we could bring the dogs over to roam around their house and lick their kids to death we stayed warm. Not taking any chances on the houseguests/fish comparison though so we went to a hotel last night. Now that most people have their power back there was finally a room available.
Grandma and Pappy, my parents-in-law, just got their power back on last night at 9 PM. It was particularly rough on them - they’re in the country outside of the city of Guelph. No power means no water, as the pump for the well is electric. They were able to keep the pipes from freezing by using the wood fireplace, but that also meant that there had to be someone there at all times to feed the fireplace every 2 to 3 hours.
In one of those great moments that make you feel better about humans in general, about ten of the neighbours showed up around noon on Christmas day. Together, we cleared about thirteen spots where branches, limbs or trees were touching the line from the pole at the road to the pole with the meter on it. (Hydro One is responsible for the maintenance of the public hydro lines, as well as hydro lines where they have a declared right of way. Hydro lines on your property are your responsibility to maintain.) That left only the circuit breaker on the pole outside the property to be fixed. (Yes, before we did any of this work, we took note of the fact that that breaker was open, and there was no juice flowing to any of the wires we were clearing. Sadly, none of us was qualified to assess the condition of the line and close that breaker - that’s a Hydro One job, and we left it for them!)
When I say ‘we’, I was in there with them. There was plenty to be done, even for those of us who had never touched a chainsaw in our lives.
We ‘cooked’ their first warm meal in days on Christmas Eve, when we reheated some lemon chicken and rice from Metro on a camping grill rack over 5 emergency candles. Christmas dinner got reheated when some of us ran into town to use the dorm kitchen at one of the grandkids university rooms.
Now, what concerns me the most is - my in-laws used to be a real pain in the ass about ‘preparedness’. “You should always keep the gas tank filled in winter, and only drive on the top quarter tank. You should check your fire extinguishers at least once a year. Where do you keep the fresh batteries?” And now - they’ve got no generator, they didn’t have any flashlights or emergency candles, they didn’t fill the bathtubs when they had the chance, they didn’t know where to go for bottled water - all very worrisome!!
If I lived in the country, I think I’d have a lot of emergency supplies laid in; one big snowstorm and you could be out of touch with the rest of the world for a week or more. One big icestorm, and you lose power for a week!
We are having a flash freeze warning for Calgary today - I don’t actually know what that is, but I don’t like the sounds of it! :eek:
We went through this in 1998, in the country, with a 6 week old daughter. We had no idea at the time what was happening.
“Hey, freezing rain. Good thing I’m off work this week.”
“Oh, look more freezing rain again today.”
“Hey, it’s still freezing rain.”
“I can hear tree branches snapping in the forest behind us.”
And then shortly, no power. We used the fireplace for heat and barbequed a few meals, but it was too much with a six week old so we had to abandon the house and stay at my mother-in-law’s apartment, and then my sister’s house. We were fortunate that our power outage only lasted 6 days.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, I empathize with everyone going through this, and if – as a rural dweller – I ever hear of an impending ice storm, I will be waaayyyy more prepared than I was the first time. It’s one of those “it can’t/won’t happen here” mentalities that we all seem to share.
My sister, who lives very central just off St. Claire, finally got the power back on today. They stayed at a friend’s house to stay warm, but the new salt water aquarium they got the kids for Hanukkah didn’t survive, all the fishies froze!
The last thing I saw said 1500 still without power- people whose houses sustained serious damage. Still awful, but a lot better than 400 000.
We’ve just about completely recovered from the flu. My MiL got it Christmas Day, the kids had a re-occurrence on Thursday or Friday, but I think we’re all all right now. It was a brutal week. The night before the ice storm, while we still had power, I had three children three and under all barfing every ten minutes. I’ve spent pretty much the whole last week and a half doing endless laundry. The power outage was like an extra layer of, “Oh, shit. Really?” on top of everything else. It was lucky that we got ours back after only thirty hours or so.
So glad most people have their power fixed. This has been a crazy week.
As of yesterday, my landlord’s girlfriend still had no power at her house. She spent all day Sunday coming downstairs (into my apartment) to do all of her laundry that had piled up! (We’re located in Scarborough, part of the GTA.)
