I’m doing some research for something I’m writing, and I wanted to know if any Dopers had first hand experience of the clean up after the Ice Storm of 1998 in the Northeastern US, Ontario or Québec. I’m particularly interested in hydro lines in rural areas, where the transmission towers had collapsed from the added weight of the ice.
All anecdotes welcome…
I helped clear hiking trails in NH. Some places were completely obliterated, others came through without much damage. There were huge differences over a short distance as the temps were right on the edge of freezing rain. In places, it was impossible to identify that a trail had ever existed, let alone move through the area to survey the damage.
Some places took years to recover.
Really? Interesting. I remember seeing all the hunchbacked trees in the Ottawa area in Feb./March that year.
Was it the debris from fallen branches and fallen trees that made the trails unrecognizable?
I had to clean up my basement.
Hey, all anecdotes are welcomed! 
Believe it or not, I’m intrigued - what happened to your basement as a result of the Ice Storm?
Or do you just mean it needed cleaning anyway, and that was the week, so you lived off tinned ham and pickled artichokes for a while?
I had no power for a week. Due to the rising temperatures, and melting ice, water was coming up through my sump hole. We had a 6 week old daughter at the time and had to abandon the house and shack up with city-dwelling relatives: with power.
Every night for a week I would go out to the house and assess the situation. On well-and-septic, no electricity is quite a burden. Not only was there no heat, but no running water too.
On the very last night with no power I was at my house armed with a flashlight, a few beers, and a jug of plumbing antifreeze. I was in the process of winterizing the plumbing when all of a sudden the power kicked on. You have no idea how happy that made me. The thermostat in the house was approaching zero, and people were telling me that my pipes were going to burst, and that my drywall seams would all start to crack, and that I was going to be screwed!
I cranked the heat up and then drove back to the city to collect my family. It was cold sleeping that night, as the furnace worked overtime to bring everything back to normal, but we were really glad to be back in our own beds.
The basement was unfinished at the time. I had moved everything away from the ever-increasing puddle growing around the sump hole, and so clean-up was minimal. We were obviously very fortunate compared to a lot of other people hit by the storm.
I was on winter break, staying at my mother’s house in New Hampshire. When they finally got our power back on, it was brought on by a crew from Connecticut: two states away. Our crews were so overwhelmed that they needed to bring in help. The crews were not used to how things were done in rural New Hampshire, and had to come to my mother’s door to find out where the lines came into the house. Where they were from, lines always went up the driveway, but at my mother’s house they went through the woods, since it was closer to the road. Of course, the woods were full of downed trees and branches, which made things that much more complicated.
I guess I wasn’t really involved in the clean-up, but I was near it.
Blithering mother of sh!t, I hadn’t thought of that, and I even have a sump in my house that goes off every 20 minutes in the fall rains. Please pardon my taking that situation lightly. I’m glad the power came on before the pipes froze - that would have been horrible!
We were without power in our house in Toronto last year for almost 24 hours late Jan. or early Feb. - I don’t remember the exact date. The most bizarre thing was that every time I went from one room to another, I’d take a swipe at the light switch and have a moment of puzzlement when the ‘click’ made no difference to the room…
My sister’s first ranch in BC was far enough off the beaten track that if the power went out, it could be up to ten days before BC hydro found the break in the line. A generator was just standard equipment for all the ranchers around there.
People were without power for up to two weeks. Frozen water lines were common, lots of damage to plumbing.
The trails simply didn’t exist anymore because of the huge number of downed trees. You could go for 100’s of yards without touching the ground just by walking on the trunks of downed trees. People had to go in with chainsaws and essentially cut a new trail corridor from scratch.
Some links:
http://www.wapack.org/98storm.html
http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/lands_forests_pdf/ice98.pdf
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/almanac/arc2008/alm08jan.htm
http://www.hubbardbrook.org/research/longterm/ice_storm/likens.htm
I’m from the Ottawa region. During the Ice storm I only lost power for a day. And had a couple of days off work because of it. I didn’t help out in the clean up. Instead watched trees around my place collapse and skated to the store for more beer.
Good times.
There are still hunchbacked trees. Drive down any of the highways through the Montérégie or the Eastern Townships (I drive Autoroute 10 a lot) and you still see trees that are curved due to the weight of the ice back then. They are alive, just oddly shaped.
I didn’t help with the clean up and was relatively unaffected since we only lost power for a day or two non-consecutively. I recall two days off of school, though, since they couldn’t warm it up fast enough after the first power outage.
We took in three children though - they lived with my family for about 2.5 weeks. They were from the St. Bruno area, which IIRC was one of the last to get power back. These kids were the children of a hostess who worked for my dad, and had been spending a few days living on cots in a gym. I don’t know if my dad offered or if they asked. The youngest was about 5, so she spent her days in my mom’s classroom (she was teaching grade 2 at the time) and the other two were 11 and 14-ish and stayed together with my sister, who was 16 and in high school.
I should find out it my dad was the one who offered; it’s one of those things you should know about your father, no? One of his employees was shot during the Dawson College shooting, and my father paid him for the remainder of the season (about a month or so) even though he was unable to work. I was so proud of my dad!
None of this is what you’re looking for, eh? My former boss’ husband works for OntarioOne (or whatever they are now), but it’s been years since I spoke to her. I know he worked to help restore the power lines, though. Wish I could help!
So the trees are still there and bear the scars. What about those 100+ foot transmission towers? Did they leave those up, or were they a danger and got taken down? And if they did take them down, how exactly did they do it? Bulldoze the concrete footings? Take them apart piece by piece? Anybody know?
I wasn’t involved in the repair/clean up, but do remember that well. I was home in southern NY for winter break from college in Potsdam, NY (Clarkson) - way upstate, near Canadian border. Spring semester was delayed by at least a week if I remember. The campus was without power for a couple of weeks, but had it back on time for classes to begin, but power companies from all over north east were using our campus as a base of operations, sleeping in the gym and student center, so we opened late. Even when I finally got back up there I remember the hundreds of trucks and cherry pickers parked, rolling in and out, of the parking lots around campus.
I left a fish in a fish tank with an electric feeder and reserve water pump thing in my dorm room. After having no power and an extra week I assumed that fish died. When I walked into the room, the 10 gallon tank had about an inch of water left in it, the feeder was full (never fed) and the fish had actually cleared a depression in the rocks at the bottom to find deeper water. But he was alive!!! I almost think the freezing temps he went with for 3 weeks with no power probably put him in suspended mode. I had never named him, but he immediatly became Thaw and lived for another 8 years in 5 different apartments and my parents house after that! Toughest damn goldfish I’ve ever known…
I had a large limb break and hit my power line and deck. The deck rail survived. I had a metal table get bent.
The biggest concern was my meter was ripped off the house and the wire inside pulled out
I had to hire an electrician to fix the meter box and reattach the wire. He came the third day. It took the power company another 6 days to restore power to my neighborhood and my house.
I learned from that experience. Two years later I had the wire from the pole to my house installed underground. I never want to have my service ripped off my wall again.
.
Damaged towers were all replaced for sure, though I’m not sure how. Since the lines were dead, I assume they could just remove the cable and build new at the same spot, or perhaps adjacent to old towers. I don’t know if I could tell by looking at them, but I might head out to the Townships next weekend and I’ll see if I can tell what the bases look like. The newer towers look different…simpler in build (fewer trusses) but more solid looking. Drive around hereon Google Maps and you can see two different types of towers; that’s what I mean (Autoroute 10 near Richelieu, if it doesn’t work).
I watched these trees “grow up”. They definitely have more of a curve since 1998 (Autoroute 10 near Marieville)
Yeah, it’s situations like this image that I particularly wonder about - were the collapsed ones just left, or were they taken down as a danger?
They have definitely been taken away, or I would have expected to see one over the past 12 years!
No direct experience myself, but my Dad and step-mother were without power for a significant amount of time (I’m thinking more than two weeks but I’m not sure and they are no longer around for me to ask). He was pretty self-sufficient though and they had a wood-burning stove.
It was bloody impressive when I was there the following summer seeing the crumpled high voltage transmission towers; I never would have believed that ice could have crumpled a tower like that rather than just snap off the wires! Picture the Jolly Green Giant leaning on the top of one of those towers and it buckling under his weight; that’s what I thought of.
