Steve Mills and his wife have one daughter. They previously owned two coffee/ice cream shops, currently operate an internet sales company and teach classes, but his primary job involves the paper industry worldwide. Hobbies and interests lie in gardening, photography, recorded music and of course, their pets.

Anyone want to share their experiences from the Winter Storms of February?

Posted Monday, February 22, 2021, at 12:15 PM

A brisk morning on our hills

We have many but before I get into some of them let me say a BIG THANK YOU to Duck River Electric and the surrounding crews from other areas who worked in a tough, demanding, COLD, and sometimes dangerous environment top bring warmth and light back to our world. I realize that some of us are STILL experiencing outages, but the silver lining is that at least the outside conditions are getting better and the sun is getting through again.

We were totally out of power, heat and water for 5 days, (I say out of water because we had no pressure, but we did have a dribble with which we filled gallon jugs) with a 6 hour break on Wednesday when power was restored until 1:50 Thursday morning. I know the time because I was up and looking toward the window when a bright flash told me trouble was coming again. Surprisingly, power did not go immediately. It took an hour before systems failed.

I hated that the hard working crews that had just left 6 hours before were going to have to come back. When I talked to the first crew that walked our lines, I found out that one of them was without power since Sunday and he had no ability to work on his own home.

Because I use a Bi-pap for sleeping, I could not sleep laying down so I eventually started sleeping 2 hour naps in my truck or the van. I changed back and forth to keep them both semi warmed up if we need to go somewhere. In one we charged our phones to stay in touch and handle our online sales efforts but we eventually shut them down because we could not ship anyway.

The outside cats had to go on completely dry rations and since we could not heat their water bowls I kept bringing water in jugs to replace the ice. Eventually, I built small stands where I placed short votive candles meant for keeping food trays warm or lighting decorative glass under metal dishes. It kept the water free for a few hours but eventually it was ice again. I don't know if cats eat snow for water. Anyone know?

I don't believe we lost anyone since they all had dry, wind-free places to cuddle up. Some just chose to cuddle up under the house edge, while others went into the coolers, and small homes we have built for them. The rest went into the numerous underground mini-caves we have around the property.

There is more, but how about you? What did you endure?