BREAKING THE ICE
Now that the holidays are safely behind us and the dust is beginning to settle, I believe it is a politically correct time to reflect upon the Great Ice Storm of 2008. For those who were part of it, you will understand what I am talking about here, for those who were unscathed, you can count yourself lucky.
The usual non-stop news coverage left few uninformed, but what you don't hear a lot about are the little details, the unsung heroes. This storm was peculiar and as a lifelong native, I have never seen anything quite like it. Ice never really stuck to cars, parking lots or roadways, but it sure stuck to trees. On the night of the storm, I was keeping an eye on roadways, expecting to have to mount up and service my commercial customers with a sand/salt application. I hung around outside for a few minutes, listening to large trees crashing in every direction, transformers exploding from every quadrant, and growing increasingly uneasy with the magnitude of it. As expected, the power went out. It wasn't until the next day, after taking a drive to higher elevations in surrounding towns, that the gravity of it began to hit me. Devastation truly beyond belief, with large trees across roads, telephone pole after telephone pole snapped in two, and darkness.
Sometimes in life it is best not knowing what you're heading into. Our "Little House on the Prairie" act gets old quick with my children. It is refreshing at first. The crackling of the fire, playing Parcheesi by candlelight, making Christmas presents out of cornstalks. Then the questions begin. "When do you think the power will be back, Dad?" It is the infrastructure equivalent to the famed travel question, "are we there yet?" It was best not knowing.
Odd, though, when the power came back, we began to feel guilty. Christmas was around the corner. We live in a neighborhood, and the next street up from us went several days longer without power. We felt uncomfortable turning on Christmas lights. It didn't seem right. A psychological phenomenon was occurring.
I heard many people describe what they had seen as being like a "war zone". I must have heard this a hundred times, and it made me think. We all know how these kinds of things bring out the best, and sometimes the worst, in people. Other than some random gouging on generators and a few break-ins, I saw little of that. What I did see was an impressive parade of giving. Neighbor to neighbor, town to town, friend to friend and stranger to stranger. It is interesting how we react, how, for most of us, the natural tendency is to reach out. It feels good, but more importantly, it feels necessary. There were countless stories told through countless media sources of people helping out in every way. In our town, a local health club put up over 150 line workers from every part of the country. These guys were working in extreme weather conditions, long shifts, and possibly missing Christmas with their own families. We are indebted to them eternally.
The "war zone" analogy also made me think about exactly that. What it must be like in a war zone. It is kind of a callous comparison in a way, though nobody meant it that way. We got a little taste of what it must be like, still, to have life change overnight. We learned that we take electricity for granted, literally, when in fact, as we also learned, it is a rather archaic and very vulnerable part of our infrastructure. I thought about people in actual war zones, still living without power after months, or even years. Indeed, here in New England, we have people suggesting that utilities should be fined in the future if they can't get power restored in a certain amount of time. This is ridiculous, not taking into account by any measure, the unpredictability of life. In fact, there were some patrons of the health club I mentioned, complaining about the housed line workers. These, surely, were people who had not lost their power.
Overall, the entire event served as a sort of reaffirmation of the intrinsic "good" in most of us. Folks volunteered in any way they could, brought hot drinks and sandwiches to line workers in the middle of the night, and behaved, largely, as we would all hope. It is heartening to know that we have not yet reached the point where such events unfurl into chaos. It is not this way every place in the world. It reminds me why I am so proud to be a New Hampshire native, a New Englander, and comforts me to know that many others feel the same way. Sometimes, it takes a little ice to break the ice.
Good luck with that.
Karl From New Hampshire