Saturday, January 08, 2005

It’s finally winter, and I don’t like it.

Tuesday, Jan. 4, winter hit with a vengeance. An ice storm came through Kansas and hit Wichita particularly hard. A city with a population of about 360,000 was nearly paralyzed with more than 60,000 residents whose electricity was lost, and with downed trees due to the weight of ice that nearly or completely blocked most residential streets and cut power to a great many neighborhoods. Most of those who lost power are still without. Ron and I were without for four days and three nights, but that wasn't bad considering others who are still in the dark or in hotels. This is why I have not blogged about it until now. We were able to finally move back into our apartment last night.

Wichita looks like it has been hit with an ice-filled nuclear bomb. And for a while, transformers all over town were blowing up, showing brilliant, bright colors of first blue-green, then orange, then bright white. The sky lit up as if 50 spotlights were shining up into the night sky all in one condensed area. At the same time, a low but loud humming could be heard while electrical arches could be seen, the transformers not wanting to give up their fights.

Thank goodness, my parents' house is finally done being built and they're moved in. They lost power for several hours Tuesday, too, but since my dad is an electrician, he was able to get a generator through his connections without having to spend a bunch of money. He's also been very busy helping businesses get their power back. He works for a large commercial electrical company and, at times, is quite in demand.

Ron and I were able to stay with my parents, though, at their house. They got their power back that night before we went to bed. We were their houseguests until late last night when we found out that we had power back at our apartment and could go back. It felt really good to know that we had somewhere we could go where we could have the comforts of home instead of having to spend money on a hotel room where we wouldn't have a kitchen or a place to put the perishable items from our refrigerator.

I think God was holding off on this storm so that we'd have a place to go that was warm and inviting. Thank you, God, for blessing us with a family that cares and warm shelter through the storm!

2 comments:

Devona said...

Thank god you're safe. We got a really bad storm ourselves this year right before Christmas, but it wasn't that bad for us personally. we also got the tail end of your crippling atomic bomb of ice.

Isn't it great to live by your parents?

It's also great when you've got a new baby, let me tell you. :)

Mommy's Resource Closet said...

I haven't always thought it was so great to live close to my parents, but in this case, I really did. They live about a 20-minute drive from where we do right now. It's far enough that I don't have to see them every day, but it's close enough that we can see them when we want to without having to plan out a whole day for it.

I know that when Ron and I have kids, it'll be nice to have my parents semi-close to us, although we really want to move out of Kansas in the next year or three.