The ice storm hit Sunday afternoon and by that evening our electicity was out, along with about 20,000 other homes. By Monday the reports were coming in that 200,000 here in town were without electricity and the last report I read said their was a total of 600,000 homes without power statewide.
The news reports indicated this was the worst we've had in Oklahoma, as far as power outage. I know I've never experienced anything like it. We've had power out for a few hours, but never over night and definitely not three days in a row. Some of it was due to problems with transformers, but the main problem was tree limbs falling on the power lines from the weight of the ice.
Some were fortunate and at least had gas to heat their homes. But our house is total electric, so we were left with only the fireplace to keep us warm. (Luckily, RL had just got wood last Saturday.) No electric and no hot water. We used the wood burning stove to cook our meals (the few we ate at home) and to heat water for our baths.
When we couldn't take sitting in the house any longer, and because we needed electricity to charge the cell phones and the laptop, we went to the mall, restaurants, and coffee shops. Yesterday we spent 30 minutes to an hour driving around looking for a place (1) with electricity, (2) that wasn't so crowded there was no where to sit, and (3) had outlets near the tables so we could plug in. It sounds crazy, but it seems everyone was doing the same.
Our electricity finally came back on yesterday afternoon and I couldn't have been happier! We would've been ok a few more days if we had to, but I'm sure glad we didn't.
