Under The Glass The world through my lenses

My World #4

My world was a rough one over the weekend.  The ice storm started Thursday afternoon into Friday morning when I took this photo. We lost power around 11:30 pm Thursday night and we went without power for 36 hours. I'm finding out that we are the fortunate ones. Last I heard there are 120,000 people without power in Massachusetts and 160,000 people without in New Hampshire. In total there were over 1,000,000 people without power.

Most New England homes have basements. A lot of these basements due to topology have water problems and have sump pumps to keep them dry. So in addtion to not having power or heat, people have basements that are flooding. There is also concern if the temps go down enough there will be some pipes bursting added to the mix.

My wife's parents are still without power. I stopped over yesterday afternoon to find that they were very stressed out. Without being able to run a sump pump, their basement had 3 feet of water in it. They spoke to the fire department and were put on a waiting list. Their position was 60 on the list and they were told it could be more than a day before they show up.

Luckily I had an answer for their problem. I went home and got my power inverter. These inverters convert dc power to ac power. With the inverter we were able to pull the car up to the bulkhead and plug the sump pump in to drain the water. When my father in law came home from work today he had to drain the basement again. Looks like it fills up roughly 3 feet a day. Until power is restored, they will not know what damage the water might of done to their hot water heater and oil furnace.

We have some more stormy weather on our way. We have rain turning into snow for Tuesday into Wednesday morning with a forcast of 1 to 3 inches of snow. There is also a larger storm predicted for Friday. The scary part about these storms if they accumulate is snow removal.  The area still has a lot of trees on the ground as well as electrical wires. Not sure what will happen when a plow hooks onto one of these wires. This will also hinder the people working to restore power.

As far as school goes, Leominster has announced no school for Tuesday. Lunenburg the next town over has canceled school all the way to January 5th.  Some of the schools are being used for shelters for those that need it. There is also the problem of children that walk to school where some sidewalks are not accessible.

To see the world through others eyes, visit That’s my World, a weekly meme sharing photos and impressions of all the welorld seen through the participants’ eyes.