Northerners

I just received this email from one of my "kids that I didn't give birth to", as Bridget Jones would say. TR doesn't know who originally wrote this, but it's what I've been saying since Katrina struck.

WEATHER BULLETIN

Up here in the Northern Plains we just recovered from an Historic event --- May I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions"? --- With a historic blizzard of up to 24" inches of snow and winds to 50 MPH that broke trees in half, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed all roads, isolated scores of communities, and cut power to tens of thousands.

FYI:

President George Bush did not come, and was not expected to come...

President George Bush did not cause the storm...

Global warming did not cause the storm...

FEMA staged nothing...

No one howled for the government to do something...

No one even uttered an expletive on TV...

Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards...

No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House...

No one looted...

Jim Cantori of the Weather Channel did not come...

And Geraldo Rivera did not move in to be on camera.

Nope, we just melted snow for water, sent out caravans to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars and trucks, checked on our neighbors, fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Aladdin lamps, and put on an extra layer of clothes because up here it is take care of yourself and others and work or die. We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sit at home' checks.

Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and and we know how to deal with it ourselves.


This is the same storm that encased our area in an inch of ice. We were the lucky ones. West-central Minnesota and southeastern North Dakota got the worst of it. They got the 50 mph winds on top of the ice. Miles and miles of power lines went down. It wasn't just the line that snapped; the poles snapped off like matchsticks! 10,000-15,000 homes were without power for several days. They think that they've finally restored power to the last few homes TODAY. That's 10 DAYS without power! Many of these days had subzero temperatures.

TR's best friend's Dad is a lineman for Ottertail Power, one of the power companies that assisted in returning power to the affected area. These brave souls didn't abandon their jobs to see to the welfare of their families. They drove on icy roads, through 2 feet of snow, in the middle of the night. They reset poles through 4 ft snowdrifts and frozen ground. They restrung line in winds that were much stronger than the 20 mph maximum that their union rules allow.

After the power was restored many of these homes flooded when their ruptured water lines thawed out. Now these homeowners are faced with the task of replumbing their homes, in the dead of winter. There aren't enough plumbers to go around, so many of these people will be doing the work themselves.

Many people didn't have backup heating. They abandoned their homes and moved in with friends and relatives who were able to heat a couple of rooms in their homes. These people will return to homes containing frozen foodstuffs, toiletries, and cracked sheetrock.

The destruction would have been worse if the area were more densely populated. I'm sure that people perished in this storm, but I haven't heard a death toll. The news media hasn't covered our disaster very well.

We didn't wait for FEMA to rescue us. We northerners are smarter than that. We jumped on our snowmobiles and 4-wheel drives and went out to rescue each other.
We northerners are a self-sufficient lot!