This photo was taken on Teal Drive between Elm Drive and Lariet Lane in Del City.  To view the entire set, just click on the photo.

I thought I would take this opportunity to give everyone an update on our situation.  This ice storm started Saturday night, December 8, 2007.  The rain fell all day Sunday and and the trees started looking a little glazed over.  I lost power Saturday night for three hours but it was due to lightning nearby.  It was very strange that we were having a thunderstorm at midnight when the temperature was 32 degrees.  I was really worried about my ham radio tower taking a lightning strike.  The power came back on at 3:51 am and I was praising the Lord.  Around noon on Sunday it went back off for an hour.  By sunset I was beginning to get concerned with the trees in my backyard failing for the weight of the ice.  At 9:00 pm Sunday, the lights went out and of the posting of this the power is still out.  When the lights went out, we heard a loud buzzing sound outside and the sky lit up green.  This happened three times before going out for good.

I began to hear many sirens in the distance getting louder.  I ran back to my ham shack and turned on my battery scanner to hear the Del City police responding to several fires.  I went out to see what was going on and you could hear the trees falling about once every five minutes.  It was a very creepy feeling.   By morning our street was impassable due to tree branches laying in the street.  I thought to myself… “Self, this would be a good time to get the camera and take some pictures.  So far I have taken more than 300 just in our residential neighborhood.  I was amazed at the damage.  You can go to my Flickr page.  As I type this, I am unloading my compact flash card onto the laptop.  It filled up a 1 GB card so it is taking a while.  It will really take a long time when I begin to upload them.

Thanks to Larry, KD5MAF for giving me a 600 watt power inverter to hook up to my truck.  This converts the 12 volts DC to 110 volts AC.  This has allowed me to have one light, one 20″ television, and my cell phone charger plugged in.  I go start the truck every 3 hours and let it run for 45 minutes.  One reason I need the cell phone is because our home phone went out before the electricity.  Since we use DSL, our Internet was out as well.  If you want up to the minute updates on how we are doing, just check our Twitter page at http://www.twitter.com/plmccordj. I send text updates from my cell phone to Twitter so everyone can read the updates.

Back on topic of the storm…  When daylight came yesterday, we went out in the backyard to survey the damage.  I found that our neighbor’s tree, the spawn of Satan has collapsed again on our power line pulling it away from the back of the house.  This makes two ice storms in a row.  I begged the insurance adjuster this morning to pay to remove that tree and she said she will… Yea!  My 70 foot tower is leaning a bit because a very large branch fell and landed on the East guy wire holding the tower up.  Another branch broke both of my HF antennas and one of my two meter beams.  There is a branch on the roof of the house as well.

I was panicking on Sunday because I had several lessons that I had to get uploaded.  I was suppose to have them up by Friday but because of my gall bladder surgery last Wednesday I was given a couple of extra days.  I barely uploaded them before we lost power for good.  The insurance adjuster came over this morning and stood in the rain for nearly an hour surveying the damage.  She gave us a preliminary payment that I think will get us going.  We need to get the tree cut down before we can get the electric drop line reinstalled.  Even after we get our house back up in order there still is no electricity in our whole neighborhood.  My dad’s street and Glenn Avenue were the only streets in this whole square mile of Del City to have power.  I spoke to my dad this morning and he told me that his power went off as of 6:00 pm last night.  I am supposed to go back to work tomorrow but the tree people and electrician are supposed to be here tomorrow.  So much for having any vacation time in the next year.

Both our ham radio repeaters are offline due to power and ice buildup on the antennas.  I am not sure if the WIN System antenna was damaged when the tree landed on the guy wire.  It shook the tower pretty good.  Also I noticed the power poles behind our house have the wired broken between our pole and the next pole to the West.  I must give my respect to the people of OG&E.  These people are working among power lines that continue to fall in heavy rain and temperatures in the 30’s.  It is hard to imagine working in that type of an environment and they are doing it to help thousands of us without power.    I tried to post a message similar to this on Sunday evening at the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) but just as I was about to post, the power went off.  I was glad we had already paid for our food.  One thing that I have noticed is that every restaurant in town that has power has cars parked everywhere.  It looks like the 200,000+ estimate given by OG&E is correct.

I am sorry for rambling and incoherence in this post but I am in a very crowded Del City library with many people wandering around because their homes have no power.  I was fortunate to find an open outlet to plug the laptop in so I could get a good charge.

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