Photo above –taken by Matthew Howard– shows why many homes in southeast Missouri are still without power. Matthew managed to get some photos on his Facebook page and give me permission to share a few here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a utility pole snapped in two. Or this much ice damage to trees. And this close-up sort of tells the story.
It was a bad deal in Kennett, and it still is, going on three weeks after the event. I’m putting up a bunch of pics to http://www.flickr.com/chuckyone
Should take a few hours to get them all up. I gave up shooting going into the second or third day. It was beyond depressing. Only now are we seeing the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. We were lucky, got our power back on 13 days into the event. Others aren’t that lucky as Kennett isn’t up to full power yet. And we are running on the natural-gas powered generators of City Light Gas and Water. With a surcharge from the gas folkes, will someone please pay my bill for next month. It was insane for this month and it did not include a couple of weeks of no juice. Help. KBOA was the only radio station that provided information for the folkes in town. Chuck Isabell is my hero.
KAIT8 tv blew it…kept going on about 3000 poles down around J’boro. Kennett had a bunch more than that and further north it was worse. I heard the number to be close to 15,000 power poles in Dunklin county. The light folkes are heroes here. The older ones that have been doing this for years told me that they had never seen the damage that we in this area, and northwards, sustained.
During the whole of the event, I kept remembering St. Louis poet T.S. Elliot…his poem OLD MEN…
“This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends…not with a bang, but a whimper”. It felt just like that for a day or two….