The temp was in the 30's, it was raining and I had to slice open these awkward, rectangular shaped, compact, squares of insulation, and bust them up and run them through the hopper. Hubby was up in the attic doing his thing. We took a break to eat, got the Little Man to bed, and got back to work. About an hour later (8:00pm), we were down to our last bag and I was out cleaning up and heard a beeping. I figured it was the machine and went about my business. Finally I realized it was a smoke alarm in the house. I ran inside, hubby is running down at me and then I realized it was coming from Little Man's room. I'm pretty sure my heart stopped at that moment. I ran into his room (completely forgetting any education I've received - check for smoke, feel the door to see if it's warm, etc). I got in there, had the alarm blasting it's warning at me and immediately smelled smoke. I grabbed Little Man and his blankets (myself all covered in insulation), screamed at hubby and ran outside. Hubby is running around and realized that insulation was falling down the cold air return (from the attic) and must be going through the furnace. Meanwhile the house is filling with smoke and he's running in and out. I got Little Man laid in the back seat of the car, grabbed hubby's phone and called 911. Hubby is doing what he can (turning off furnace, fan, etc). We let the operator know that there wasn't any flames or anything and then we hear the sirens. By this point we were just embarrassed. I stood at the end of our driveway to flag them down and see not one, but two firetrucks and an ambulance. Oh My!! The ambulance left pretty quick and a couple of the fireman helped clean out the furnace and try to fire it back up. It's vibrating/shaking terribly and has been out of commission ever since. They leave shortly after but leave us a nice present before they go. They were trying to help take the smoke out with this HUGE fan only to sit it on the porch and blast all the insulation that fell out of the hopper, all over the living room (on the furniture, the fireplace, Christmas tree, everywhere). By this point we thought we'd have to stay at a hotel due to no heat and the smell but after spending an hour cleaning up all the insulation we decided we were too tired to go anywhere. We put a small electric heater in Little Man's room and called it a night.By this point I figured I had plenty to blog about right??? There's more....
So the house got very cold through the night and we wake in the morning only to realize that the ice storm they were calling for REALLY did come and we were out of electricity. This was somewhere between 7-8a.m. Sunday morning. All the trees were coated with ice and we had a few limbs down.
So we spent the morning brainstorming what to do and thought we had settled on a hotel when we found out Lowe's was getting some generators from their other stores and people had started to wait in line. Hubby started waiting while I brainstormed what to do. After figuring the cost of a hotel for potentially 3-4 nights we decided to fork over the cash and go the generator route. An hour later and we had our generator, got some gas and headed home. 30 minutes later hubby had it running. We had electricity!! Woohoo....
We were able to get our fridge running and 2 little electric heaters.
Fast forward to this morning; our yard and driveway look like a warzone. There are tree limbs and gigantic branches everywhere. You can just stand outside, listen for the cracking and watch the smaller limbs and huge branches come crashing down. It's definitely not safe to stand outside near any trees. With a little chainsaw work hubby was able to get us an alternate route to the road since our driveway is definitely out of commission. It should be interesting to see how different it looks tomorrow morning. Above I posted pictures of day 1 and below is day 2 to give you an idea of what 24 hours can do. Anyway, all is well now. We got a little bit better heater today and the house is now up to 59 degrees (it had been at 53 for the first couple days). We are warm, well fed (grilled out tonight) and we are obviously spoiled with internet and lights. We were even able to take a hot shower today (gas water heater).
We hope the rest of you are as lucky and doing well!! I'll try to give an update soon. This morning there were 48,000 customers out of electricity with our Electric Company. It may be awhile until it's back up and running. Oklahoma City has over half a million homes without power (setting a record). Enjoy the pictures. These are from today.
