Storm Cleanup
This is the branch drop off location for the city of Leominster. Back on 12/11/08 we had a major ice storm which damaged many trees in the region . Follow this storm tag to see previous posts. While things seem to be back to normal, there still a lot of cleanup to happen.
This past Saturday the city held it's first clean up day (unfortuntaly I found out after the fact). Leominster has 25 miles of hiking and walking trails. Monoosnoc trails and Leominster state forest have been closed until they can be cleaned up. These areas are heavily used year round. In the winter they are used for cross country skiing and snow shoeing and for hikers and walkers when we have no snow.
I'm sorry I missed the day but will keep my ears open in case another group event occurrs.
After the storm
I was out on Elm street and noticed these pine trees around the reservoir. These pine trees tend to be 60 to 80 feet tall and only have branches on the top parts of the tree as you can see from the ones that are still standing. I was amazed at how the ones that did break did so in such a clean fashion. This is all damage from the December 11th ice storm.
Update on the power issue. Leominster has 99.9% of power restored. There are people in Fitchburg, Lunenburg, and Townsend still without power though. As the story unravels it seems Unitil, the company that provides power to these communities has miss-managed the recovery quite a bit. There are a lot of angry people in these communities. One news cast stated that Unitil would not allow other vendors into their cities until the governer of the state stepped in and demanded that other companies such as National Grid be allowed in to help.
Resdients of Fitchburg have asked city and state officals to remove Unitil from the city. I'm sure this is not any easy task even if it is possible. State officials have announced that they will be holding hearings after all power is restored. I hope Unitil is held accountable for their acctions.
Bonsai
This is my neighbors house. The tree you see in front of the small stone house is a red maple. This maple tree is over 40 years old, but only 5 feet tall. At one time my neighbor had 20 of these trees in his yard. He has thinned them out and I believe he is down to 6 of them.
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.
What a Storm
Haven't been able to post since Thursday. Starting Thursday afternoon into Friday morning we had freezing rain. This caused all the trees to freeze. A lot of the trees could not handle the weight and ended up breaking. We got lucky for the most part. We had one tree fall and break a cast iron fireplace we have outside.
We went without power for 36 hours, which was tough for us because we have a 6 month old baby. We spent a lot of time driving around warming up. I drove 40 miles away where they had power with the hope of finding either a generator or power inverter so I could get my pellet stove operational to heat the house.
Unfortunately my thought was not a unique one and every place I went was sold out. The last place I checked was home depot, a chain hardware store. They had chairs setup for people to wait in line for generators. Looking at the 25 people sitting down waiting, along with the statement on the sign saying 15-25 minute wait from the front of the line I decided not to wait.
I'm glad that we got our power back. Just heard on the news that they are predicting that some areas will be 3 weeks without.
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