‘Struggling along.’ Kentucky county deals with widespread power outages, frigid cold.
No heat. No morning coffee, and no way to cook. No hot shower, and no water at all for some homes. No WiFi or television.
That’s been the reality for many people in Jackson County since a storm moved through Kentucky on Monday and coated the county with ice. That caused countless trees to fall, tearing down electric lines and blocking roads.
At one point there were more than 5,000 homes and businesses in the county without power, or about 70 percent of all customers.
Jackson Energy Cooperative, the local electricity provider, had extra crews in from elsewhere in Kentucky and from Georgia and Alabama to help fix lines and restore power, but more than 40 percent of customers still had no power at mid-afternoon Wednesday, according to one map.
Water service also was out to some people because of the electricity outages.
“It’s a bad time,” said Gene Neeley, who was filling a container with kerosene Wednesday at a convenience store to run a heater at his house.
The county set up a shelter Tuesday at Tyner Elementary School where people could get food, warm up or stay the night if needed.
It was the only one of the county school system’s five facilities with power, said Steve Gabbard, who oversees buildings and grounds for the system.
Wilma Sizemore, 78, said a sheriff’s deputy answered her call for help and took her to the shelter Tuesday afternoon. She’d been without electricity for more than 12 hours and the house was cooling off.
Sizemore spent the night at the shelter.
The Army-style cot on the floor of the gymnasium wasn’t terribly comfortable, but the shelter was a blessing, said Sizemore, whose husband died two years ago.
For her, the worst part of being without electricity was that her landline telephone wouldn’t work and she couldn’t charge her cell phone. She would have been cut off after her cell died.
“It’s not being able to contact someone. That’s what makes an old person scared,” Sizemore said.
Wednesday morning, Sizemore, who is a hospice volunteer and helps with a jail ministry, was reading her Bible at the shelter.
She was in Ecclesiastes, appropriately enough, in the passage about there being a time for everything, and was keeping a good attitude.
“It’s something I get to tell my great-grandkids,” she said. “It’s something I’ll never forget.”
Volunteers at the shelter said the power outage and blocked roads had been difficult for lower-income people because they didn’t have money to stock up on food before the storm.
That’s an issue in the county, where the per capita income is only a little over half the U.S. level, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission.
One family that came to the warming center said they only had cookies and crackers at home. Another woman who came in said she was cold and hungry, volunteers said.
“I think for a lot of them, it is the inability to have food,” Tracie Hays, a teacher who was helping at the center, said of the hardships caused by the storm.
Ruby Casavares, who works at the Gray Hawk Landing convenience store and was putting chicken tenders and potato wedges under the heat lamps before lunch Wednesday, said she’d had no power at home since Monday.
The worst part was losing the food in her refrigerator, and not being able to cook anything, she said.
She couldn’t even open a can of tuna because she only had an electric can opener, not a manual one. She planned to buy one Wednesday.
“You’ve got canned food that you can’t open,” Casavares said.
Sheriff Paul Hays said the temperature in the county sank to 9 degrees early Wednesday morning. He had no electricity at his house and his propane heater froze at one point.
Hays said Jackson Energy was working hard to get the lights and heat back on, but it wasn’t clear how long that would take. The county is hilly, widely forested and rural, adding to the challenges of fixing broken lines and poles.
“We’re struggling along, doing the best we can,” Hays said. “It’s a bad time, but it’s going to get better.”
Several people said they were using small kerosene or propane heaters to keep their homes warm, while others have gas-powered generators.
There was a rush on small propane tanks — like those used on barbecue grills — when the Blue Rhino delivery man got to the Annville Town & Country Shell Wednesday morning.
Brian Murray, who runs the store with his wife, Allison, had arranged for the shipment, the fourth in less than two weeks.
The driver was handing full tanks to customers directly off the truck instead of unloading them.
Blaine Miller had driven to the store from his home in Sand Gap, a distance of about 30 miles, to get kerosene for his two heaters because there was none available closer.
The worst thing about having no electricity?
“It’s all pretty bad,” Miller said.
The store, a combination convenience and grocery store, was busy with people filling kerosene cans, getting gas for generators and stocking up on bread and milk for the next round of snow, forecast for Wednesday night and Thursday.
The store also was preparing food for utility workers.
“We’re trying to band together and get through this,” Murray said.
Hays, the sheriff, said he had been impressed with how people in the county had responded to the power outage.
Police, firefighters and volunteers took fuel, food and medicine to people, or picked them up and took them to stay with family, neighbors or to the warming center. Neighbors checked on neighbors. Judge-Executive Shane Gabbard, a Baptist minister, personally delivered oxygen to people.
Dozens of people helped clear downed trees that were blocking roads, Hays said.
“I’ve never seen people in my life that were so eager to help,” Hays said.
Chuck Hammond was among those helping his neighbors. He had helped cut trees and clear the road to an elderly man’s house, and Wednesday afternoon, he was taking a family to shelter.
The family had had only candles for light and heat, Hammond said.
Anyone who gets through life without having helped someone hasn’t had much of a life, Hammond said.
“That’s our purpose, is to help people,” he said.
Residents were bracing Wednesday for more potential problems.
The weather forecast was for 3 to 5 inches of snow to fall beginning Wednesday evening — wet snow that could add more weight to tree limbs still covered in ice, causing them to crash down on power lines.
Some of the repair work utility crews were doing, said county emergency manager Jamie Strong, “is probably going to get undone.”
