Ohio Ice Storm!

[Tyler]

How was everyone's night? Let me tell you about mine... first I got to work and nothing was going on. We all ate an enjoyed a good dinner of pizza, and then we sat on the couch to veg out. First tone goes off for Quint 33 to investigate some wires down. About 2 minutes later, Engine 37 goes out to investigate some wires. Then 30 seconds later Lt. comes running in from the parking lot yelling "You guys gotta come see this ****! The whole ****ing sky is lit up green, and orange!" We run outside, and see nothing Then we get our first call for wires down, and boy oh boy it never ended. The entire time were responding to our calls were seeing trees fall, transformers blow up. We were actually standing next to a tree when one of the limbs fell off from about 40 feet (GIANT oak tree) and smashed to bits on the ground, then we realized it had landed some a mailbox... and the mail was still in it We got the hell outta that warzone and then got a call for a house fire. Wires has partially pulled out of the house and set the attic on fire, that lasted about an hour. Back in service at 23:00 or so, and go on a few more calls. Get back to quarters at 00:00, and finally try to relax. We fall asleep, 02:30 I wake up because the wind is blowing pretty good and trees are snapping everywhere. Round 2 starts! More power lines down, more fire. Oh, and to make things more cooler, the entire night were out we kept seeing those green flashes that Lt. was talking about. There is a rather large substation in the middle of the city that supplys the entire south/eastern part of Kettering that exploded, blew huge transformers 100's of feet in the air. DP&L kept doing a temp fix on the cables, and they just kept popping them off left and right. When we finally got back to quarters around 06:00 or so, our station is on a corner and its pretty wide open. Theres a lot of farm fields by us, but we can see the rest of the city to our North, plus you can see downtown Dayton from our parking lot. The only thing that was lit up was our station and parking lot (running on generator). The ENTIRE city of Kettering/Oakwood, and 90% of Dayton was pitch dark. It's one of the aeriest things I have EVER seen. Check out the video...

KETTERING: DP&L Works On Restoring Power - Video - WHIO Dayton

[JD3020]

Yeah, over here power was out everywhere around 9. My dad was at our drive-thru in West Carrolton and said transformers kept blowing up in the neighborhood behind him, but our drive-thru is on Central Ave. by the fire department and had power. My grandparents are in Jefferson Township and have been out of power since last night.

My mom walked outside at about 8 yesterday and said the entire yard turned red and yellow, she ran inside screaming thinking the house was on fire. My grandma has a scanner and Jackson Township said a Transformer in town blew up. For the rest of the night we sat in the living room by the fire to stay warm, and the sky would light up for a second or two then go dark, transformers blowing. At one point a big pine tree was down across our road. I was getting dressed to go out and move it when somebody started cutting it up.

And my dad was coming home plowing the 2" of ice off the road, and blocking traffic so the county plow trucks could push trees off the road.

It was like a repeat of the hurricane, but instead of strong winds and rain it was strong winds, freezing rain, and cold temperatures.

[Tyler]

yeah, people from middletown could see our sub station blow. thats 30 miles...

[JD3020]

Dang thats crazy. I think my neighbors across the road are still out of power, and our power flickered once or twice today. But because of the bad roads and no power in places we are having our 3rd snow day of the week, i think the 6th or 7th so far this year. Last i heard we are going 3 days extra in the summer. Sweet. I'm just glad there were no fires around here or power lines down, in the 1/2 mile drive i made today i saw 3 big tree's that had been cleared off the road.

And i hope I-75 is clear tomorrow, i gotta make a trip up to Troy to pick up some snowmobile and atv parts.

[Tyler]

Originally Posted by JD3020

Dang thats crazy. I think my neighbors across the road are still out of power, and our power flickered once or twice today. But because of the bad roads and no power in places we are having our 3rd snow day of the week, i think the 6th or 7th so far this year. Last i heard we are going 3 days extra in the summer. Sweet. I'm just glad there were no fires around here or power lines down, in the 1/2 mile drive i made today i saw 3 big tree's that had been cleared off the road.

And i hope I-75 is clear tomorrow, i gotta make a trip up to Troy to pick up some snowmobile and atv parts.

According to Lyndsey, our power was on and off all night. I was on duty all night. Our cable/internet went out around midnight, and got it back around noon today, but it went out again and just got it back about two hours ago. We had one attic fire due to down power lines, and that substation I showed in the video caught fire. So all in all we had two fires, and 18 calls just in my district for down trees and power lines, we have 6 other districts with close to 200 calls total, all from 1700 to 0700.

[Jarrod B]

ya that vid was wild man.