Snowmageddon Came to My House and Almost Blew me Skyhigh

Snowmageddon came to my house and almost blew me sky high. I was well prepared for the monster storm. Or so I thought. I stocked the refrigerator days ahead of time. I developed an escape plan for my car. A trusty 4-wheel drive, it can plow through almost anything, but it had been snowed into my garage by a solid two foot wall of snow during the last big storm. This time to make sure it did not get barricaded in again, I drove it to the bottom of my street and parked it facing MacArthur Boulevard, which always gets plowed spotlessly days before the side streets even get touched. I had candles, matches, flashlights, batteries and ski clothes, and my snow boots. All set. Bring it on!

The blizzard began on a Friday night. The storm of the century blasted DC, dumping a foot or more overnight plus another foot the next day, bringing the nation’s capitol to a screeching halt. Congress did not work on the jobs bill. The Federal Government shut down. Schools closed. The nation’s capitol was immobilized. There was no motion and no sound at all-- no planes overhead, no buses going by, no newspapers plopping at the front door. Silent night became silent morning. Quite lovely for a city that thrives on hustle and bustle and is peopled by workaholics. I gave a sigh of relief that the din was stilled and sipped another cup of coffee, enjoying the solace as I surveyed the serene world of white outside. It was so quiet you could have dropped a two ton cannon and no one would have heard. The expression, “if a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear it?” came to mind.

Guess not. Sometime during the time I was enjoying my morning cup of Joe, a 60 foot high Leland Cypress next to my kitchen window collapsed under the weight of the snow, ruthlessly ripping the gas pipes right out of the side of my house as it toppled and wrenching the gas meter right off its moorings. The broken pipes spewed gas throughout the house and into the entire neighborhood, a scenario that would have proved problematic, to say the least, if someone had lit a match. One spark could have turned my home and everything in it, (including me) into a giant fireball and blown us all skyhigh. My house would have looked like the space shuttle taking off right from North West DC.

I had been upstairs getting ready to go out to enjoy the snow when I had smelled gas.The odor was really strong. Within minutes I began feeling sick from the vapors. I suspected a gas fireplace that must be malfunctioning because snow blocked the chimney. I went outside to seek help from a neighbor who was shoveling his driveway. It was curious I thought that so many neighbors were out there as well and they were all on their cell phones. Turns out, they were calling 911, the fire department and Washington Gas. Everyone in the neighborhood had smelled the gas and knew it could be only a matter of time before there would be an explosion. Fortunately, within minutes help arrived. Firemen. On foot. Because our neighborhood is at the top of a hilly street which becomes engorged with snow at the drop of a flake and never gets plowed for days, the emergency vehicles were unable to make it through the two plus feet of snow and the firefighters had to climb the hill and walk about half a mile to get to us. But within minutes of arriving they found the fallen Leland that had caused the damage and immediately turned off the gas supply to the house. House and neighborhood saved! Only one problem. That was the end of my heat and hot water. How soon could it be turned back on, I asked? Unfortunately, the firemen explained, gas service could not be restored until the entire tree was removed—root and all. “You’ll have to call a tree service!” The tree itself was a big enough problem, and half of it had crashed through my neighbor’s fence and was lying across her yard; but its root ball was massive and had enmeshed my gas pipes and meter in a giant mess of mud, snow and ice. And try finding a tree removal service during the blizzard of the century which had knocked out power to hundreds of thousands in the tri-state area because hundreds of trees had fallen on power lines! I spent the next six hours calling every tree service to no avail and figured that I would now be without hot water until summer! “We’ve just been hired by the state of Maryland,” said one company, “and have to remove hundreds of trees from fallen lines.” Most of the others were also booked or just didn’t answer. As evening fell and the temperature in the house dropped below freezing, in desperation I called a friend, Carter Cafritz. Luckily he happened to knew a tree guy, Ernie Shiflett, who he said often came on short notice. I called and only got Ernie Shiflett's voice mail. I left a message, thinking he too, must be out lifting trees off cars, homes and power lines. But deus ex machina, the following morning Ernie arrived, cigar in hand, to survey the scene. Ernie was no youngster, but went right to work sawing the fallen tree in half, carting off the wood and promising to be back the next morning. As promised, Ernie arrived Monday morning with a crew of 5 fellow cigar chompers --all of whom made me a bit nervous as they chopped away at the big root ball right tangled up with my gas line with lit cigars in their mouths. The root was stronger, it turns out, than they thought and their axes proved useless. The root ball was so defiant, the men had to park their cigars, surround it with cable, tie the cable to their truck and start driving away to get the root to budge. Finally the root popped like a bad molar! Now the trick was to get Washington Gas to show up. “Oh just call us in the morning and we’ll get someone out there they said.” Monday came and went and no Washington Gas.

It had been three days now with no heat or hot water. The house was frigid. Think Polar Bear swim. ( It’s one thing when you can crawl into bed at night with 20 layers of blankets to keep warm. It’s another when you have to get out of bed and your house is like the Arctic and you cant get warm no matter what you do and you cant take a hot shower, wash your dishes or your clothes and you cant find any place to sit that’s warm, but you have to stay and wait for the Gasman to show up.) This is when you start wondering how they survived in 16th Century Scotland in those castles without central heat. It’s also when you start thinking about solutions to problems like no heat or hot water. I was fortunate to have an electric stove. For three days I had boiled water and carried it up to my bathtub to bathe. I washed my hair in the kitchen sink with more boiled water. I boiled more water to wash the dishes. I was also fortunate to have friends who offered to have me stay with them until the heat was turned on. ( I stayed put. I was afraid to leave the house unattended, lest a pipe burst in my absence.) I was also fortunate to have good neighbors. One walked over and loaned me a space heater to keep my pipes from bursting. Another brought me a box of logs to burn. So frosty house notwithstanding, I toughed it out with ski clothes, boiled water and a wood burning fireplace. My car plan at least worked. I trudged down the snowladen hill, shoveled out my car and drove to a Superbowl party. And finally, three days later, the gas company arrived (at 8pm!), hooked up a meter and turned on the gas. (One never knows how good life can be until you have heat when it’s 25 degrees outside. To go from the Ice Age to the 21st Century makes one appreciate the simple gifts of heat and hot water.)

And so, I survived the blizzard of 2010 with good cheer, good friends and good neighbors. The Mother of All Storms taught me a lot. Storms bring out the best in people. Ernie Shiflett, the tree guy, was prompt, efficient and as nice as they make come. Neighbors are great. If it had not been for the folks who got the fire department to my house pronto, I could have been looking down at earth instead of up at the stars. If it had not been for the neighbor who brought me the space heater, my pipes probably would have exploded. If not for the neighbor who brought me wood for my fireplace, I would have been miserably frozen. I also learned that in spite of my best plans to survive the storm, Mother Nature always wins.