Ice Storm 2009 Snapshots

Wow. Where do we begin? What started out to be an annoying bit of rain, then freezing rain, turned out to be a nightmare. Never on record has there ever been such a severe storm to sweep across the state of KY. 100 out of 120 counties were declared disaster areas and qualified for Federal (FEMA) assistance! To quantify this, I am enclosing a photo of the county by county break-up of our state...

9/10ths of KY was crippled by freezing rain then snow and below freezing temperatures. Wind was also a factor. Kentucky suffered the worst effects of the ice storm that paralyzed wide areas from the Ozarks through Appalachia. Officials blamed or suspected the storm in at more than 40 deaths nationwide - 37 of which came from the Heartland! Most from hypothermia, traffic accidents or carbon monoxide poisoning from improperly installed generators or charcoal grills which were used indoors.

At its height, the storm knocked out power to 1.3 million customers from the Southern Plains to the East Coast, more than 700,000 of them in Kentucky, a state record. By Sunday, the figure had dropped closer to 400,000 in Kentucky.

The 4,600 soldiers KY Gov. Steve Beshear ordered on duty, including his entire Army National Guard, swept through the state distributing food and water, removing fallen trees, providing security and checking houses in hard-to-reach areas. The troops, utility workers and good-natured civilians took advantage of temperatures near 50 across much of the region to make headway on repairs. Over 5000 linear miles of debris is estimated across the state and clean-up and repairs should take roughly 4 months to accomplish.

Many of you have sent in photos of the carnage from its onset and beyond! Thank you for putting a face on what you have suffered! Many people were heroes including first responders, Linemen, Red Cross and other such organizations, National Guard and all those who came in to voluntarily serve in our time of need! I wish I could thank everyone by name but that would be near impossible! Blessings go out to Back Home Restaurant too. They were faithful in feeding over 200+ linemen every morning from the onset until they departed from Nolin RECC.

THANK YOU for all you have done...you know who you are! Now, let's take a brief visual journey through some of what folks endured from Larue, Green and Hardin Counties...

Send your pics in their original form by clicking "send your pics" and I will edit them as well as size them for addition to our page. Thanks in advance and know our hearts are with you.

We start in Flaherty just outside Vine Grove. Sabine Miller says these are photographs from aroud her house. They spent two days in their RV.

Great job Sabine! Beautiful yet disastrous.

Now we check in with Vance and Susan Ray at their home in Elizabethtown.

Thanks Vance! I hope you and Susan are doing okay!

Off to Rineyville! In her own words here is Leann Givan...Hello my name is Leann I live in Rineyville. Here are a few pics of the ice storm at our house that left us without electricity for 7 days and without a phone line for 20.

Some of these are pretty interesting.

Artwork in the making...

Thanks leann! Thank God life is somewhat back to normal, huh?!

Cecilia Resident Emily West has some interesting takes...

Taken as things were beginning to go south...

Emily's her dogs were a wee bit freaked out about the tree taking up their play space.

Emily and her hubby John were out of power for 10 days and had to make

other living arrangements until Nolin RECC came to the rescue!

Now... it's off to Green County. On the Property of Karen Allenn..This is January 27th, 2009. Before the snow blasted the area on top of the freezing rain...

Sasha's first ice storm...or storm ever! She's just 6 months old.

How could something so devastating be sooo beautiful?

Then the snow hit...January 28, 2009

Ray getting our driveway somewhat cleared...

Animals somewhat bewildered...

It could only take so much. Down it came. Ohhh, the house...

Now from the Home of GM Rene' Bell...

Taken the 27th of January 2009 off the back deck. Rene' and her husband Daniel were met with absolute devastation on their 100+ acre spread.!

Taken the 28th of January 2009! Breathtakingly beautiful..

The signs were adding up that electrical outages were going to be a huge problem...

The 29th of January brought those suspicions to life. Rene's driveway is impassable.

Like many of her neighbors in Sonora, Rene's heart just sank when she saw the far reaching damages the storm had brought about. And this was just outside window.

On to our Business Administrator's Home. Becky was lucky to still have one.

Let's have a look...

This journey is captured on January 28, 2009.

A neighbor's mail box takes a hit...

Hubby Johnny and friend Jeff getting ready to move the boat out from underneath all the frozen wires. Then, the job ahead seemed insurmountable.!

One branch at a time.

Again, the effects of the ice seemed to also have its beautiful side...

Samantha finds a branch heavily covered in a very thick layer of ice. No wonder the trees cannot stand up to its effects.

But, their home did survive without heat, phone and satellite for roughly 10 days. The structure lost maybe a shingle or two but faired very well. Thank God!

Kelly Decker did a great job in capturing some of the effects of the storm. She gave us the story from home, around E'Town and Radcliff.