I never realized how deadly winter storms can get in just a matter of hours.
- There was a sad news story last week regarding the fate of one poor elderly couple during a massive ice storm.
Their electricity went out while they were snowed-in at their house. They didn’t have a generator and both were surviving on oxygen tanks. No family members or first responders could get to the elderly couple who were later presumed to have died the second day without electricity. It’s sad and terrifying, but it’s important to understand these dangers if you have a choice to live in a region with winters as severe as our own. You cannot survive through the roughest patches of winter weather if you don’t have indoor heat. Because I don’t want to be stuck without electricity and no heat, I have decided to use my wood stove as my primary heat source. Last year I made it through the entire winter on just a few dead trees from my property that I hauled into my driveway and spent a week slowly chopping into enough wood to form two cords worth of wood in my garage. That was enough wood for the entire winter. Whenever I needed more heat, I simply walked into my garage and grabbed a pile of firewood. If I had severe allergies to smoke I might be in a bad situation, but so far I haven’t noticed any respiratory or sinus related issues after switching to burning wood for heat. It’s also nice having a good wood stove that emits most of its heat into the house instead of sending most of it up the chimney like a traditional fireplace would.