I never realized how deadly winter storms can really get in just a matter of hours.
There was a really sad news story last Monday regarding the fate of an elderly couple during an ice storm.
Their electricity went out while they were snowed-in at their house. They didn’t have a generator plus 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 day after they lost electricity. It’s sad and terrifying, but it’s really important to understand these dangers if you have a choice to live in a region with winters as serious as our own. You cannot survive through the roughest patches of winter time weather if you don’t have indoor heat. Because I don’t want to be stuck without heat if the electricity goes out, I have decided to use my wood stove as my primary heat source. Last year I made it through the entire winter time on just a few dead trees from my property that I hauled into my driveway and spent about a week slowly cutting into enough wood to form several 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 just grabbed a pile of firewood. If I had serious allergies to smoke, I might be in an awful situation, but so far I haven’t noticed any respiratory or sinus related problems after switching to burning wood for heat. It’s also nice having a nice 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.