A place to share the worst
and the best of this once in a lifetime (we all hope!) weather event,
as well as the most powerful images and the most creative ways you
found to get through it.
Creative ways of getting through Ice
Storm '98
Readfield, Maine; 11 years old - Readfield Elementary School:
Ours was cooking. We had beef for breakfast.
Bath, Maine; 9 years old - Dike-Newell Elementary School: We
went to my Grandma and Grandpa's house. They didn't have power
either.I played with my Legos most of the time.
Carmel, Maine; 12 years old - Caravel Middle School: My mother
used bottled water to wash shampoo out of her hair.
Peterborough, New Hampshire; 13 years old - South Meadow
School: The most helpful thing, although not creative, was my dad
buying a small propane campstove for us to cook on.
Bowdoin, Maine; 15 years old - Yarmouth High School: We found
that if we sat by a fire and buried ourselves in a book, things
weren't so bad.
Yarmouth, Maine; 15 years old - Yarmouth High School: I think
the most creative solution was making candle holders for the
candles.
Freeport, Maine; 13 years old - Freeport Middle School: We
collected water off the roof to flush the toilets.
Portland, Maine; 17 years old - Portland High School: Going to
other peoples houses=-)
Farmington, Maine; 11 years - Cascade Brook School: I never
lost power.
New Vineyard, Maine; 11 years - Cascade Brook School: Going
snowboarding.
West Farmington, Maine; 11 years - Cascade Brook School:
School was cancelled.
Farmington, Maine; 10 years old - Cascade Brook School: We
used 1 candle in every room to light the house. Plus we used
flashlights.
Farmington, Maine; 11 years old - Cascade Brook School: We
played Monopoly.
New Vineyard, Maine; 11 years - Cascade Brook School: We got a
very long mirror and we put candles in front of it so that it
would make double the light.
Temple, Maine; 10 years old - Cascade Brook School: Going
outside.
Industry, Maine; 11 years old - Cascade Brook School: My
family filled up pots with snow, melted it on the gas stove and
used it to flush the toilet
Farmington, Maine; 10 years old - Cascade Brook School: We
just played games we hadn't played for a while.
Topsham, Maine; 11 years old - Woodside Elementary School: We
went over to my grandparents' house to keep warm.
Topsham, Maine; 12 years old - Woodside Elementary School: We
have a gas stove for cooking and a wood stove for heat.
Topsham, Maine; 12 years old - Woodside Elementary School: We
did not really have any trouble with the storm but, we did have to
cook food on our woodstove.
Topsham, Maine; 12 years old - Woodside Elementary School: We
mostly all slept in the livingroom, but one night it was so cold
we had to go to our neighbor's house because they had a woodstove.
Topsham, Maine; 11 years old - Woodside Elementary School: We
bought a hot lantern.
Topsham, Maine; 11 years old - Woodside Elementary School: The
most creative thing we did was make soup on our woodstove.Also to
keep the heat downstairs we took a blanket over the part where the
your entering the downstairs.
Topsham, Maine; 10 years old - Woodside Elementary School: The
most creative solution was that we went to a shelter home and we
had a good time.
Freeport, Maine; 14 years old - Freeport Middle School: We got
water off the roof so we could drink it and used a propane fire
place and wood stove to cook things on.
Topsham, Maine; 11 years old - Woodside Elementary School:
What we did was pretend that we were in George Washington's times
when they had no electricity. We used candles and oil lamps.
Topsham, Maine; 12 years old - Woodside Elementary School: The
most creative thing my family thought of was putting everything
that was in our refrigerator out on the porch and cooking on the
camping stove.
Topsham, Maine; 11 years old - Woodside Elementary School: My
mom, brother, and I were in the livingroom. All we did was play
games. But before we played the game, I wrote a letter to my best
friend.
North Yarmouth, Maine; 11 years old - North Yarmouth Memorial
School: We learned how to plan ahead so when the power came on for
a little while, we could get many things done in a short time
before it went out again.
Harpswell, Maine; 11 years old - Woodside Elementary School:
We had to get our water from a spring in the woods. It was hard to
bring in water everyday. We had to bring in six jugs each every
day.
Winterport, Maine; 10 years old - Leroy H Smith School:
Because we had no school my Mom home schooled us a little in Math
and Spelling. We also made t-shirts that say " I survived the Ice
Storm of '98" We will wear them to school.
Cumberland, Maine; 8 years old - Home School: We cooked dinner
in the fireplace.We put potatoes and meatballs in tin foil and put
it in the fire. My friend and his dad had dinner with us because
they didn't have a fire place or any heat.
Bowdoinham, Maine; 8 years old - Bowdoinham Community School:
To eat with we used paper plates and cups and plastic spoons and
forks. When it was hot in the refrigerator, Mom took out all the
food and stored it in the back hall mud room and on the porch.
Those places worked like a freezer because it was so cold.
Harpswell, Maine; 11 years old - Woodside Elementary School:
We used candles for light. We used a keresean heater to keep warm.
We put our food out side to keep it cold.We played cards for fun.
Windham, Maine; 11 years old - Windham Middle School: We sure
did find a new way to pass the time. My family sat back and
listened to channel 6 on the bottom of the FM band on our radio,
which had all the TV shows on it that are normally on. It was just
like the old days, listening to the radio programs!
Belgrade, Maine; 8 years old - Belgarde Central School: One
thing that my family did was to open up our home to other people
so they could take showers and spend the night with us as we could
keep warm and stay clean.
Eastport, Maine; 16 years old - Shead High School: I cooked a
chicken hot dog using newspaper and hickory chips in a bread pan.
Scarborough, Maine; 9 years old - Wentworth Intermediate
School: We set up a kitchen outside with the gas grill and the
Coleman camp stove. I had to collect the ice that had fallen off
the trees so my mom could melt it on the wood stove and then use
it for flushing the toilets.
Scarborough, Maine; 5 years old - Blue Point School: I made
Christmas thank you notes with my mom's fancy edge scissors. I
played American girl dolls and pretended we lived in their time
when they didn't have electric lights.
Windham, Maine; 6 years old - Windham Primary School: To take
a bath, my mom heated water on the kerosene heater, then made us
stand on the rug in front of it, and she washed us with a
facecloth.
Lisbon, Maine; 10 years old - Lisbon Elementary School: We had
our friend rewire our telephone line so we could use our phone. We
learned how to cook on a woodstove. We learned how to be a closer
family. We learned to make sure to ventilate our home when using a
kerosene heater.
Winthrop, Maine; 13 years old - Winthrop Middle School: We
chiseled a hole in my stream and that's the water we had.
Harpswell, Maine; 9 years old - Harpswell Islands School: We
made a mural of the rainforest.
Greenwood, Maine; 8 years old - Crescent Park Elementary: I
got to use a fire place to cook my macaroni and cheese.
Hanover, Maine; 11 years old - Crescent Park Elementary: My
family had the ideas to:Lug water from a neighbors stream and use
it to flush our toilet. We also moved our couch from our
livingroom to our kitchen infront of my woodstove.We packed snow
in plastic grocery bags and put it in our cooler then we put some
of the food from our fridge/freezer in it. We dug holes in the
snow banking and put our drinks in it.
Bethel, Maine; 11 years old - Crescent Park Elementary: We
have seven greenhouses and my dad hooked up the generator so the
plants wouldn't die.
Fayette, Maine; 8 years old - Fayette Central School: My dad
had to put up a sign that read"NO POWER". My cousin's dad buried
his meat in the ground.
Brunswick, Maine; 11 years old - Brunswick Junior High School:
I thought the power outage brought my family together in a
stressful but fun way. We worked together and completed task by
task. I think that if this happened again that we would be able to
survive.
Brunswick, Maine; 11 years old - Brunswick Junior High School:
Two of the most creative solutions that my family thought of was
using the outside as a refrigerator, and using our wood stove to
cook. The outside was much colder than my refrigerator, so this is
the logical place to put all food that needs to be kept cold. Our
wood stove gets very hot and there is a flat top. We cooked dinner
on our stove every night we were without power.
Brunswick, Maine; 12 years old - Brunswick Junior High School:
One of the most creative things we did was cook on the wood stove.
We put stuff in a pot and put it on the top of the stove. It was
done within 5 minutes. The way we got wood was we open the family
room window and passed wood from person to person and put it into
the wood box.
Readfield, Maine; 7 years old - Readfield Elementary: We
boiled water on the gas stove, filled a coffee carafe with hot
water at night to take upstairs. We put cold water from the
lobster(we kept full upstairs) into the sink and added enough of
the carafe's hot water in to wash with. The water was warm enough
in the carafe the next morning for a face wash. We put milk and
yogurt and mayo in a cooler on the porch outside, but when it got
really cold it froze too.
Brunswick, Maine; 12 years old - Brunswick Junior High School:
When the Ice Storm first started we camped out at home in sleeping
bags on the living room floor. I thought it was a creative
idea;fun too.There was a fire in the fireplace and a kettle over
the fire with water so we could drink hot cocoa. We ate bacon and
eggs cooked in a pan over the blazing fire. The toast was toasted
on a flat piece of metal that turned out not to be metal but some
material that can burn.(It melted in the middle forming a hole.)
It was a very exciting experience, probably the best part.
Fayette, Maine; 10 years old - Fayette Central: We put our
food in a cooler and put in the basement instead of outside,
because then we don't have to walk in the snow to get something to
eat.
Brunswick, Maine; 13 years old - Brunswick Junior High School:
The most creative thing I did was my hamster was very cold so I
took a laundry basket and put two very thick blankets in and over
it. She was very warm inside there.
Brunswick, Maine; 12 years old - Brunswick Junior High School:
Taping hot water bottles to the side of my tropical fish tank
tying to keep my fish alive.
Brunswick, Maine; 11 years old - Brunswick Junior High School:
Well I was scared when my power went out. But I knew that my mom
she is so creative and she knows how to fight through anything. My
dad he is creative too and they are always there for me and my
sister and brother.I woke up in the morning about seven o'clock
and my mom, dad and sister were up and they were supposed to get
up at 6:30 am and they were major late. When they got home the
heat was gone and I was freezing cold there was no heat at all.
But pretty soon I started worrying about not only me and my family
but the whole wide state of Maine that got this dreadful
experience.I was worried about the my friends that had no power or
heat or wood stove or gas stove to use for heat.
Fayette, Maine; 14 years old - Winthrop Middle School: The
most creative thing I learned was how to get along with my
brother.
Winthrop, Maine; 12 years old - Winthrop Middle School:To put
washer fluid in the toilet to get the ice out of the toilet. How
to cook food on a fire. It tasted smoky but it's better then
nothing.
Hartford, Maine; 8 years old - Hartford-Sumner Elementary:
Daddy wiring the generator to the electric panel so we could have
power.
Hartford, Maine; 9 years old - Hartford-Sumner Elementary: The
East Sumner Trading Post burned down.
Lisbon, Maine; 9 years old - Lisbon Elementary School: The
most creative thing we did was when we took bottles and a
grapefruit and bowled.
Brunswick, Maine; 12 years old - Brunswick Junior High School:
I was spending the night at a friends in Topsham we went to a mini
mart to get milk. When we got home the doors were locked. I
quickly remembered my friend left his Playstation control paddle
under the window. I lifted the paddle up high enough so my friend
could slip in and unlock the door. We survived the storm.
Winthrop, Maine; 13 years old - Winthrop Middle School: It was
very nice to have a woodstove right in our kitchen so we did not
suffer from heat, and we placed candles all around our house to
see, and we cooked our food on a Coleman stove, and we blocked off
all the rooms leading to the upstairs so that all the heat would
be surrounding us from where we were mostly instead of wasting
heat to provide for all the rooms. We entertained ourselves by
playing games, reading, things like that.
Winthrop, Maine; 13 years old - Winthrop Middle School: The
worst part was not having power for 11 days. We also had some of
my family's friends over. All together we had seven people two
dogs two cats and three gerbils. One of the dogs was a two week
old puppy and the other was so old she could not walk and went to
the bathroom everywhere. It was also pretty cold but we had a wood
stove going to keep us pretty warm. We did not have running water
or any power for 11 days.
Brunswick, Maine; 9 years old - Jordan Acres: My family just
played board games every night.There wasn't much could do to
protect our belongings.We made up another way to cook and it was
on the woodstove and we sometimes cooked on the grill.
Brunswick, Maine; 10 years - Jordan Acres School: We came up
with a very good solution. We made a bed arrangment. It showed all
the beds and where evryone was sleeping. It turned out that I got
the best bed.
Hampden, Maine; 9 years old - Wheatherbee: My family got
together when the power went out.
Bethel, Maine; 8 years old - Cresent Park School: My dad
figured out how to heat water! He used a propane torch, put a pipe
on it and set the teapot on it.
Gilead, Maine; 10 years old - Crescent Park School: We used a
generator for our freezers, and had a wood stove. So we sat down
stairs and played Yahtzee by candlelight.
Bethel, Maine; 8 years old - Crescent Park Elementary: We
melted snow to flush our toilet!
Bethel, Maine; 8 years old - Crescent Park Elementary: Well I
don't think we knew we had a well that worked with power out! And
not everything is t.v. all the time.
Hanover, Maine; 8 years old - Crescent Park Elementary: After
four days we decided to retreat to Massachusetts. We drove 1 hour
before we found a gas station that was open We were scared that we
were going to run out of gas. Route 26 was closed. We took another
route. Power lines and trees were down everywhere.
Brunswick, Maine; 11 years old - Longfellow Elementary: We
listened to the t.v. on the radio!
Cape Elizabeth, Maine; 10 years old - Pond Cove Elementary
School: We made candles on the camp stove.
Topsham, Maine; 9 years old - Woodside Elementary School: I
went up in my attic to find old toys.
Bath, Maine; 13 years old - Bath Middle School: We got out our
old propane cookstove to heat up water for hot chocolate, being
especially careful to leave a window open when we used it.
Lisbon, Maine; 15 years old - Aucocisco School, S.Portland: We
had to put socks on and put towels on the ground so we wouldn't
slip getting into our car that was on a slant filled with ice.
Brooklin, Maine; 12 years old - Brooklin
School: We figured out a neat way to get rid of all the food that
would spoil quickly: Have a big smorgasbord with all our friends
over. Mom cooked up a storm while we were still eating from the
last wave of food, so we didn't lose anything.
Brooklin, Maine; 12 years old - Brooklin
School: We figured out a neat way to get rid of all the food that
would spoil quickly: Have a big smorgasbord with all our friends
over. Mom cooked up a storm while we were still eating from the
last wave of food, so we didn't lose anything.
Lebanon, Maine; 10 years old - Hanson:
Well we didn't have any fire wood so we actullay burned baby
diapers.
East Lebanon, Maine; 9 years old -
Hanson: My mother put on the stove, and she even put all the food
in the tub with snow! And there were over 40 candles lit!
Ingleside, Ontario; 12 years old - R/O:
Well after supper we would play cards for about 1/2 an hour it was
fun. The way we did it was that we set our card table flat on the
floor and set the lamp in the middle of the table.
Alfred, Maine; 13 years old - Alfred
Elementary School: The most creative solution my family and I did
was to use our Boy Scouts skills and put them to use. We took all
the stuff from the refrigerator and put it into a cooler filled
with snow. We melted snow to flush the tolet, fished water out of
the well with a rope and a bucket, wove our blankets to keep the
cold air out, and carried enough wood to keep the fireplace
going.
Gray, Maine; 9 years old -
Russell-Pennell School: We cooked steak by throwing it right in
the fire then taking it out with the tongs and eating it. It was
pretty good.
Yarmouth, Maine; 10 years old - HMS: I
kept myself from going crazy by playing with K'nex. I hadn't
played with them much before, but they turned out to be
great!
Watertown, NY; 18 years old - Out of
school: My mom and brother fed about 100 people out of our
kitchen. They fed the fire departmentt, village DPW, ambulance
members, military and police. I figured out how to pump water from
alot of cellars and how to get along with 18 people sleeping at my
house.
Stories from the Ice Storm of 1998