Starting nine days ago, on the evening of Friday, January 12, freezing rain began to coat the landscape from Eugene, here the southern valley, up to Portland in the north. When it started we didn’t really know how bad it was going to get, of course. But the forecast was not encouraging. And when I awoke last Saturday morning, it brought back unpleasant memories of a previous ice-storm disaster we had here. It was in December of 2016, when I was living in another neighborhood of north Eugene, that freezing rain left a good portion of the city immobilized. I had electricity for the first day of the storm, but when I awoke during the middle of that night, I had the realization the power was out. For the first full day of darkness, and then the second, I wore multiple layers of clothing (including a down jacket and ear muffs), huddled on my couch, for hours and hours at a time, under a big pile of blankets. I kept my phone powered on with an external battery pack and listened to the news.
The temperature outside remained in the teens and twenties. More trees fell under the weight of the ice, more power lines went down. I learned that it could be several days before power was restored. The temperature in my apartment continued to fall. It was about the time that I began to see my breath that my mood began to significantly decline. Oh, I thought, this is the very scenario that plays out when it is ultimately learned that the storm has led to various fatalities: people freezing to death, alone in their own dwellings.
It was after two full nights alone in the cold when I decided, on the third day, that I needed to take some kind of action. Given that the power was not out all over the area, there were pockets where life was, unbelievably, going on as usual. I called a hotel a few miles away, learned that they had power, and that they were offering discounts to folks who were seeking a safe place in the storm. I made a reservation, hastily packed a suitcase with my frozen fingers, and very carefully drove over there. I settled in, took a long hot bath, and started to feel safe. But this whole experience had been traumatizing and had left me with a sense of dread, unease, and extreme vulnerability.
Now, fast forward to 2024 and this storm. The weather this time turned out to last days longer and be more severe than originally anticipated; in fact, this storm was even worse than last time, according to the experts. Reports kept coming in with more and more power outages, even as my lights remained on. I became increasingly anxious. I rather expected to have to relive the trauma of 2016 all over again. And this time, any kind of escape seemed even more problematic; I didn’t believe my car would make it out of my parking lot, much less get me to a hotel that had power. What was going to be my survival maneuver this time?
