In times like the ones we’ve experienced this last month at Wild Earth, we truly appreciate our neighbors, friends, and supporters, who all pulled together to help us through the recent winter storms and the aftermath. Having moved to Kentucky after living in places like Maine, Cleveland, Chicago, and upstate New York, I felt I had seen it all as far as winter weather was concerned. But nothing could have prepared me for the onslaught that we experienced these last few weeks in rural mountainous Eastern Kentucky. The first sign that something big was about to happen was the ghost town I encountered when I went about my normal errands, stocking up on animal feed and supplies. Ice storm on the way? Ice storms are beautiful, and no big deal unless you were driving, I thought. I could not have been more wrong.
The second sign that it was going to be big was my favorite neighbor, who has lived on this mountain for longer than I’ve been alive, came by to check in and make sure I was stocked with firewood. Then it began: three days of ice pelting the trees, then rain (which then froze), then everything was topped with six inches of snow. I spent eight hours chiselling ice off the vehicles and stairs (which was a great way to warm up from the chill of a house which was now 40 degrees-- having lost electricity, heat, and water days ago), only to find there was certainly no possibility of driving anywhere due to downed trees all over the driveway and road. I took to ice sledding around the farm to get to the animal barns (a harrowing experience but fun nonetheless). Neighbors snow boarded on the desolate, empty roads.
This was the second time our community rallied for Wild Earth, with offers of warm places to go stay, friends of friends in town who could help, calls to local authorities regarding the details of the unplowed and impassable roads. Of course, I had to hunker down and wait it out because the dozens of animals on the sanctuary were relying on me to help them get through this. Did I mention this all happened during the coldest nights of the year? The following night, there was no sleeping as I listened to the trees breaking and crashing down all night long, dreading the destruction come morning. It felt exactly like the time I was in the worst hurricane in Belize in 40 years.
Luckily, although trees did fall on or around the pig and turkey, duck and chicken barns, no one was hurt and the barns were not severely damaged. Then came the next wave of appreciation as supporters donated to our GoFundMe, and neighbors came by to cut a path through the heavy, frozen debris so we could use the driveway and get to the hay barn. Volunteers came out to an emergency work day to remove fallen branches (as ice chunks fell all day from the tree canopy above), repair gates and fences, and clean the sanctuary’s barns (which was sorely needed after the animals’ long stay inside).
Friends organized a service day with their church and a big crew came out to pick up the branches everywhere to assuage one of the other dangerous future outcomes of ice storms: forest fires from all that fallen brush. Family came from out of state and for an entire week repaired damage and turned the fallen trees into firewood for the next power outage (which came again several times over the next couple weeks). Sadly, all that ice and snow, plus new rainstorms soon caused massive flooding in Eastern Kentucky and many in our town and surrounding localities lost their homes, businesses, and all their belongings. Being on the mountain, we were spared, but were trapped for days by the floodwaters covering roads and bridges in all directions. Please donate to the relief efforts if you can. All in all, an ice storm like this hadn’t affected Kentucky in the better part of a decade and the flooding was one of the worst in recorded history.
Two lessons were learned this month: people really do care about each other and natural disasters only make that more apparent; and these kind of extreme weather events are only going to be more prevalent in the coming years, so the importance of alternative energy, and building resilience is paramount to our survival.
Thank you,
Heather Patrick