Left: The Ice Storm of 1998. This picture was taken about 10 miles from my parents’ home.
The phone rang in my San Francisco apartment at about 8:30 a.m. on that Saturday morning.
“Dan, it’s Sharon (my sister) — there’s been a terrible accident.”
I wiped my hungover eyes. The night before was my 32nd birthday party, and my studio apartment had a plethura of friends sleeping on the pullout sofa. Someone had asked me at the party how my parents were doing in spite of the worst ice storm to hit New England in a century. I responded that they were without power but fine – I had talked to my mom earlier that Friday morning and she mentioned that they were running a generator since power had been out for over a week.
“What?” I answered wearily.
“Marty is dead; your mom is in a coma.” Marty was my step-father who had married my mother 10 years earlier.
She explained that during the night something had happened with their generator causing carbon monoxide to drift throughout the house while they slept. My brother had shown up for coffee at about 8 a.m. and saw their dog stumbling around the kitchen through the kitchen window. She had vomited in numerous spots all over the house. After he let himself in, he was surprised at the weird odor permeating throughout the house and that Marty and my mom were not up and around the house.
He found them. They were lying in bed. Marty was dead and a strange yellow color. My mother was barely breathing but alive. He called 911 and emergency services were set into motion.
Several hours later I got the call. I felt so far away (and I was). My friends showed up to take care of me, and other friends gave me a free airline ticket to get home that day. It was the longest day of my life. My mother had been airlifted to Bangor, Maine and placed in a hyperbaric chamber. Such a chamber is often used in diving accidents and carbon monoxide poisonings to replace oxygen in the blood that has been displaced by other substances. Marty was the official first Maine casualty of Ice Storm 1998.
My friend Mark picked me up at Logan and drove me north along the Maine Turnpike. Power lines and trees littered every roadside, and one had to drive carefully amongst black ice and debris. He dropped me at my sister’s home, and we then drove another hour to the hospital in Bangor. My mother was still in a coma when I arrived.
It is as if she had waited for us to get there. When she awoke, she asked for Marty. All she remembered was going to bed with him on Friday night.
I had to tell her that Marty was gone. She was confused and incoherent, but understood my words. I held her hand.
We explained what had happened. Apparently, Marty had placed the generator in the stairwell between the basement and the outside – most New England farm houses have such access. While he left the outside stair doors open for ventilation, he had closed the door between the stairs and the actual basement. When ice fell off the roof in the middle of the night, those airtight doors to the outside were hit and closed shut. The one-inch space at the bottom of the other access door to the house was just enough to allow carbon monoxide to flow freely into the house for many hours. The coroner said Marty had died at about 4 a.m. He had been a heavy drinker and smoker most of his life and his organs couldn’t keep up the fight. On the other hand, my mother had never had a drink nor a cigarette her entire life. Her body was stronger and she had survived until the morning when my brother showed up.
One can never imagine such a disaster happening to anyone they know. It did to us. I was listening to callers ranting and raving about the lack of Katrina relief this morning on talk radio. I can relate to trying to rebuild a home after losing family and having one’s life completely disrupted. My mother went back home a week later. We buried Marty. We had her carbon monoxide-stained home professionally cleaned. She still sleeps in the bed where Marty died. I can’t imagine her life without that home to go back to. Many in the Gulf States haven’t had that luxury.
Several lessons to you all from this experience. First, always expect the unexpected and be prepared. My earthquake kit will be refurbished upon my move back to the Bay Area. Second, install a carbon monoxide detector in your homes. My mother will never live without one. She had a heart attack as a result of the carbon monoxide poisoning and still regularly takes medications to prevent another one. The detector alleviates some of the stress of it all for her.
And, enjoy every day. You might not wake up tomorrow morning.
Sorry about the Debbie Downer post. It’s on my mind this morning and wanted to share.
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