Maine History Told by Mainers

Ice Storm of 1998

Submitted February 23, 2006 by Kerri Pooler

Back in 1998 was the Ice Storm. Something I will never forget. I was 14 in my small town of Palermo. I was living with my mom, my little brother and my sister. We lived on this big hill, it was in the middle of the woods, hardly any other houses, no other cars, and barely any other people. The storm started and we loved it of course, because snow? Who doesn't love snow if you're little and you live in Maine. Then the snow started turning into freezing rain, and the temperatures only dropped throughout the day and night. Then the winds started whipping around our house, the sound of that powerful, growling wind scared me more than the icy roads, and snow covered trees. We lost power the first night the storm started, so we all sat in the living room with the windows opened and listened to the trees falling. We would be really quiet, and just listen. Sometimes I remember my mom saying, "wait...shhh...listen listen!" and we'd all hear a big huge crackling, crash. "That one fell over there!!", my little sister would say. We couldn't go to sleep because of the sounds that were happening outside, so we all stayed awake. Throughout the whole night we all talked, listened to our battery powered radio, make funny faces in front of our flashlights. Whatever we could do to keep ourselves busy and entertained, we did it. The next couple mornings were rough, as we still had no power at all, our hair was greasy, we all had a certain stench to ourselves, and we were hungry. We had to go outside and pick through the ice and find as much snow as we possibly could to melt on the woodstove to get water. We only ate soup, that we would have to heat over our woodstove also. One morning I remember our neighbors walked down the road to see us, and see how we were doing. Their hair was as greasy as all of ours too. They said they lost power, and had to eat soup also, so we didn't feel as bad as we did knowing, "hey we're not the only ones going through this". We had lost power for over 13 days, and we had no school for more than that. As we all returned back to school and seen everyone wearing those "I survived Ice Storm '98", I thought to myself...yeah, we sure did.