Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 20, 1994 TAG: 9401200212
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Paramedics rushed to a Roanoke County home this week: An elderly man was in cardiac distress.
What they saw nearly gave them the same symptoms. The house was down a steep, 100-foot driveway coated with 3 inches of ice. "You couldn't break it with your foot," said Charlie King, a county fire and rescue captain.
Firefighters and medics sleigh-rode a cot to the door and strapped the man onto the gurney. To get him safely in the emergency van, they rigged a rope system and pulled him out. "Lucky we had ropes with us," King said.
Wednesday morning, a city crew jackhammered through the glacial sod along Brambleton Avenue to fix a burst water main for hundreds of customers. At 3 degrees and with 16 mph gusts, the wind chill was minus 29.
Pipes crack like bamboo when it's that cold. Even the stone that crews use as fill around pipes freezes on the trucks and must be knocked apart. Some people are working 16 to 18 hours straight, almost all of it outside.
The women and men of Roanoke's American Automobile Association office took 250 calls from motorists Wednesday morning. Most were for start-ups on cold batteries; some were about frozen gas lines and water hoses, or diesel fuel that had freeze-jelled in car and truck tanks. People waited four hours or more for service.
The staff was asked to go home for afternoon naps so they could come back and work till midnight.
"People have called in wanting to go to Florida, wanting to go to the Caribbean," said office manager Jeff Hummel, whose staff also arranges tours. "And they want to leave right away."
Pharmacies were busy making home deliveries of prescriptions - IF they could make it up slick streets and sidewalks. Some people worried their heart and blood pressure medicines would run out.
"My driver was complaining this morning about sliding sideways" in her car, said pharmacist Fran Kirk at the SupeRx on 19th Street Northwest. "She's fallen a couple of times."
Phone orders were brisk. "They're adding some two-liter drinks and some chips - something to keep from going stir-crazy," said Tom Garland, owner of Econo Drug on Melrose Avenue.
Nurses, food workers and others at Lewis-Gale Hospital have slept on cots in a conference room, voluntarily worked extra shifts and picked up stranded co-workers to keep the hospital fully staffed.
Spokeswoman Terri Rush said maintenance employees have worked long, frigid shifts - from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. - to keep ice off the sidewalks.
Private ambulance services were trying to get people to doctors' appointments and kidney dialysis. "We've had some fender-benders today, trying to get the dialysis people in," said Karen Robinson, coordinator of Carilion Transportation Services.
Plumbers and furnace repairers were dragging with fatigue.
They're seeing some stupid things, too, like people who had left their garden hoses hooked up and outside spigots on since summer. Now their pipes are frozen.
J&M Plumbing and Heating got 200 calls for help Sunday and Monday. Owner Dave Murrell got two hours' sleep. Now there are too many calls to count and he's preparing for pipes to burst all over the place when frozen water thaws this weekend.
Murrell's been to the Thrifty Inn downtown four times already for busted pipes. Another customer woke to find nearly 4 feet of water in her basement.
"I take some chances I shouldn't take," he confessed. Tuesday he went on a call to a house up an icy mountain road in Roanoke County. Waterlines were frozen. "I got there," he said. "I got that lady water."
Wiley and Nadine McGuire, owners of Roanoke's McGuire Plumbing & Heating, aren't around to live the tales of the Great Freeze of '94. They're stranded at their daughter's house in Albany, N.Y., which got 2 feet of snow.
They're calling home three times a day, though. Hazel Hofauger, Nadine's sister, and the McGuire staff are carrying on their work ethic.
"The plumbers, they've worn their chains out," Hofauger said. "It is so cold, the men have nearly frozen."
Tuesday night, a plumber was heading home when a woman called for help. Her mother, a 91-year-old widow, was diligently emptying a bucket under her leaking kitchen sink. The daughter feared her mother would break down if she stayed up all night doing that, which she figured the mother would do, rather than let water run all over her kitchen.
The plumber went right over. "He went and took care of it," said Hofauger, her voice full of admiration for the plumbers. "They're frozen to the bone, and they're tired."
Total Action Against Poverty is frustrated. The agency has little money to solve some of the heating crises being reported.
A Roanoke County woman with two children had no heat Wednesday afternoon. Her furnace was broken. Her landlord refused to make the expensive repairs and there was no written lease, so the tenant had dubious legal clout.
She even lacked kerosene for a heater. She has plumbing troubles, too, and a leaking roof. "She can see through the kitchen ceiling to the rafters of the attic," said Judi Huffman, TAP's acting housing development director.
"We're gonna find her some kerosene today," Huffman said resolutely. Then she'll figure out what else can be done.
Power poles are so icy, Appalachian Power Co. workers find themselves shooting to the ground. Belts that normally secure them to the posts have no traction on ice. Nothing does. Crews use hammers to try to break off the ice.
Apco line workers had just come in from battling West Virginia's snowstorms last weekend when they were hit with this ice. Since the snows of mid-December, there's been no let-up for them.
The League of Older Americans wishes this ice would go away. Volunteers aren't delivering Meals on Wheels because of it, and clients are running out of snow-day bagged food.
The staff is calling the 400 clients every day. Workers are borrowing some four-wheel-drive vehicles today to take food to those who need it most.
Virginia Department of Transportation road crews still face remote roads that are sheets of ice, impervious to salt or anything at these temperatures. There isn't much they can do. Some people in Roanoke County haven't left home for days, and some of them are mad at road crews.
"There are some mountain roads we can't even get up yet. We're doing everything we can," Ronnie Bryson said over his portable phone as he drove around his territory. He runs the department's Hanging Rock office in Roanoke County. His staff's putting in 14 hours a day.
And if we may toot the horns of our newspaper carriers:
George Sanderson, a retired Roanoker, called the paper to commend his carrier of the past year, Edward Pentaleri.
"Yesterday morning, I believe it was," Sanderson said, "there was a sort of plea, some [public service announcement], for people to shovel their walks so the poor letter carriers could get up to the mailboxes. That galled me. This [paper] carrier hasn't missed a single day. He doesn't throw it in the yard, either. He brings it right to the door. If he can do that, why are we so worried about these poor letter carriers? He's to be commended."
Pentaleri said he starts his 195-paper route before 4 a.m. He slipped and fell on the ice Wednesday morning, he said, but he's doing all right. Another Roanoke subscriber rigged up a flight bag on a string so her carrier could leave the paper near the curb, to be reeled later to the house.
by CNB