Ice Memories On Ice Storm Anniversary, Valley Residents Grateful For Working Light Switches

A year ago today, Valley residents woke to a frozen fairy land.

Rain the day before had turned to ice as fast as it fell, wrapping everything in a crystal coat. Power lines - those that hadn’t snapped - sagged across roadways like heavy strands of diamonds lit by the sun. Bowed and broken, trees resembling abstract sculptures sparkled on that brilliant morning.

It was beautiful, but terrible, too. The ice storm that hit the Spokane area on Nov. 19, 1996, left thousands of people without power, heat, phones. It was weeks before some Valley residents had their electric service restored.

The winter wonderland of that first morning was just an illusion. This was really a nightmare.

Or was it?

With a year to let those chilly memories thaw, some Valley residents today have a different take on the ice storm. No, they don’t want another. But they learned they had heart enough to make it, and enough left over for others. They drew close to family, friends and neighbors. And they’ll never look at the light switch the same way again.

“When we were sitting around in the dark, it forced us to get to know each other again,” Beth Lopez says of her family. “We couldn’t go anyplace, we couldn’t do anything.”

That lasted for 10 days. She and husband Mike played word games with Jennifer, then 15, and Matthew, then 13. “There was no Nintendo, no computer,” Beth says. “And it was fun.”

Best of all, free from the digital din, they talked. “We had to pull together to survive,” Beth says. “Maybe that’s why pioneer families were so close.”

Now, Mike spends less time making business calls from home. Jennifer tries to spend less time on the phone with friends. Everyone spends less time glued to the tube.

“It also brought our extended family together,” Beth says, laughing. “My mother-in-law brought a chainsaw over and tried to saw. She’s a tough cookie.”

The family lives high on a slope along Mohawk Drive in the Painted Hills neighborhood. The wooded yards are big, the spaces between homes are wide. “This neighborhood is not the over-the-fence, ‘how you doing’ type neighborhood,” Beth says.

That’s changed a little. Some of the 100 trees in the Lopez yard toppled, smashing pool furniture and a fence. None hit the house, but some still cracked loud and threatening.

Then neighbor Mike Schimmels charged to the rescue. His construction crew cleared the yard and dug out the stumps - for free.

“They basically had a slash pile at the bottom of the hill that was 15 feet high and 6 60 feet long,” Mike Lopez says. He’s still amazed.

“Now, we can see our neighbors,” says Beth, motioning down the slope once walled-off by green needles. Where once they were strangers, neighbors look out for each other.

“It’s kind of like your neighbors when your grandparents grew up,” says Schimmels, who shrugs off the praise. “They knew neighbors a lot more back then.”

People got closer throughout the Valley. Sometimes, very close. “At 38 weeks after (the storm), we got very, very busy,” says Teri Pitts, manager of the maternal ward at Valley Hospital and Medical Center.

In July, 56 babies were born there. In August, the number was 45. Most months, they number about 30.

Babies weren’t the only ice storm miracles, though. Paul Chase is a believer.

The Valley Fire District fire marshal remembers how busy firefighters were when people tried alternatives to electricity. Two people were killed when a charcoal grill filled their trailer with poisonous fumes, then fire. Another living room burned when candle fires got out of control.

What sticks in Chase’s mind, though, is something he can’t explain. A man living in Otis Orchards took his propane barbecue outside, burned all the smoke out, then brought it into his basement. Easy heat.

Instead, it soon raged into a smoky, fume-filled fire. The man, now upstairs, didn’t know - his fire alarms were hard-wired to the house’s dead power system.

Just in time, the power kicked on. The alarm sounded. The man got out alive, and the power went off again. “I don’t know whether the linemen or the angels pulled the switch on that one,” Chase says. “I just don’t know.”

Chase believes the man would have died. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said.

And since those fires, hundreds of needy families have picked up free smoke detectors at county fire district offices.

That’s small consolation to the family of the two killed in the trailer fire. They had no detectors. Still, their families wanted others to learn from that mistake. “They really wanted their deaths to mean something,” Chase says.

Mary Jo Sattler’s elderly charges didn’t face fire. But the residents of the Valley View senior home did face evacuation - twice.

They piled into buses and ambulances. They wound through the halls in long lines, many fumbling with walkers. And not just any shelter would do - they needed monitors and medicine, special diets and incontinence supplies.

What Sattler discovered through all that, though, wasn’t how fragile the seniors were. It was how tough.

“What I saw was the camaraderie. People helping each other … They seemed to come together in a big family, some that had never visited with one another before.” They felt needed and useful. Their self-worth rose.

And Sattler breathed a sigh of relief for the emergency evacuation plan she designed just the year before. “Without it, I’d have been hysterical.”

Jerry and Shirley Stout, too, learned new respect for their elders. When their power went out on Upriver Drive, it was Shirley’s mother who showed them how to get by.

“We had to live near the fireplace in the living room,” Jerry says. His 80ish mother-in-law showed him how to cook over the open fire. “That had to do it like that, way-back-when.”

He called a rental place to see if if any generators were left. “They all laughed.” Later, he found out that a friend would have lent him one. “He said, ‘Why didn’t you ask?”’ But having never tried, they lived the hard way. “I didn’t get a lot of sleep,” Jerry remembers. “We learned how to use the daylight. We had some flashlights, but when the sun was out, it was time to do things.”

That’s when he chopped wood. By night, he listened to an AM radio with his family and some other seniors he cares for. They slept in the living room, nestled in the cozy brick house, warmed by the fire.

And he watched the weird blue flashes arc on the horizon.

“It was those power generators blowing out,” he remembers. “It was pretty, but not good.”

Now, cooking in the kitchen, he stops. He needs more light. “We take it for granted that when you turn the light on, there it is.” He flips a switch. A warm yellow glow fills the room. “Just like that.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 4 Photos (2 Color)