Self-Reliant Country Folks Are Good At Getting By Residents Of Remote Rural Areas Keep Busy By Keeping Up With A String Of Minor Disasters

Lyle Graves expects to spend today watching Kansas City Chiefs football on satellite TV.

For a guy without electricity and running water, that took some doing.

Every day last week, Graves rose at dawn to plow his mile-long driveway. He dug out his snow-buried satellite dish. He gassed up a generator to extra-deep-freeze his ice chest.

Then he drove to Coeur d’Alene to fill a 15-gallon water tank and, if time allowed, take a shower. Usually, it didn’t.

“Don’t get too close,” the unshaven Graves said last week. “I’m a little ripe.”

With the chores finally done and the food iced solid, Graves switched the generator to his television set. And relaxed. “We’ve got to live, don’t we?”

Facing several more weeks without electricity, thousands of rural Inland Northwest residents are slaving from dawn to dusk to stay comfortable at home and salvage farms and forests.

Many dodge downed lines, scoop snow and juggle batteries just to use the restroom. Some sleep in their coats, cook on wood stoves and play endless hands of cards. A few spend more time splitting wood than playing with their kids.

Most of the powerless in Kootenai County live in the country and have faced isolating storms before. They know which neighbors are new to rural life.

“Every spring a few people move out because they can’t take it,” one rural resident said. “They think it’s going to be like the city, only prettier.”

But Mother Nature’s most recent bashing created challenges for even the most hardy of residents.

“I lived through firestorm, and that was something,” said June Morrison, a Turner Bay homeowner. “Last winter we had floods. But this … this is something else.”

Graves agreed.

“I’ve been here 15, 16 years and, honestly, we’ve never lost power for more than 12 hours,” he said.

Some residents of Lake Coeur d’Alene’s east shore expect to be powerless into December.

So residents carry chain saws in their cars, knowing roads clear of fallen trees could be blocked again in hours.

They stock up on Ball jars - not for peaches or vegetables, but for canning their venison.

They pack buckets with snow to fill empty toilet bowls. In some cases, they share bathwater to prevent waste from backing up while electric-powered septic pumps are down.

In weaker moments, old-timers look with scorn upon the unprepared.

Thursday, near the head of Morrison’s driveway, a small Chevrolet pickup started the steep, snowy climb toward Highway 97.

Watching from the seat of her tractor, where she was taking a breather from an afternoon of scraping an icy path to her home, Morrison, 65, shook her head.

“That’s a two-wheel drive, buddy!” she shouted. “Better be a good one!”

Amid these thickly wooded hills, slick roads are the least of residents’ worries. Here, even the trees - firs and pines, mostly - can be deadly.

Earlier, when Morrison was cruising behind the house in her Yamaha four-wheeler, she heard a familiar cracking. She cut the engine and dived beneath its metal frame.

An 18-inch thick tree slammed the ground a foot from her vehicle. “I can still move that fast when I have to,” she chuckled.

Earlier in the week, she grabbed her 24-inch Stihl chain saw and hacked up 31 trees that had crashed across her driveway. She woke Friday morning to find her exit barricaded again by 11 new snow-weighted pines.

In a 10-minute span that afternoon, she watched and listened as three more fell.

“It’s just amazing,” she said. “I was thinking of logging up in here, but I guess I don’t need to now.”

She leaned forward and whispered, “If you hear them crack, don’t wait. Just run. Any one of those can go in any direction.”

A neighbor likened the snap and pop of toppling pines to volleys of gunfire.

“It’s like skirmishes from the Civil War - pop … pop-pop-pop … pop,” he said. “Then silence.”

While her husband goes to work in town, Morrison’s days are spent protecting her home. She clears her driveway again and again, and worries about rocks and limbs the storm dragged into nearby Turner Creek.

“There’s so much to do,” she said. “All I want for Christmas is a front-end loader.”

She’s been called out at night to free neighbor Laura Lee, who was stuck behind trees and a mountain of snow in her Federal Express van. The excavation took three hours. Lee is now staying in a motel, while Morrison cares for her cat.

A generator fuels three of Morrison’s rooms with light, but doesn’t have power to run her freezer. She planned to spend the weekend canning to salvage its contents.

She’s already made a game plan for the upcoming holiday. Morrison plans to snap the legs off her 14-pound turkey and shove it into a Dutch oven.

“If you can use it for biscuits, why not Thanksgiving,” she said.

Up the lake, Suanne Harns’ children are weary of playing board games and occupying themselves with clay.

“During the day, they can play outside, but when they come in we have to string wet clothes all over the house so they’ll be dry the next day,” the Carlin Bay resident said.

Old habits died hard. When hungry, the kids opened the refrigerator and stood looking for munchies.

“But you can’t do that” when food is melting, Harns said.

Before her husband tracked down a generator Friday, evenings started at 3 p.m. so the family could plan for darkness.

“We tried to stay up late as we could, but bedtime usually came at 8 p.m.,” Harns said.

At Gotham Bay, Graves spent days putting out fires.

Snow keeps gathering on the roof of his motor home, which threatens to cave. As soon as it’s clear, a tree falls over the driveway.

“It’s non-stop squeaky wheel getting the grease around here,” he said.

The only thing Graves doesn’t fret over are his two horses, now sheltered in a barn.

“Them horses are living better than I am,” Graves said. “They’ve got lots of hay.”

The chickens at Tom Stott’s daughter’s place aren’t faring as well. They’re molting and not laying eggs.

“They better start doing something or we’ll be serving up chicken stew,” Stott said.

His own home in Carlin Bay has no water, so he’s been living with his daughter and granddaughter. They’ve already tired of “hobo stew” - a brothy gruel they heat on the wood stove for dinners - but are too tired to try an alternative.

Friday, Stott was scrapping ice off the windshield of his truck for a drive into town. He’d promised to take a nephew to basketball practice - despite the rotten roads.

“The coach says if he doesn’t make it to practice, he can’t play in the games,” Stott said.

Even in this storm, “the show must go on,” Stott said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 4 Color Photos

MEMO: (“After the Storm” Special Section, Day Five)

This sidebar appeared with the story: LIVESTOCK NEED SPECIAL ATTENTION When storms take out power and water service to rural residents, livestock owners sometimes assume animals can fend for themselves. They can’t, said Dr. Dave Tester at Prairie Animal Hospital. It’s important to ensure large animals have enough food and water, which they can’t get from eating snow. “They can’t possibly eat enough snow,” Tester said. “Think about it: When you melt a bucket full of snow all you get is a little water in the bottom. Imagine how much they’d have to eat.” When the freezing rain started falling last week, Tester increased his horses’ daily hay allotment by one-third. “Hay makes warmth,” Tester said. Tester also sprinkled loose salt on the hay to force the animals to drink more water. If water pumps are down, Tester said, consider making a fire to melt snow. Lots of it. A thousand-pound horse needs at least 15 gallons of water a day, a cow up to 20 gallons, he said. If their feed is increased, they need more water to digest it. If an animal is shivering, throw a blanket over its back and shoulders or bring it indoors. “Most animals handle this kind of weather well,” he said. “But you have to watch them, just in case.”