Remembering the ice storm

Get over it. Let’s move
forward

Nancy Mahlow, president of the Eastside Neighborhood
Association, said her group is gathering a list of resources in their
neighborhood — who has generators, who needs snow shoveling — to be able to
help neighbors in need in the next crisis. The effort was born of last year’s
storm and aftermath.

“We want to make sure people are safe and are being taken
care,” she said. “That they’re not sitting there freezing to death, or their
sidewalks aren’t getting shoveled.”

“If you dwell on the negative you’re not going to get
anywhere,” Mahlow said. “There’s positive in everything. It may not feel it at
the time. Look back. This brought us together. This built the communication
link, we were able to make changes.”

“I think the ice storm, it was terrible to go through. Trust
me, I was here with a n 86-year-old mother with no heat, no lights, no nothing.
… Was it a pain? Yes.”

Mahlow said it doesn’t make sense to stay angry at the BWL for
the debacle.

“Get over it people, a mistake was made, we all survived,
nobody died,” she said. “Thank God nobody died and nobody was seriously
injured. Let’s move forward.”

‘I was pretty angry with
BWL”

Clemens Avenue Neighborhood Watch coordinator Jana Nicol stayed
at her house for two and a half days after the ice storm.

“And it was rough,” she wrote in a message to City Pulse. “Finally I decided to go to my mom's on Dec 24. I was
supposed to have everyone at my house for Christmas and the house was almost
all decorated when the power went out. So I drove to Charlotte to stay with her,
when I got on the freeway and saw the widespread damage I knew it was worse
than I had thought.”

Nicol said her neighbors looked out for each other,
even before the storm.

Her mother, who is 83, didn’t want her to leave when
her power was restored by Dec. 26. She was enjoying the company. She also had a
neighbor come to her house, who’s condo was without power.

“I was pretty angry with BWL, but I am impressed
with the lessons they have learned and the steps they have made to better their
communication with the community,” Nicol wrote. “I have a BWL app on my phone
now. My favorite was the fake BWL Twitter account, I LMAO at that pioneer
award, OMG it was the bright light in the middle of a fiasco.”

“As far as the community, I think many would have
liked to see Peter "offed" from BWL. And I still feel that way. But I
think everyone learned a lot about preparedness.”

The ark that Preuss
built 

The Preusses were braced for last-minute holiday shopping by
pet lovers three days before Christmas last year.

Instead of a shopping rush, Preuss Pets in Old Town served as
an emergency operations center for fish, bird and small mammal owners caught in
the ice storm without electricity to keep their animals alive.

“We grabbed any tank we could and filled it with water,” said
Kirbay Preuss, store manager.

Preuss served as a warming center/shelter of sorts for 80
customers with fish, reptiles and birds.

“It was like a triage unit,” said Rick Preuss, store owner.

They offered battery-powered air pumps and styrofoam to
insulate tanks from losing heat. They eventually allowed owners to bring their
pets to the store for shelter — guppies, piranah, discus, geckos and even
birds.

Some never started their tanks back up even after the power was
restored, selling their fish and letting the hobby go.

“There’s sadness affiliated with it,” said Rick Preuss.

And although the store’s Christmas sales suffered, Rick Preuss
said, “We’d definitely do it again. We are now part of the infrastructure of
successful pet keeping.”

Kirbay Preuss agree.

“It set a good example about where our values lie,” said Kirbay
Preuss. “Going through that, was about compassion and giving.”

Blessings in the storm

Christmas 2013 should have been a sad affair for the Evans
family, but instead it was a celebration of blessings.

Darryl Evans, owner of Pure Enchantment Photography, spent all
of his and his wife’s savings to buy new camera and computer equipment to keep
the business going.

They had lost everything besides the clothes on their back in
an Oct. 22 house fire.

“I’m in nothing but a robe out on the street, a 3-month-old in
one arm, the hand of my 7-year-old in the other hand, trying to flag a car down
to call 911 for me,” said Evans of the day the fire broke out. His wife had
left for work and his dog was still inside.

His dog was rescued but everything — his house and his studio —
was a loss.

Then the incredible happened. Calls poured in offering
everything from underwear to toys to furniture to a house.

One friend’s mother’s house was vacant. Evans was allowed to
move in with his family.

Then someone offered a car.

“I thought it would be a 1973 Pontiac or whatever, and the guy
sends me a picture it’s a 2000 ES Lexus. What do you say to that?”

Entering Christmas the Evans were focused on rebuilding. The
fire “set us back. We had to start all over.”

Then “the ice storm hits and we’re good. We’re in this house on
the northside, we’ve got power, heat, food. ...Our street was a mess, wires
down, big branches. God was like you had the fire. We had no issues at all. It
was a blessing.”