By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
It’s 52 degrees in the garage where Julie and Dennis Wehling have been holed up since Saturday. And that’s with the wood stove blazing.
That’s better than the 44 degrees in the kitchen of their adjacent triple-wide manufactured home.
“We’re cold, but we’re OK,” Julie Wehling said Monday in a phone interview from her home in Beverly Beach north of Newport.
The Wehlings are just one example of people making due through massive power outages that started Saturday when parts of Lincoln County were hit by an ice storm.
The Wehlings moved to the coast in 2020; Julie is 66, Dennis is 76 and in the early stages of dementia. Their family is in Albany and not available because of bad road conditions to and from the valley.
They’ve been through bad weather before, including 11 days of an ice storm in their former Oregon City home, which had a pellet stove and generator.
A year ago they had a wood stove installed in the garage, she said, “so if ever there’s an emergency we can go to the garage.” But the metal structure is not insulated and there’s no windows for light.
There’s a gas-powered generator to warm up their bedroom at night, but it’s low on gas and stations in Newport have been closed or had lines a mile long. To help her sleep, Julie Wehling has been using a neighbor’s battery-powered generator to run her CPAP machine.
There’s plenty of food and water and Julie Wehling says their spirits are fine.
“He and the dog are out there cuddled up next to the stove,” she said of her husband. “And I’m not holding my breath that we’ll have the power back on tonight.”
At 5 p.m. their electricity was restored.
“Pain in the butt”
Kelly and Ashley Painter and their two children live on five acres off Yaquina Bay Road east of Newport. They’re very self-sufficient with a wood stove for heat, generator to run their refrigerator and freezer, and propane for cooking.
But their property is a mess.
The ice storm took down hundreds of mostly alder trees, Kelly Painter said Monday.
“I bet half the trees on our property are down,” he said. “Any tree that wasn’t incredibly strong had problems.”
Saturday night they sat in the living room and listen to the trees explode under the weight of ice. On Sunday, Painter was able to clear his long driveway of debris so he could at least make it out to the main road. Monday the sun came out.
“We’re about as good as we can be,” he said. “It’s just a pain in the butt.”
Their power was restored at 1 p.m. Monday.
Painter is a professional fishing guide. Coastal stream conditions for much of the season have been challenging. Now, when the weather calms, there will be more issues to contend with.
“We’re going to have to take a chainsaw down the river with us,” he laughed.