Some still out in the cold

As Putnam County slowly recovers from the recent ice storms, some citizens are still without power.

Denise Thede lives in Madison Township. She said her power initially went out on Monday night. After having power on and off for a bit, by Tuesday evening her power was out until at least the middle of Thursday.

"We ran out of wood. We have a fireplace and we were using that and even with that it was 48 degrees in our house. We packed up and brought our clothes and stuff and we're going to stay at the Walden tonight."

Thede's neighbor Deb Beck also said she was leaving home Thursday to stay in a hotel.

"We're going to Plainfield." Beck said. "We're going to have a little fun."

Beck talked quickly from her cell phone, which was about to lose power.

She said her husband works in Plainfield and she has to work today in Danville, which contributed to where her family was staying. Prior to deciding to go to a hotel, Beck and her family, which includes one 13-year-old and two children in their 20s, were trying to make the power outage a game.

"We've been dealing with (the power outage) with our woodstove. We've been making shepherd's pie and baked potatoes," Beck said.

"We've been trying to make it into a little adventure all the way. I think we're kind of over that and we want to have a warm, cozy sleep."

Thede said she was focused on keeping her family entertained. She and her husband have two children who are 6 and 8 years old.

"We were playing lots of board games," Thede said. "(Wednesday) we broke out a 1000-piece puzzle.

With the power out, the cooking options were limited. Thede got as much use out of her oven as she could during the portion of time with power on Tuesday.

"During the times when we did have power we made a batch of macaroni and cheese so we would have something to eat," she said "We also baked some cupcakes so we could have some fun stuff to eat.

"We also had shrimp cocktails because the shrimp in the freezer was starting to thaw so we thought 'why not use it instead of losing it?'" Thede said.

Once the power was out, Thede said they cooked hot dogs and marshmallows over their stove.

Thede said there was a good sign as her family was leaving their house.

"My husband said there was a Park County REMC going out toward our direction," she said.

Carolyn Kilby with Parke County REMC said Thursday afternoon there were around 200 customers without power in the Reelsville area. She also said the hope was to have all their members back with power by late Thursday night.

"We're making some good progress," Kilby said.

Duke Energy had 103 outages listed on their website for Putnam County as of 5 p.m. Thursday. Steve Bahr, Duke area manager, said they had 7,400 customers who were affected in the Greencastle by the storm.

Behr said that the outages were caused by a combination of two problems.

"Ice gets on the trees. Tree limbs break. They fall through the lines. That's a tremendous problem," Bahr said. "At the same time, you get an additional amount of weight on the line and it can knock down the line itself."

Behr said that he wanted to reiterate safety.

"Even though we're going into the end of this thing, we still have to remain aware of our surroundings and treat anything that's on the ground as an energized line. We really appreciate the patience the customers have given us," he said.