Safety
Hi everyone,
We woke up today, (Jan 5th), to our first day of school for the remaining semester. “Gees – it’s cold!” All the windows were iced up and the outside temp was reading 8 degrees F below zero (or 24 degrees below zero Celsius). If it’s windy today the chill factor could get the temperature down to 30 degrees F below zero. I don’t know how this happens, but the windows all had thousands of intricate patterns of small flowers like the ones you see sometimes on expensive frosted glassware. After breakfast, I headed out to start the car. Fortunately, we have a garage and so it started OK. You need to run your car for 15 minutes before you can journey out. This will insure that the heat is coming through and the windows will not fog up. By the time I came back inside the house my ears, toes, nose and fingers were crying out for warmth. It’s quite a change when you come inside - 75 degrees F or 25 degrees Celsius – which is really cozy.
Arriving at school, I endeavoured to find a key and wrestled with the metal door to seek solace inside for both of us. Don’t make the mistake like I did of grabbing the handle with your bare hands. The chill goes straight to the bone and it takes quite a few minutes before you get feeling back into your hand. To our distress, there was no solace inside. The heaters weren’t working in the High School. We tried to teach our first period. I found that my writing froze on the board while using my white board marker. At the end of the period, it was quite a job to rub the lesson back off. Kate, couldn’t feel her feet in the library and returned back home to pick up a bar heater. But, relief was at hand for all of us. “Newsflash - School has been called off for the High School today.” (The Middle School and Elementary had to carry on regardless because their heaters were OK.) We couldn’t wait to come home again and crank our heat up to 80 degrees F.
Winter health and safety
- You need a couple of humidifiers in your house. They are filled up with water each night and you put a cap full of anti bacteria treatment and humidifier treatment in it to keep the air safe. Humidifiers of course put water back into the air and stop your body drying out with the heat from the furnace.
- In the basement you need to run a dehumidifier 24/7 to take water out of the air. This will prevent mould and smells. If mould takes over it will get into the foundations and will be impossible to get out. People have been known to have to knock down their home to get rid of it.
- Car safety requires a mobile phone to be taken for
communication in case of blizzards etc, sleeping bags for warmth and oddly
enough – candles.
When these are lit, it is enough to raise the temp a few
degrees to stop you freezing to death. - If you don’t rub Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion all over our body each day you will find the urge to itch irresistible. The heat from the furnace dries your skin out and the humidifier is not enough to overcome the problem
- If you want to be really careful – take a broom handle with you so if your car is covered over in a blizzard you can poke up your broom to let rescuers know where you are. As I mentioned in an earlier email this actually happened and saved two peoples lives.
- If your car goes into a skid on ice the best thing to do is head for the ditch. Since most of the roads are flat with little fall offs, this is a better option than trying to right the car and hitting oncoming traffic or flipping over. You can always be pulled back out later and the snow off the highway will impede your speed.
Today a few of the teachers said that their pipes had frozen. This is bad news because it means no water, no showers etc. One of the teachers has moved out for the time being and is staying at a hotel in the nearest town about 12 miles away. Thank God, we moved out from the trailer we first had because we would facing the same predicament now.
When you have light snow on the road and the wind is blowing across it you see the weird sensation of a seemingly smoking road or the effect you get when fog is pumped across a stage to add a mysterious atmosphere. At times it really looks like the highway is on fire.
This is only the beginning of winter. Further north in a place called Minot, North Dakota, which is often the coldest place in the United States, one of the priests was telling us that the temperatures one particular year plummeted to 92 degrees F below zero, when the wind chill factor was taken into consideration. I can’t really relate to that – what does this mean for human beings out in it? Can you even breathe without it hurting you? They say an interesting experiment is to microwave water to boiling point, go outside and throw it up into the air. I must try that!
Our goal is stay warm and safe over the next 3 months. The blizzards are next.
Kind regards,
Kate and Brian
