Test your knowledge of more recent West Hartford history with this ‘Thursday Throwback.’
By Ronni Newton
We interrupt our regular Throwback Thursday programming with an image of West Hartford’s much more recent history.
Photo credit: Ronni Newton
We’re not really asking you to guess where this photo was taken, because it could have been any street in town. But since I will reveal that it was taken early in the morning on Oct. 30, everyone will probably guess the year quite easily.
This photo comes from my own personal photo library, and it’s of my own street early in the morning of Oct. 30, 2011. The image can’t even begin to capture what the morning light (and I had to wait until the sun rose because the streetlights had gone out with the power 14 hours earlier) revealed that day, a scene highlighted by snow atop downed trees, all tangled in power lines. A sight like none I had ever experienced, like the apocalypse of my nightmares.
This photo was part of a gallery I posted the morning of Oct. 30, 2011, using the laptop I had charged in the car and accessing the Internet with an air card. I was the editor of West Hartford Patch at the time, and my headline read “West Hartford Looks Like the Scene from a Disaster Movie.” All of the initial photos I posted were of my own street, because it was a while before I could get out of the neighborhood.
I saw that a thread had been started on Wednesday morning on a Facebook group I belong to, with people being asked to post how long they were without power as a result of that freak October storm. I was personally without power in my home for 10 days, and although I slept every night in my cold, dark house, I spent most of the days in the West Hartford Police Station’s Emergency Operations Center or covering stories about the storm (and a murder and some major fires that also occurred that week). I am still thankful for my gas hot water heater, gas stove, and gas fireplace.
Do you remember school being closed for more than a week? Halloween being cancelled? Concern about whether or not the polling places could be opened for the election on Nov. 8?
A year later, I was starting to write a “What a Difference a Year Makes” story when once again West Hartford was hit with devastation courtesy of Storm Sandy. It didn’t snow again, and the damage in West Hartford was not quite as widespread, but it was still freaky to have two “storms of the century” on exactly the same day two years in a row.
Those dastardly snowflakes that appeared in some early weather forecasts for this weekend were cause for a bit of alarm on my part. I think we would all like to get through two year in a row of unscathed Halloween weekends!
Feel free to use the comment section below to post your own memories of the 2011 October snowstorm or Storm Sandy. Or just enjoy this Throwback Thursday image and be happy that we’ve had some beautiful fall weather, the trees were spectacular at their peak, and we haven’t even had a frost yet. I’m pretty happy to be looking out the window at the roses still blooming in my garden!
Next week we will return to our regular “Thursday Throwback” feature.
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Being retired and living in Georgia,I did not witness the storm firsthand.I did however find your articles a great read!..The clean up looked like a real challenge!..Glad the roses are blooming for you Ronnie..My grandmother loved the roses.My Dad always gave her a rose plant on mothers day…
Thanks for your comment, John! And I’m quite sure these are still the same roses your grandmother enjoyed. They’re definitely the same rose bushes that bordered the house when we bought it almost 17 years ago. Come by if you’re ever back in West Hartford!
Aaaah- we made it through the end of this October without a disaster! Hallowe’en wasn’t cancelled (twice!). Those ten days three years ago were a true test of the WeHa community. Ronni- Your work at Patch really kept the community together and informed when some of us couldn’t even receive Mayor Slifka’s phone updates. How the community rallied to provide shelter and essential services to those in need (and that means just about everybody) still warms my heart to this day.I hope that WeHa.com won’t have to provide our only lifeline to the outside world anytime soon!
[…] week we took a little break from featuring long-ago throwback images to recall the October snowstorm that happened exactly three years earlier. Much of West Hartford’s outward appearance bounced […]