The power is out, thermometers read below zero, and the snow is up to the rafters — and nobody seems to care.
The neighbors of 93-year-old Elinor “Dolly” Avenatti found her bundled up in a chair in front of her fireplace, which had gone cold — dead. Air Force veteran and religious man, Alden Park Thayer, 85, died at his Lake Arrowhead home as the snow drifts piled up to 14 feet outside his windows. His daughter, Lisa Thayer, was by side as he passed singing “How Great Thou Art.” The roads remained impassable, and emergency officials said it would be at least week until they could retrieve Alden’s body.
These are just two tragedies that have befallen the San Bernardino mountains alone during a two-week onslaught of record-setting snow–which total at least eleven, according to authorities — perhaps many more.
It remains unclear exactly how many more lives have been lost due to blizzard-related factors, such as blocked roads, downed power lines or critical medical care that could not be summoned. At a City Council meeting this week in Big Bear Lake, city officials said that more than seven feet of snow had fallen there in 15 days; hospital officials said that “tragedies” had happened because of the weather, citing access to dialysis treatments as a particular concern.
“I’m sure they haven’t found everyone yet,” said Rhea-Frances Tetley, who spoke of her neighbor across the street who died last week in her home and was not found for days. “I only was just able to get out of my house yesterday afternoon, and it took two strong men to dig out the driveway,” she said.
Gary DeFrench, a contractor in Crestline, tells of a similar fate for his neighbor, a woman in her 80s, who froze to feath last week. “Some of those people are on roads that are very narrow and way out in the boonies,” he said, adding, “I’m from Cleveland, Ohio, so I’ve seen snow storms. But nothing like this. This is unbelievable.”
Authorities are keen to list the deaths as “natural.” The sheriff’s department, which also serves as the county coroner’s office, said there was little evidence to suggest that the victims died because they might have been trapped in their homes.
But other snowbound locals have called this ridiculous. “That’s absolutely not true,” said Carola Hauer, a Running Springs resident and psychologist, adding that she hoped officials and communities would learn and be better prepared in the future.
“We probably should have raised the emergency flag a little sooner,” she said.
The mounting cold-related tragedies–of which I’ve only documented a small percentage of–come as yet another winter storm barrels into California, threatening to deliver feet of additional snow to the higher elevations, with heavy falls forecast across the Midwest and Northeast, too:
But of course, with these being ‘cold-related’ tragedies they aren’t quite garnering the same mainstream media attention.
There is no balance, only agenda-driving obfuscations…
UK HARDSHIPS
Similar misery is sweeping the UK, too.
Here, spiraling energy prices, plunging living standards and an unusual March freeze are making existence particularly hard.
According to one report, an additional 100,000 people are expected to die next winter–that’s over and above average winter deaths–due to economic hardships; i.e., having to choose between heating and eating — and that’s assuming the lights stay on, which, as the energy CEOs have warned us, is far from guaranteed, particularly if winter 2023-24 is a cold one.
Below is a comment I read online which I feel perfectly sums up the level of frustration and confusion:
This winter has been by far the most brutal of my life. My heating bill has been incredible! I literally cannot afford to keep my home warm AT ALL. I’m living in the smallest room of my house with an electric heater set on low and even that is costing me around £10 PER DAY. WTF is going on!? How is this allowed!? How is this legal?
My bedrooms, my bathroom all have black mold growing on the walls and ceilings, because it’s so cold any water vapor is condensing on the walls. I’ve live here for years and never had black mold.
Honestly, I do not give a toss about Ukraine. You may hate me for saying that. But I don’t know these people, it’s horrible that the war is happening over there but it isn’t OUR problem. It has nothing to do with us. We should NOT be giving money and weapons to them, painting a target upon our country for no reason and making our own people suffer this brutal winter. We are literally allowing our unelected government to murder and impoverish our own citizens to further the West’s anti-Russian agenda that’s been running for several decades now. For what? Why must we die from cold, illness and starvation for Ukraine? Has anyone here voted to give Ukraine tanks and missiles? Have you voted to increase your power bills 10 times over? Did you vote to get health problems due to black mold? Did you vote Rishi Sunak into office? No? Me either.
The West is crumbling — and not organically.
Access to cheap and reliable energy is under attack; consumption of meat and eggs etc. is being demonized; and bodily autonomy without state intervention is painted as some crazy conspiracy theory.
And a word of warning to all those dutifully abiding by these undemocratic charters, know that your weakness is forwarding an evil anti-human agenda and also lining the pockets of the 0.01%; know too that your cowardice won’t go unpunished.
SWINGS
Straying off topic a little now, but watch for the pendulum swing from ‘left’ back to ‘right’.
The culture is visibly shifting, the left has gone way too far–even for Hollywood! But be it far-left or far-right, far-anything is bad, and given how doggedly the right has been going after the left’s absurdities of late, and rightly so, an overcompensating shift is all-but assured. Take victory graciously when it comes, and, crucially, be sure to keep that pendulum swing in check — as with the left’s, the right’s hands are far from clean when it comes to evil and human suffering.
These are merely my musing, and maybe they’re off.
Either way, ‘something is coming’.
