How family survived two-week blackout

Jane and Paul Bruce in their snowy Methven property. Picture / Simon Baker

The Bruce family of Mid-Canterbury were this week among the last South Islanders to get their power reconnected after the paralysing snowstorm of June 12.

Farmer Paul Bruce and his wife, Jane, their daughters, Sasha, 14, and Brianna, 7, and their two pet jack russells, Jo and Muffy, endured 14 days without electricity.

For most of the two weeks, the Bruces relied on a petrol-powered generator to run a single lightbulb and to pump running water to their rural home near Methven.

In the two days before getting the generator, they had to melt snow for drinking water and bucket swimming pool water into the toilet.

The family relied on friends and relatives for hot showers, cooked on a gas-fired barbecue inside, and slept on mattresses by the wood burner in their lounge to stay warm.

What was the best thing to come out of those 14 days?

Mrs Bruce: "Probably seeing how well our children coped. That first week they had no school and they were both quite amazing - helping out. I'm really impressed with how our family has pulled together."

What did you do to get by in that first week?

Mrs Bruce: "The oldest [daughter] did a lot of homework. Charades, card games and board games. Candlelight is just too hard on your eyes, so if you were going to do your reading ... you had to do it in the daytime.

Sasha picked all the lemons off the lemon tree that were ready and we made lemon syrup two or three times."

Mr Bruce: "We started living around when the sun was coming up and when it was going down."

What were the worst times?

Mr Bruce: "We talked to the neighbour at one stage and his comment was that some of the worst times were the second and third days [when] we knew no help was coming. And it's then you go into survival mode."

What was most difficult without power?

Mrs Bruce: "One of the hard things, I found, was to go out anywhere, getting ready with no power and no hot water. To wash your hair you had to get snow into pots on the barbecue and heat that. And for four of us to do that, you had to prepare a couple of hours earlier."

What was the best thing about having electricity back?

Mrs Bruce: "I would say having the hot water back, but then we have had such severe frosts the last couple of mornings that we haven't had water, because it's been frozen."

Mr Bruce: "The day the kids got home from school on Monday this week, they said: 'Yay, I'm having a shower'."

Mrs Bruce: "Apparently they had a wee dance around and were very excited. To walk in and have the television going, it was surreal, really."

What have you learned from the whole ordeal?

Mrs Bruce: "Stocking up on non-perishable foods would be a thing I am seriously looking at.

"Firewood - we ran out and are just bringing the dregs in now.

"Any bad weather forecast, you think, well, we have got to be prepared for the power going down again."

Has this put you off living in the country?

Mrs Bruce: "Not at all. We are country people and we both have lived in the city. I look at it that you can move to the city any time in your life, but there's not very many opportunities to move from the city to the country."