The Blizzard of ‘78
We moved from Haifa to Elazar in December, 1978. It was an easy move. We went to Elazar because we had a friend there who was actively trying to get us to join. Elazar, at that time, was a co-operative settlement. There were real houses already built and waiting. There was also work. Elazar was not involved in agriculture in any way. That would come later. Elazar was designed as a prototype industrial village with several cottage industries. A description that proved very appropriate.
At the time, there were fewer than 30 families living in Elazar, but the original building plan included 50 houses and a central office building. Empty houses served as public buildings. One was used for the Elazar Chemical Laboratory, another was the local grocery store, and yet a third was used as a synagogue. I split my work time between the software company located in the central office building, and the electronics assembly company located in another of the empty houses. My wife worked in child care for younger children, also located in an otherwise empty house.
We were barely settled in when Israel was hit with a major winter storm. Elazar is located about 11 miles (18 kilometers) south of Jerusalem, in the middle of the Judean Mountains. It is some 900 meters above sea level. At that elevation the heavy rains that hit the Israeli coast turn to snow. That storm dumped enough snow to totally block the roads from Jerusalem southward. We were completely cut off from the rest of the world. It also took down power lines so we had no electricity. No power also meant there was no heating in the houses because the oil fired systems installed in them were electrically controlled. We had a separate kerosene burning heater we had from Haifa so we were better off than most of our neighbors. The army ran tracked armored personnel carriers through the snow on the road to deliver fresh bread, milk, and some kerosene for portable heaters to us and other nearby villages. We stuck the milk in a bank of snow outside the door to keep it cold.
The possibility of losing electrical power had been considered when the village was in the planning stage. A small, pre-fabricated, hut had been delivered as a place for an emergency generator. But the planners set up the hut for a generator that would provide power for only the central office buildings and perimeter lighting. This was based on the Kibbutz model where there was a central dining hall and kitchen. We didn’t follow that model. Every family had their own home with kitchen, refrigerator, and stove. The generator was not large enough to provide the power needed. The hut was delivered, but it was empty. Meanwhile, the authorities went about ordering a new, larger, generator for Elazar. It would be funded in the next fiscal year.
When the new generator arrived it was too large to fit inside the original hut, another bureaucratic oversight. So a new hut was ordered. Once again, the funding would come only in the next fiscal year. It was wasteful to leave the new generator in Elazar, unprotected from the elements. So the generator was sent to another location where it could be usefully employed. The following year the new hut was brought to Elazar. But the generator was already in use somewhere else. Once again, a new generator had to be ordered. I’m sure you correctly guessed that it could only be funded in the next fiscal year.
A year later, when the newest generator arrived and was placed in its home we discovered that it would not start automatically when power was lost because the lubricating oil was too cold and the unit would not operate properly until the oil was at a higher temperature. A permanent oil heating device was ordered to solve this problem. As usual, funding would be delayed. But this time, one of our local residents, an electrical engineer, put together a temporary heating element that carried us through until the new device arrived.
Today our population is more than 20 times what it was when the original generator story transpired. In the interim, the national power grid has also grown and new lines connected to allow alternate paths for electricity to reach us when one or more locations have lines down. Those of us who lived through that comedy of errors can now tell our incredulous grandchildren how it was back in the blizzard of ’78.
Wetherhorn 