Prospect News

The great ice storm of January 2009
We had like four families in a three bedroom double wide mobile home. We shut off all except three rooms we had the den ,kitchen, and dining room. We stayed warm by using the fire place. We slept in the den and the other three rooms on blankets and sleeping bag’s. We got our water from the side of the consqenhut. We took fresh snow and melted it down for coffee, hot chocolate and for cooking. Also we took melted snow for washing dishes and for washing up.
Everyone did their part to help out during the ice storm with out any power ,or running water. We all had our pets we had to feed and water make sure they stayed warm and dry.
Every one helped chop wood and carry it on the back porch. We got most of the wood from fallen trees and branches from all the trees that started to fall or snap due too much ice and snow on them. . We helped out our neighbors by getting people unstuck in the snow and ice also by pulling or cutting down trees out of the way.
We cooked by the food we had in our freezers and cupboard’s .we just cooked it over or in the fire place.
If we got our clothes wet we dried them by putting them next to the fire place .we played games by using candle light at night time. During the day we got more wood cut and chopped up brought up to the back door. Checked on the out side animals made sure they had water to drink. We basically took care of what we could do in the day time hours.
If we had to go to the bathroom we used a bucket outside by a broken branch as a portable bathroom and disposed the toilet paper in a bag and also in sewer pipe drain.
Some one always had to feed the fire place so it wouldn’t go out .at night we took shifts to keep it going.
We were out of power for like five days before we got it back on. The kids were out of school for five days also. We first had the rain then the snow .the ice afterwards .the ice was causing the trees to lean over and snap, or fall over.
There was at least three inches of solid ice all over the place in Donipihan ,Mo .
We also stayed warm by putting extra layers of clothing on.
that’s how the four families survived the ice storm of 2009.

By Michelle Large

It's an embarrassment that Ripley County has no newspapers online. Embarrassing, but not surprising.

Recently an article by Poplar Bluff Regional Hospital's CEO, Bruce Eady appeared in the DAR. The article talked about the many things that the community should be grateful to the hopsital for, like employing 1400 people, contributing to local charities, and qualified nurses and physicians.

What Mr. Eady did not say is that without the people - who have no other ER or inpatient hospital in their community - they have no choice but to go to Poplar Bluff. Even when the hospital's own corporate executive from Florida says it is the meanest place he has ever visited (according to one supervisor).

Mr. Eady wants you to think that the hospital pays big bucks in wages, when the truth is they take advantage of the working poor. Many of the employees who work there in nonnursing jobs and who are clerical jobs complain that they do not earn enough - even with shift differential - to pay their utility bills. The "big bucks" that Mr. Eady talks about in wages is paid to the profssional staff and not the everyday working person like Mr. Eady tried to make us think. Those people responsible for makikng the hospital the success it is with their medicare and medicaid because they do not have the gas money to go elsewhere are us, not Bruce Eady's great hospital and doctors.

Mr. Eady reminds us how grateful we should be to the hospital, but most of us in the community - even alot of the hospital's own employees - are looking forward to the day when St. Francis has an ER and inpatient beds so people have a choice where to go - and where to work too! Once people have that choice, I bet they won't be going to Poplar Bluff Regional.

It is a place where no one cares about how patients are treated until they complain about sitting in the ER all night and being ignored because they have have something the nurses don't want to get close to. Or maybe they will clean a room if a patient complains about how dirty it is.

It is well known among employees who work in admitting that one employee nicknamed herself the Greeting Nazi. This is because of the way she treats people when they come to admitting to see a emergency room doctor.

Mr. Eady says how much they give back to the community in way of spending at local businesses. When was the last time you saw Mr. Eady -remember his picture, it was on the article - at Walmart? I'll guess never, or at least not so often as most of us who have to buy cheap.

What Mr. Eady is really trying to say is that you have no choice but use his hospital, and they deserve your money. I think once the competition will kick in that Mr. Eady's company will go back to where they came from pretty fast becuase no one will want to go there.