Shannon Shumaker works by the light of a battery-operated flashlight Wednesday at the Clarksville Post Office. Without electricity, postal workers in the village had to improvise as they sorted mail.
Neither rain ... nor power outages!!? Clarksville Post Office gets mail delivered despite lack of electricity
CLARKSVILLE - The motto of the U.S. Postal Service is "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
You can now add to that power outages.
The Clarksville Post Office battled treacherous weather and a lack of power at the post office Wednesday, but managed to get the mail delivered to approximately 1,600 customers.
"We were about on time," said carrier Sue Fisher.
Postmaster Carolyn Quinn said she called carriers Fisher, Shannon Shumaker and Sharon Crabill early this morning.
"I called them at 7:15 or so and told them we don't have any mail or power," Quinn said.
After a rough start to the day with the unloading of the truck that delivers mail to the post office, Quinn and Co. - which included clerk Tracy Reimer Canby - had to sort mail in a room without electricity. They used natural light from a couple small windows, but also had their own illumination.
"They all brought in their own lights or flashlights," said Quinn.
They used lanterns and flashlights, and even had lights on their hats, as they quickly put the mail in marked slots.
"We just improvised," Quinn said. "There are approximately 500 slots to separate mail in and it's usually fine print, so it was definitely a challenge to get the mail in the right spot."
Once out of the office, the carriers had to battle snow- and ice-covered roads to get to the 1,200 rural customers. The cleared roads, while easier to negotiate, presented another problem.
"The snowplows pushed all that snow right up against the mail boxes," Quinn said. "It would help if people clean out from in front of their mail boxes."
Quinn said some of the boxes were impossible to reach. Some of the boxes the carriers could reach had frozen doors.
"They [the carriers] carry with them a rubber mallet ... that usually breaks the icy seal," she said.
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