HORSE CAVE — HORSE CAVE — Soldiers with the Kentucky National Guard went door-to-door Monday morning conducting wellness checks in parts of Hart County hardest hit by last week’s ice storm.

The soldiers carried cases of bottled water with them in the event anyone needed them. The soldiers were with the 138th Fires Brigade HHB2 — 138th FA of Lexington.

They conducted wellness checks in Horse Cave, Munfordville, Bonnieville and Priceville communities.

“I’m happy to be able to help people out in the community,” said Sgt. James Forester.

One of the stops they made was at the home of Emma Waters on Fisher Ridge Road.

Waters had electricity Monday, but had been without power for a couple days.

“I stayed here two nights without any heat and then I went down to my son’s that real cold night,” she said. “My electric came back on Friday.”

Waters’ neighbor, James Borders, weathered the storm with his wife by living in one room of their home.

“We closed the house up. We sealed the upstairs off and sealed the rest of the rooms off. We just lived in one room and went outside to cook and boiled our water to take a bath,” he said, pointing to a cast iron kettle sitting at the edge of his driveway.

Borders was without power for five days. He thinks they lost power sometime during the early morning hours last Tuesday.

“We just woke up and it was off,” he said. “It came back on Saturday.”

As for water, Borders said it “got real low and it stayed low for a while and then it just finally went completely off.”

Many people compared last week’s ice storm to the one that wreaked havoc across southcentral Ken-tucky in April 1994.

“This is worse,” Borders said. “It was bad in 1994, but this is worse. But they got our power back up quicker.”

In 1994, Borders was without power for more than a week.

“This was about five (days), so it was a whole lot quicker,” he said.

Borders took time out from sawing tree limbs that had fallen in his yard to talk to the soldiers when they stopped by to see if he needed water or anything else.

“I appreciate them coming by,” he said. “That’s the first time it’s ever happened.”

Further up the road, Borders’ neighbor, Thomas Moldon, met the soldiers coming down his driveway on his four-wheeler.

“I just got lights back on this evening and I ain’t got no telephone now,” he said. “I got water yesterday evening. I think they brought in a generator or something.”

Moldon agrees with Borders about the ice storm of 1994.

“This here was the worse one I’ve ever seen,” Moldon said.

As of 9:30 a.m. Monday, wellness checks had been conducted in 58 counties statewide, according to Master Sgt. Paul Mouille-seaux with the Kentucky National Guard’s Division of Public Affairs.

“Guard members have been instrumental in saving at least four lives during the wellness check process. This includes rending aid to two elderly people in Lincoln County relying on oxygen to survive,” he said. “Guard troops are teaming up with local emergency management agencies, fire departments, rescue squads, law enforcement agencies and volunteers to conduct wellness checks for all households in Kentucky’s 120 counties.”

Some of the water the soldiers were attempting to distribute Monday came from Metcalfe County.

“We do anything to help our surrounding counties and neighbors,” said Greg Wilson, judge-executive for Metcalfe County.

Officials took 12 pallets of bottled water to Hart County on Monday and Wilson said if Hart County needed more, his county would do what it could to help.

By Monday afternoon, Terry Martin, judge-executive of Hart County, said, “Everything is coming around. As far as the roads in the county, all the roads should be opened. The state roads are all open and pushed back.” ­

The next phase of getting things back to normal will be debris removal, he said.

“That’s going to be a big problem,” Martin said. “It’s going to take a long time to get all the debris out of here.”

He compared the amount of debris from the ice storm that needs to be moved to the debris created by the tornado that struck Munfordville in 2005.

“We had debris removal, but nothing of this magnitude,” he said. “It will probably take us six months to get everything out of the roads and off the sides. This is the worst that anyone has seen.”