As I have stated before, watching the events that unfolded in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina forever changed my thinking, and I have become determined to make my family as self-reliant as possible. Being a novice at many things, I have just had to guess on how prepared we really are, especially since I live in an area that (so far, at least) is not prone to earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. Well, this week Texas saw snow, and our area actually saw more snow than we have ever had in a one-day time period. It was pretty fun, well, up until the point that our power went out. But even that had its “up” side because we got a chance to see where we really are as a family as far as being prepared goes (our home is all electric). Like pretty much everything in our lives, we learned that we had our strengths and our weaknesses.
A big thing that I did right was that I actually listened to the weather forecast for once. In our area, the weather can be so hit-and-miss that many times when you hear a forecast predicting inclement weather, it is easy to roll your eyes and say to yourself, “Oh, whatever.” This time I took the report seriously and went to the grocery store before things got bad. There was plenty of fresh bread, milk, etc., in the house. In addition to a house full of food that needed cooking/heating, we had lots of things to eat that didn’t require cooking. We were set. If we did need to cook, Robert had a little camping stove and fuel squirreled away that he bought at a garage sale (garage sales are a great source for acquiring that type of thing at a great price). I did realize, however, that while we had plenty of food in the house, we didn’t really have a decent supply of drinking water. Not a problem for a power outage for us, but if there was ever a major problem with our water supply, we might not be so happy. Need to work on that.
One thing for which we have always been grateful is the fact that we made it a point to buy a house with a fireplace. While it isn’t exactly an inferno, it did keep the house pretty warm, especially when we closed the other rooms off and congregated in the family room. Another plus was that we had plenty-o-plenty of firewood, all of which was free. Living in a residential area, there are at least one or two trees each year that get a good pruning, or even cut down. Unless those home owners also have a fireplace (most don’t), that wood ends up on the curb, waiting for collection on trash day. Robert volunteers to haul it off, and so far no one has ever turned him down – it’s a win/win for everyone.
The fireplace is definitely an asset, although I will say that now that I seem to have so many problems with breathing and sinuses, I will probably get a wood burning stove if I ever get my house in the country. With no electricity to operate a blower, we have to leave the doors on the fireplace open in order to get maximum heat, and the burning wood drives me nuts. There is a new product I have seen advertised that I am quite taken with. The Vermont Bun Oven is a wood burning stove that will not only heat your home, but also allows you to use the top surface for some basic cooking and there is an oven on the bottom for baking. Yes! My little house on the prairie will have one!
The second item for which I was grateful has also served to humble me through the years. You see, my husband is a tool collector; I can’t even tell you how many different tools and “toys” he has. I just know that he has stuff everywhere, and his “stuff” has been the subject of many discussions. When he told me a few years back that we really needed a gasoline powered portable generator, I found myself thinking, “Woof – another new toy to clutter up the garage.”
Well, today was not the first day that I was glad that he bought that thing. We have used it a couple of times before, after losing power during thunder storms, and it always comes in handy. Our big thing is that our freezer is usually pretty stocked, plus there’s the refrigerator, and we hate the prospect of losing all of that in the event of a long-term power outage. The generator provides enough power to run our refrigerator and freezer, plus something small like a lamp, and my husband always runs an extension cord over to our next-door neighbor’s house to help him out. (Note: If food safety is a concern, the Texas Cooperative Extension has a neat fact sheet, “Handling Food and Drinks When Losing Power” that is quite informative.)
We did learn a lesson today: You need to fire the generator up once in a while, when you don’t actually need it, if you want it to start right up when you do need it. I believe The Old Coot said this was in the instructions, and was something he meant to do, but just never got around to. It took him quite awhile, and a lot of struggling, to get it going today. We will be performing regular maintenance on our generator in the future.
I also learned to appreciate my cell phone. I am not a fan of cell phones; I generally find them intrusive and annoying, and I think most of us talk way too much. But it did come in handy today because we recently “bundled” our cable, internet, and land-line phone service. Even though we had purchased the battery back-up pack for our land-line “black box”, it died way before we were able to get our generator going, leaving us with only our cell phones, one of which I used to report our power outage. I guess I’ll have to rethink my opinion of both cell phones and bundled services.
A tiny hero in our “emergency” scenario was actually something I had bought as a fluke, as stocking stuffer gifts for many members of our family. I’m a big fan of QVC and they have something known as a “Today’s Special Value” (they pick one product each day and offer it for a 24-hour period at a really great price). Right before Christmas they had offered these really cute, little flashlights . Initially I liked them because they were in a set of five and came in really cute colors like lime green and purple:
They are exceptionally bright:
But what really sucked me in was the “glow-in-the-dark” ring that makes the flashlight easy to spot in the dark:
In fact, Mom was the first one to know that the power had gone off when she got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. When her table lamp would not come on, she was able to easily spot her flashlight’s glow ring (she keeps the flashlight on her nightstand). She then came and told me about the power outage, and it was easy for me to spot my flashlight, too. Who knew that something so insignificant could be so helpful?
We were too busy taking snow pictures and trying to get the generator going to listen to the radio, but we do have a crank-powered radio available to get important information if we need it.
Well, that was our winter storm experience. Our power DID finally come back on, and we DO love electricity. There are some things we still need to work on, but overall, the steps that we have been taking towards being prepared did pay off – the day was not too bad!
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