Questions for the Group - Yes, I mean you

Today our power transformer made a huge boom and four houses in my urban neighborhood were without power.  Yes, mine was one of them.

 

And it made me realize I’m not as ready as I should be and maybe not as ready as I use to be.  First the two of us at home got out flashlights.  The flashlights were in place (next to the fuse box) and had working batteries.  And yes, I have some spares (about 30), but we did use up some over the holidays and haven’t replaced them.  Must buy batteries.  I realized just how dark our house is without power – really dark.  And this is during the day!

 

So, when the boom happened, I was making my morning tea.  Must have caffeine!  So, I took my teapot out to the gas grill.  Oh yea, the starter on the grill doesn’t work any more and now we are throwing matches in the gas to start it.  Yikes!  That’s quite the blast when it does light.  Must fix starter and buy more propane.

 

So, right off the bat there are two things that weren’t so good for me – the grill and not having enough batteries.  Also, some of the food in the basement is expiring and/or getting stale.  The truth is we don’t eat some of the stuff we stock.  We eat fresh fruit/vegetables and protein.  So, canned beef stew and powdered eggs are great to have in hand – but we simply aren’t rotation our stocks and they are going bad.

 

So my question to the group is – if it hit tomorrow, would you be ready?  What are you missing?  What needs to be fixed?  Are you more or less ready than a year ago?  Have you had a trial run?

 

Happy 2008 everyone

Gexydaf wrote:    So, when the boom happened, I was making my morning tea.  Must have caffeine!  So, I took my teapot out to the gas grill.  Oh yea, the starter on the grill does work any more and now we are throwing matches in the gas to start it.  Yikes!  Thats quite the blast when it does light.  Must fix starter and buy more propane.

I have a lot of candles, oil lamps/oil/wicks, lighters, and hand crank flashlights. I moved away from propane (although I have a couple of stoves and two lanterns that use it, and I'll get at least a couple of 20lb bottles and adapters when I can afford them) and invested in some dual fuel equipment. On the downside they put out a lot of carbon monoxide so they have to be used in a well ventilated area. The advantage is that they run economically on unleaded gas. And once the callous develops on your thumb, it's not that big of a deal to pump them up every so often
    
    

We have had two power outages in the last year, the most recent with the ice storm. We did ok, although there are a few things I would like to add to my stockpile like more matches, I thought we had alot, but when you go around lighting candles and oil lamps, gas heaters, etc. it wasn't uncommon to use 10-15 at a time (went out to fast, going to burn your fingers, went out on it's own, etc.) I also realized I needed more lamp oil, I only have 3-4 bottles and I had never actually used  the lamps I had, I had filled them, but never tried them (bought the lamps at Walmart $4.99). Hubby realized he would now like to have a generator, so will be looking into that in the next couple of weeks after the holidays.  I also realized we were down to only 2 working flashlights, we had several that have been misplaced and a couple more that have been broken over the past year. Fortuantely we were given a NICE set of 3 flashlights for Christmas, will still pick up a couple more. And more batteries, we have been using them in remotes, MP3's, portable CD players, etc. I need to stock more pet food, I have been holding off on this because of the space it takes up though. Our dogs eat 25 lbs a week and our cats eat 18lbs a week. We do eat what we stock with the exception of some canned ham, spam (not alot) and canned potatoes, I figured we would eat those if necessary, I was just looking for a little variety as it seems like we have alot of the same items. I guess I would not be ready without one last trip to the store. I need to get back to being ready, as my "last trip to the store" was going to be optional and just for fresh items that we could do without if necessary.