Even as I type these words tonight, thousands of people are still in the dark waiting for electricity to be restored. Back on Thursday, a severe ice storm swept up across the Northeast, hitting parts of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. Nearly half a million people lost power - and some more than that. Reports are that full restoration will not be finished until Wednesday or even later.
As the saying goes, shit happens. Especially weather shit.
Weather 'events' take place year round, so if everything is fine where you are, just remember that it's not your turn....yet. My power went out some time Friday morning. I didn't get it back till 7:45 Sunday night. In between were two nights of temperatures into the low 20's, and lower still for people farther north. I live in the capital region of New York, just outside of Albany. The last time I went through something like this was back in 1987, the "October Surprise" snowstorm that hit while the trees still had leaves on and really got crushed by snow. I didn't get my power back for a week then. It was only out three days this time, but in some ways it was worse. Follow me over the jump for more.
Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got till it's gone? It's so easy to ignore all of the things that make life go smoothly, not give them any thought until reality comes up with that ole bitch-slap to the face. That "no one could have known" excuse just doesn't cut it though.
Friday morning I woke up at 7:00 instead of my usual 6:00am aware that it was lighter than it should have been, and a lot quieter. I'd gone to sleep the night before with my fingers crossed because ice was already building up then, but I'd hoped we'd get lucky. Nope. No power. Needless to say, I called in to work explaining I wasn't coming in.
In the house I'm living in now, no electricity means no heat, no water, no lights, and - this is a critical item - no sump pumps in the basement. Having been through several power interruptions and basement floodings before, it's not something I wanted to ever do again.
We have a portable generator. We got it early this year just in case, because we knew it was inevitable we'd need it. I'd read the manual, and made a practice of starting it up every so often and letting it run for a while. In fact I'd fired up both it and the snowblower on Wednesday night to be ready just in case.
So, one of the first things I did was set the generator up outside on the front porch. (More on that below) I ran two extension cords into the basement and got the sump pumps going right away. After that, I ran another extension cord into the family room on the first floor through another window. That one was for things like the refrigerator or the TV.
We have a fireplace in the family room. We got a fire going shortly thereafter. We don't have a huge woodpile, but we have enough to get through a few days. That room quickly became the family gathering spot. My wife and son bedded down there at night with all the extra blankets; I toughed it out upstairs with the rest of the blankets. The first floor was about 58 degrees F the first day, and got down to 50 by Sunday. Upstairs went down to 41. The cat spent a lot of time close to us when he wasn't parked right in front of the fireplace.
With immediate steps taken, there was time to assess the larger situation. For one, it was still freezing rain outside. We live on a back road. We didn't know how bad it was at first, but reports from the TV suggested it was going to be pretty bad, and it might take a while to get power back. There was no traffic going by outside for a while - and the first vehicle I did see was a fire truck going slowly up the road.
I did a walk-around outside the house. We don't have any trees in position to fall on the house and do any serious damage, which is a good thing. There were plenty of downed branches. Ice had built up to a half inch thick on them. I carefully checked out the power lines to my house up from the neighborhood feeder, and found them okay. I got lots of pictures of crystallized trees - and debris.
Cooking was problematic - electric stove. However, we still had the propane barbecue grill set up in the back yard with a goodly amount of fuel in the tank. With a burner on the side, we could heat water - and I eventually figured out how to use the grill like an oven to heat up a frozen pizza. (Our freezer is out in the garage, so lack of power wasn't really a problem so long as it stayed cold.)
After a few hours, when I got an idea of how long gas was going to last in the generator, I ventured out for a supply run. The road had been salted, so ice wasn't a problem, but I did have to keep an eye out for downed trees and wires. At the far end of the road, a thirty inch thick tree had fallen over, and was hanging about two feet off the ground across a power line down hill from the road....
The shopping complex I was headed for was about 5 miles away, and fortunately had power. I picked up a couple of 5 gallon gas jugs, plus one more. I also picked up an electric heater, the oil-filled type. From there I ventured into a nearby town where my sister lives with her family. Their power was erratic (it'd go out later) but they are on city water so I was able to fill up that third jug with drinking water. From there I headed back home with one stop to fill the other two jugs with gasoline. (And that could have been a real problem if the gas station hadn't had power to run the pumps.)
From that point on, things settled in to a routine. We had flashlights and batteries, and several candles. (Not really the safest idea, but my wife is addicted to them.) I have plenty of camping gear, including a couple of Coleman lanterns and a bunch of backpacking stoves, plus the gas grill in the back yard. The generator provided enough power to keep a sump pump running in the basement, and the oil heater to keep things just warm enough so the pipes would be okay. I'd switch the other line between the refrigerator periodically and the TV. We all layered up with extra clothing. By Friday afternoon the freezing rain had pretty much stopped
While TV sounds like a luxury, it was actually a life line. It provided updates: how bad the weather was, how bad the overall situation was, how long recovery would take, where to go for help and shelter, and so on. We had battery operated radios too, including a weather radio, but really didn't need them so long as the TV was available. It provided entertainment - nothing like watching "The Three Amigos" while waiting out the cold. "It's a Wonderful Life" also proved to be incredibly topical this year - watching Mr. Potter demonstrate Republican economic theory while wondering how much longer we'd be able to stay in our own house was a bit too much to the point.
The television also provided a lot of practical safety information. Traffic lights were operating erratically. The rule of thumb was, treat every intersection where lights were out as a four-way stop, and avoid unnecessary travel. There were constant warnings about using generators properly - never set them up inside a garage or basement because carbon monoxide from them can be fatal. (It was for several people.) In fact several times we heard setting one on a porch like we had done was not a good idea - they should be kept as far away from the house as practical. In our case I figured we were okay because the windows we were using to run power cords through were a good distance away from the generator. Still, it's something to think about.
People rushing out to buy generators and kerosene heaters were cautioned to read the directions thoroughly before using them. Ditto for people getting chain saws to clear downed trees. There were constant warnings to treat all downed wires as "live" and to avoid them.
At one point our carbon monoxide alarm went off upstairs, followed by the smoke alarms. I think that may have been from some funky things happening with the electricity, because we were still getting a faint trickle of power for a while. Getting all of the alarms sorted out took some time, but we eventually decided things were okay. Still, having them was definitely a good thing.
Our house is a modular home, two stories with a full basement. Built in 1997, it's pretty well insulated. Between the fireplace and that, it didn't cool down too slowly but the trend was not good. For many people, one night of trying to camp out in a cold dark house was enough, and they went to emergency shelters that were opening up all over the place. People were asked to check on neighbors and the elderly if they thought they might be having trouble. My wife and son went elsewhere periodically; they had the option of going to a health club to warm up and shower. I stayed around the house for the most part keeping an eye on things.
By Sunday I was getting a bit tired of all this. Monday was looking good, with a forecast for the temperature to reach into the 50's, but we were a long way from there yet. Then things went downhill. At some point in the afternoon, the generator stopped putting out electricity. The gasoline engine was running just fine, but no juice! Crap!
After some frantic searching, I located the operating manuals. Not much help to be found there - and going to the company website for more information wasn't really an option. Neither was the 1-800 number outside of 'normal' business hours. Things had dried up enough by then that the sump pump probably wasn't needed, but with a thaw coming.....
Then at almost exactly 7:45pm the lights came back on.
I'm writing about this in the past tense, but for too many people it's still going on. There's a nasty snowstorm coming out of the midwest with a real cold wave behind it which is making life miserable for people out there. There may be more freezing rain tomorrow somewhere. Misery is going to get more company.
Lots of people had far worse times than we did. As I said, there were several fatalities. People suffered real damage. Some had basements flood when sump pumps stopped working. Others had flooding from broken pipes that had frozen and burst open. Fire departments were kept busy responding to homes where efforts to keep warm had tragically backfired.
One of the people I work with only made it in today. She and her husband just about killed themselves periodically bailing out their basement sump holes by hand. Eventually they gave in and got the Fire Department to pump them out a couple of times. Then, they were able to borrow a generator and things got better. As it happened, their church set up a generator swapping arrangement among the congregation so people who needed them took turns sharing them around.
One family shown on the news had no trouble at all after they lost power. They'd invested in a $7,000 system powered by a big propane tank that automatically kicked in 15 seconds after the power went down, and brought everything back up for them. Nice, if you can manage it.
Looking back now that I've begun to recover from the experience, there's a few things I'd like to see to before the next crisis. I'm definitely going to have to get the generator seen to, and find out why it packed in when it did. Having had the generator up and running before hand was definitely a good thing - but it would have been a lot more useful if I'd also had an electrician in to make arrangements. If I could have used the generator to run the furnace and the well pump, as well as the sump pumps and the refrigerator, everything would have been a lot easier. Having heat and running water would have made the lack of lights no big deal. Having some kind of small shelter for the generator away from the house would also be more mind-easing. I had enough gasoline on hand to get things going, but having had an extra jug or two already on hand would have been useful as well.
On the whole, the fireplace was useful, but nowhere near as useful as having a wood stove would have been. Most of the heat goes right up the chimney with a fireplace - a wood stove could have kept most of the house a lot more comfortable.
A few more observations:
• Have some duct tape handy, or painters tape. If you are going to be running power cords through windows, you want to be able to seal out the drafts. You may want to seal off rooms to conserve heat, too.
• If things are going downhill fast, and you think you may need help, don't wait until the last minute to call for it. Emergency responders are going to be swamped by a weather event like this. Give them time to make arrangements.
• If you lose running water, it doesn't hurt to have some drinking water already stored away. Don't forget, you'll also need water to flush your toilets. As it happened, I was able to use the water coming out of the sump pump for that by collecting it in buckets.
• Having food that doesn't need to be refrigerated can be a good thing. That's why canning was invented.
• If water is going to be in short supply, lay in a stock of paper plates, cups, plastic forks, etc. That way you don't have dirty dishes piling up in the sink. Getting a supply of wet wipes for hand washing is another way to save on water for washing.
• Don't leave pets out of your emergency plans! If you have to go to a shelter, you may not be able to take them with you. Several kennels were offering pet shelters for people who had to get them out of their homes - and it might be a good idea for emergency response planners to think about it ahead of time too.
• Phones. If you have electric phones (combined answering machine/wireless hand set) they may be useless with no power. A plain old phone that just plugs in to the phone line could be a life saver. Cell phones are good - if the cell phone system isn't knocked out - but you have to be able to charge them. A car charger can be a really good thing to have. UPDATE: Definitely look at the comment from G2geek about telephones, about the third comment down. He brings up some more info people need to know.
• Radio - do you have one that works without power? They're cheap enough to have one stored in a drawer somewhere. You can find a bunch that work on hand cranks, solar power, etc. Don't bother with the ones that also pick up TV channels - in another couple of months that won't work when all TV goes digital.
• Go to the light! Along with regular flashlights, it's now possible to get flashlights that work by shaking magnets inside them. They're also here, below the crank radios on this page. The one you may find the most useful, though, is the one that leaves your hands free. And, don't forget these! They're a lot safer than candles.
• Since you're reading this online, I assume you have some kind of computer. Is it backed up? Could you take the backups with you if you had to get out? Forget the Internet if your power goes out - unless you have a cell phone with net capabilities. Texting and Twitter could be a good way to keep in touch with others while you work on survival.
• Timing is everything. The time to start dealing with an emergency is before it happens. If you need a generator or a kerosene heater, buy them beforehand - and learn how to use them properly. Otherwise, you could find yourself standing in line waiting for a truck to come to in from 5 states away. See notes above about water, food - and don't forget batteries, flashlights, and first aid supplies.
• Practice. Think about what kind of emergency you could be facing, make plans, then test them. You really don't want to be making things up as you're going along. If your pipes are going to freeze for example, would you know how to turn off your water supply and drain them? What do you have on the floor in the basement that you really don't want to get wet? If you store things in cardboard boxes, well plastic totes hold up a lot better and they float.
• All of the above is mainly focused on what to do around the house. What do you have in your car that you might need badly some day? What do you need to get?
• Don't be a hero if you can avoid it. If you're getting in over your head, get help sooner rather than later.
• Try to keep a good attitude, or you may find that axe you're using to cut firewood seeking less appropriate targets. Cabin fever is no joke. Get out some board games, read that book you've never gotten to, or see if (given a willing partner) that one page of the Kama Sutra actually is feasible.
I don't pretend the above list is complete. If you have to deal with wild fires, mudslides, locusts, tornadoes, or hurricanes, your list will be different. But if there is one thing that the Boy Scouts of America got right, it's their motto: BE PREPARED!
UPDATE: Woot! - rescued!
If you missed this posting the first time around, there are some good points and stories in the comments. Feel free to add your own. And, as I suggested, you might want to add some survival stuff to your holiday gift giving. Everybody can use some kind of flashlight and first aid kit for their car, for example - if they don't have them already that is. Those hand crank radios and batteryless flashlights that work by shaking internal magnets are good to have in a drawer somewhere, along with some light sticks. Think about what you might need for your situation where you live - and one more tip: Make sure the rest of the people you live with know about this stuff and how to use it, because you might not be there when they need it.