Severe weather emergency supplies/plans

[devonpow]

Sort of? We have emergency bags with things like weather radios that you can crank and charge your cell phone, and canned goods and water etc. Heat is an issue - we can put batteries in our gas fireplace and use it for heat in the living room but that’s it (no generator etc). I think we rely a lot on the fact that we live in a city and the resources that provides (emergency shelters usually close by, easy walk to neighbors/hotels/stores erc) . Not exactly the best system.

[tiramisu]

I live in an apartment and have a gas stove with pilot lights, so no electric ignition. I'd still be able to cook, if I could stay in the apartment. I have a solar lantern, a flashlight, and headlamp. I also have a solar-powered cell phone charger, but I've never tried it to see if it works. I have some packets of water that are supposed to be equivalent to some larger amount of drinking water per day, but I've probably had them long enough that they need to be replaced. Cat carrier is easily accessible (where it wouldn't alert my cat that I'm getting it out), cat food is easy to grab, too. I have a tent in my trunk and a sleeping bag in my closet. That's about it. I also live somewhere that doesn't get too cold and my apartment seems to be pretty well situated to avoid flooding. I do need better prep for fires, though.

[moreace01]

For 17 years, I lived in apartments/condos in the city of Chicago. Stores were in walking distance. If our power went out, being in the city meant we got priority to getting it back on (the most I had ever gone was maybe 3-4 hours). And honestly, it was never much of a concern. The only time I ever freaked out was at the start of covid when I went to the store and shelves were emptied. Because I never had to be prepared before and didn't think it was a thing I needed to care about.

Now I live in the suburbs in a standalone house. With the extreme cold spell a few weeks ago, that was the first time ever in my life I had gone to the store and bought water and dry goods to get us through a few days. We do not have a generator. I have no idea what we would do if we lost power for a length of time. 

[jamaicam]

kinda?

We have a water tank so are set for water for a few days, up to a week if we are very careful. WEecook on gas (sorry!) so we can cook. WE do not have an electricity back up system but we can survive without for a few days - we have friends with generators who we can give my meds that need to be kept cold to. We have candles always for light!

Otherwise, at the start of the hurricane season, we get some drinking water and tinned foods in.

We also redid our roof recently and have nice new hurricane straps on it.

[abs]

I’m surprised by how many people aren’t prepared and don’t think about being without power. Is my anxiety that bad that we have multiple plans? Or has Houston broke me with our yearly once in a lifetime storms?

I mean 99% of the time we have zero power issues. But when we don’t it’s not fun. I didn’t actively think about it until Hurricane Ike in 2008 when we went 17 days without power. Now much you can do to plan for that beyond whole house generators.

[yellow23]

I keep several gallons of water on hand and we always have extra food I store in the basement, but I don’t specifically stock food for emergencies, we could go a week or two if needed on the non-refrigerated food we always have on hand. We have flashlights in pretty much every room and always have extra batteries. We have a gas stove/oven and gas fireplace, plus a grill if accessible. We have lived in our house for 17 years and have never lost power (lines are underground). We are at low risk for most natural disasters, but I know anything is possible.

Every few years there is a chance of a “major snow” or some other storm and I end up buying extra stuff, but it almost always misses us.

[redheadbaker]

We have non-perishabe food, a manual can opener, flashlights, battery-operated radio, and a first-aid kit.

If the heat goes out, our backup plan is "go to Mom's house."

[rubytue]

The biggest prep we are in the process of doing - we have solar going in sometime in the next few months. And while we did not get a sunlight backup system, we got the equipment that could do it. And, we are putting in a sub panel and have identified crucial circuit we want for that. So, in an emergency, we would only need power to the sub panel, which could be generator, solar battery backup, sunlight backup, or whatever seems appropriate. And we are designing to age in place, one of the circuit will be a clean line to the master bedroom, in case medical equipment is ever needed, plus fridge, and the electric component of the gas heating stuff (blowers). Oh, I think H wants to put one lighting circuit on it.

[penguingrrl]

We are generally at risk of weather emergencies that we have warning in advance for (hurricanes and snowstorms primarily), so I stock up on non perishable foods when we know one is coming, but don’t always have a stocked house as we tend to eat few non perishables on a regular basis. I often end up donating them to the local food pantry in the early spring then restock the next time there’s a risk. Same with bottled water, which we otherwise avoid.

We have a flashlight, a first aid kit, a manual can opener and a wood burning fireplace that will give some heat if we need in addition to a gas stove, so we’ll be able to cook even if the power’s out. We almost never use the fireplace, but keep wood around and have it checked annually for safety.

We’re lucky because we’re on the same line as the police station, fire house, and middle school, so we’re first priority for getting power back up in an emergency. The only time I remember an extended outage was after Sandy and that was about a week, but was before we were in our current house. In that situation, just going to someone else’s house or a hotel wasn’t an option because of how widespread the outage was, but we made it through and stayed safe.

[pixy0stix]

Jan 11, 2023 16:17:26 GMT -5 abs said:

I’m surprised by how many people aren’t prepared and don’t think about being without power. Is my anxiety that bad that we have multiple plans? Or has Houston broke me with our yearly once in a lifetime storms?

I mean 99% of the time we have zero power issues. But when we don’t it’s not fun. I didn’t actively think about it until Hurricane Ike in 2008 when we went 17 days without power. Now much you can do to plan for that beyond whole house generators.

I'm not sure how anyone in TX could live without multiple emergency plans surrounding power. I think you're justified. I just don't see how that grid is going to remain stable.

[waverly]

Jan 11, 2023 15:12:55 GMT -5 krystee said:

We are not highly prepared, but in Chicago, we don’t get hurricanes or gigantic blizzards (or if there is a blizzard, there’s also advance notice). If there was a tornado, we could walk to my parents’ house with a generator if we lost power and couldn’t drive around trees in the streets.

I think we should be more stocked with water, though.

I'm in the midwest also.  Snow storms are usually not a problem because they have equipment to clear them.  

I don't have a generator and that would be the main thing we might need.  But if the roads are drivable and the power outage is long, we could stay at a hotel or with others.  We do have a gas stove, camping stove for cooking.  We have city water.  We do have a fireplace but it doesn't put out that much heat.

Tornados are basically just take cover, and we are not in an area where we would be flooded.  Lots of rain in our yard could be a problem but we are on top of a hill, so we won't get super flooded.  

[rubytue]

I went through all of these power thoughts when we were researching solar. Everyone was all “we have a stable power grid on the east coast” and “we don’t have brown outs and such like the grid issues in the west.” To which I was all “sure, we don’t *now*, you are selling me a 30 year system. Which is, basically, the rest of my practical life, at least in this house. I want to build it for 15 years from now.”

[pixy0stix]

Jan 11, 2023 17:08:01 GMT -5 rubytue said:

I went through all of these power thoughts when we were researching solar. Everyone was all “we have a stable power grid on the east coast” and “we don’t have brown outs and such like the grid issues in the west.” To which I was all “sure, we don’t *now*, you are selling me a 30 year system. Which is, basically, the rest of my practical life, at least in this house. I want to build it for 15 years from now.”

Yeah, basically people plan for "right now" or based on historical data, but that's all out the window.

When the wildfire ripped through not mountain CO suburbia, we suddenly had a lot of neighbors interested in our metal roof because of it's fire protection. Historically, there was never any chance wildfire would come close to us. Now? Who knows.

[goldengirlz]

Jan 11, 2023 16:17:26 GMT -5 abs said:

I’m surprised by how many people aren’t prepared and don’t think about being without power. Is my anxiety that bad that we have multiple plans? Or has Houston broke me with our yearly once in a lifetime storms?

I mean 99% of the time we have zero power issues. But when we don’t it’s not fun. I didn’t actively think about it until Hurricane Ike in 2008 when we went 17 days without power. Now much you can do to plan for that beyond whole house generators.

Oh, the risk of losing power is ever-present with PG&E, which will preemptively cut power whenever there’s a risk of wildfires (often when I’m in the middle of a load of laundry or really need a shower 😖). I don’t think of that as “disaster planning” though. It’s just one of those annoyances we live with. So I guess that means we’re always prepared? As much as you can be for something like that …

[audette]

We are moderately prepped, but we could do better.

DH and I have talked about getting solar installed. And a battery, because why bother with solar without a battery, too...

But, doing so will likely require an overhaul of our electric system, and we are still working on higher priority projects on the house (we're barely over a year into ownership here).


Alternately, we have discussed a backup generator. We have had a couple power outages at the house since buying, which surprised us at first (buried lines in the neighbourhood, but... not _to_ the neighbourhood - one of those outages was because someone drove into a power pole, taking down the line that powered our whole neighbourhood for a handful of hours).

[DotAndBuzz]

We just had a whole house generator installed last year, so unless the gas supply gets cut, we should be ok.
We also have a reverse osmosis system, which I *think* would be able to supply our drinking water (truly don't know, will look it up), but I also have iodine/purification tablets stashed away somewhere. It's only for the kitchen sink (separate spout, not the regular tap/what I use to wash dishes, etc) and ice makers, but better than not having it at all?

Have high quality masks, batteries, nitrile gloves as well.

I remember buying 2 gallon jugs of water a looong time ago, so should probably refresh those just in case.

Thankfully we don't live in a high-frequency severe weather zone, so likelihood of loss of water is low. But power outages are getting really bad with worsening storms (winter and summer), so we got the generator for that.

[Jalapeñomel]

No, we aren’t prepared at all.

[docholly]

I actually have been reading Lights Out by Ted Koppel which discusses a power grid failure, so this has been on my mind.

We have...
Water
Canned food
A wood burning fireplace and wood/camp stove
crank radio
first aid kits
Flashlights 


I am looking into investing in a generator. In Ohio, the main weather threat is tornados/snow, but we are not in the snow belt.


I think it is good to be prepared for short-term emergencies even if unlikely.  

It's human nature to believe that since nothing has happened yet, nothing will happen... even despite warnings (normalcy bias).  

reboot-foundation.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-normalcy-bias/

[scm1011]

We have a wood burning fireplace and my DH hoards batteries but that’s about it. We don’t live in an area that loses power often - I honestly can’t recall a time in my adult life that we’ve lost power for longer than 30 minutes.

[heygrey]

Our biggest threat is wildfires and we are prepared with multiple evacuation plans and GO bags packed during peak months. We even have plans for if our house burned and we had to live elsewhere for a year+ while rebuilding.

We do not have adequate plans to shelter in place during an extended power failure, especially in the winter. We have food and means to cook outside (charcoal bbqs), we have cold weather camping gear and sleeping bags rated well below freezing, water, headlamps. We don’t have an alternative heat source if our furnace didn’t work. If it lasted more than a day we would go to a friend’s house with a wood burning fireplace.

[chickadee77]

Yes. I grew up in rural WI, so my pantry/freezer game is on as far as food goes, and we just moved from hurricane-land so we've had some practice.

We are in the process of moving to a very rural part of the world with extreme winters, and plan to have triple redundancy for everything as far as power goes. And wood if everything hits the shitter. We're even going through training for first aid and minor emergency stuff (stitches and the sort) because the road to the only hospital in the area tends to shut down due to wrecks periodically. There is a helipad in "town" for med evac, and a few local EMTs, but snowed in is snowed in - birds don't fly in a blizzard.

ETA Currently? We're good. We've been through extended power outages due to cold (have gas fireplace and a genny now) and heat (we keep outdoor sprinklers and again, genny). Food and meds stay stocked. We're actually the people others were contacting because they were running out of stuff, lol. I prep for a community 😀

[litebright]

I go through waves of prepper-obsession, so we are in pretty good shape. We bought a gas generator a couple of years ago when there was a multi-day power outage (we are on a well, so no power = no water), and a whole-house is on our list of big projects to do in the next few years. I made sure DH has a chain saw, I keep pretty extensive amounts of drinking water on-hand and I have two bins full of emergency gear and cheap backpacks with various things (OTC meds, contacts, toiletries, non-perishable snacks) plus we have a lot of good camping gear. My level of preparedness is: Happened to have a handful of N95 masks on-hand when covid initially hit (because they were on prep lists for fire or flood clean-up).

DH makes fun of my tendency to have back-ups for back-ups and attempt to plan for any contingency, but he didn't complain when me having a power inverter that we could plug into one of our cars and run extension cords to our fish tanks kept the fish alive before we got our generator.

Most of my prep is pretty run of the mill. I don't have a bucket of freeze-dried MREs or anything. But, um, I do have a few things in my stash like books on medicinal and edible wild plants of North America that would only be applicable if shit really HTF.

[macmars45]

We are most at risk for wildfires. Thankfully there is advance notice for that. We have our fire safe ready to go in an easily accessible place so we'd just need to pack clothes, meds and electronic chargers which could easily be done in 20 minutes or less.

If we were to get a blizzard/snowstorm and lost power for too long we'd need to leave. Everything is electric. Thankfully we have local family and a warming center isn't too far away.

A battery for our solar panels is in our 5 year plan. That would help if we lost power for an extended time.

[nothingcontroversial]

My biggest anxieties revolve around some sort of international or national crisis (hypothetical crisis) that leaves me without access to my blood pressure meds and / or CPAP supplies. For instance, a hypothetical earthquake, other natural disaster, another pandemic disruption, etc that causes supply chain issues.

A few years ago, I switched PCP's (new PCP was located closer to my office), and the new PCP called in a 3-month supply of blood pressure meds for me while I already had on hand 2 months of my previous prescription from my previous PCP. My employer had just switched carriers for prescription coverage, which is why my insurance didn't deny the refill.  The new PCP didn't realize that I already had 2 months of meds on hand; it was a miscommunication. So, ever since then, I have had between 2-5 month of blood pressure meds on hand at all times. 

As for my CPAP stuff, I use all of my masks, tubes, etc. for longer time periods than they are eligible to be replaced so that I can built up my "stockpile" of CPAP supplies in case something happens to the supply chain. For instance, the tubing is eligible to be replaced every three months, and I use the tube for longer than 3 months, but I still order a new tube once every three months so that I can have "backups." I do something similar with the face mask, mask pillows, etc.

I have a goal to purchase a CPAP battery this year so that I can power the machine if we lose power at our house. 

[erbear]

We have a lot of canned food and some water (and a gas mask courtesy of my crazy ass MIL but I can’t see why we would use it…). We live in a major city on a hill (so not too worried about flooding), we rarely get a lot of snow (not too worried about a blizzard), and we rarely lose power (underground lines, plus our grid is the fire station so it gets restored pretty quickly).

[bee20]

I'm one of the "my gas stove and fireplace insert are part of my preparedness plan" for cold weather. Hopefully by the time gas is sunset we'll have good all-electric options but it has been helpful in multiple power outages in this house.

I live in earthquake country where authorities recommend 2 weeks of food and water. Luckily I live in a house and can keep jugs of water stashed in a few places, I have heard under the stairs is most likely to stay solid after a quake so I have a cache there with some important items. I also have backpacking/camping gear I use regularly but also can keep me warm, sheltered, and fed to below freezing temperatures. If my house is leveled and I get out with just myself, I have friends a few miles away and will start walking, we've all agreed on one house to meet at if it goes full apocalyptic. They have a manual well and chickens.

Due to the hiking I have a satellite communicator which is nice for if the cell lines are jammed but is expensive if you are only planning emergency use. The cell phone manufacturers are hinting at putting this in new phones so hopefully it becomes a more everyday option.

On the cheaper end, I have an inverter I can plug into my cigarette adapter which essentially turns my car engine into a small generator. It won't cover my whole house but keeps electronics charged and will run the electronics on my gas water heater so I can have hot showers. This has come in VERY handy for longer power outages that happen in the spring and fall here.

[arehopsveggies]

Our biggest risk would be wildfire, but we are on the side of town farthest from trees so I think we would have decent warning.

We have a generator and lots of canned food and dehydrated food.
We have a wood stove if needed for heat.
If we kept power, we probably have a year of food. Not a year of quality food we would be shoot with, but not starving to death

We have a propane stove in the camper and could cook on that. Also that fridge runs on propane so we could keep small amounts of food in there with a power outage

[arehopsveggies]

We have rain barrels, but I’m not good at keeping enough drinking water stocked

[UMaineTeach]

We are moderately prepared. We have diverse heat sources, would always like to add maybe solar, wood, heat pump, but we have propane, pellets, and oil. Propane will run without electricity.

We have a generator with a transfer switch, so it’s not permanent and automatic, but after you get it out it plugs into the house. It isn’t big enough to do the whole house, but it does the furnace, pellet stove, half the kitchen circuits, the den TV, bathrooms, and upstairs lights.

DH has some sort of system for fresh gas rotation in portable cans for the generator and snowblower. Propane is on auto delivery. Fuel oil is not. Some years we buy pellets a few tons at a time and other years 5-10 bags at a time. This year we are trying to burn pellets more than the oil.

We lack “go bags” and food. I’d never remember to rotate the go bags and end up with a size to small shorts and sunscreen in February. We have some pantry food, but it’s not like I have a food plan or extra drinking water.

We are on town water, but if we weren’t a well pump would be the first thing to be on the generator transfer switch. We also live near a hospital, which seems to get our power on more quickly than other neighbors.

[basilosaurus]

SS? Currently nothing. I have passport always on me. I have nothing else to really worry about. I've already lost so much for non weather situations. Also there's pretty much never any extreme event where I am currently.

When I grew up in hurricane country the family had multiple page checklists for hurricane prep. It was detailed in what you do 3 days ahead up to point of evacuation.

I should have had plans when living in earthquake country. I did not.