It's unlikely we will lose power, or gas, or water, but it is not impossible. One car sliding on icy roads could knock down a power pole in the neighborhood and shut us off for a while. Without electricity, the well wouldn't pump water. If the gas went out for some reason, we'd need ways to cook and stay warm. We want to be prepared for all possibilities for the storm. Here are our contingency plans.
Food/Water
We have some water bottles so we would have enough to drink, prepare food, and clean up in the kitchen. Food in the refrigerator and freezer will stay cold for quite a while provided the doors are not opened often. If it looked like power would stay out for a long time, we'd probably move those items we want to access easily (such as drinks) into an ice chest to minimize opening the fridge. I've got frozen water bottles, cold packs, and ice in the freezer to help keep everything chilled.
We can make easy meals with the fresh perishable items in the fridge, canned goods, emergency food (Clif bars), and dehydrated food. Since the sun won't be out for the next three days at least, solar cooking is not an option. We'd have to use our little propane camp stove for cooking, which would mean preparing foods that cook really fast - like the dehydrated stuff. Not all that exciting, but nutritious and easy to swallow when you're already accustomed to a plant-based diet. (No, we don't have any beef jerky or Spam in our emergency pantry.)
Instead of heating water multiple times, I'd use the thermos to keep water hot for drinks and maybe the retained heat cooking basket to keep a pot of wash-up water warm.
The dogs would notice no changes in an emergency, except we might cuddle up to them a little more to keep warm.
Staying Warm
Speaking of staying warm, if we lost gas during this storm, we would get rather chilled. The high on Friday will not be that much above freezing all day. I suspect we'd be putting on multiple layers to keep warm pretty quickly, along with scarves, knit caps, and gloves. We've got quilts to huddle under, and will probably pile those up on the bed for nighttime. Somewhere I have a hot water bottle that I should dig out that we could also use to keep toes warm. I don't think it will be cold enough to necessitate this, but one way to sleep warm in a freezing house is to erect a tent inside the house and have everyone sleep inside the tent. The trapped body heat creates a nice little warm zone. Considering how much Angel farts, though, I'm not sure I'd be too eager to share a tent with her...
Keeping Entertained
There are some people that I would not want to be around if the power went out. They are so dependent on electronic devices - that need to be charged occasionally - that they might go batshit crazy if they had to go cold turkey on a tech-free life. Luckily, I am not one of those people nor is my sweetie. We'd be perfectly contented to read a book during daylight hours and play games by oil lamplight in the evening. We also picked up a few jigsaw puzzles today at the used bookstore. I could work on one while he plays his mandolin. We also have hand-crank flashlights that can be used for reading at night as well as a hand-crank radio for entertainment.
The Bathroom
Okay, we've covered eating, staying warm, and keeping entertained. At some point, someone is gonna have to pee. Got that covered, too. It's been a long time since we've gone camping, but we still have our camping portapottie. It uses very little water and can hold quite a lot. Now I know what you're thinking: "It's cold, Chile's gonna be drinking hot cocoa and tea to stay warm, so she's gonna be peeing a lot. Isn't her camping toilet gonna fill up really fast?"
There are ways to deal with this potential problem, my doubting friends. One is to pee in a bottle (males) or margarine tub (females), and then go dump the urine into the compost bin. It's perfectly safe and will actually heat up the pile during the cold weather. The other option is to set up a sawdust (or peat moss or coco coir) bucket that is used for urination only. To do so, you're supposed to start with a good base of sawdust and toss in a little more for cover material after each use. When full, dump in the compost bin. Again, perfectly safe for your compost and a good solution for an emergency. (For fun reading, check out Liquid Gold on using urine as a fertilizer.)
For the bulkier bathroom deposits, the camping toilet is a must as we do not have a humanure composting system set up. Conservative use of TP would help extend the capacity of the portapottie tank. (If also used for urination, cloth wipes would help tremendously to reduce the paper bulk in the tank.)
Showers and baths would obviously not be an option if the well pump shut off, so a very low water "spit bath" would be necessary. We're used to those so it would not be a hardship at all. Washing hands throughout the day will use some water but we've also got the alcohol hand sanitizer as a waterless option.
I'd prefer to have more laundry clean than I do presently, but in an emergency, I'm not going to worry about whether my jeans are a little dirty. I have enough clean underwear and socks to make it for a few days at least, so I'm not going to panic over some dirty clothes.
Transportation
We don't plan on going out during the storm since we have the supplies we need at home. In case of an emergency, however, we do have a full tank of gas in the vehicle, our bikes, and our feet. I'd prefer to avoid the roads when they are wet, snowy, or icy, especially since people are still driving crazy for the holidays.
Have I missed anything? The snow won't start until tomorrow so I still have time for a little more prep.
5 comments:
Chile. Why don't you take advantage of the close to freezing weather and move most of your refrigerated foods/water to doubled cardboard boxes outside? They would retain the cold and certainly make it through the next few days intact. You could save quite a bit of stuff that way.
Moving on to bulky effluence... If you have newspapers or old magazines, you could make deposits on same (privately, of course), then roll all contents into a tight tube to be burned, later, outside. Primitive; but, it works...
Hang in there... out snow was gone almost completely, next day. 8-( Gotta move fast, if you want pix of snow here...
It is so important to be prepared- I don't worry about a porta pottie so much as I can head out to the back forty an pee on the compost pile. I keep the pantry stocked with easy to cook vittles (ramen noodles, dehydrated and canned veggies) Make sure all my emergency lights are charged- this includes the solar charged lights. Since my Suzuki doesn't have a radio my solar powered one is in the window-And i make sure to have dog and kitty food on hand. They get hungry in a storm as well.
Sounds good. All we need at present is umbrellas - its been raining off and on for a week!
All our veg seeds are up in the garden and the potatoes look great. We should get carrots and parsnips and leeks too along with peas and beans.
I'm hoping the sweetcorn in eldests plot actually make it as he has looked after them and deserves some return.
Hope the storm isn't too bad,
viv in nz
Since we have power outtages on a regular basis, we are usually pretty well prepared whenever it happens and, since we have a wood cookstove - that also heats the house - cooking food and heating water is not a problem.
We usually run off a few large buckets of water and/or fill the bathtub up beforehand to flush the toilet (we are also on a well so no water would pump.) If you follow the "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down" rule, you can usually get by with flushing only once or twice a day and if you pour it directly into the bowl, it doesn't take much, especially if you have a low-flush toilet. Even if you don't, it doesn't take much.This is what everyone around here does.
Of course, we usually have a fair amount of snow that can be brought into the house and melted on aforementioned woodstove. If it's raining, set your buckets outdoors.
Good luck, Chile. After four Nor'easters in four weeks I am storm weary so I really sympathize with anyone having a storm. Today is brilliantly sunny and the clean white snow, blue skies and snow covered evergreens are beautiful. I am going to soak it in before the next Nor'easter hits.
Sharlene - yeah, if we lose power, it did occur to me that outside would keep the refrigerated foods cold. Cardboard would not survive, though, as it's wet out, but I do have an ice chest here and a couple of 18 gallon plastic totes.
Um, your suggestion sounds interesting but wouldn't the burning smell stink?
Rob - I don't want to trek through the mud to get to the compost bin. (It rained an inch!) We got everything charged up last night just in case. And, of course, we keep enough dog food on hand for our pooches!
Viv - yeah, we needed umbrellas until just a few minutes ago when the rain and sleet finally switched to snow.
Your garden sounds great! We have *nothing* ... well, other than some really leggy lettuce starts in the house that are suffering from lack of sunlight.
Olivia - we're generally pretty prepared, but just got everything together for convenience.
We'd have to have a lot of spare water for flushing by bucket as we eat a high-fiber diet and certainly need to get rid of browns more than once a day! Frustratingly, too, that time of month has coincided with the storm. So far, though, no outages of power, gas, or water.
We're likely to only get a dusting of snow and instead be dealing with mud from all the rain. When the excavators did their work, they seem to have brought more clay up to the surface as our yard and driveway are much muddier (instead of good draining sandy soil) than they used to be. :(
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