September is National Preparedness Month in the United States. While we should be prepared all year long, it never hurts to be reminded.
I thought I'd share a personal story. A few years ago, we had a major hurricane come through the Houston area. Hurricane Ike. We thought we were prepared and we had the mindset that 'hey, in a day or so, everything would be back to normal'. It wasn't a category 4 or 5 so we weren't worried about damage to the house but we vastly underestimated how quickly things would bounce back.
The night it hit (why do they always seem to hit at night?) was definitely intense. We could hear the house creaking and more than a couple large objects struck the house. You could hear the explosions of transformers as they went out and if you braved glancing out the window, you could see purple and green flashes in the sky as they exploded from downed power lines. The power finally went out about 1am. Quick, grab the radio. Here it is. Oh wait, the batteries are old, go get some more. Where are they? In a box in the cabinet above the washer. Where is the flashlight? It's in the drawer in the bathroom. If I need the flashlight to find the batteries, how do I find the drawer in the dark without a flashlight? Fumbling around, we found it and thankfully, it had fresh batteries. We got the batteries in the cabinet and we had 9 volts galore. And C's. And D's. We were good to go! Oh wait, the radio takes AA's. Oops. The radio lasted about two hours, just long enough to be so exhausted we dozed off listening to it. Radio was really dead the next morning. It was sunny and calm (the 'after' in hurricanes is weird like that, clear skies and widespread damage). We had no power of course. Tree branches were everywhere. A huge six foot long piece of sheet metal from who knows where was in the backyard (decapitation if you were outside anyone?). There was also a gouge in the wooden siding about 2 inches from the window behind the bed headboard. It was from a section of metal gutter that came from a building about 2 blocks away. Glad we didn't have glass raining down on us (don't sleep near a window in a major storm, better yet, maybe don't sleep till it's over).
The house was getting warm. No windows open of course (old house, windows painted shut, haven't worked in years) and no fans to create a breeze. Power will be back on by night, we were sure of it. Oops, can't go to work because power is out there as well. A city of several million people and at one point, 90% of the city had no electricity. Most stores had no power, food was going bad and being thrown away. Gas stations had no power, no one could get gas. No ice. Oh how we missed ice. ATM's down, hard to get cash. Word of mouth says there is an ATM somewhere with power. Or a gas station with power but lines around the block. Night was dark. Very dark. And quiet. Eerily quite. I got my Dad's pistol and kept it loaded and handy...you know, just in case. Oh wait, there is only half a box of bullets left. None for the rifles. I better be a good shot if necessary.
Day two we saw helicopters flying over. The Governor. His helicopter surrounded by black helicopters. Rumor had it the President was with him as well. FEMA came into town and set up stations around the city. There was one in our neighborhood on the third day. They handed out water, bags of ice (that quickly ran out) and food. We drove over to the FEMA station and waited in line to get a case of bottled water and a box of MRE's. The National Guard, with guns in hand of course, were standing around telling people to move quickly through the line. Yes sir! All in all, it went smoothly and I'll have to admit, it was much more well organized than we expected. Thankfully, people behaved themselves. It was definitely interesting, if not a bit "twilight zone-ish".
By day five, I told 2nd Man I felt like we were in one of those bad end of the world movies. Soldiers, helicopters, lines of people, damage everywhere and hot. Very hot. This was early September on the Gulf Coast. It was hot and humid. I'm here to tell you that no matter how much clothing you take off, if you're still hot, you're still hot, even when naked (TMI?). Even the cats were wondering what was going on. Gradually, power came back to parts of the city. Some stores reopened including a Target down the road from us. It was nice to go in and be cool. But they were out of most food. Trucks were coming but they weren't due for a few more days.
About a week in, we had done a lot of cleaning...cleaning out the upright freezer in the garage that was fully stocked with meat, veggies and other items before the hurricane. Cleaning out the refrigerator/freezer in the kitchen of everything that we had. Trash cans outside were full of rotting food but the appliances were clean and like new. Only without food. You know, like showroom new. We did learn that MRE's don't taste all that bad.
FIFTEEN DAYS LATER...the power came back on at the house...
and things slowly returned to normal.
That's a reason, a small reason, but a reason nonetheless, that we bought the farmhouse and land..it gives us what some might call a "bug out location" but what we call "our farm". It's far enough inland that when a major hurricane is headed to Houston we can go there before for safety or after for the same reason. Thankfully, we don't have horrible winters (very cold on occasion, but never blizzards). We can and do have tornadoes on occasion. We also live in a high profile major US city that, unfortunately, is surely high on a terrorist target list. We are also a very international city, and if anything like a virus came to town via an international flight, it would spread rapidly.
So being self reliant/self sufficient is vitally important.
We are more prepared now. We are stocking food at the farm (as well as extra in town) but we do need more. We're saving seeds. We have a well so water shouldn't be a problem but we do have about an additional 30 gallons of drinking water stored if necessary. We can always have more. We keep our cars filled with gasoline as often as we can, especially if something is brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. The windows open at the farm, yay that's a plus! We are looking into generators so we can have one in town and one at the farm. We have batteries, lots of them, at both places. Some medical supplies but we need more. We keep cash on hand in case we need it. We have a few large oil lamps that work and a few more than we still need to fix up. We have plenty of candles. And matches. And at the farm we are stocking up on non electric kitchen tools and gadgets. Oh yeah, and bullets. We have bullets now.
If we ever have to leave Houston quickly and go out to the farm, we can load up the cars with supplies we have in town, grab the cats and live out there for any length of time necessary. We learned, and are still learning, how bad it can be (and how it could be even worse than that). We know what we need to do to keep some semblance of a normal life at the farm and we'd like to think that the goodness in humanity will ultimately prevail in any outcome.
So please be prepared, wherever you are. Think about what you'd have to do if you didn't have power for an extended period of time. Or you had to evacuate. Or if there was a storm coming and you couldn't leave the house.
How about you...how well are you prepared?
Any tips or suggestions?
