Are YOU prepared for ten days?

Codger_64 said:
Some good answers and suggestions here Quiet Bear. But I have to ask...

what about Mrs. Sturtavant who lives a few doors down? She is eighty and has trouble maintaining her body heat when all is going well. Her family all lives out of state. Are you prepared to take her in too and see to her needs?

And Polly and her three kids who live at the end of the block. They've struggled since Tom shipped out with his squad and there is no way she is prepared. Are you willing and able to care for her and hers too?

You see, THIS is where the rubber meets the road. Will you just draw the curtains and not answer the door or will you go knocking on doors checking on neighbors? Are you just preparing to warm and feed yourself, or are you preparing to be a light?

Codger
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We dont have icestorms or cold those extremes
but when we have storms and power outages , my family has been looking out for the oldies on our street and the ocasional young single mum who move in the street for a while , clearing fallen trees , house repairs , making sure they got food and drink and bringing the ones who are having serious problems into our home for the duration .

BUT

we dont make a big fuss about it , we just do it quietly . We dont pretend we are any charity or agency that has back up , just a friendly helping hand if its needed .

it get bleeding annoying at times , our home is small and it happens that oldies want to be helpful but are slow on their feet and at times unsteady , it can get frustrating .

over the last couple years we have slowly bought for our pet oldies single burner gas camp stoves , and a couple packs of gas canisters to run them , and other gear to help them manage with no power , squeeze it torches , led lights , small car batteries , solar trickle charger and smallish inverter for running a nebuliser machine etc

saves us hassles for small outages , we have been slowly getting them kited out with bug out bags / emergency bags , the storms we have been having are heaps stronger than usual and Im seriously expecting houses here to loose roofs and other damage , if one of our oldies cops it , they can just grab their bag and go , at least they are less of a load on whoever they end up with , or hopefully able to take care of their own needs if they end up in a evac shelter .

In away , its making my life easy , I dont have the worry now about my friends that I used to have , kinda consience balm I guess , they feel more prepared and able to deal , thats a HUGE improvement on a oldie freaking out doing a helpless act .

Its had a bit of a domino effect too , the oldies I care for have their own kids grand kids and great grand kids , some of these are catching on to the more practical ideas as the back up gas stove , spare bottled water and stash of extra food .

its not huge things , its little things , maybe $50 a month kind of financial investment , over the last 7 years or so but in real terms , we are seeing pay offs that I never figured on seeing , in friends , the things the oldies teach me and the kids in my care that we wouldnt have learned about any other way .


thats my story anyway :)
 
naked,
if you have a basement with a room in it that would be the easiest room to keep warm, below grade.
The ice has knocked out power to a lot of people here in mid-mo, i am not one of them so far.
Last winter, we got it good, I was out for 3 days, that would not have normally been a problem, except I was on crutches. So loading the wood furnace and gassing up the genny was out.
I just hung out in the bedroom with candles for light and ate MRE's til the waterbed cooled off then went to a buddy's with power.
This winter I'm good to go.
 
On the topic of helping the neighbors- who knows all of theirs? I purposely do not know many of mine- only the couple who lives due South of us- and neither has been into the others house. Why- cause when you know your neighbors they eventually piss you off and I have seen others come to a very bad place in short order as a result of getting too close with those that live near you. If you don't know your neighbors then there is less pressure to help out when you should be worrying about your own.

10 days should be OK- I have a Coleman stove, and a propane BBQ. We have full cupboards, a 12 pack of bottled water (given to us and saved for emergency purposes- -I refuse to buy water). If all else fails there are many rabbits around! For heat we all have camping gear that we would use outside right? Then use it inside if you have to. The major change we would do is have our daughter sleep between us.
 
Our house was built like a wedge laid on its side - classic "salt box." Fireplace is in the "cutting edge" at the low end so the heat rises through the house to the bedrooms on the partial second floor. Those pioneers knew what they were doing. (Also built on high ground, as those pioneers did = no need for sump pumps.)

Lots of insulation.

We have had power outages from minutes to a week in the eleven years out here in the xerbs. Never got through six months without at least one outage. Fortunately, the longest ones have not been in winter, but a three-day outage was and several 24 hr+. The biggest pain is getting up to keep the fire going.

The gas stove could help some. It works without electricity, but I hate to use an unvented flame too much.

There is not one public water source in our 36 sq. mi. township, but we have a creek and multiple filters.

We do our best to take care of the young ones in the neighborhood during outages - the 30 and 40-somethings. Having lived so little, they do get flighty and upset when the juice goes off and they have to use buckets to flush (had to teach them how ["Can you do that?"]). Also "No, it's a bad idea to run your generator in the attached garage." But I fugure it's worth the trouble in order to keep the youngies alive to continue civilization when all the experienced adults die off.
 
The longest I have ever been w/o power was 2 weeks. And besides dealing with the lack of power we also still had to work every day.

The hardest part was bathing and watering the animals because we had to carry about 15 gallons 300 yards to the animals every day after work, since the pump runs on electric we had to use our well that has a hand pump on it.

Nowdays we have "city" water that is not dependant on our power supply. But we still have our 2 wells and 1 spring too.

On the agenda is still harnessing a spring above the main barn and piping it down so we don't have to fill the watering buckets every day. The buck pen already has a spring fed stock tank so we are good to go there:thumbup:
 
My neighbor,after Katrina,was running all over looking for water.I reminded him to look in his back yard.He had a 20,000 gallon swimming pool.Dummy.Arnold
 
SDS said:
If you do start "prepping" I highly recommend not telling anyone. You'll get that "well I know where we are heading if things go bad" line from everyone you know. And you know what? They will head to your place. Help where you can but make sure your family is taken care of first. If no one else knows about your preps then YOU get to decide who, and when to help.
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Not around here. We're in earthquake country and pretty much the entire neighborhood knows they're on their own for some amount of time if everything falls down. I don't know anyone who isn't prepared for at least 3 days without services.

But when I get that "I know where I'm heading" line, I just point out that I have children to protect, I'm armed, and I won't be too upset about what happens to looters if the big one hits.
 
tobyrogers said:
My neighbor,after Katrina,was running all over looking for water.I reminded him to look in his back yard.He had a 20,000 gallon swimming pool.Dummy.Arnold
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Swimming pools are a bad source of drinking water. Heavy metals and lots of noxious chemicals. It's way better to have drinking water stored away somewhere.

The swimming pool is good for flushing the toilet. And when the looters come demanding water, you can let them take from your pool too. :D

All of this reminds me, I really need to rotate my stored drinking water.
 
I think it would be easier for me to winterize my home and head for my RV to live out 10 days. If we were talking Ice and cold weather, it's much easier to heat a 32 foot camper rather than a 2600sq. ft house. I would just have to take the food from the house and head to the storage yard. Thats my plan.

Paul.
 
Thats what I had in mind.Drinking water should be rotated ever so often.I caught amoebic dysentery from a bad jug.Thats no fun.Arnold
 
This thread has been really informative. I copied and pasted many of the things on here and then printed them out. I have heard the thing about putting a few drops of bleach in drinking water that you are going to store for a long time. What I'm wondering is, is the water still safe to drink afterwords?
 
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