The big blackout. What worked. And was needed. A good lesson in urban survival.
So, it's been three days since the big line of thunder storms wiped out the power grid here in the Washington D.C. suburbs. We live about 30 miles north of D.C., and the power just came back this morning. No lights, air conditioning, stores closed, and gas stations not pumping. This has been a good preview of a breakdown, and what worked and what didn't.
Lights. Small efficient personal lights worked the best. The better half and I had Fenix EO-1's on a lanyard around our necks, and they were handy as a thumb. Good light, long run time, and very small, small enough that it was always used. We had bigger more powerful lights on hand, but I discovered a weird parallax. The more powerful lights were a pain in the butt as they washed out to much night vision and the glare of things in close quarters like on a basement shelf, made them not as good as the little EO1's. They gave too much light. When it's really black type of dark, like a power outage, there is a valid thing as too much light. The little Fenix let me find things on a basement shelf and lit up the room well with very long run times. The single AAA battery has been in use every night since Friday night, and is still running strong with no changing.
REI ( hour emergency candles. These things are great. A good light with no smell, and very slow burn rate.
Camp stove. I'm glad that when age and arthritis made me give up backpacking, I kept some things for emergency use. Things like my old Optimus 8R stove. It was nice in a total power outage to get up in the morning and make a pot of fresh coffee. Strange how little things can mean a lot. Our new state of the art coffee maker was useless as teats on a boar hog, but the old dented and beat up percolator coffee pot up in the attic was a great thing to have.
Saws and rope. We had a lot of downed trees and tree limbs in the road. Our little neighborhood has one road in or out, and a huge tree fell blocking any coming or going. A couple of us had manual saws, and sawed off the biggest of the limbs, and then used ropes to tie to the tree and the front framework of the cars to drag it out of the way enough to get a lane open.With 100 degree temps it was too darn hot to swing a ax, so the saw was easier. I had a Sven saw and a larger bow saw that went through wood like a beaver on crack. Big teeth for fast cutting. Another neighbor had a hand saw and we managed to saw off enough limbs to get it to where our cars could move the tree. A Toyota Corolla and a Honda Element side by side had enough oomph to drag it about 45 degrees to open the road.
Water containers. Jugs. Montgomery county was under a tight water restriction because the water plants did not have power to fully function. We were told via news on the radio to not even flush the john after every use. Bath tubs were filled as well as any plastic jugs around, used bleach bottles to milk jugs in the recycle bin. I'm going to put some water jugs in the attic for filling in emergency use. Bottle water sold out fast in the stores, and Saturday morning we drove the 30 miles up to Middletown Maryland to the Safeway there that was untouched. We stocked up on cases of water to take home as well as fill up the cars gas tank since they had gas up there. Which brings us to;
Gas. It was good that we had some small gas efficient cars to run errands. Most of the gas stations were closed due to no power to pump the gas. the few that has some power due to the luck of the grid pattern, quickly sold out what they had with lines down the block. Some fights even broke out when people tried to jump the gas line. And this was a small local event. A small glimpse of how people will react if it got really bad. For a few days there, there was not any open gas stations, and some people ran out of gas and had to leave their cars where they stopped. Karen and I decided not to use our cars unless it was dire emergency, and I siphoned off a couple gallons from my truck and put a gallon or so in each of our two Vespa motor scooters. With 80 mies per gallon, it gave us ability to run a lot of short errands using very little fuel. My neighbor borrowed the siphon to get some gas out of his Ford Explorer to put in his wires Honda Civic and used that for shopping.
Small battery radio. With no TV or internet, we had to go back to 1950's tech with the small AA powered radio. We got local news stations that gave us the low down, location of places to get ice, open gas stations, etc.
Canned goods. Easiest to warm up and eat, can be prepared with small camp stove, sterno stove, hobo stove, Weber grill, any other heat source. No extra water needed to cook, and in the heat that was good. Canned soups helped keep hydrated as well as drinking lots of water. The stores ran out of ice fast, and it was impossible to save the food in the fridge. Our neighbors all dragged out the Webers to the front and we had a block party. Any kind of meat from the freezer or fridge got grilled in the belief that cooked meat lasts better than raw meat. Between us all ,we had a feast of hamburgers, hot dogs, pork chops, salmon, chicken, we even grilled lunch meats. The whole little neighbor hood dragged out stuff from the kitchen and cooked it on the grills out front, and passed stuff around since we figured we were going to loose most of it in the heat anyways. There was even fried baloney sandwiches for the kids of all ages. Since we got some bags of ice, we had cold brew skies in the coolers. Since ice was so limited, we all decided to cook the meat and chill the beer. Even in an emergency you have to keep some priorities strait.
The biggest thing was how flat footed we were caught. This was not a hurricane, an earthquake, or nuke. It was just a line of freak thunder storms with unusual winds in a strait line event that clobbered our infrastructure and sent us back to a post apocalypse type of survival mode for a few days. It was a wake up as to what we need to keep on hand, and it high lighted what weak points we had in our homes.
So, it's been three days since the big line of thunder storms wiped out the power grid here in the Washington D.C. suburbs. We live about 30 miles north of D.C., and the power just came back this morning. No lights, air conditioning, stores closed, and gas stations not pumping. This has been a good preview of a breakdown, and what worked and what didn't.
Lights. Small efficient personal lights worked the best. The better half and I had Fenix EO-1's on a lanyard around our necks, and they were handy as a thumb. Good light, long run time, and very small, small enough that it was always used. We had bigger more powerful lights on hand, but I discovered a weird parallax. The more powerful lights were a pain in the butt as they washed out to much night vision and the glare of things in close quarters like on a basement shelf, made them not as good as the little EO1's. They gave too much light. When it's really black type of dark, like a power outage, there is a valid thing as too much light. The little Fenix let me find things on a basement shelf and lit up the room well with very long run times. The single AAA battery has been in use every night since Friday night, and is still running strong with no changing.
REI ( hour emergency candles. These things are great. A good light with no smell, and very slow burn rate.
Camp stove. I'm glad that when age and arthritis made me give up backpacking, I kept some things for emergency use. Things like my old Optimus 8R stove. It was nice in a total power outage to get up in the morning and make a pot of fresh coffee. Strange how little things can mean a lot. Our new state of the art coffee maker was useless as teats on a boar hog, but the old dented and beat up percolator coffee pot up in the attic was a great thing to have.
Saws and rope. We had a lot of downed trees and tree limbs in the road. Our little neighborhood has one road in or out, and a huge tree fell blocking any coming or going. A couple of us had manual saws, and sawed off the biggest of the limbs, and then used ropes to tie to the tree and the front framework of the cars to drag it out of the way enough to get a lane open.With 100 degree temps it was too darn hot to swing a ax, so the saw was easier. I had a Sven saw and a larger bow saw that went through wood like a beaver on crack. Big teeth for fast cutting. Another neighbor had a hand saw and we managed to saw off enough limbs to get it to where our cars could move the tree. A Toyota Corolla and a Honda Element side by side had enough oomph to drag it about 45 degrees to open the road.
Water containers. Jugs. Montgomery county was under a tight water restriction because the water plants did not have power to fully function. We were told via news on the radio to not even flush the john after every use. Bath tubs were filled as well as any plastic jugs around, used bleach bottles to milk jugs in the recycle bin. I'm going to put some water jugs in the attic for filling in emergency use. Bottle water sold out fast in the stores, and Saturday morning we drove the 30 miles up to Middletown Maryland to the Safeway there that was untouched. We stocked up on cases of water to take home as well as fill up the cars gas tank since they had gas up there. Which brings us to;
Gas. It was good that we had some small gas efficient cars to run errands. Most of the gas stations were closed due to no power to pump the gas. the few that has some power due to the luck of the grid pattern, quickly sold out what they had with lines down the block. Some fights even broke out when people tried to jump the gas line. And this was a small local event. A small glimpse of how people will react if it got really bad. For a few days there, there was not any open gas stations, and some people ran out of gas and had to leave their cars where they stopped. Karen and I decided not to use our cars unless it was dire emergency, and I siphoned off a couple gallons from my truck and put a gallon or so in each of our two Vespa motor scooters. With 80 mies per gallon, it gave us ability to run a lot of short errands using very little fuel. My neighbor borrowed the siphon to get some gas out of his Ford Explorer to put in his wires Honda Civic and used that for shopping.
Small battery radio. With no TV or internet, we had to go back to 1950's tech with the small AA powered radio. We got local news stations that gave us the low down, location of places to get ice, open gas stations, etc.
Canned goods. Easiest to warm up and eat, can be prepared with small camp stove, sterno stove, hobo stove, Weber grill, any other heat source. No extra water needed to cook, and in the heat that was good. Canned soups helped keep hydrated as well as drinking lots of water. The stores ran out of ice fast, and it was impossible to save the food in the fridge. Our neighbors all dragged out the Webers to the front and we had a block party. Any kind of meat from the freezer or fridge got grilled in the belief that cooked meat lasts better than raw meat. Between us all ,we had a feast of hamburgers, hot dogs, pork chops, salmon, chicken, we even grilled lunch meats. The whole little neighbor hood dragged out stuff from the kitchen and cooked it on the grills out front, and passed stuff around since we figured we were going to loose most of it in the heat anyways. There was even fried baloney sandwiches for the kids of all ages. Since we got some bags of ice, we had cold brew skies in the coolers. Since ice was so limited, we all decided to cook the meat and chill the beer. Even in an emergency you have to keep some priorities strait.
The biggest thing was how flat footed we were caught. This was not a hurricane, an earthquake, or nuke. It was just a line of freak thunder storms with unusual winds in a strait line event that clobbered our infrastructure and sent us back to a post apocalypse type of survival mode for a few days. It was a wake up as to what we need to keep on hand, and it high lighted what weak points we had in our homes.
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. The storm did come through Harford County, my sister's boyfriend's power is out on his side of the street, across the street, their power came back on.
