Emergency preparedness - what’s in your kit?
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We just had a bad storm and were without power for almost 30 hours. The most nerve-racking thing was that we realized that we had very little gas in the car and not a lot to eat bc Mr. SK was planing to fill up when he went to the store the next morning. Because the power outage impacted over 70% of the town, the closest grocery stores and gas stations were all closed, and a fair amount of roads had downed trees blocking them so 1) we weren’t sure where to go to find an open gas station, and 2) we were worried that we’d go to one across town, find it closed and then start running out of gas… Anyway, we got lucky and found a place that was open, and after waiting line for about 40 minutes, got gas. Whew. Then we found bread and matches (to light our gas stove top).
Anyway, here’s what we had on hand:
- Several flashlights and a camp lantern (battery) and extra batteries
- Battery pack for cell phone — that is good for about 2.5 charges before it needs recharging, which is ok, but we only have one. A solar one might be good.
- Canned tuna — this was our dinner the first night, tuna w/ mayo and crackers.
- Bottled water — we didn’t need it, but some other places in town lost water pressure for a while, so it’s a good reminder to keep that on hand
That’s it, that’s what we had and it doesn’t seem like much. We got lucky that the power came back when it did, because initially they were saying the power wouldn’t be back for another 24 hours. Also we were able to get gas, and my campus office got its power back quickly so we could charge up there. Oh, and on day two, we ate lunch at a cafeteria on campus … IOW we’re definitely not prepared for a longer outage.
So what’s in your emergency kit?
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Costco-sized boxes of Duracell batteries in various sizes. They last ten years in the package and we always use them up before they expire.
Definitely battery powered LED camp lanterns. On the lowest setting they give off plenty of light and they go for hours.
Disposable butane lighter to light the gas burner.
Headlamps. Bought something like this a while back.
https://www.costco.com/infinity-x1-700-l-dual-power-led-headlamps%2C-3-pack.product.4000236031.html
They're cheaper in-warehouse, if you have access to a Costco that happens to carry them. They come in handy any time you need light but would like to have your hands free, like if you're poking around under a cabinet or in a crawl space. We keep a couple of them in the nightstand so if the power goes out in the middle of the night we can just grab one and put it on so we can find our way to the basement to get the camp lanterns.
We always have enough food in the basement pantry for weeks of eating. Costco again...buy in bulk...
We rarely go below a quarter tank of gasoline in the car. And at least half to three-quarters during the winter.
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Steve is so into off grid camping that we have enough portable solar panels (and solar powered batteries) and vintage campstoves and fuel and water filters that we could feed and water the entire neighborhood.
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Yep, our camp lantern is LED. The other thing that's nice is that all of our rooms and bathrooms have light colored walls, so a little light goes a long way. Also, Mr SK said he's never letting the car's gas tank get that low again. Actually we were super careful during covid, but we've gotten away from that. And the supermarket, where we also get gas, is so close to our new house, I'm sure he didn't think of it. Oh, and this storm kind of came out of no where, usually we have warning a few days in advance, and then the morning of etc. This one, I happened to be at home (thank goodness!) and I got a notice on my phone and yelled down to Mr. SK "there's a storm warning" and then like 30 seconds after that, the wind smashed into the house, and then after about another minute, we lost power. Crazy.
