Your Survival Blog
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
The power’s out. Now what?
Snap. Crackle. Pop.
There went all the lights, and the fan, and the music! (And, if you’re in one of those unfortunate homes where furnaces and well pumps depend on the power company, maybe the heat and water too.)
So how long are you likely to be in the dark this time? And what are you going to do with yourselves while the power’s out?
In my previous neck of the woods, power outages varied from a few minutes to much longer, though in a decade I don’t think we had one longer than fourteen hours (during the ice storm of December ‘08). We fell into a routine pretty quickly, though:
- Shut off anything we didn’t want coming back on unattended — computer equipment, a video/DVD player, the electric stove.
- Check with someone in another neighborhood, to see if they were out too (they often were, though sometimes it was just our street). Note that this requires a working landline or cell phone, as your Internet service goes out when the power does.
- Call the power company to see if we could get through and get an estimate (estimates were notoriously unreliable, but at least gave us something to work with). If it seemed like a long wait, often we’d give up and pile into the car for a day trip to some comfortable place which served food.
- Decide how long we could live without power, heat and tap water (yes, we were in one of those houses). On one particularly memorable occasion (during the ice storm), we packed our bags and went to stay with friends in another town.
Now let’s say you live in a household with no special needs — no people or pets requiring life support (that includes aquarium fish!), or with a major disability, or under the age of one. You expect the outage to be more than a few minutes, but less than a couple of days. What should you have on hand?
Light. Always on hand at our house: candles, matches, flashlights, batteries, light sticks, emergency lights (the kind that hang on walls and in closets, and can be pushed on and off) and camping lanterns. Never, ever leave candles unattended, or near combustible items like curtains — especially when people are sleeping! You don’t want to die in a fire just because your lights went out. If you want always-on light at night (we certainly do), stock up on various sizes of camping lanterns. Stash all of these items where you can easily reach them in the dark.
Warmth. Depending on your climate and the season, this could be anything from a long-sleeved shirt for everyone in the house to spare blankets and pairs of knit stretch gloves to down-filled, below-zero sleeping bags and winter hats and Gore-Tex parkas. If you live in a wintry climate and have a woodstove — and a clean chimney for it — by all means burn some wood to keep the place warm. (Do you have some on hand? and kindling, and matches?)
There are two things you should not rely on for heat. Fireplaces (the kind without woodstoves) often suck more heat out of your house than the provide — warm air escapes up your chimney, as cold air is drawn in through poorly insulated walls and windows elsewhere in the house. (We learned this the hard way.) Non-electric, non-vented space heaters (the ones which run on kerosene, gas or propane) are intended only to be used outdoors, as they’re carbon monoxide factories, become extremely hot during normal operation, and frequently burn people’s houses down while they sleep.
Note that I’m in a cool climate — if you’re in a hot one, this item might actually be about ways to stay cool without your air conditioner or fans. If your faucets still work, try a cool shower or draping cool cloths over your head and neck. Drink plenty of water (not, mind you, beer), and don’t forget to keep your pets hydrated too! Keep the curtains closed to prevent heating your house further. And if you can, go spend the day at a movie theater or other cool spot.
Drinking water, of course. (If your tap works and it’s a simple outage, great. If not, you know where your bottled water stash is, right?)
Hygiene supplies, if you live in a house with a well pump. (You won’t be able to flush, or wash from the tap — so have separate bottled water, baby wipes and hand sanitizer, and either a way to flush your toilet or an alternate plan for bathroom functions.)
Food you can get to and prepare during the outage. You do not want to open your refrigerator (or freezer) during a power outage expected to last less than a day, as it’ll let the cold air out and spoil much of the food. So you need canned, boxed and bagged convenience foods, along with a can opener and scissors (and maybe a bottle of juice you’ve stashed for the kids). If you expect a long outage, you might want to break out the paper plates and cups — or even a camping stove. (At the point where a simple blackout makes me feel like I’m camping, I generally start thinking about motels and restaurants, but I’m high-maintenance that way. I have been known to put a pot of canned soup on the grill, though.)
Entertainment! I don’t know about you, but without an Internet connection I’m often a little lost these days; I have to consciously remind myself of how much I love reading books, too. So have books everyone will enjoy at hand — if you have kids, this is an excellent time to start a family read-aloud session — and games that are easy to play by candlelight (cards? Trivial Pursuit? whatever works for you) — and a few favorite toys for every member of your family (for adults, this might mean a knitting project, or crosswords, or a guitar). Have a singalong! Play charades!
For a multi-day, can-we-tough-this-out-without-going-to-a-shelter outage, you’ll want other stuff on hand: extra first-aid supplies and medicines (if the blackout is related to a storm making travel difficult); that camping stove, and fuel for it; even a generator. But extended camp-outs are a topic for another day.
Posted by eks on 02/09 at 10:44 AM(5) Comments • Permalink