Day 3: Preparedness

Though some of our lessons of preparedness were learned as we went on, I’m going to use the third day to share what we learned. I was panicked. Especially Saturday morning. I woke up with dread in my heart because though we had plenty of food, most of it was going to go bad that day and there was nothing I could do about it. As I lay in bed, feeling sorry for myself, the spirit touched my mind and told me to reach outside of myself. I started to text friends that live near me, checking in on them to make sure they were doing ok. A few hours later, my dear friend Pat Riley texted, “We’re fine, how are y’all doing?” I replied, “We’re good. Regretting not buying a generator.” Never in a million years would I have imagined they’d have an extra generator lying around. She called me a bit later. “We have an extra generator. If we bring it to you, will you share with the Durrants?” “Uh, absolutely!” They dropped it off later that day (getting around town took about four times as long as normal). Andy hooked up our fridge/ freezer and deep freeze. I opened up the deep freeze to check on things and all of our meat was as solid as a rock. I started crying. Crying from the miracle of our friend’s generosity with their generator, crying with gratitude and relief that our food hadn’t gone bad. We’d lost most of our fridge food and the other two freezers worth of stuff, but we had the majority of our meat still safe. We invited the Durrants as well as our friends, the Payans, the Rogers, and the Woods to come load up our fridge and freezers with anything that was still good. We planned a week’s worth of breakfasts and dinners together, half joking that we were practicing living the law of consecration. I told them, “Everyone has to pitch in on cooking and cleaning up because I cannot do this alone.” I may have come across as a bit bossy, but I was waking up with migraines every day, so that probably didn’t help with seeming a bit snippy. Sorry, guys.

That night we cooked up any meat that may have started defrosting in the freezers as well as six ears of corn, some peppers and onions and mushrooms I had in my fridge and skewered them. We fed the Payans, the Durrants (Lindsay helped cook it all and Krista helped me skewer), the Rogers, and a small amount went to some refugee children that live a couple of doors down. They were wary taking anything from us, especially the first day, but by the second they started trusting us more and warming up to us. Somehow we ended up with half an ear of corn left, about a cup of shrimp and veggie skewers and even some chicken and fish. Luckily we now had a working fridge to store the leftovers.

One of the friends I had texted that morning had told us they were out of town at a medical convention. They were getting kicked out of their powerless hotel that day and were headed home to a dark house with no food. I told them to join our little commune for breakfast on Sunday.

Lessons on Preparedness

Items we had that were useful without power:

• Lanterns for each person.
  • We bought them at Academy for a camping trip. It was the best thing to have. Each kid had their own so there was no fighting over them, they could all go take cold baths/showers on their own, use the restroom on their own, etc.
• Butane powered stove top. Or a way to heat up your food
  • Make sure you have backup butane though. It lasted about three meals for us.
  • We also used our little propane powered fire pit for a few things.
  • our grill was electric powered… so a charcoal grill/propane grill might be a good way to go.
  • Andy cut down a bunch of trees (some that were leaning) the first day to let them dry out so we could use those to make a fire and cook our food if needed. Luckily it didn’t come to that.
• Battery packs.
  • because my husband is such a tech guy, we have a lot of battery packs that we keep fully charged on a normal basis. We were able to charge our phones as well as our friends’ phones until we got the generator.
• Crafts/things for the kids to do
  • I had bought a huge box of chalk to slowly replenish the kids’ chalk as they used up their old chalk… they used up an entire bucket in the first day! I also had a gallon of bubbles, nerf bullets galore, painting supplies, slime, and more (I didn’t let them do the play-doh or sand because my vacuum’s batteries were too energy consuming to recharge).
  • It was great that I had these things, but the kids were so creative with what they came up with to do each day. They made paper stuffies of their favorite characters with paper, crayons, staples, and more paper to stuff them. The older boys played live-action Minecraft since video games were off limits. The little girls made fairy gardens with moss and other pieces of nature they collected. I’ll have to come in and edit this part as I remember all of the many things they came up with.

• Wipes/ Clorox wipes
  • I don’t use that many Clorox wipes on a normal basis, but since laundry was a challenge, they came in handy! Andy took two bags of Costco wipes to work for two of his coworkers that were living in the waterless, powerless hospital because their own homes weren’t currently livable.
• Plan for your pets
  • We have a turtle that needs filtered water and a heat lamp. We took him in the sun and let him poop after eating his dinner in a separate tank to keep his other tank’s water clean. After a couple of days I realized our ryobi light let off a lot of heat, so I moved that to the turtle’s room. It used probably three battery charges a day. I’m sure it varies based on your pet, but make sure you have a plan to take care of them.
• For those who suffer from migraines, these ice masks were a game changer once we got our freezer hooked up to the generator.
• Bugspray and sunscreen
• flavor for water.
  • Drinking tap water isn’t always appealing, staying hydrated is essential, so flavor packets are a great way to help your kids stay hydrated.
• portable fans
  • The minute Andy was able to hook our house power up to the generator and get a fan plugged into our window, was the night I stopped waking up with a migraine. It made all the difference.
• Food storage
  • I keep enough of the shelf stable supplies of our favorite meals to make three of each meal. When we make the meal, I replenish with the missing can the next shopping trip and I keep up on that. We also have freeze dried food that we didn’t end up needing, but it still offered a lot of peace and comfort when I thought we were going to lose all of our perishable food. I will share my food planning/storing system in another blog post as it proved to be very helpful.
• Water
  • we filled our bathtubs with fresh water at the end of each day. We never lost water, but our neighboring county did. You can use bath water to boil to drink, fill toilets to flush, wash clothes, etc. I also keep a case of bottled water on hand. I didn’t want to use that, because we never lost potable water, but my kids kept sneaking them. I guess I’m glad they stayed hydrated… I just wished they’d refilled their water bottles in the kitchen sink just so I’d have the comfort of knowing if we did lose water, we still had a Costco pack of water bottles.
• Ice
  • One of the most common requests I saw on the Ring app was ice, water, gas, and propane. We ended up buying an ice machine, but it didn’t get there until our power came back on. We’re enjoying it now though. But having cold water to drink was a game changer. One of our friends brought us ice from their ice machine and it was a mood boost for sure.
• Bandaids/ first aid
  • We ended up sharing some of our medications with our neighbors since Andy’s a doctor and one of them got sick, one of them was having back spasms, and a whole bunch of scrapes for the kids who were playing outside all day. Having backups for bandaids and what not made it easier to share with those in need.
• Cash
  • With no internet in the area due to downed cell towers and power lines, a lot of stores took cash only. I highly recommend keeping a week to two week’s worth of cash in a safe location in your house at all times.
• 72 Hr kits
  • Fortunately, we didn’t have to leave our home, but a lot of people did. Our 72 hr kits are four years outdated. Make sure you set a reminder every year to take out old food and replace it along with the next size of clothes for each individual.
• Extra clothes
  • I used to think that we had too many clothes, but when laundry is hard to do, having that extra pack of shorts, shirts, and underwear was a lifesaver. It made for a HUGE pile of laundry to do when this was all over, but we never ran out of clothes. I did have to wash a few things and learned that a large bucket of water with detergent, a bucket to rinse it, and then a mop spinner helped do the trick. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped get us through till we got power back.
  • Andy ended up buying these shirts. It was so miserably hot, that having athletic wear made it more bearable.

Things I wished I’d had

• a generator
  • This is the one we ordered, but it kept getting delayed. Our friends lent us one that was able to power about two cooking devices and our fridge/freezer combo and our freezer.
• otterpops
  • they help keep your fridge/freezer cold and when they melt, it’s no big deal. They’re also a nice treat for the kids when there’s no AC and they’re in the hot sun all day
• Extra batteries
  • we had AA’s and AAA’s galore (I had just restocked at Costco), but I didn’t realize we didn’t have any more D’s and apparently the larger lantern that Andy and I were using needed D batteries. So just make sure you have backups.
• Extra glow sticks
  • We had enough for one night and it was so fun for the kids and comforted them in the darkness of a world without power. They put them in the bathtub and they were great night lights as they fell asleep. I want to get enough for a week and keep that on hand.

Remember there will be a scarcity. Even when the power gets back on or even if you don’t lose it; people panic. Gas became scarce. Jay Durrant drove two hours each way to find gas for his car and the gas tanks for the generator. Food is now seeming to catch up in the stores for those who now have working fridges, but make sure you have at least enough food for two weeks so you’re not panicking about the scarcity. Going in to empty stores is only going to add to your anxiety in times of crisis.

I may come back and edit this post as I remember things we did to prepare or learned from our lack of preparedness. I know Andy has a lot to share, so when he has a chance, he’ll get on and share what he’s learned.