By Jennifer Zeitz
It’s an Emergency! Are
you prepared?
By Jennifer Zeitz
It’s October. It’s snowing. That’s okay. We have seen an occasional wet snow in
the month of October. It keeps snowing. The snow is heavy. Thick, wet snow piles
up on the leaves of the trees. The branches can’t take the weight. Bang! Whoosh!
Thump! Limbs begin to fall. All around huge chunks of trees are falling. The
power is out. How long will the power be out? Where are my candles? Where is my
flashlight? Does my radio have batteries? What is going on?
That is the start of an emergency. It was an surprise October snow storm that
left many in my area with out power for over a week. In your area natural
disasters will come. The disaster may not be snow, but something will come your
way. A natural disaster is the most common emergency that any of us will face
whether it is an ice storm, flood, hurricane, tornado or something else. How
prepared are you?
I thought I was prepared. In many ways I was, but I could have done better. I
did not have extra supplies in one easy to locate box or tote bin. I would
highly recommend that, so you are not scrambling around in the dark to locate
candles, flashlights, etc. What should you put in your bin? Well the experts
tell us many things. Here is what I found lacking. I hope my experience will
help you. It’s going to be dark, and you are going to need to see. I would
highly recommend some battery-operated camping lanterns with extra 6 volt
batteries. We had one of these, but a couple more would have been great.
Flashlights! You will need flashlights. I would recommend one per family member.
Get yourself a economy pack of D-cell batteries or C-cell, if you have smaller
flashlights. In an emergency these will gone from store shelves, if you can even
find an open store. Also, you should have extra bulbs for your flashlights and
lanterns. Now there are those flashlights that do not need batteries. You shake
them to charge the light. I don’t have experience with those, but I understand
that they are good. Another light source can be candles. They do not produce a
ton of light, but they do make you feel warmer especially if it is cold as well.
According to Carla Emery, the author of The Encyclopedia of Country Living, you
can never have too many candles. I would suggest safe candles such as jar
candles, 3” pillars or votive type. Taper candles just do not seem as safe to
me. Get lots of candles and put them in your emergency bin.
Now that you can see how are you going to stay warm? If you are in a northern
state like I am, this is a very important consideration. Ice storms can hit and
leave you in the dark with sub zero temperatures outside. In our case, we were
not prepared in this area. We did not have dry firewood for our fireplace. It
had been raining for weeks in our area. All our wood was outside and very wet.
Fortunately, my father had enough wood to keep us for the days that we needed.
Fireplaces do not produce good heat, but that is all we had. There are fans and
such that you can get for a fireplace to help heat the room more efficiently. A
wood burning stove is much better. So, if you could choose between the two, pick
the wood burning stove. Obviously, if you already have a fireplace then you have
to live with it unless you are planning to invest in a change. In a southern
state this might not be a concern in October, but it might in January.
How is your water supply? When there is no electricity, water pumping stations
cannot operate. Therefore citizens are in danger of losing there supply of fresh
water. This is another area that I am not well prepared in because I could never
settle on a good way to store water. Water keeps better in glass than in
plastic. Large glass jars are not easy to come by plus they weigh more to store.
In our case, as soon as I learned that we could lose our water, I rallied my
troops, I mean children, and we filled pitchers and canning jars full of
filtered water. I got up to about 5 gallons, and we used about half of it
because there was a boil water advisory and also a no unnecessary use of water
advisory at the height of the storm. I also filled a large 5 gallon bucket with
water for flushing toilets and so forth. You could also fill a clean garbage can
or a bathtub with water.
Our plan is coming together. We have lights, heat and water. Let’s turn our
attention to food. Food in a refrigerator will only last about 24 hours without
electricity. A freezer will keep longer. By the end of the 3rd day, even a zero
degree upright or chest freezer will get too warm to hold the frozen food. You
need to eat up the food in your refrigerator first, but you can’t keep going in
there. Also, how are you going to cook this food? In our case, we have a gas
stove. I can use the stove top, but not the oven to cook just about anything.
The ovens in newer stoves have an igniter box instead of an open pilot light.
Actually, I think this is a shame because it renders them useless in an
emergency. If you have an electric stove in your kitchen you may want to invest
in a camp stove for your cooking needs during an emergency. A grill can be used
to cook on, but it might not be practical in January in New England. I was able
to make hot oatmeal, cream tuna and biscuits, black beans, etc. Hot food warms
the belly and the soul when there is no heat. Just don’t make more than you can
eat up at one meal because you have no place to store leftovers. Whatever you
use, be sure that it can be used indoors if that is where you are using it.
Carbon monoxide poisoning becomes rampant after a natural disaster.
Lastly, let’s consider a generator. In our case, it was a must. We have a sump
pump in our basement. Our sump crock was full of water. The first night we
bailed out the well every hour by hand with a bucket and a measuring cup. Our
house is situated at the bottom of a hill. Lots of water flows through our
property. We were blessed to get a generator from my father by the end of the
first full day without electricity. Even with the generator, David still needed
to wake up about every 2 hours through the night. I told him it was like having
a nursing baby. He was not amused. A generator is not a small expense, and it is
an expense that is best assumed before the emergency strikes. Generators were no
sooner delivered to the local home improvement store and they were gone. People
would get in line at 6:00 AM or earlier if word got out that a store would have
generators by 8:00 AM. There are many options in generators including
permanently installed generators that are hooked up to run certain circuits
during a power outage. These are usually run on natural gas or LP. There are
also gasoline operated generators. These are considerably less expensive than
the permanently installed type. Again, caution needs to be exercised in using a
gas powered generator. Carbon monoxide, an odorless, colorless, lethal gas, is
produced when operating these generators. They need to be run away from the home
in an open area. We did have two fatalities in Western NY as a result of
improper generator operation.
Natural disasters occur regularly in our world. The best defense is a good
offense. Begin planning and preparing now. When a long term power outage strikes
your area, you won’t need to panic. You will be ready.
******************************************************************
Jennifer Zeitz lives in West Seneca, NY with her husband David of
15 years and their four children: Jonathan(12), Natalie( 10), Carolyn(7), and
Brianna(7). Jennifer has been home schooling since 2000. She spends most of her
days learning along side her children as they sew, garden, cook, and manage
their home together.
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