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KATRINA ON THE HUDSON: Hurricane Sandy Recovery Program in New York City Was Mired by Its Design.
The night Hurricane Sandy struck, Jayme and John Galimi swam out the front door of their home in Broad Channel, Queens, into the rising waters of Jamaica Bay with their five children, the youngest clinging to his father’s back.
Almost two years later, all seven remain jammed into a three-bedroom rental. Their debt is mounting. They applied to a federally funded New York City program for help rebuilding, but that devolved into an unending loop of lost documents, aborted meetings and frustrating exchanges with temporary workers handling their application.
A low point came in January, when the couple arrived for an appointment at the intake center to hear what construction work would be covered. But they were met by blank looks.
“Nobody knew why we were there,” Ms. Galimi said. “Again.”
So it’s basically the Healthcare.gov approach to disaster recovery.
DISASTER PREP: Boosting Resilience After Storms And Disasters.
DISASTER UPDATE: Utilities caused post-Sandy fires that decimated Breezy Point and turned it into ‘war zone,’ 120 residents say in suit.
An aside: “Decimate” is not a synonym for “devastate.” That is all.
DISASTER RELIEF AS PORK: As Coasts Rebuild and U.S. Pays, Repeatedly, the Critics Ask Why.
Even in the off season, the pastel beach houses lining a skinny strip of sand here are a testament to the good life.
They are also a monument to the generosity of the federal government.
The western end of this Gulf Coast island has proved to be one of the most hazardous places in the country for waterfront property. Since 1979, nearly a dozen hurricanes and large storms have rolled in and knocked down houses, chewed up sewers and water pipes and hurled sand onto the roads.
Yet time and again, checks from Washington have allowed the town to put itself back together.
Across the nation, tens of billions of tax dollars have been spent on subsidizing coastal reconstruction in the aftermath of storms, usually with little consideration of whether it actually makes sense to keep rebuilding in disaster-prone areas. If history is any guide, a large fraction of the federal money allotted to New York, New Jersey and other states recovering from Hurricane Sandy — an amount that could exceed $30 billion — will be used the same way.
Tax money will go toward putting things back as they were, essentially duplicating the vulnerability that existed before the hurricane.
Yes, we’ve vacationed on Dauphin Island a number of times. It’s a lovely place, but it’s basically a small piece of sand in hurricane alley. When “disaster relief” is part of your lifestyle, it’s quit being a form of insurance, and turned into just a subsidy.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TO REVIEW ITS DUMB DECISION NOT TO ISSUE A HURRICANE WARNING FOR SANDY.
And yes, as I’ve pointed out today and also last week, this was a dumb decision that may have caused delayed evacuations and complacency that cost lives.
DISASTER PREPARATION: A Camp Stove That Also Charges Your Cell Phone.
I HAVE A POPULAR MECHANICS PIECE: Lessons Learned From Hurricane Sandy.
I HAVE A POPULAR MECHANICS PIECE: Lessons Learned From Hurricane Sandy.
DISASTER PREPAREDNESS: Reader Kathleen Wallace writes:
I have been an Insta-addict for three years. I appreciated, among others, the recurrent theme of disaster preparedness during Hurricane Irene, and was struck particularly by the role of inverters.
So, when we saw Sandy on the way, we finally got our inverter, set it up, and tested it here in our home in New Jersey. As predicted, our power went out.
We ran the inverter off the car periodically each day, an hour in the morning and the evening. We ran the fridge, the furnace, the modem, charged the phones, and caught up with the Instapundit. We were conservative (of course), and at the end of 5 days, we had well over half a tank left in our Ford Escape, were warm, and knew what was happening. The car ran quietly, cleanly, and safely, unlike the many loud, smelly generators in the neighborhood.
We never needed to wait hours in line with several red plastic containers. The candles and transistor radio made the evenings enjoyable.
I thank you for your blog, and especially for helping us rethink disaster preparedness.
Inverters are pretty cheap, too. You’ll want extension cords, too.
UPDATE: Say, here’s a question: How much power does a gas pump consume? Could you power one with a big (2000-3000 watt) inverter?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Marcoux writes:
I second what your reader Kathleen wrote about using inverters instead of a generator. Followed some of your links to arrive at that conclusion. Fortunately, I haven’t had to use anything yet.
One obvious reason to go this route: fridge, a big concern, doesn’t have to be on all the time to maintain, per what Kathleen is doing. I wish she had written what inverters she has.
Yeah. I assume she has her furnace wired with a pigtail connection, too. You can splice into the furnace, of course, but not everyone would want to do that.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Alan Gray writes: “How about some rules of thumb on the right size inverter? And can any size be run off a car?” Pretty much — up to 2000-3000 watts pretty easily. There are bigger ones, but they’re best hardwired. Of course, you can run low-power stuff off the battery, but if you’re running more than a few hundred watts you really want the engine running. You want to keep the inverter close to the car — no 12-volt extension cables — and then run an extension cord into the house. You lose a surprising amount of power in cabling, though, so you want to keep things as short as possible.
MORE: Reader Curtis Franklin writes: “If you’re going to try to serve circuits in your house through a generator/inverter (rather than simply plugging appliances directly into the outlets on the power source), then it’s critical to have a transfer switch wired into your main breaker box. They’re not all that expensive (thought they’re a definite licensed electrician job) and they prevent power from your house from back-feeding into the local power lines — a situation that is dangerous for the people trying to restore power and can delay that restoration for hours while they track down the homeowner working so hard to kill them.” That’s true. Not many inverters big enough people would plug them into their house, but yeah.
And reader Allan Pierce writes: “A quick search on Fuel Dispenser Electrical Requirements turned up a gas pump mfr’s brochure, which suggests a gas station pump has one or two 1 horsepower pump motors. Figure about 1000 watts per motor, so the answer is yes. Big issue is safety: wiring the gas station with a power inlet and cutover switch for each pump near its electrical panel. Could be done under disaster-recovery conditions by electricians certified for hazardous area (explosion-proof) work. It’s better not to wait, but gas stations are low-margin businesses so this is unlikely to be done in advance of need unless required by law or encouraged by economic incentive for all stations in the most-vulnerable areas (hint to people doing post-disaster ‘lessons learned’ reviews).”
DISASTER PREPAREDNESS: In Backup Generators We Trust? They’re handy, they’re not perfect.
On Monday, New York University’s Langone Medical Center lost power during Hurricane Sandy, and ended up having to evacuate 215 patients when the generator that was supposed to keep its charges alive and its critical systems running failed to turn on. Across the United States there are about 12 million backup generators. Most only operate during blackouts — times when a hospital, or a laboratory, or a bank, needs electricity and can’t get it from the larger electric grid.
But backup generators aren’t 100% reliable. In fact, they won’t work something like 20%-to-30% of the time, said Arshad Mansoor, Senior Vice President for Research & Development with the Electric Power Research Institute. The bad news is that there’s only so much you can do to improve on that failure rate. The good news: There are solutions that could help keep a hospital up and running in an emergency, even if the emergency power system doesn’t work.
It’s like having a car you never drive. The less you drive ’em the more they rust.
UPDATE: Reader Will Frye writes:
As one who was responsible for operation and maintenance of backup generators during my 37 year career I can assure you that emergency generation can be a LOT more reliable than a 20 to 30 percent failure rate. Of course like other electromechanical systems they require continual attention. Maintenance and training and testing on a recurring basis are essential.
They are expensive insurance policies for worst case scenarios and management has to understand their importance. If not valued and maintained they will degrade rapidly.
I don’t know what Langone Med Center did to prepare for the storm but if administrators failed to include testing the backup generators in their preparation plan they should be summarily fired. Testing doesn’t ensure the machines will come on line next time but it should make it highly likely.
And reader Billy Rawl emails:
Don’t know about others, but my 25 KW Generac has never failed when I needed it. But like a car, boat, airplane or any other piece of mechanical equipment, they have to be maintained. My worst nightmare is to lose electrical power and have a $10,000 inoperative generator, so I do everything I can to keep it in running order such as maintaining the battery, oil, coolant and make sure it runs for about 20 minutes every week. Well maybe not my worst nightmare. That would be if we get stuck for another 4 years with that charlatan in the White House.
It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to live normally with A/C or heat, lights, computers, TV, stereo, etc. when the rest of the neighborhood is dark and cold (or hot).
It’s probably even more wonderful to know that your ventilator will keep working. And reader Harmon Ward writes:
For dozens of engineering related reasons the vast majority of commercial backup generators run on diesel fuel. In California this has led to regulations which limit how often backup generators can be tested and how long they can be run while being tested. Even at hospitals. Hopefully our Air Quality Management District has factored in the amount of air pollution caused by an emergency evacuation.
Great. I hope that New York didn’t have similar rules.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Christopher Smith writes:
I’m a life long IT worker. I worked at a high availability data center on the weekend shift. One of my jobs was to run the backup generator once a week, take the readings on the 1000 hp diesel engine, check the fuel level, write down the power output readings every 10 minutes for an hour, etc.
A critical emergency generator should not fail to start. If it failed to start when you needed it or failed to provide the power it was meant to provide, that means you failed to properly maintain it.
One would think that a hospital’s maintenance schedule would be particularly rigorous.
MORE: An anonymous reader sends this:
The generator failed because it was flooded. No steps were taken to prevent flooding from the storm surge.
Once under water, there was no way for the thing to work.
Simple sandbagging would have prevented the failure. But no one bothered.
No supporting links, but if true it’s an egregious failure.
POLITICIZING DISASTER RELIEF: Totally predictable, of course, but still utterly ignoble. The editors of the Wall Street Journal document the Obama campaign’s–and its surrogate, the lamestream media’s–panicky attempt to capitalize on Hurricane Sandy by implying that Romney and Republicans are opposed to disaster relief. Uh, yeah, whatever.
But seriously, here’s how inane the Democrats’ efforts are:
As for Mr. Romney and FEMA, the liberals are excavating remarks from one of the early GOP debates. CNN’s John King asked if “the states should take on more” of a role in disaster relief as FEMA was running out of money.
Mr. Romney: “Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.
“Instead of thinking in the federal budget, what we should cut—we should ask ourselves the opposite question. What should we keep? We should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say, what are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do? And those things we’ve got to stop doing, because we’re borrowing $1.6 trillion more this year than we’re taking in.”
This isn’t an argument for abolishing FEMA so much as it is for the traditional federalist view that the feds shouldn’t supplant state action. As it happens, the response to Hurricane Sandy has been a model of such a division of responsibility.
Exactly. Word of the day for our liberal/progressive friends out there: FEDERALISM. It’s part of this thing called the “Constitution.” You should check it out some time.
Well, it’s too late to stock up on milk.
HURRICANE SANDY more likely to hit NY/NJ or New England.
Mr. Bingley reposts this hurricane-preparation advice. More on hurricane preparation in these posts.
And you can still get a generator by tomorrow if you order in the next few hours.
TROPICAL STORM SANDY: Now a Hurricane, and a Serious US Threat, with the potential to be a billion-dollar disaster for the Mid-Atlantic, and could impact the presidential election, “Weather Nerd” Brendan Loy writes.
IN A HURRICANE, CASH IS KING:
Banks across New York City are making provisions so people will be able to get hard currency Sunday and Monday, even if Hurricane Irene knocks power out and floods branches.
One of the enduring lessons from the hurricanes of 2005 is that cash is crucial in a storm zone for basic staples, yet often difficult to come by. After Katrina, for example, ATMs across New Orleans simply did not work.
With that in mind, people scrambled to ATMs on Friday and Saturday morning across New York and New Jersey, often withdrawing hundreds of dollars to prepare.
Keep some cash — in small bills, mostly — in your disaster kit.
DISASTER-PREPARATION IDIOCY: North Carolina Governor Declares Every Concealed Carry Permit in eastern NC Invalid Due to Hurricane Irene.
INTERESTED IN DISASTER PREPAREDNESS? Check out Bill Quick’s discussion forum. And here’s a hurricane preparedness list.
Also, some bug-out bag recommendations. And some stuff to keep in your car or SUV.
UPDATE: Some preparation advice from Dr. Melissa Clouthier.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Hints for boarding up your windows.
SOME DISASTER-PREPAREDNESS THOUGHTS FROM READER KEN LIGHTCAP:
We just had major storms in the Kansas City Metro and we lost power for twenty-four hours beginning at 11:30 PM last Thursday night. Forty-eight hours later there were still over 20,000 homes without power. Here are three things I learned the hard way during this latest episode:
Grandchildren, if you are not vigilant, will find your emergency flashlights, play with them and leave them on even after they put them back in the drawer thus leaving you in the dark.
Consistency is your friend. Thursday night as I was falling asleep I realized that I had my cell phone in the bedroom and not out charging in the entry which I always do before going to bed. Just this once I said to myself, it will be OK. It wasn’t. The next day I fought a drained phone trying to find places to charge it (car, McDs etc.) I also didn’t check the weather before bed and because of that we lost our porch umbrella.
Keep a land line for phone and an old low-tech phone you can plug in when power goes out. The five station high-tech phone doesn’t work when there is no power but the old ATT princess phone still does fine. I refuse to give up my land line and even had ATT work it into my new U-Verse bundle.
Just some thoughts to add to the survival posts which have been very helpful to us as we live in severe storm country where we often lose power.
With Florida facing a hurricane threat, here are some hurricane pre-preparedness thoughts, and here’s a list of preparedness gear. Also, a roundup of more resources.
Are Americans prone to violence after natural and man-made disasters? That’s the assertion of libtalker / Democratic Party strategist Bill Press, who used yesterday’s syndicated radio program to compare post-quake Japan to the US in derisive terms.
Citing looting after Hurricane Katrina and rioting in South-Central Los Angeles during the Rodney King incident, Press claimed the calm atmosphere in Japan proves Americans are “ruffians and thugs” by comparison.
Hmm. Those are mostly-black areas. Press’s comments sound kinda . . . racist, you know?
EARTHQUAKE/TSUNAMI TALK GOT YOU INTERESTED IN DISASTER-PREP? Check out Bill Quick’s discussion forum. And here’s a list of disaster-prep supplies. And here’s another.
SO YESTERDAY’S POST ON LOW-BUDGET DISASTER PREP has produced still more email. Mostly it’s suggestions for what more people can do. That, of course, goes all the way up to a custom bomb-shelter / retreat in the mountains somewhere. But for most people, resources are limited. What are some things you can do that go beyond just keeping some extra groceries and bottled water? But not too far beyond?
You can keep a case or two of self-heating MREs around. They last a long time, they aren’t bad, and they’re more portable than canned foods if you have to leave home, but they don’t need separate water to prepare them like freeze-dried foods.
You might invest in a water filter, which will let you turn iffy water into drinkable water.
You should stock first-aid supplies and extra needed medications, in case you can’t get prescriptions refilled.
You might want some sort of backup power, ranging from a big uninterruptible power supply (keeps laptops and internet going for a long time, recharges cellphones, etc.) to a generator. Generators take annoying degrees of maintenance; a UPS can back up your computer or modem/wireless router until needed for more. But they put out a lot less power than a generator, and won’t keep your freezer from thawing. But generators cross the line into “more serious” as opposed to “slightly serious” preparedness, which is what this post is about.
Some additional source of heat. If you have a gas fireplace, make sure you know how to start it without an electric igniter. If you have a woodburning fireplace or stove, make sure you have plenty of wood, and matches and kindling, etc. (Woodburning fireplaces aren’t much good for heat, really; stoves on the other hand put out a lot). A backup kerosene or propane heater is good, too. Propane is easier to store than kerosene, and there are some propane heaters that are supposed to be safe for indoor use — though I’d invest in a battery-powered carbon monoxide detector to go with any kind of backup indoor heat. Also, extra blankets. And wool socks! Maybe even a Snuggie or two. In case the power goes out in the summer, make sure you have screens on your windows so that you can open them without filling your house with bugs. A small battery-powered fan is nice, too — clip it on to the headboard of your bed and it’ll be easier to sleep on a sticky night. Keep plenty of batteries, too.
Backup lamps and lanterns. One nice thing I have are plug-in nightlights that turn on when the power goes off, so that stairs, etc., remain navigable. I have them at the top and bottom of stairs, and in parts of the house that would be really dark if the power went off. They double as flashlights. These look good, too.
A list of phone numbers for family, friends, neighbors, and various services — plumbers, doctors, etc. — that you won’t be able to look up on the Internet if the power’s out.
A shovel, a crowbar, a water shutoff tool that fits your hookup — make sure you know that it works, how to use it, and where your hookup is in advance — and other simple tools.
A couple of tarps. During the Great Water Incident of a couple of years ago, one of these saved my basement carpet when water started coming out of the ceiling. . . .
Duct tape, duct tape, duct tape. And extra plastic garbage bags. Very versatile.
Any other reader suggestions for things that don’t cost too much, but would take disaster-prep up a level from yesterday’s post?
UPDATE: Reader Thomas Leahy writes: “Don’t forget a little extra food for the pets.” Good point.
Reader Peter Gookins emails:
This goes a bit beyond “prep on the cheap,” but you asked…
Generators-most people get one that’s much bigger than they actually need. Back north, I needed a large 240 volt generator (Honda ES 6500) to power the well pump, fridge and freezer when power went out (“locked rotor current,” which is the technical name for the high amperage required to start an electric motor from rest, on a 1 HP deep well pump is a LOT higher than the 8-12 amps (which, at 240 volts, is 1/2 the amperage it would be at 120; figure starting draw on most motors will be about 4X-5X running current; the 6500 puts out 52 amps and at pump start you could tell it picker up a lot of load) it takes to run the pump, and don’t forget that some stuff – like most -but not all- deep well pumps – are 240 volt only); here in Florida I’m on county water. During the 2004 hurricanes I loaned the big one to a neighbor, and it wound up feeding three houses for refrigerators, fans and TVs. I ran off a portable 120 volt 3K watt portable Honda RV generator (EU 3000) just fine, which powered the fridge, fans, lights and and a window AC at night for sleeping. Since then I’ve picked up a 2K watt Honda to use as “an infinite extension cord” at the gun club – it’ll power ONE saw, or a couple of floodlights and a fan, run cordless drill battery chargers, etc, and it weights 47 lbs. so it’s portable. Turns out it will run my fridge, some lights and a fan OR my window AC and some lights, all on less gas than the 3K watt Honda used. The fuel tank is small, but the RV crowd has solutions for that, just Google “EU2000+fuel tank.” And, Honda sells kits (but it’s cheaper to make your own) that allow tying two EU2000s together to get 3200 watts at 120 volts (about 26 amps) steady output. RVers do it all the time.
Remember, the smaller the generator the less fuel it uses. You can get aftermarket propane conversion kits for the Hondas, which I’ve considered doing with the 6500 when I move back north next year, because even with wheels under it it’s not very portable. I haven’t considered doing it with the 3K or the 2000 because having to drag around a propane tank reduces the portability, but if one expected a semi-stationary use, a propane conversion kit and a couple of 70 lb propane tanks would be a good investment. If I were staying in Florida I’d convert from electric water heater to propane tankless, and replace the electric range with a dual-fuel range, and stick a 250 gallon propane tank in the back corner of the yard. All the propane dealers here brag about how their trucks are propane-powered and they never missed a delivery during the hurricanes.
Speaking of well pumps…there is a great advantage to replacing the small well tank ( about 3.5 gallon draw down – one flush with old style toilets, so your pump is starting up a lot) builders always put in because it’s cheap with multiple large tanks. Well-X-Trol makes one that has a 46 gallon draw down from full before the pump needs to start and refill it. I put in two back north; in daily use the pump starts fewer times and runs longer, which extends its life, and when the power went out I ran the pump on generator until the tanks were full, which gave us 92 gallons before we needed the pump again. With water saving shower heads and minimal flushing we could get through an entire day (BTW, with a little judicious circuit breaker adjusting, one can power only one of the heating elements in an electric water heater with one’s generator, preferably the bottom element; takes a little while, but in 30 minutes or so you have a tank full of hot water. Check what wattage the elements are and replace the bottom one with a 4500 watt or 3800 watt (assuming the original is a 5500 watt) to ease the load on the generator. During normal use you won’t notice the difference.
If I were building my house from scratch, I’d consider putting in an underground propane tank and running everything off propane instead of natural gas, with a propane-powered generator thrown into the mix. A couple of deliveries a year and you’re semi self-sufficient.
Reader Anthony Swenson writes with a low-budget point that’s more in the spirit I meant for this post:
One of the cheapest things you can do – it won’t cost you anything but a nice smell in your laundry – is to make sure you always buy plain, unscented, unflavored chlorine bleach.
Yeah, bleach is good for sanitizing stuff, too. I keep extra around — but it’s harder and harder to find plain old Clorox bleach anymore amid all the scented, splash-resistant, etc. stuff on the shelf. Read the label carefully. . . .
UPDATE: Reader Henry Bowman writes:
Another item to consider if you have a hybrid vehicle: a large inverter. I read an article a couple of years ago about a fellow in Connecticut who ran many of his electric appliances in his house for three days off his Prius, with inverter. He claimed it cost him 5 gallons of fuel. Seems like an inexpensive backup, and one for which you don’t need to worry about starting often, as is the case with a portable generator.
My sister and brother-in-law, who live in the Houston vicinity, were without power for 13 days after Hurricane Ike. They have two Priuses: they could have used a couple of inverters.
A big inverter is a lot cheaper than a comparable generator, and probably safer, too. And you can use it to recharge your UPS. But the hybrid thing isn’t as easy as it sounds. The guy you mention modded his Prius, because the big honking battery that drives the electric motors doesn’t put out 12v DC, and the 12v power system that starts the motor in the Prius (or in my Highlander) is separate. So I’m not sure there’s any special benefit to having a hybrid unless it’s modified, but correct me if I’m missing something.
Speaking of cars, think about when you’re not at home. Reader Mike von Cannon writes:
A note about disaster kits: I work for the Sevier County Sheriff’s Office and starting the morning of Dec 26 our dispatch center was flooded with calls from tourists in rental cabins who were stranded and running out of food (it was even worse during the blizzard in 93, which also hit on a weekend), so even on vacation it would pay to buy extra in case we get more snow than you expect. many tourists who thought they’d be going home sunday were stranded til Wed or Thur.
Good advice. And you should travel with at least a bit of helpful stuff. I keep some emergency stuff in the back of the car — some food bars, water, a spare pair of shoes in case mine get nasty while changing a tire, etc., and assorted minor toiletries and hygiene products and, very important, a roll of toilet paper — which helps. (And if you can produce tampons in a pinch, you can be a hero to women everywhere.)
I use these food bars, because they stand up to the heat in the summer better and they’re not appetizing enough that people will snitch ’em just for a quick snack, and these water packets because they don’t burst if they freeze. Most of this stuff never gets used, but being stuck by the side of the road for an extended period just once makes it worth having.
Also: Some survival blankets, some basic tools, and a Swiss Army knife or a Leatherman. (Make sure it’s one with a can opener/bottle opener). And a roll of duct tape! I keep all of this in a small pack that takes up very little room in the back; there’s one in Helen’s car, too.
Reader Gary Saffer writes:
A couple of things that I didn’t notice in your disaster preparedness posts.
Chemical light sticks. A friend of mine suggested these for general use. They’re cheap, they provide enough light to move around, and they save batteries for more light intensive tasks. And of course, you can get them at Amazon.
Consider that under most circumstances, it’s going to be 48-72 hours before rescue or relief shows up. If you are planning for much longer periods of being off the grid, consider moving to a rural area where you can build you entire house around being off the grid for long periods of time.
Firearms. You don’t mention them, but everyone should have a means of self defense. The veneer of civilization is thin at the best of times, it vaporizes in a real emergency. The predators will be out fairly quickly because their disaster plan is to use your prepared material to survive on. They don’t know specifically who you are, but they’ll keep looking until they find someone who has the stuff they want. Or a firearm they want no part of.
Yeah, light sticks are cool, even if Joe Biden thinks they’re drug paraphernalia. The gun issue is a whole separate post, but a gun (or several) is important disaster-prep, but that moves beyond the “easy steps” focus of this post. And the rural retreat approach goes way beyond it.
Reader Tina Howard writes:
For those who actually have a landline: an old-fashioned, non-electric telephone that plugs into the phone jack & has the handset attached to the phone. Easy to identify because there is no electric cord with it. Our phone lines worked after 2003’s Hurricane Claudette but the cordless phones wouldn’t. Very cheap at Salvation Army Thrift shops.
In the same vein, keep the necessary cords to plug a computer directly into the phone modem, because the wireless router is also electric. We were able to get online and check weather and news reports, as well as make posts to update others.
Good advice. Yeah, an old-fashioned landline phone that uses line power is good to have. Cellphone batteries die. Phone company line power is more reliable than utility power. Some multi-handset wireless phone setups or answering machines have a handset at the base that still works when the power is out. (Mine does). Most don’t. You can also hook the base into a big UPS — they don’t draw much power so they’ll work for days that way if you do. Ditto your cable/DSL modem and wireless router.
Reader J.R. Ott writes:
Three lengths of sturdy rope,5/8 climbing rope,inexpensive clothesline type,for bundling up stuff,para chute chord,All three are handy for bug out 50′ min and a few short hunks.Each bundle of rope has a snap knife taped to it (about a dollar each from the paint dept) . . . . Lastly if folks can afford it a Westie dog or a Shepard,good alarm and a Westie will shred an attacker as they are very possessive Terriers and if the dogs women folk are attacked you would not believe how damaging the dog can be.
Dogs are good to have around. More advice on low-cost preparation here, from a reader.
I should also note that while having extra stuff is handy — if the roads are blocked, and you don’t have enough food, there’s not much you can do — it’s also important to have skills. Most of the survival books are aimed at somebody lost in the woods, but, again, a low-budget approach means being able to deal with home-based small-scale disasters. This book, When Duct Tape Just Isn’t Enough, is a good focus. My own skillset is nothing to brag about: I can do basic plumbing, electrical, and carpentry stuff, but I don’t really like it because I’m a perfectionist, but not skilled enough to make it perfect very fast so I get frustrated. (Plus, I’ve usually got an article I should be writing, or something) However, it suffices for quick-and-dirty solutions to problems like clogged or burst pipes, etc. Being able to deal with that sort of thing is a big leg-up, and that’s the kind of thing this book addresses.
FINALLY: Good advice from reader Spencer Reiss: Keep some cash around. Preferably in relatively small denominations: “The universal solvent–gets anything else you need. and no power, no phone=no ATM, no credit cards. Post-Andrew desperate Miamians were driving halfway to Orlando to get some (and in some areas systems were down for up to two weeks). Much easier/smarter to keep $1000 stashed somewhere.”
DISASTER-PREPAREDNESS LESSONS FROM THE BLIZZARD:
The recent blizzard has shown once again the importance of having at least a basic short-term food store. Intentional slowdown or otherwise, people found themselves trapped in their home or apartment unable to go out for sustenance. Even if not technically trapped, many were in a position where they did not want to be forced out to face the elements or on to the dangerous roads.
The importance of having enough to eat and drink for a few days is matched by the ease of preparation. On your next trip to the supermarket, buy a few bags of beef-jerky, a jar of honey, and a mini-keg of beer and/or a few gallons of water. When you get home, put them away together in a cool dark place. That’s it.
Add some canned goods (with a mechanical can opener, and/or easy-open cans), a flashlight, a battery-powered radio and lantern, and a few extra blankets. (I don’t think the mini-keg of beer will really keep for a year, though.) You can do a lot more to prepare, but if you do this much you’ll be prepared for most reasonably-probable eventualities.
UPDATE: Reader Robert Rafton emails: “Never been much interested in your disaster-preparedness blogging until you mention this morning that one should stock a small keg of beer. You’ve now won me over.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Richard Dean writes: “Excellent advice on the storing essentials in case of a disaster, even a minor one. One word of caution: beware of the thin plastic gallon jugs of water sold at most grocery stores. They will keep for maybe a year before the plastic breaks down and they spring leaks. I found this out the hard way one time when I checked my emergency kit and found that my water had leaked and I had lost several cans of food, 100 rounds of premium handgun ammunition, a roll of duct tape, and a hand-crank emergency radio into a soupy mess. Luckily, it wasn’t during an emergency that I found this out.” Yeah, and if you store plastic containers directly on a concrete floor they break down faster. Canned goods shouldn’t be hurt by wetting, though, except for the labels.
MORE: Reader Paul Carlson writes: “For metal cans of food, write down the contents on the lid with a magic marker. Thus, if the labels do come off, you still know what you have before you open it.”
Meanwhile, Rick Lee emails:
After 9/11 I stored a bunch of emergency materials and had the nasty experience of plastic water jugs going bad and ruining a bunch of stuff in the garage.’ve never replaced those things… How SHOULD one store water?
And the response comes from reader Kevin Menard:
We buy the five gallon carboys that you normally stick in a water cooler. It’s a bit more expensive but the plastic holds up for years and we haven’t had a break or leak yet. I date them and use the oldest first. We opened a three year old one last year and the water was okay. Needed aeration but other wise fine. Since most of our emergency food is freeze dried, our expected emergency water usage will be higher. A forty pound propane tank and a propane stove help too. If you lived up north, you could run a camping heater off that too.
Yes, my sister-in-law — no prepper, but a poet — keeps those because her water comes from a well and she has to be ready for when the power goes off. Seems to work, er, well. And reader Marica Bernstein writes:
One thought about food preps. Canned goods, etc. are just common sense. But if you’re used to “real” food, I imagine it would be something of a shock to the system to switch abruptly to several days of the canned stuff. Making a weekly menu, and shopping for what you need on a designated grocery day (as opposed to stopping in at the store after work each day), wouldn’t solve all your problems, but at least you’d have on hand the items you’d need to carry on as usual– meal-wise (well, unless the disaster hits the day before grocery day).
We woke this morning after serious storm threats last night to discover we have no running water! No problem. We’re prepared.
Well, that’s always a comfort. And note that none of this requires Omega-Man style apocalypse planning — just maintaining a bit of a reserve. And when people do that, it helps things upstream, as everyone who does so is one less person trying to navigate jammed grocery stores, or calling 911 or whatever.
MORE: Bill Quick emails:
1. Crystal Geyser sells one gallon jugs of water made of the same long-lasting plastic as their smaller bottles.
2. Free: Rinse and reuse the two-liter bottles you get your soda pop in. They last forever, too, and have the added bonus that the water inside can be disinfected by letting them rest in direct sunlight. According to the medical doc posting here, the heat will kill all living organisms inside.
3. Those 2.5 gallon jugs with handles available at most drug and grocery stores will last forever, too.
All this and more, for those who read the “Water Storage at Home” thread at Survival-Preps.com!
I’ll just note that if you want to go a step farther, you might want a Katadyn (or similar) water filter, too. That lets you turn iffy water into drinkable water without having to store mass quantities. Also note that your hot water heater will contain many gallons of clean water, and your toilet tanks will, too — though you might want to treat or filter the latter, as much for your own peace of mind as anything else.
Plus, try-before-you-buy advice from reader Joseph Dorsett:
When deciding whether we wanted to go with freeze dried we got a “free sample” from e-foods direct. It actually cost the $14.95 shipping and handling. It was really pretty good though we decided to stick with canned goods and true individual meals for our boogie bags. We have friends who went with freeze dried because of the longer shelf life and variety of food. Readers may want to do this before investing in large lots. It will certainly give you a good idea of what the options are.
Yes, “large lots” go beyond the advice above, but if you’re storing food you should be sure it’s stuff people will want to eat. Even lousy food will keep you from starving, of course, but if you’re stuck at home for days because of an ice storm, food will be one of the few things that alleviates the boredom and it’s better if it’s good.
And reader Ken Lightcap writes:
Having been through several ice storms in Kansas City, once without power for four days and only partial power for another five, I was greatful beyond words for a gas hot water heater and a gas range and oven. It was forty-seven degrees in the house but we had hot water for showers (feeling clean is a huge morale boost) and always fire to cook and bake. Also, don’t over-look the old K-1 kerosene heaters popular in the 70s and 80s. I was glad I never threw mine away. It kept pipes from freezing for nine days.
I keep one of those kerosene heaters, and an indoor-rated propane heater. When I was a little kid, we got through the Great Northeastern Blackout fairly well because we had a gas stove. It would have been much worse if we’d had all-electric.
And reader Peter Gookins offers this advice for canned goods: “Don’t forget to write the purchase date on the tops of canned goods so you can use the oldest first.”
EVEN MORE: Reader Tom Anderson writes:
One easy thing to do to prepare for an emergency is to keep an extra full tank of propane for your gas grill. Not only will you never run out of propane in the middle of a barbecue, but if you lose electric power for your stove/range you will be able to cook for days using your grill.
In addition, troll Craigslist for a lightly used generator; people buy them after a storm or hurricane, then sell them after they sit for a few years. I bought one in excellent condition for $50 that would not run because an oil pressure sensor went bad from sitting too long. $20 in repairs plus a siphon line so I can use the 25 gallon gas tank in my SUV as a gas reserve of fresh gasoline and I’m good to go.
Combine the generator, the mini-keg of beer, and the gas grill, and I’m almost looking forward to an ice storm.
Heh. Meanwhile, reader Drew Kelley wonders why I’m not talking about MREs. Well, no reason — you can keep a case handy for fairly cheap, with heaters even. But they kind of go beyond the sort of incidental-effort preparedness that was the theme of this post.
FINALLY: Reader Alan Colon writes:
I am the Emergency Manager for my city, and you hit almost all of the high points in your posts on preparedness.
The most important things are the simple things. Have food and water, have medications and essential supplies (baby food, diapers, etc) for 96 hours.That said, here’s a couple of things people should know about their homes:
Heat:
– Modern homes are very tightly insulated and wrapped with vapor barrier. Using any kind of fuel based heater (propane, etc) inside the house is an invitation to carbon monoxide poisoning.
– If your house has a gas fireplace, find the instructions and learn how to light it without the electrical igniter (wall switch) normally used.
– If your house has gas heat, it usually takes relatively few amps to run the fan the the electronic controls. With a power connector wired in and a small generator, you can keep your furnace running for a long period of time.Phone:
– Make sure you have an old-fashioned plug-in phone in the house (less than $10 at your local big box). If power goes out your cordless phones are dead. A cheapie analog phone is powered from the phone line and will continue to function of the power is out.
– If you have gone all cellphone or VOIP, consider keeping a landline phone line on the cheapest plan your phone company will give you. With power outages, cell sites are quickly overloaded with calls, then they go offline after their backup batteries quit. Without power, DSL and cable lines will fail, then knocking out your VOIP service.Backup Power: This is not cheap, but it provides definitive standby capacity:
– If your home or business has gas service, companies make relatively inexpensive natural-gas-powered standby generators which will auto-start and run off gas pressure (which is not dependent on the electrical grid being up).
– These will provide power for critical circuits such as heat, hot water, cooking, basic lighting, etc.
– Installed prices can be under $3000Thanks for helping get the word out!
Happy to. I should note that you can get tri-fuel generators that will run on natural gas, propane, or gasoline, though they’re pricier. That’s kind of beyond the scope of this post.