I mentioned the other day that we recently had a pretty severe storm that left us without power for four days. So today what I want to talk about is disaster preparation. Funsies!

FIRST OF ALL, I would like to say that we were so incredibly lucky. In the days after the storm, I walked around marveling at how it could have been SO MUCH worse and feeling super grateful. We had some very minor damage to our gutters and some broken tree limbs to clean up. That’s it. Like I said: we were very, very lucky. And overall, I think our city is okay. The storm ended quickly. I don’t think there were any deaths as a result of the storm. Some of our neighbors had tree damage to their homes and cars, which is awful, and I can only hope they have good support networks and good insurance. Our neighborhood lost a LOT of trees – even now, a week later, there are branches and split-up tree trunks on the sides of the roads, waiting to be turned into sawdust.

We haven’t had any extreme weather in the days since – it’s been mainly hot and sunny, but not TOO hot. There were still a few pockets of homes without power even after we got ours back, but electricity had been restored to pretty much everyone by the fifth day. Electricity servicepeople and tree servicepeople flooded the streets for a good week – you couldn’t go thirty feet without seeing a truck, with its attendant experts climbing up in a bucket to inspect a power line or chainsawing a fallen tree. They were ON IT. It was inspiring to see, and I felt my heart swelling with gratitude that there are people who DO THIS.

I have been thinking a LOT about the people in the Bahamas and in Sioux Falls and all over the world, who have been hit much harder with natural disasters and have suffered much, much more. And I have been thinking about next time, when we might not be so lucky.

This was such an easy outage – for my particular family, who admittedly has resources not everyone has – that it turned out to be a good test for our disaster preparedness. And it’s shown several spots where we could improve.

Things That Would Come in Handy During a Power Outage

I already have a good store of water – well, maybe not GREAT, but we’re talking about handling a short-term outage, not the apocalypse; in that case we are EFFED – and a hand-crank radio and a multi-tool. If I were thinking, truly, about the apocalypse, I would want a seed vaultand some gas masksand maybe an emergency kit. But if we’re talking merelyabout surviving a severe storm, here’s what I’d like to have on hand next time:

Unscented long-burning candles. We had plenty of candles to light the house, but a ton of them were scented and so I ended up with a headache. I found I much preferred the tea lights – especially the ones in their own little tin containers – to the tall pillar candles that I had to set on foil-wrapped plates. They gave off just as much light and they seemed less precarious, because of course I was afraid one of us was going to set the house on fire. And, of course, you need lots of matches.

 

Flameless candles. We had some flameless candles, too, which were very useful. Of course you don’t want to fall asleep in a room full of real candles, or you don’t if you are me, so I set up flameless candles in Carla’s room while she was sleeping, and put one in each of the bathrooms to act as little nightlights. I only used them for this, though, because they have batteries and so don’t have unlimited life. Probably I would also buy some extra batteries.

 

More flashlights. We have a grand total of two flashlights. They were fine – and we had our phone flashlights, too, until the batteries died. But it would be great to have MORE. Plus backup batteries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lanterns. Boy, I am really fixated on lighting, aren’t I? Well, those long hours once twilight falls can be pretty hard to fill when you are in the dark. A friend has these particular lanterns and loves them. I like that they are collapsible as well – I don’t know about you, but I have ONE SHELF in my basement that is devoted to survivalist stuff.

 

 

Fire Starter. I think this would be really useful if it were winter and/or if we needed to find some way to cook food and didn’t have access to propane. Then again, maybe I have watched too many episodes of Naked and Afraid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Battery operated fan. As I said, we got lucky with the weather. It wasn’t too hot during the day, and at night it cooled down enough that we were fine with all the windows open. But if we were stuck without electricity in a super hot stretch of summer, I would definitely want a fan. And more batteries.

 

 

 

 

Solar charger for my phone. Man, I certainly am addicted to my phone, aren’t I? But it would have been really nice to have a way to charge it that didn’t involve sitting in my car or driving to Starbucks.

 

 

 

 

 

Stovetop tea kettle. I drink tea every morning. Going without it for four days was not my favorite thing. I don’t particularly like stovetop kettles (my electric kettle is FAR SUPERIOR… but electric), but it would be nice to have one for dire times. This one looks easy to clean (and easy to tell if it IS clean). (By the way – our stove is gas, so we could simply use a match to light the burners. I suppose it might be nice to have a Coleman stove on hand in case you don’t have access to a gas stove, but… that’s beyond my research skills.)

 

 

Body wipes. We have a gas water heater, so we had hot water during the power outage. But if water wasn’t usable, and/or if we had an electric water heater, these body wipes would have helped tremendously.

 

 

 

 

 

Dry shampoo. Same thing for water-free hair cleansing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A cooler. We don’t own a cooler, mainly because we have no regular use for one and partly because we don’t have a lot of extra room. I like this collapsible one – it would have been nice to fill it with ice and be able to eat more normally, rather than going to restaurants the whole time the power was out. Obviously, this assumes you have access to ice. But it might come in handy. 

 

 

Things I Already Have

Hand-Powered Radio. If we hadn’t been able to charge our phones – if we didn’t have car chargers and/or there was no power in the whole city – we could have used this to charge our phones. Plus, it can get weather information which would be nice if we’d been inside a big string of storms.

 

 

 

 

Lifestraw. Our water was fine, but I am glad to have these (one for each person in my household) on hand, in case getting clean water became an issue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Multi-tool. I didn’t have any sort of use for this in this emergency, but I am grateful to have it just in case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kindle Paperwhite. One unexpected thing I was super grateful for was my ereader. I love nothing more than a good, solid book in my hands. But ebooks are inarguably useful in many contexts. When you have no electricity is definitely one of those contexts. My Kindle Paperwhite has a nice, long battery life and you can see the screen in the dark. Perfect for long evenings with no TV and no internet and a phone whose battery you want to spare.

And I was lucky to have a big cache of books to choose from – I started City of Mirrors, which is the third in The Passage series by Justin Cronin. But lying there at seven pm with nothing to do but read (my husband was on call), I was super glad to have it.

Do you need a good ebook recommendation? (Shameless plug alert!!!)Here is where I heartily urge that you buy a copy of my friend Kristina’s excellent first novel, Weight of Memory. She categorizes it as a horror novel, and there are certainly many deeply chilling things that happen in it… but I canNOT deal with being too scared, and I could not put this book down. It’s one of those books you think about a ton after the fact, because it was both pulse-pounding (I couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next) and thought-provoking (the premise, which is part occult and part evil charm, really got my brain churning; plus, the heartstring-plucking part of it, about the lengths we’d go to recapture time with a dead loved one, made me think a lot about the finality of the boundary between life and death). The main character is super strong and determined and I really, really like her – in large part because she feels so real. And the plot is one I have never encountered before and found really creepy/unsettling, but in a fun way. Anyway, the ebook is $10 and I think you should get a copy. (I ordered the paperback version for $20, because I really want her book on my bookshelf. But paperbacks don’t really tie into the theme of this blog post.)

Can opener. Just in case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bottle opener. Works on wine bottles and beer bottles alike. Just saying. Why this photo says “3 pack” yet shows four bottle openers is beyond me. But when it comes to wine-opening apparati, the more the merrier is my motto.

 

 

 

What do you keep on hand in case of a natural disaster? What am I missing from this list?