Emergency Preparation

On Chris's Knife Thread Kav entered info on survival gear.

I am not a survivalist but thought it was an interesting topic. We keep our household well stocked and prepared for New England weather. The longest we were without power was 8 days in the Great Ice Storm of 2008. Because we are well prepared we became a defacto shelter and had 6 people and 2 dogs move in with us for that storm. We also supplied hot showers and warm meals to others as needed.

Our emergency preparedness starts with a generator. 8000 watts. Enough to keep the furnace running to heat water and run the well. I  use a generac switch to control where the electricity goes and to also disconnect me from the grid. I cycle the generator on and off to conserve fuel. I don't keep the house lit up like an airport. In fact I don't even have the household lights wire to the generator. More on that later. To fuel the generator I keep 30 gallons of treated gasoline on hand. I also have 15 gallons of treated diesel to run the tractor.

We have two woodstoves. One is a cookstove with an oven. They can heat the house when I keep them blazing. I use the cookstove to prepare our meals.
During the ice storm of 2008 I prepared a lasagna and a fresh loaf of bread. One of the husbands staying with us complimented me on the meal. Then he turned and said to his wife "Gee, we're eating better in the middle of a natural disaster than we normally do". His wife just glared.

We use oil lanterns for light. We have 10 of them. Two are Alladin mantle lanterns and are bright enough to read by. I keep all  10 filled plus a gallon of lamp oil in storage. I have extra wicks and mantles for the Alladins. We have, no lie, over 150 candles as well. Plus 6 big boxes of wooden strike anywhere matches to light everything.

For food we keep a well stocked pantry. There is at least 60 pounds of dried pasta in there. I have canned spaghetti sauce and lots more canned tomatoes and sauce to cook with or make spaghetti sauce. There is always 20 lbs of white flour, 10 pounds of wheat flour and 16 pounds of sugar.  To go with this I keep 3 jars of yeast plus baking soda and powder in stock. There is at least 150 servings of dried soup mixes - Lipton and Bear Creek. I have assorted cracker, pretzels and breakfast cereal included 15 lbs of oatmeal. Plenty of raisins, prunes, dried appricots and cranberries. I also keep 15 lbs of rice on hand and about as much dried beans.

For canned meat I keep 20 cans of tuna fish and some canned Spam. I love Spam but my wife does not so I only have a few.

Our one lapse is vegetables. We don't normally eat canned veggies and I am loathe to stock them as they would not get used. Everything mentioned food-wise so far is in our normal eating regime. I just replenish as we eat from the pantry. The food is all purchased at the grocery store. Pasta last forever, the canned goods have 2 to 4 year shelf lives. Buying a few extra items a week built up our stocks.

So we are well set for any short term disasters as long as we are home. It would be interesting to hear any one else's emergency preparedness.

Phil

Phil, other than missing people we could survive for a very long time if TEOTWAKI ever happened. (the end of the world as we know it) We're sort of survivalists, but because of where we live, and it just took on a life of it's own. Power outages and such? No big deal.

I weld and had a welder that I plugged into the mains. I sold it and got a gas fired one that also doubles as a 8k generator. I mentioned it to a gent at work and he stated, good choice, it can tolerate a full short until it runs out of fuel. It also idles when it's under no load. I do have a one lunger diesel (600 rpm, huge flywheel) Lister engine that I have a generator for. I have the engine mounted but have yet to hook up the generator to it. I might get to it one of these days.

Lots of canned food, dry beans and grain, wheat, rice, oats, meats both canned and dry, you name it and if we eat it we have a bunch. I enter the winter with a few cans of gas an we always fill up the oil tank at the start of the season, but our main heat is wood. That conserves the oil. But if we didn't use wood the one tank is enough for the winter. Same goes for the propane. We have 2 100 gallon tanks that get topped off in the autumn. That's enough for a year +.

Because of the Great Ice Storm we put on an addition and added the wood stove. But part of the plan was to add solar electric. We have 10 125w PV panels and 1000 amp/hrs of 24v juice. Of course we can only use the top 20% of the charge without hurting the batteries.

Before the ice storm our plan was to revert back to pre REA days and use kerosene. I still keep 2 55 gallon drums of K1 on hand, but our pre REA plan, while it worked fine, had a fatal flaw for a sustained outage. Any hydrocarbon when it burns produces CO2 and water. After 5 days of burning kerosene and with tight homes the interior of our home was getting saturated. Hence the wood stove, PV system and such. Yeah, we have Aladdin lamps, hurricane lamps, Alpaca stoves and such also. They eat nothing so they won't get sold. Oh, I have maybe 30-40 gallons of white gas for the pump up lanterns.

Hey, we live in New England and feces can hit the fan. Gotta be ready.

My mom came up to visit one winter and commented on the storm we were going to get hammered by... How would we get out, yada, yada. I just asked her if she had somewhere to go. "No", was the answer. "OK, then we're going to stay right here and wait it out. We'll be fine. ". Yup, snug as a bug in a rug. Just another winter day in rural Maine.

At one time I kept 1 gallon wine jugs full of water stacked up. I'd put a sheet of plywood on top of each layer and they were stacked up to the ceiling of the shop. It was something like 100 gallons but I don't remember the exact amount for certain. I did that after the Ice Storm. Then with the addition of the PV system and being able to run our well pump they went away. Back then (before the jugs to the ceiling) I also bought some Katadyne water filters and many of the outages found me filtering drinking water from runoff. Water is the very first thing that is missed of the necessities.

To keep law and order on the hill, all of us have firearms. I'm a shooting competitor with rifle and handgun and another gent is a cop (I was a cop and I'm ex-military). So we can keep what we have. Not that there's much rioting and looting in rural Maine during outages, even long ones. Heck, everyone in Maine knows that everyone in rural Maine has firearms and knows how to use them and breeds mutual respect. They're tools for us that get used frequently.

For storms I fill up the indoor wood rack before it arrives and we're pretty much ready for most anything. If the power goes out I walk into the mud room, flip 2 switches and push a switch and we have power again. That takes about 10 seconds and most of it's getting up and walking time. After a few hours I'll run the generator to recharge the batteries and run whatever large draw items need to be run. Without the gen' running the inverters can handle minor loads; lights, refrigerator, TV and such, and run the well pump since I have them slaved together for 220v. We have plenty of flashlights and charged cells so we really don't even need to run the electric lights.

I'm probably forgetting things, but that's the gist. How else can one live in rural Maine if one isn't ready?

"How else can one live in rural Maine if one isn't ready?"

I agree whole heartedly. We live in SE NH. Not rural at all but not suburbia either.

I consider our preparedness to be a prudent plan for New England winters. People at work called me a prepper though we are far from that.
When the 2008 Ice storm hit I was amazed at how un-prepared most folks were. And even folks with generators had no stored gasoline. They were lined up with red cans at the gas stations that had power.

BUT I am even more surprised at the people whom lived through the ice storm that made no future preparations. That I do not understand.
My wife was the kind hearted soul who opened our house to others be it a temporary shelter, just a hot meal or a hot shower. However she made it clear this was a one time offer. Now that you have lived through it make sure you are prepared in the future. You will not be welcome back at the PHilNH5's residence in the next disaster. The two families that stayed the longest each bought generators after that

I would love to have solar but we live in a valley so that is out.

I do have a coleman lantern and cookstove. All of my planning was based on winter weather. We lost power in irene for 4 days. Hot humid and sticky. Certainly not a good time for a wood cookstove. The Coleman stepped up nicely.

Phil

You can have all the prep supplies in the world without this...you're in trouble....

When I was active in that community we had to post a disclaimer explaining the negative social image of a 'survivalist' was not our purpose. I missed whan this 'prepper' nonsense came along. It doesn't take such extreme stockpiling to put yourself in a better state. My grandmother's house was damaged in the Northridge earthquake. There were still 4 families who originaly settled that street in the early 30s. I drove over with my Coleman stove, Dietz lanterns as my brothers were trying to wrestle an unused kitchen woodburning stove from the garage that hadn't been fired in 40 years. Within minutes I had nieghbors who had changed my diapers walk over with preserves and canned meats from their backyards (the nieghbohood was a rare surviving residential agriculture zone) and we had hot coffee and food going in short order by kerosene lanterns. The yuppies who never made an effort to meet anyone actually called the utility company to complain about this one house having pwer restored. A overworked service truck stopped by and had a good laugh-and a hot meal before going back out with a large thermos for his crew. Later that night while everyone was sleeping on old army cots my uncle acquired in the fifties I saw two figures hop the fence. I slipped behind a big leafed Sycamore with a 97 Winchester riot as they walked past me to the shattered window. I sort of introduced myself ching ching. They claimed they were looking for work! I said O.K. stack the bricks from the collapsed fireplace. It was dawn when they finished and I recognised romany being spoken.
They asked for pay. I replied payment was 30 seconds head start and i would be in touch with the local gyspy headman; who remembered my great grandmother. The yuppies
demanded a zone change and within a few years all the original families were gone, yuppies sold out to a developer who called the nieghborhood an old slum and demolished everything for apartments.

Steel' and Kav, you'll get no argument from me. I'm a shooting competitor to stay in practice. I might not be much of a ranked competitor because I'm so accurate (takes away from time) , but I see competition as a vehicle to hitting my target. I don't miss many A zone hits but even to do that I'm fairly fast.

I agree, without what you pictured the rest just turns one into a resupply point for those with. "Our" hill is pretty much of a single mindset, as far as the long term residents anyway. We'll take care of each other if you get my drift. There's only one way in, and one way out. There are folks who are transients but folks move out to us for a reason and it's pretty much a common mindset of independence that brings folks out here. If one can't cope with that one can't survive out here. Life is far easier and less expensive in town. Almost everyday someone is heard shooting some firearm; but that's incredibly common for rural Maine as I'm sure it is anywhere in rural USA.