What a Storm! No Power but We Were Fine…What we Did
Yes, we were without power this week as a really windy storm blew through and blew down trees, power lines, trucks, and on and on. This is what we did.
I had anticipated we might have a problem so I had filled our drink cooler and all our pitchers with water. I went to the garage and brought in a few gallon jugs of water to be used to flush the toilet in the bathroom we designated for use. I placed glow sticks around all the door handles in my home so no matter where we were when the power failed we could reach for a glow stick and have light! I had already taken meat out of the freezer to make my first stew of the season. It sounded so good with the rainy weather. Just as I went to the microwave to defrost the meat the power went out.
We have a gas stove, power outages are another great reason to have a gas stove. I got out a frying pan and began defrosting the meat by browning it and as soon as it was defrosted enough, cutting small pieces off. I added an onion and then finally the remaining ingredients, covered the pot and let it cook away. We made a list of those we knew had electric stoves and committed to call and invite them for a hot meal should the power remain off. We called an elderly couple in the neighborhood to make sure they were ok.
What we discovered was that while we have one land line phone which is plugged directly into the phone line, and not battery operated, many of our neighbors do not. What that means is that when the power goes down your phones do not work. Cell phones also did not work as the lines were so crowded we could not get a call through. The lesson, go buy at least one phone that will plug directly into phone lines and not into electrical outlets.
Next, I got out the crank radio and turned on the local news station. There was no news about the outage but we broke up the silence with some good music, and since it was a crank radio we did not run down any batteries. Remember, if you have a crank radio it must be charged by placing it in the sun and charging the solar before you need to use the crank. If you have a crank/solar radio and have not charged it, get it out today, place it in the sun for 5 or more hours, and you will be set to go when that winter storm knocks out your power.
As soon as the power came back I hopped in the shower, put the wash into the dryer and refilled all the water containers we had been using, just in case another tree went down and left us in the dark again. For us this was only a few hours but 10,000 people are still without power, 36 hours later. This is the season for weather related power outages. Prepare now.
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OH. MY. GOSH. What an incredible simple idea! Glowsticks. They’re cheap at the dollar store and will make such a huge difference when the power goes out! Thank you