Emergency Prepardness - Do it NOW!

Please read this post!! I'm doing this with the intention that people will benefit from this experience of ours with no water and/or power. Here's a list of things that are important to have and plan for:

#1) Water - HUGE!! I didn't even dream that this would be an issue, but our private well won't pump without electricity. If we hadn't had friends with power, we would have been up a creek - literally packing water in to use!! (Fill up bathtubs, buckets, plastic storage containers, etc.) A friend of mine told me that they sell huge barrels for water storage at one of those emergency essential stores. They hold like 55 gallons of water or something.

- Hint: A friend told me to fill up our bath tub full of water. I'm so glad I did. We used a lot of that water in the first few days otherwise we would have had nothing. I would recommend filling up anything you can if you know there is a possibility that power will be out.

- Water bottles - I wasn't going to get any, but when I got to the store on Friday before the storm the stores were sold out. I managed to find a few packs and was so glad we did. We used about 1 2/3 packs of water over a 5 day period (that is minus Shawn drinking it for breakfast or lunch) and supplementing with milk that we had in our fridge. Get a pack per person in your family.

- Buckets, Water Cooler: You need to have a way to haul your water and use it.

- Because we didn't know how long our power was going to be out for, we used most of our water to flush toilets! If the situation would have been more severe I would recommend making an outdoor latrene. Digging a hole, whatever you have to do. Have a shovel on hand. I would have felt so guilty not having water for more important things than flushing the toilet.

#2) First things first - fill up your vehicles with gas and any containers you might have. Find DRY ICE and/or blocks of ice to put in your freezer. If you have a deep chest freezer always have a few blocks of ice in there to have on hand. A big problem that we ran into was finding ways to keep our food cold. Because some people had power we were able to take our freezer foods to their freezers, but by day 5 our food in the fridge had had it. We got dry ice (a fairly small amount) on Monday and it lasted until Wednesday night. Without a way to keep your food cold it won't do you any good.

- Charge all of your phones, computers, electronic equipment - you might not be able to have another chance. Our kids used the laptop to watch movies on for a few afternoons and that was a life saver for them and me. I will also admit that I was so OUT of IT without electricity. I don't get a paper, so the government could have been overturned and I wouldn't have had a clue. I'm going to invest in a battery operated radio - just so I could stay in tune in case I needed to evacuate or needed to know something else that I really soley upon internet and tv for my news.

- Have cash stowed away that you could use in a major emergency.

- Diapers, wipes, formula - if you have a baby make sure you have extra of all these things available!

- IF you can afford it - a generator might be worth investing in. Our neighbors were able to use their's the entire week and were fine with nice cold food!

#3)Cooking your food - a propane cooker, a grill with a full tank, a fire, whatever you plan on using have all the things necessary for it. Have full propane tanks for your grill. I had a great emergency prepardness class in Iowa where the sister taught us to use the grill like an oven. You can cook bread and even cookies on your grill if you can keep the temperature constant. Wood and an Ax - eventually you'd run out of propane, so have these items on hand. Also if this would have happened in the winter we would have been freezing - we do have a wood burning fire place, but had no ax or wood. We are in the works of getting wood and I bought an ax. Think about all weather situations. I managed to make some fairly normal meals for the kids on the one heating element -
veggie pasta, chicken fettucini, cheesy eggs with ham, salmon and grilled potatoes. We ate good. The only thing I want to find is a propane cooker with a heating element that I could have used inside. If it would have been winter it would have been harder to stay outside and cook the food. Plus it would have been nice to use for heating water to use for cleaning.

#4) Cleaning and Sanitation - we used a wash bucket for washing hands, and Shawn spongebathed the first morning in cold water!! Have a BIG heavy bottom pot to boil water in for these things. Also clorox wipes, anti-bacterial soap, paper towels were handy. No wonder people always got sick back in the day. I got really tired of trying to wash the dishes in just the minimum amount of water possible. I'm sure our kitchen was not as sanitary as we are used to.

#5) Lighting - Holy smokes this ended up being a pain! We did great playing outside, going about our day as normal until about 8:00 pm when it was completely dark. Our kids weren't quite tired yet, so we did have flashlights, and eventually got out some candles/matches. I think we'll get more candles and invest in a lantern or two.

Shawn reading scriptures to us at night.


#6) Batteries - have extra batteries for all flashlights, radios, etc.

#7) Food that doesn't have to be cooked. These might have preservatives but having things like crackers, granola bars, pretzels, cereal, isn't a bad idea. Also fresh fruit - oranges, bananas, apples, etc. that don't need to be cold are good to have. It really helped on day 5 when our yogurts, cheese, milk, fruit, etc. were gone or not good anymore.

#8) Grow a garden!

(Kids putting no power to use - riding their mighty steads to places with power - Yee Haw!!)

I'm sure there are more things you could add but these are things that I think we learned during our "SAGA" - Irene thanks for coming but this is not an opened invitation - we don't want to see you again.