WazzuCoug
Member
We are in our 9th day without power and water. It's been a good learning experience in many ways, and I thought I'd share a bit so maybe you'd think about what you might do if there is a long term power and/or water issue. It also got me thinking about my post-surgery diet, life and such, which I'll get into a bit.
We sort of felt good about our emergency plan, but it obviously had holes in it, which we are going to correct after things return to normal-ish. We have a bunch of emergency supplies, water and food, which we have not gotten into and won't. The nearby towns and the city all have power, so we can easily get supplies. However, seeing how our lives are impacted when we can still get things from town makes us think a bit harder about: what if we couldn't just go to town?
The thing that has made this the most difficult is obviously the water situation. We have a good well, but we need electricity to pump it. We have several natural springs and a year-round creek on our property, so we could collect water if we were desperate. It's been raining off and on, so I have a rainwater catchment system collecting water that we are using for our toilets. We heat water to use for washing dishes and taking "sponge baths." We have periodically checked into a nearby hotel to take good showers. I can also take showers at my place of work, so that's helpful. We have a washer and dryer at my wife's business, which has power, so we are washing clothes there. We are lucky. So many others in the rural areas don't have those things. We need to plan like none of those "conveniences" will be available.
I was able to get my hands on a generator which is now powering our refrigerator, a couple lights, our internet, and powering up our batteries and keeping my CPAP running. It's made things a little more tolerable.
We ran out of seasoned wood to burn in our wood fireplace, but I was able to find someone who had a half cord I could get, so we should have enough to get through this outage. I'm hopeful that it will be on in the next couple days-ish. We actually got a text last night that power was restored, but...no, it wasn't. I suspect a major feeder may have gotten power back, but there are so many lines and poles down along our road, I don't know when they will be back up. It looks like the lines along a nearby main road have been fixed, so I think it's getting closer to when they'll get the side roads done.
So, how does all of this fit into post-surgery life? Well, it has been a bit harder to eat the way I would prefer to eat. We didn't have a refrigerator for several days. We had to throw out almost everything that was in our freezer. We moved things into coolers, and some stuff did stay frozen long enough so that we were able to take them to my wife's business and use the refrigerators and freezers there when the power came back on a few days ago. We still lost a lot of food though.
So, making food choices has been a little more difficult. I think stress has definitely triggered a desire to eat more and feel hungry. The quality of the food has taken a bit of a hit. Not as fresh. Getting food to go in town. Processed snacks. We don't want to cook that much because it takes water to clean it up, so even though we have planty of ways we could cook, we haven't been doing that very much because of the water issue. With the generator, we were able to get our fridge back up and running, so we've stocked it minimally with some new veg and a few other things, but we are keeping it pretty minimal until the main power comes back.
I could weigh myself. But I haven't been. It just hasn't been on my mind. It wouldn't surprise me if I gained some weight, but at the same time, it wouldn't surprise me if I lost a little. I've been eating at very irregular times. It's just really odd.
It's made me wonder about really long term disasters though with the smaller stomach. Would it benefit me or become a problem for food an nutrients long term? I don't know. I'm just thinking. For the most part, I don't think it would be a huge issue. Dehydration might be the biggest issue, but I wonder about if there was a food shortage and if I coudl only eat once every few days, would I be at a disadvantage with the smaller stomach? It's not like you can stretch it out overnight to have more capacity. We recognized that we need to have a better food storage solution. We had planned to expand our garden quite a bit this year, so along with that...more bottling and canning for food storage.
So, we are reevaluating our disaster plan. A manual water pump for the well is now a "must have." A better way to collect and purify larger amounts of water is now a "must have." We've found options for both of those things, so those will get integrated into our plan immediately. Firewood. We don't use our wood stove that often, so we never kept that much wood around, even though we could collect enough for a couple seasons of burning right from our property. So, we have an extra storage shed, so I'm going to be filling that up to dry over the next year.
The generator has been helpful since we got it on friday, but it still requires gas, which is still easy to get, but it wouldn't be in a major disaster, so we've got to plan of no power better.
We are very lucky that we have property and space to do some of those things, but even if we lived in town or the city, we'd be taking some different steps to prepare, and I guess what my goal is in this post is to get you thinking about your own disaster plan. Think about the food you'd need, the water you'd need (as seen in Texas, water can go offline even if you are on a municipal water system. You've got to have water for backup. We have plenty of water, and a couple little purifiers, but it needs to be better.
That's what has been on my mind, it's been a significant wake up call that clearly showed that although we took steps to have an emergency plan, it was really insufficient.
There are probably going to be more incidents like this and what Texas has been experiencing in the future. Our power grids are old and not particularly well maintained. Climate change is going to cause more freak incidents like we've seen.
So, you don't have to be a doomsday prepper to get ready for these sorts of things, but the concept of being ready for disaster is really necessary for all of us, I think.
We sort of felt good about our emergency plan, but it obviously had holes in it, which we are going to correct after things return to normal-ish. We have a bunch of emergency supplies, water and food, which we have not gotten into and won't. The nearby towns and the city all have power, so we can easily get supplies. However, seeing how our lives are impacted when we can still get things from town makes us think a bit harder about: what if we couldn't just go to town?
The thing that has made this the most difficult is obviously the water situation. We have a good well, but we need electricity to pump it. We have several natural springs and a year-round creek on our property, so we could collect water if we were desperate. It's been raining off and on, so I have a rainwater catchment system collecting water that we are using for our toilets. We heat water to use for washing dishes and taking "sponge baths." We have periodically checked into a nearby hotel to take good showers. I can also take showers at my place of work, so that's helpful. We have a washer and dryer at my wife's business, which has power, so we are washing clothes there. We are lucky. So many others in the rural areas don't have those things. We need to plan like none of those "conveniences" will be available.
I was able to get my hands on a generator which is now powering our refrigerator, a couple lights, our internet, and powering up our batteries and keeping my CPAP running. It's made things a little more tolerable.
We ran out of seasoned wood to burn in our wood fireplace, but I was able to find someone who had a half cord I could get, so we should have enough to get through this outage. I'm hopeful that it will be on in the next couple days-ish. We actually got a text last night that power was restored, but...no, it wasn't. I suspect a major feeder may have gotten power back, but there are so many lines and poles down along our road, I don't know when they will be back up. It looks like the lines along a nearby main road have been fixed, so I think it's getting closer to when they'll get the side roads done.
So, how does all of this fit into post-surgery life? Well, it has been a bit harder to eat the way I would prefer to eat. We didn't have a refrigerator for several days. We had to throw out almost everything that was in our freezer. We moved things into coolers, and some stuff did stay frozen long enough so that we were able to take them to my wife's business and use the refrigerators and freezers there when the power came back on a few days ago. We still lost a lot of food though.
So, making food choices has been a little more difficult. I think stress has definitely triggered a desire to eat more and feel hungry. The quality of the food has taken a bit of a hit. Not as fresh. Getting food to go in town. Processed snacks. We don't want to cook that much because it takes water to clean it up, so even though we have planty of ways we could cook, we haven't been doing that very much because of the water issue. With the generator, we were able to get our fridge back up and running, so we've stocked it minimally with some new veg and a few other things, but we are keeping it pretty minimal until the main power comes back.
I could weigh myself. But I haven't been. It just hasn't been on my mind. It wouldn't surprise me if I gained some weight, but at the same time, it wouldn't surprise me if I lost a little. I've been eating at very irregular times. It's just really odd.
It's made me wonder about really long term disasters though with the smaller stomach. Would it benefit me or become a problem for food an nutrients long term? I don't know. I'm just thinking. For the most part, I don't think it would be a huge issue. Dehydration might be the biggest issue, but I wonder about if there was a food shortage and if I coudl only eat once every few days, would I be at a disadvantage with the smaller stomach? It's not like you can stretch it out overnight to have more capacity. We recognized that we need to have a better food storage solution. We had planned to expand our garden quite a bit this year, so along with that...more bottling and canning for food storage.
So, we are reevaluating our disaster plan. A manual water pump for the well is now a "must have." A better way to collect and purify larger amounts of water is now a "must have." We've found options for both of those things, so those will get integrated into our plan immediately. Firewood. We don't use our wood stove that often, so we never kept that much wood around, even though we could collect enough for a couple seasons of burning right from our property. So, we have an extra storage shed, so I'm going to be filling that up to dry over the next year.
The generator has been helpful since we got it on friday, but it still requires gas, which is still easy to get, but it wouldn't be in a major disaster, so we've got to plan of no power better.
We are very lucky that we have property and space to do some of those things, but even if we lived in town or the city, we'd be taking some different steps to prepare, and I guess what my goal is in this post is to get you thinking about your own disaster plan. Think about the food you'd need, the water you'd need (as seen in Texas, water can go offline even if you are on a municipal water system. You've got to have water for backup. We have plenty of water, and a couple little purifiers, but it needs to be better.
That's what has been on my mind, it's been a significant wake up call that clearly showed that although we took steps to have an emergency plan, it was really insufficient.
There are probably going to be more incidents like this and what Texas has been experiencing in the future. Our power grids are old and not particularly well maintained. Climate change is going to cause more freak incidents like we've seen.
So, you don't have to be a doomsday prepper to get ready for these sorts of things, but the concept of being ready for disaster is really necessary for all of us, I think.
