April 2010
The recent storm may well have served as a wake-up call for the possible
difficult times that might occur in a disaster of greater proportion. The
advance knowledge that heavy rains were coming, did not, to the best of my
knowledge, include the fact that there would be winds of up to 72 mph. This is
the unpredictability of Mother Nature. Fortunately, outages were random. I had
no power for almost 48 hours, but across the street they were never without it.
On Saturday, we were visiting with someone when the power went out at their
home, only to be fully restored less than three hours later. We left there and
came home to find that my house had been without power for several hours. We
took stock of what we had in our house. At least three working and powerful
flashlights, phone service(we have one copper line), two Blackberry's, hot
water because we have a gas hot water heater, stove-top gas cooking, no battery
operated AM radio, no wind-up clock, two refrigerator/freezers relatively full,
and two HT's, each fully charged, and with an additional fully charged
battery for each. It would be so poetic to be able to say that our
communication to the outside world was preserved by the presence of those
HT's. However, in reality, we were fine. I did suspect though, that we
might be in for a prolonged black-out when the usually authoritative phone
message from LIPA with its generally accurate estimate about return of service,
had a phone message, that to paraphrase sounded like, "We have no
@#$%^&* idea of when we can get the power back."
24 hours later, in the darkness of evening, by the light of ever-dimming
flashlights, Blackberry's no longer charged and unable to be re-charged, my
FIOS phone-line gone (we still had the copper line but only because no tree had
taken it down ), HT's still in good shape, and the realization that at some
point, they might have been my only communication to the outside world. No
hyperbole here! Reality! KEEP THOSE BATTERIES CHARGED!
All of us probably learned something from this storm, and we will put
together some guidelines for members that we hope will be helpful in preparing
for an emergency. We certainly invite your input. For me, one of the positive
aspects was the XYL coming to understand the need for a generator. After all,
there was no way that she ever wanted to go so long a period of time without
watching the Home Shopping Network. Hmm! Perhaps we can pick up a good deal on
a generator there?
