Lazy Man and Money

Was I Prepared for an Emergency?

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On August 10, my state of Iowa was hit by a derecho.  This is a type of storm with destructive straight-line winds.  In this particular case, winds topped out at 140 mph.  The city of Cedar Rapids, a dozen miles north of me, was devastated.  I’m writing this article ten days after the storm, and quite a few people still don’t have power, and even more don’t have internet access.  The road to recovery is going to be a long one.  The city has lost half its tree canopy, and already 22,000 tons of debris have been removed.

“A windstorm”

The early forecasts weren’t particularly concerning to me.  There was going to be a storm with high windows in the afternoon, with the possibility of people losing power.  That’s not particularly rare – it’s not unusual for storms to briefly knock out power.  My neighborhood has buried power lines, so we’re generally less affected than other people.

My wife and I are both working from home, due to COVID-19.  She works upstairs, and I have a desk downstairs, in the finished basement.  As the storm approached, she and the kids came downstairs.  I continued to work, updating documentation in Jira.  I was working right up to the point where we lost power and internet access.

The aftermath

My wife and kids went back upstairs after the storm passed.  I attempted to continue working.  I tried using my cell phone as a hot spot.  This didn’t work the best, but I was able to sporadically get connected.  Eventually, I stopped trying, and just did some work offline.

I expected the power to be back within the hour (as it usually is), but a few hours had passed and still no electricity.

The FDA recommends discarding refrigerated food if you lose power for 4 hours and frozen food if you lose power for 48 hours.  This assumes that you have left the doors closed to prevent warm air from getting inside.  As the four-hour mark approached, we ate an early supper.  Anything that didn’t get eaten was going to get thrown away.

Later, we went through the process of taking everything out of the fridge, cataloging it, and throwing it out.  Luckily, the next day was trash day.  Many homeowner’s policies have coverage for refrigerated contents.  In our case, there was no deductible.  We turned in a claim for $300, and it was promptly paid.  $300 might sound high, but there’s a lot of stuff in your fridge.  We had 75 unique items on our list.

Nightfall

We chatted outside with the neighbors.  The main topic was the power outage – when would we have power back?  Hopefully by morning.  The local news stations had been knocked off the air, so nobody was really sure what was going on.

We had plenty of flashlights around the house, but not many spare batteries.  I went onto Amazon and ordered a bunch of D batteries since we didn’t know how long this might last.

[Editor’s Note: We lost power the week before for about 4 hours. We have a ton of AA and AAA batteries for kids toys, which work well in some of our smaller flashlights. I didn’t plan it this way, but it worked out.]

I used my work laptop to top off my phone’s battery.  Then I remembered that the battery charging packs for the car had a 12V port.  The battery packs didn’t have much battery left, as it has been about a month since I had last charged them.  Still, they had plenty of juice to charge a couple of phones.  We also had quite a few portage power packs for the phones.  We’d be able to keep our phones charged for a while.

My wife ordered a couple of battery-powered fans.  Days later, I realized that we actually had a couple of them.  I’d ordered some a couple years ago when my daughter’s Girl Scout camp occurred during a heatwave.  Unfortunately, they got put with the camping stuff and forgotten.

I was able to take a hot, albeit dark, shower.  Unless you have a well, you don’t need electricity to have water.  We have a gas water heater, meaning that we also don’t need electricity to have hot water.

Power!

Around 1:30 AM, we got power back.  Hooray!  The joy lasted about 90 seconds before the power cut out again.  Finally, around 4 AM, the power returned for good.

The next day, we saw the extent of the damage.  Our town had been hit with winds of about 80 MPH, meaning that we were spared the brunt of the storm.  Almost all of my coworkers were without power, and most of them would be without power for days.

In Cedar Rapids, it looked like a war zone.  Power lines were down all over down, and trees had been uprooted and had landed everywhere, including on houses.  Each batch of pictures looked worse than the last.  It was – and still is – sickening.

Near Des Moines, one of the grocery stores disposed of 800 gallons of spoiled milk by dumping it down a storm drain.  That causes a fish kill and they had to pay for the Department of Natural Resources to prevent the water from reaching a river.  If it’s not rainwater, it doesn’t belong in a storm drain.

How did we do?

Although my family had fairly minimal impact, it seemed like a good time to see how we fared in terms of disaster preparedness.

Electricity

We don’t have a generator.  We almost never lose power for more than a trivial amount of time.  Also, I know quite a few people with generators, and in most cases could probably borrow from them.  Unfortunately, in this case, the destruction was so widespread that all generators were in use.

Honestly, I doubt that we’ll get a generator.  I’m not sure that the risk of this happening again is enough to justify the cost.  But I’m definitely giving it more consideration than I had in the past.

In terms of batteries, we were in OK shape.  Our cell phones would have lasted for several days on the power we had.  I did go ahead and buy some solar-powered battery packs so that we can produce our own power next time.  My kids don’t know it, but if we were still without power the next day, I’d have confiscated their chrome books and bled the batteries dry to charge phones.

Food

We wouldn’t have starved.  We had peanut butter, cereal, summer sausage, crackers, fruit cups, and some canned goods.  Our propane grill could have generated some heat for cooking.

Communications

We do have a landline phone and a low-tech non-electric phone.  This worked fine.  Our cell phone service was spotty, but we were able to stay in contact.

Housing

We weren’t forced from our home like some people.  We do have a six-person tent.  At this point, we’ve only used it for cub scout camping events.  It wouldn’t be the most comfortable place to sleep, but it would work in a pinch.

How did we do?

Overall, I think we were reasonably well prepared.  We should have had more options for power, but we’d have been OK for several days.  We may want to look into the best ways to cook various shelf-stable foods on a grill, and maybe buy some extra grill accessories to make it easier.

Have you been through a natural disaster?  How did you fare?

Shopping for the End of the World (as we know it)

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Today’s article comes from regular contributor, Kosmo.

My family is at near-lockdown stage at this point.  A week ago, the kids were in school, my wife and I were both working from the office, and we were set to go on a long weekend trip to a local indoor waterpark.  The trip was the first to get scuttled.  Late on Thursday, my company gave us the option to work from home for two weeks (which has since been changed to indefinitely).  My kids aren’t going to have school for at least a month.  My wife is hoping that her group’s work from home request, currently mired in red tape, approved today.  If not, she’s going to burn vacation waiting for the approval.  At that point, none of us are leaving the house/yard for a while.  The vast majority of Iowa’s cases are in my county (thanks to an Egyptian cruise), so we’re being cautious with our human interactions.

We usually have a good supply of food on hand, but enough to last 4-8 weeks?  Probably not.  Over the weekend, I made a trip to the grocery store.  What did I get?

Non-perishables

  • Canned tuna – I hate tuna (and pretty much all seafood), but the rest of the family likes it.  The stuff’s good for a couple of years.  I also bought a couple of jars of Miracle Whip to mix with it
  • Other canned meat – I bought some canned chicken and ham.  There aren’t going to be anyone’s favorites, so I’ll push them to the back of the pile.  But if we need protein, they’ll serve nicely.  Easy recipe: make Stove Top per the recipe on the box.  Then add canned chicken, cheese, and a splash of A-1.  Not everyone likes the resulting casserole, but I do – and it’s very quick and easy to make.
  • Peanut butter and jelly – A couple of larger containers of both.  While peanut butter doesn’t have as much protein as the meats, it does have some.  We’re going to run out of bread before too long, so I also bought crackers to spread it on.
  • Dinty Moore beef stew – My wife likes the stuff, so I bought several cans.
  • Beef vegetable soup
  • Hormel Compleats pot roast – I eat these pretty often for a lunch at work, so I grabbed several of them.  Should keep things feeling fairly normal for me.
  • Summer sausage – It’s good for about six months and doesn’t require refrigeration until opened.  My daughter and I both it quite a bit
  • Chef Boyardee for the kids.
  • Pop – I’d go crazy without my sugar and caffeine
  • Spaghetti (unprepared)
  • Tomato soup – To make spaghetti
  • Microwave Mac and Cheese – Velveeta shells and cheese
  • Ramen noodle – I’m not sure these things ever expire
  • Fruit cups – The store was a bit picked over, but there were still some peaches
  • Raisins – Fresh fruit that lasts virtually forever
  • Applesauce
  • Pudding – Name brand stuff was gone, but Hy-Vee (grocery chain) will be fine.

Perishables

  • Bread – It won’t last long, but it’ll keep things feeling normal for a bit
  • Hamburger – The most versatile of meats.
  • Hot dogs and brats – immediately threw them in the fridge to stall the clock
  • Cheese – We like cheese a lot.  Blocks of cheese had expiration dates a few months out, so I bought a half dozen blocks.  Colby jack for the rest of the family; non-jacked Colby for me.
  • Deli meats – Bought some Hillshire Farms 9oz tubs of ham and turkey.  The expiration dates are a couple of months out.  They’re good for about a week after you crack the seal.
  • Bananas and apples

As you can see, there was a lot of focus on protein-rich non-perishables.

Note that we already had a stocked freezer before this whole situation started.  So we already had plenty of frozen pizzas, pot pies, hot pockets, TV dinners, as well as several pounds of hamburger.

We’re also stressing food conservation to the kids

  • We WILL eat leftovers.  Eat yesterday’s leftovers today, so that you don’t have to dip into the reserves.
  • Avoid waste by taking only what you know you will be able to eat.  If you’re still hungry, have some more.  But avoid having uneaten food on your plate at the end of the meal.
  • Be wary of expiration dates on perishables.  Once you’ve started the clock ticking (opening the deli meat, for example), focus on that item for the next several days until it is gone.  Don’t allow food to spoil.

The food conservation tips are always a good practice, but we’re not always as diligent about them, especially when something even more tasty is just around the corner at the grocery store or restaurant.  There’s no longer such a thing as a quick trip to the grocery store.  Every outside interaction is a potential exposure.  While we should avoid panic, we should also make smart choices and minimize outside contact as much as possible.