Storm AAR

Yesterday my wife and I went to visit some friends. They have been without power since Friday night when the storm went though the Chicago area. Lots of trees and power lines down in their area. A number of large trees went down on their block. Not a tornado, but 80+ MPH winds. Power is not expected to be restored until Monday.

First off, no one was hurt in their area, and there was no serious damage to houses despite a lot of big trees coming down. Just sheer luck I guess. The city spent the night cutting up the downed trees and getting the streets clear.

Our friends were able to borrow a couple of generators. They have one alternating between their fridge and their freezer, and the other one next door on their daughter's house for their fridge. The generator they were using failed after about 5 hours of running. Somehow they were able to borrow another one.

The very localized nature of the problem made if fairly easy for them to borrow the gear they needed, and they were able to get out to buy gasoline. Several of their neighbors went out and bought generators as well.

They have phone service through their cable hookup and that is not working either. They have cell phones, but neither had car chargers, so once the batteries wore down their cell phones were not much use. They went out and bought car chargers, so they have usable cell phones now. It would never have occurred to me not to have a car charger for a cell phone. But I guess it is not that unusual.

They were pretty lucky, all in all. No injuries and no house damage. And they were able to borrow stuff they needed, and go buy what they did not have and could not borrow.

Some lessons I took from this.

Just because you have a generator, does not mean your electrical issues have been solved. You are depending on a mechanical device not to fail, one that is far more fragile and failure prone than the grid is. It occurred to me that instead of having one large generator, several smaller generators would give you some redundancy.

Generators go through a lot of gas. Not a big deal if you can go out to refill on a regular basis, but a huge problem if you can't get out or the problem is widespread and you cannot refuel. It occurred to me that a siphon tube to get gas out of your vehicle(s) might be a wise investment. I am not thrilled with the idea of storing a lot of gas out in the garage, due to the inherent safety issues, but a couple of 5 gallons containers would not bother me much. Most cars have a pretty substantial gas tank that could make a decent secondary reserve.

In an incident unrelated to the storm, the water main broke down the street, and several houses were without water down the block. She (friend) mentioned that she did not know what she would do if their city water was shut off and they could not flush. I was tempted to point out that a five gallon bucket of water filled out of their swimming pool and brought inside would be adequate for 3 or 4 flushes. But I chose not to.