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Hi everyone, I just joined and thought I’d throw in my 2 cents about surviving the Iowa derecho storm last summer. A quick lesson, a derecho is basically an inland hurricane but with straight line winds. Wind speeds here were clocked at 140 mph and lasted about an hour. Oh boy, how things changed in that hour! There were huge trees down everywhere, damaging houses, blocking streets, etc. My family of 3 (me, DH, teenage son) was without power for 10 days, without internet for 38 days. No cell service for at least 4 days. I’m sort of new to prepping and DH was not really on board. I’d get an eyeroll and a teasing “crazy prepper” comment when I’d come home with something I thought would be useful. Let’s say DH has changed his tune a bit and doesn’t think I’m so “crazy” now. One thing we had debated back and forth for a while was “Should we get a generator?”. Needless to say, we did not have one when the storm hit, and fortunately thanks to the kindness of a neighbor we were able to borrow one to keep one fridge and our chest freezer running and also charge our phones and battery packs. Well, the 5 biggest “saves” from the storm were: 1. Kindness of neighbors (generator) 2. Functioning sewer and water (we never lost water, our gas water heater kept working so we always had hot water) 3. Keeping our cars full of gas 4. Cool weather for an Iowa August 5. Emergency Cash Stash
Items that were useful to have on hand : Gas siphon, temperature probes to monitor temps in fridge and freezer, battery/USB powered personal fans, power bricks (battery packs) to run the fans, pruning loppers/saw, work gloves, work boots, padlock, tarps (to cover broken windshield in DH car), cereal bars/protein bars/granola bars for snacks.
We had plenty of food on hand, and we have a gas stove, gas grill, and charcoal grill so we had no issues cooking. There were a few things that surprised me: 1. Lots of physical work (debris cleanup) and stress makes you HUNGRY! I normally do 16-8 fasting and my first meal of the day is lunch. Nope, I HAD to have something to eat in the morning or I could feel myself getting irritable. 2. Stress induced insomnia is a real thing! My mind raced every night thinking about what I needed to do the next day. 3. Lack of sleep plus hunger plus stress makes people grouchy! The solutions: Eat more often and eat more food. Take headache meds if you need them. Take something to help you sleep if needed (After 4 days of not sleeping I finally used some Tylenol PM). Take a nap if you can, rest when possible. Drink water! Have some special items to help things seem more normal. DH was so grateful that I had a small container of instant coffee squirreled away.
I could write a ton more, but I’ll call that good for now! Let me know if ya’ll like to hear more…CP
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These learned things are exactly what needs to be posted. The lessons could save someone, change a mind or help fill a hole in someone’s game.
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Corsaire, good question. If you go to ebay (or Amazon) and put in this string: 20000mAh Mini Power Bank Dual USB UltraThin External Battery Backup Charger you’ll find something similar to what we used. We have 3 (one for each of us) portable/desk size fans that can run off of batteries or a USB cable. Well, the fans used up batteries pretty fast but we found that if we used the power bank we could run them all night on the low speed. It was great for putting in the window at night to bring in cool air. We did NOT run the generator at night, but twice a day, from 8am-12pm and again from 4pm-8pm. That seemed to keep the fridge and freezer cool enough to bridge the gaps. Then we stored the generator in a locked garage at night. Later, I did hear of generators getting stolen, but as far I know it didn’t happen in our neighborhood.
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So have you developed a backup sanitation plan?
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