Posted by ZooNana | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 04-05-2007
We spent 4 days in the dark last week. A storm took down 250 power poles in our area and cut power to 3000 people. We did OK, since I plan well for emergencies. We ran the generator every few hours to keep the fridge and freezer cold. We used candles, crank flashlights and lanterns for light and had to use our stored water since the well doesn’t work without power. The kids ran around playing with their hand crank flashlights. We kept getting news that the power would be off longer and longer, but it ended up getting turned on earlier than expected. The kids kept busy playing board games. I was actually sad to see the power come one, yes I prefer the power on, but watching the kids play games and dealing well with the situation, was kinda fun.
We piled everyone in the living room to sleep and used the propane fireplace for heat. The stove still worked since it is propane we cooked only one night though. I could have cooked more if it weren’t for one little problem. We had eggs in the incubator when the power went out. The only way I could think of to keep the incubator warm was to use the oven. I sat the incubator on top of the stove, turned on the oven, and directed the hot air from the oven vent into and over the incubator. It was really hard keeping a constant temperature in the incubator. Those eggs saw temps between 79 and 108 degrees. I stayed up almost all night every night keeping an eye on them.
Well I figured we lost all the eggs after all that, but we got a surprise. I’ll blog about that soon
A few things I realized we need to do to prepare for the next emergency are:
- We need a battery powered weather radio (tornado warning happened the first afternoon and we didn’t know because the weather radio we have doesn’t alert without power)
- We need a battery powered carbon monoxide detector (I couldn’t sleep the first two nights using the propane fireplace, I was terrified of CO2 without the detectors on)
- We need battery operated smoke detectors (ours are hard wired into the house electricity)
- We need to store more toilet flushing water. (we had plenty to drink but not enough to flush with. We melted snow the first two days but there was no more snow the last two days. Hubby brought jugs of water home from work but realistically we can’t rely on being able to leave home for such things)
- We need to store more gas for the generator on the property (Hubby had to bring gas home each night and that may not be an option next time)
- We need to keep the propane tank full at all times (we had plenty of propane to last but I was still obsessively checking it because we were running the oven 24/7 and the fireplace at night. If it had been colder and had to run the fireplace all day we would have had a problem)
- Need candle holders (I have a zillion candles but not enough holders, I didn’t think that one through. We used canning jars for candle holders and that worked well but I’d rather not mess up my jars)
- Need more games and things to do. (the kids play games all the time so they were not interested in them. We ran to town the 3rd day and bought new games and they played them non stop)
- Maybe a second, small generator. (the big generator was great, but if we’d have had a small generator we could have run it 24/7 for important items like the incubator. It would use less gas only powering one item. The big generator uses too much gas to have run it all the time)
ZooNana