Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Lessons learned

The electricity came back on at 4:30 this morning. The Hurricane Irma event now appears to be over, at least at my house. Wife goes back to work today. I go back Monday.

Here are the stats:
13.5 inches of rain
103 mph maximum wind gust
93 hours without electrical power

I didn't even have to dig into emergency food supplies.

Stored supplies used:
39 gallons of fuel (I only had 6 left)
2 cases bottled water
1 chem light (for light during the worst of the storm while we were taking cover in the safe room)
1/4 tank of propane

Damaged:
We lost a tree, with another small tree needing to be staked up.
The cable from the house to the satellite dish will need to be replaced.
The UPS powering the satellite system is dead and will need to be replaced.

One of the things I learned from past storms was that during the storm and the days immediately after the storm, it is easy to get cabin fever. You can't sit there and watch the news without driving yourself crazy. So we did during the pre-event checklist was record lots of programming for entertainment. While the gennie was on to refrigerate food, we watched movies and TV shows, and our Internet was up. At night, while the power was off (I didn't want to be the only house on the street that was lit up at night- that makes you a conspicuous target) I read books on the Kindle. She entertained herself with her Kindle Fire.

Next time, I will have more fuel for the generator. I also want to get some better window covers. Other than that, things went well for my preps.

2 comments:

Elizabeth @ The Garden Window said...

Glad you weathered the storm safely!

Anonymous said...

That's great news.

I ended up buying a flammables cabinet for my fuel storage. I usually have 20-25 gallons, and increase to double that if we are in an active hurricane season. I was nervous with all that gas just sitting in cans behind the garage.

The flammables cabinet was much cheaper used than new, and only needed some wire brushing and paint. It took a while to find one cheap enough to satisfy me, but I feel much better now with all the cans and coleman fuel neatly locked up in the cabinet.

nick