AMU Emergency Management Opinion Public Safety

To Learn or not to Learn

“The right time to find the flashlight is BEFORE the power goes out.”–Ian Mitroff.

Winter 2007

A freezing rain storm of historic impact swept through Eastern Kansas, coating trees with as much as 1/2 inch of ice, breaking branches across a wide region, and shutting down the power grid for four days, none of which ever rose above freezing. I ended up running the Red Cross shelter which housed those who didn’t have warmth or other basic necessities of survival in their homes.

We were able to stay in our house due to three completely fortuitous circumstances:
1. Our gas water heater was driven by a pilot light, so we had hot water throughout.
2. Mostly for aesthetics, I had installed a wood stove in the living room a few months before.
3. The city cut down a couple of large oak trees in front of our house, and I refused to let them haul the wood away to the dump, choosing instead to buy a chain saw and put away several cords of firewood.

That was all it took. We warmed up with showers, heated a living space where we could sit in the day and sleep at night, cooked food in the wood stove and a portable camp stove, and generally had an enjoyable pioneer life for a few days. We ended up providing firewood and hot food for some of our neighbors as well.

Post-2007 Preparedness

Post-2007, I’ve installed two new gas cooking stoves and a portable gas heater, purchased a number of additional oil lamps and stockpiled lamp oil, and kept the pantry well stocked with staples and preserved foods.

Winter 2015

Yesterday morning at 0400, after a night of freezing rain, the power went out. I wasn’t all that worried, and as I prepared to get up, I reviewed in my mind again how to survive if the power were to be out for days. Of course, no plan is perfect, and as I stumbled around in the dark randomly kicking invisible furniture and cats, I realized I didn’t know where the flashlight was. The portable cooking stove was in the detached garage, and the firewood had ice all over it.

Despite these bumps, by 0800 we had a fire going, tea made, and were pretty well prepared for an extended outage. The power came back on an hour later.

SO.. Welcome to winter!! Tell this story to yourself. Do you have adequate non-perishable food stocked? An access to water if nothing comes out of the tap? Two independent sources of heat? Two independent methods of cooking? If you serve an affected public, do they? What can you do about that?

In other words: Do you know where your flashlight is?

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