Yesterday, before sunrise, we awakened to no ceiling fan and etc. We had no commercial power. We are on a private well, so when lights flickered a bit ,my wonderful wife filled sinks and etc. to ensure that we would have water if the power failed ( it did ) for the next couple of days, potable and toilet flushing as needed. I set-up USB battery banks with built in lights pointed at the ceiling in the kitchen so that we could begin our morning. We are on a gravity fed septic system so that all works normally as long as we fill the back tank to flush normally. Sanitation is survival. Next was morning coffee, a ritual that MUST be accomplished each day. We keep a Coleman propane stove and several cylinders ready and set that up on the kitchen stove top.
My lovely wife began making coffee and she being a music lover, I got out the ancient Baygen clockwork handcrank radio and dialed in a local station. That radio is old enough that it's a little bit 'fiddly' and being a geek I am used to it. We had cell phone service so my wife called the power company. I dropped notes/SITREPs onto the various prepper talk groups online incase this was a larger power outage or a developing situation.
Long story short, a few things like water, camp stove, battery lights and HEAD LAMP &etc all made a huge difference in our comfort level, basically a normal life.
1. We always keep flashlights in a specific place. You must be able to find them in the dark. Bedside, kitchen on top of the refrigerator &etc.
2. Kitchen is a survival tool, Be able to cook meals, make hot beverages and etc. when the power it out. We keep the Coleman stove and many spare propane cylinders, after that we have tiny folding Ezbit stoves as a back-up and for daypack portable hot meals.
3. HEATING - our woodstove is wonderful for heating the house and the dogs love it. Once it is up to temperature, we can use the top for our iron cookware. Our Dutch oven, cast iron pan and iron tea kettle all go there when a fire is goi9ng. Hot water/hot drinks on demand make a chilly morning quite nice in front of the fire.
4. Keep a bag of charcoal to get a quick fire going if your wood is a bit damp or a storm makes in unlikely that you'll leave the house to go to the wood pile.
5. Back-up power for ham radios, scanner and ALSO keep a NON-TECHIE radio [ alt power/solar/hand-crank] commercial AM/FM for entertainment for those who like music and etc. As hams, sometimes we underestimate how complicated some of our back-up radios can be, so having an easy to use, alt/power radio for listening by non-hams is a good idea.
Funny side note, our outage only lasted not quite three hours, no problem. However, for the rest of the day, it felt like magic to flip a switch to have lights. ;-)
de Sir John Honeybucket
