An Unexpected Real Life Disaster Drill

I have a few blog posts about being prepared and having your family ready for a disaster or other hardship.  In truth, I had thought my family was pretty darn prepared for just about anything that would come our way.

And then we got a lot of wind and our power went out for almost 10 hours.

Seems like nothing right?  Eh- 10 hours without power?  You'll live.  It's certainly not anything devastating.  No, no it's not.  But you guys- it was a much needed lesson for the entire family.  A really great disaster drill if you will.

A little background-

Earlier in the week we had lost power for the day.  Seriously, I have NO idea why and it appeared to be just my little neighborhood.  Since they were doing construction at the main intersection, I simply figured it was attributed to this.  No biggie.  The kiddo was at camp all morning so he didn't get to experience being without power for long.  Later, we went to the library so I could charge my phone and out to lunch and when we returned, the power came back shortly after.

But then over the weekend it was for casted to expect 60+ mile per hour winds, heavy rain and thunder and lightening storms.  Now- usually I just ignore these warnings.  I know....I know...but in my defense, we live in the Pacific Northwest.  These warnings occur almost weekly in the Fall and Winter and well....the news crews are a bit of hypochondriacs.

We've weathered storms much worse than this one and had no problems.  Since we have underground power lines, we almost never (see twice in almost 5 years) lose power so I figured we would be just fine.

What happened next had all the ingredients for an epic disaster.

The storm blew in hard and fast.  I had left work at noon to go pick up the kiddo from church with his Auntie and by the time we got home at 12:30 there were trees down everywhere.  Now, anyone knows that the first big storm of the season will blow all those loose leaves and limbs clean off- so it might look worse than it actually is.  Not the case here.  It was bad.  The kiddo was getting worried that it felt like the car was being pushed off the road and I wanted to get us home ASAP.

Literally two minutes after walking in the front door, the power went off.  Thank Goodness I had bought some tacos on the way home!

Now- here's the bad part.  If you've glossed over the story above, pay attention to this part.  This is where we learned all the lessons.

I had not gone to the grocery store in well over a week.  I should have gone on Friday but was simply too tired to deal with it.  Working non-stop will do that a Mama!  In addition to having a very bare looking fridge, we had also been eating out of our freezer/pantry as a part of our No Grocery Store Shopping Challenge.  So this meant that all those things like hot dogs, burgers, frozen lasagnas- yeah, we had eaten all of that good stuff.

I had nothing that I could BBQ (pretty much the only way to cook when you don't have power) and I didn't even have the makings for a sandwich.  Although we rarely have sandwich fixings because we just don't eat them often but you get the idea here.  No food.  No bueno.

Moving on, I had NOT charged a single thing and I didn't have ANY backups.  I had been using my cell phone while at work all day and by 2pm it was pretty much dead.  Since the husband was out working in this awful weather, I wanted to save whatever battery I had left so we could reach each other if necessary.  We don't have a house phone.  While I was prepared enough to have a portable power bank, you need to charge those.  Apparently mine was dead.  Get the idea here?  Everything was dead.  Great.

We have BOBS but I can't reach them.  Oh.  My.  Word.  You guys, I'm an IDIOT.  These emergency bags are a bit on the heavy side and the husband put them way up high in the garage.  There's simply no way that I can easily access them.  Our hand crank radio, that can also charge things like your CELL PHONE, was out of my reach.  Gah.  The other items in there weren't really needed in the here and now but that hand crank radio- yeah, that would have been nice to have.

And finally, I had no idea where the husband had put all of our lanterns and super powerful flashlights.  While we do have a few of those teeny little cheap flashlights dispersed throughout the house, the really good ones- yeah, the husband holds on to those.  We also have several free standing lanterns and I could only find one.  Thankfully it wasn't dark yet but I was trying to get us set up for a long, dark night and all I had were the cheap flashlights (that aren't very bright) and a butt ton of candles.  While candles are great, with an active 10 year old boy and a hyper Rat Terrier running around, they are not ideal.

We have a generator but the husband had long ago rotated the gas.  While we do make sure to start it up and check it yearly, we hadn't refilled the gas in the gas cans yet.  We typically don't do this until the Fall begins in late September.  This meant that we while we had the equipment needed (ie. the generator) we lacked the fuel to actually use it.

Let's Recap:

• No food that could easily been prepared.  No cold options and nothing to BBQ.
• Almost no way to communicate.
• Completely dead electronics.
• Emergency supplies out of reach.
• Less than ideal lighting options.
• No fuel.

Thankfully the husband got home around 5pm.  He dug out the lanterns and good flashlights and the hand crank radio and then we decided to venture out in search of food, fuel and a few provisions.  Umm....yeah.  With over 500,000 people without power- we clearly weren't the only ones in the same situation.

First we tried our local grocery store.  They were open but with only limited emergency power.  The kiddo had great fun using his flashlight in the store and thought it was a great adventure!  The employees were covering all the perishables with plastic wrap and had completely sealed off anything in a freezer or refrigerator case.  A surreal sight for sure!  The deli was also closed.  So I was unable to buy any cold cuts for lunches and couldn't buy a single thing to BBQ.

I bought bread (we could at least make some PB & J's), apples, cereal and alcohol.  Hmph.  But the husband was less than thrilled at the idea of PB & J for dinner.  The grocery store also had a gas station attached.  But since they didn't have power either, this meant no gas.

We decided to venture a little further down the street to see if we could find a store and gas station with power.  Thankfully we came across one and only about 10 minutes out.  Sweet!  I bought some hot dogs to BBQ, stuff to make sandwiches for lunch the following day and pre-popped popcorn for a snack.  Ick.  Healthy right?  The husband was able to fill up at the adjoining gas station while we were inside shopping.  On our way out, we noticed that one of our most favorite restaurants was open so we decided to place a take out order and save the hot dogs for the following day.  I was sure that with this many people without power, it would be awhile before it was restored.  This way, we had food for the next day and could get a hot meal for tonight.

Gah.  Worst decision ever.

We waited well over an hour (even though they only told us 20 minutes) and I'm sure this was actually much faster than others in similar situations.  I heard that many of the restaurants open had a wait time of 2 or more hours.  Holy Buckets.

Tired.  Hungry.  Bored.  I'm over it.

The kiddo enjoyed eating by candlelight and he even took a shower by lantern light.  Thankfully by the time he was out of the shower, the power had been restored.  Praise Jesus!

Let's highlight the good:

• We had plenty of flashlights, extra batteries, candles, lighters and matches.  Proper lighting was never an issue.  We just needed to find them all!
• We did have a hand crank radio that runs on solar as well and can charge your electronics.
• I had purchased a back up power bank prior.  Next time I just need to make sure it's fully charged.
• We had plenty to keep us occupied.  Books, games, portable DVD player etc.
• We had alternate means of cooking via the BBQ and had plenty of lighter fluid and charcoal on hand.  Sadly, just nothing to throw on the grill.
• We have plenty of emergency supplies and fully stocked BOBS.
• If the credit/debit machines were down, we had enough cash on hand to buy a few necessities.

This entire 10 hours proved to be a great learning experience!  Seriously, think about it.  If you were to loose power right this very second, would you be prepared?  The answer for our house is that in general we are very prepared.  However, since we typically don't worry about wind storms we were simply not as ready as we usually are.

If I could say anything to you, it would be to simply encourage you to think NOW about becoming prepared for LATER.  Because I can promise you that one day, later will happen and you'll need to be ready.

Want to read more?  Check out my previous posts about Emergency Preparedness.

• Do You Have a Car BOB?
• The First 72 Are On You.
• It's An Emergency!