Tuesday, September 30, 2008
We met this evening with all of our neighbors for an Ike debriefing type meeting at our next door neighbor’s house. We shared what we learned from our experiences before, during and after the storm as well as what we’ll do differently next time. Here’s the summary:
1. Keep cash on hand. As businesses re-opened, some were able to process credit cards and some would accept cash only.
2. Buy box fans. Even if it is 82 degrees in your house (or warmer), if you’ve got air circulating and moving across your body, you feel cooler and more comfortable.
3. Get a natural gas conversion kit for the generator. This eliminates the need for storing gasoline and avoids having to wait endlessly in long gas lines.
4. Watch your electric bills as they come the month after the storm. Some companies are going to want to charge you for the “estimated” power you would have used during the days you were without power. Serious!
5. When you fill your bathtubs with water, fill some empty milk jugs with water and freeze them. They will not only help keep food cold when the power goes out, but as they melt, you’ll have cold water to drink.
6. If you have, or plan to build, an outdoor kitchen, install an ice machine. People without power needed lots of ice to keep food chilled in ice chests. Ice was hard to come by even with the truckloads that came in.
7. Don’t drain your bathtubs until its over, over, over. Because some people did not lose water pressure right away, they drained their bathtubs the day after the storm. We didn’t lose water pressure until days 7 and 8 after the storm. Fortunately, that was just during the night; normal water pressure resumed the following mornings by 9 am.
8. Some water districts have a 12-hour back-up battery to maintain water pressure if the power goes out. Other water districts have a generator. Find out what your water company has and what their policy will be about maintaining water pressure for an extended power outage.
9. Keep lots of C and D size batteries on hand or, if you have a generator, use rechargeable batteries.
10. Placing charcoal briquets in your refrigerator and freezer will absorb some of the bad odors for a few days after a power outage.
11. If you have an electric stove, get a propane camp stove, a large propane tank and a “tree” for mounting a propane lantern.
12. Have more than a 72-hour supply of food on hand. Expect to be on your own for at least two weeks after a hurricane. So plan ahead for “campout” style living. FEMA and the Salvation Army didn’t arrive in our area until Day 10 after the hurricane.
13. If you don’t want to be washing dishes by hand, store lots of paper plates and cups as well as plastic cutlery. These paper products disappeared quickly from grocery store shelves both before the storm and after the storm.
14. Have appropriate rain gear, including boots or waders. If you go into flooded areas to help, beware of snakes.
15. If you intend to evacuate, don’t wait until local officials make it mandatory. That way you can take valuables, important documents (deeds, insurance info., account numbers, etc.) identity documents (birth certificates, marriage certificates, social security information, etc.), and anything else you don’t want to lose.
16. Expect to be inundated by flies and mosquitoes after a hurricane. Flies will be attracted to rotting food. Even though the trucks came through the neighborhood to spray for mosquitoes, they were everywhere. Cutter makes a mosquito repellant/insecticide that you can attach to your garden hose to spray lawns, flowers, shrubs and trees to eradicate them.
17. Also, be on the lookout for cockroaches. [Yep! Those are Cockroaches crawling out of the tree in the photo above!] They live inside trees and feed off of tree products. When their homes disappear, they will go looking for new homes and may venture into your house. Ortho makes a product called “Home Defense” that contains the same pesticide that the professionals use to spray the perimeter of your home. You’ll save some money by spraying the perimeter of your home yourself each season. It will keep the ants outside and will slow down the cockroaches that cross the pesticide barrier making them easy to catch and remove.
18. Get an old fashioned phone for each phone line in your house. Don’t count on being able to use your cell phones right after the storm; the air waves will be inundated. Once FEMA arrives, they will control the air waves from 8 am to 8 pm.
19. It was a really good idea to have a neighborhood meeting a week before the hurricane hit to prepare as a neighborhood and also know who was going to be staying and who was going to evacuate.
Also, it is good to know who has generators and will be using them as well as sharing power by extension cords. One 5000 watt generator kept the refrigerators and freezers of all six homes on our street going. We could have survived well with just one generator if gasoline had been unavailable for a more extended period of time. Having more generators among us will increase our comfort levels if gasoline is readily available.
20. Drain and clean generators after power is restored to keep them in good working order and ready to go.
21. Keep your garage doors closed. People will become looters if they see you have supplies they cannot obtain. Dave talked to a woman in Galveston who said looters were everywhere. But even though she kept her home locked up tight, looters came and took the 3 plastic pink flamingoes on her deck because that was the only thing they could take.
22. Remove debris from streets to keep drains open and prevent flooding.
