Prepping

We’re not preppers, but the case of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), the water filtration kits, the neatly packed tote with three days worth of a variety of roughing-it supplies in our basement might lead you to believe otherwise. So might the incredible number of free-standing, light-producing units (such as mag lights, headlamps, lanterns, table lamps, flashlights, etc.) that we have in the house.

Yes, hubby and I have an emergency plan and yes, we’re fairly serious about it, and yes, he knows from long experience that sighted people can’t accomplish crap in the dark. The light-producing units are all to his credit. I blithely ignore the electricity until we don’t have it. Which is exactly what happened last Sunday in the wee hours of the morning when hubby woke me up in the dark to tell me we had no power. “Why did you wake me up?” I asked. I mean, seriously, what I am I supposed to do with this information in the middle of the night? To him it was the start of an adventure. To me, it was a moment of gross underestimation of what was to become a very serious problem in mid-Michigan during Christmas week of 2013.

The first day we were without power (last Sunday) was fairly mundane. I slept until the sun rose, the temp in the house only dropped to about 65, and we had a low-key day. The city asked us not to go out on the streets unless necessary due to 400+ downed power lines and poor traffic conditions including a lot of out of order lights. So, we didn’t leave except to examine our property for damage. Tens of thousands of people in three counties were without power due to an ice storm. Hubby took precautions such as teaching me how to lock and unlock the garage door without power (he’d reviewed these steps with me several times since we moved into the house but until I knew I had to actually accomplish the maneuver without him I honestly just drowned it all out). I cleaned out the kitchen cupboards and cooked up the expensive food in the house in preparation for what was to become a total loss of our fridge, freezer, and deep freeze. We popped open a bottle of good wine.

We got out a transistor radio and began hearing about the bad news. Our wi-fi devices clued us in to the rest. Friends living out in the country were reporting they might be without power for a full week. We assumed at first we’d be hooked up by nightfall. Then we learned the ice storm was quite serious, the power company was bringing in crews from 11 others states and D.C., and the main city streets weren’t expected to get power back on for a week, either. The mayor, literally, told us to flee. He said, “If you have family outside of the area, get out. We’re not going to have the power back on soon.” We didn’t leave that night.

Hubby went to work Monday morning and I went to the YMCA for a shower. Took me a while to find one that was open. Then I began taking the whole thing more seriously. We were planning to go to mom’s for Christmas the next day but instead I conferred with Hubby and mom and we opted to have me do some supply shopping and leave a night early. We spent Monday and Tuesday in Ann Arbor for a wonderful Christmas with Mom and my brother Albacore and his new wife Lovely (Albacore has gotten married since I last blogged). We had food, presents and family. All was right with the world.

On Christmas we returned to a house about 38 degrees. Immediately very not fun. The temp continued to fall over night and we slept in three layers and hats. About three o’clock in the morning, when I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t get comfortable, the storm and power outage lost whatever dismal charm it might once have had for me.

Thursday I went to work. Wasn’t planning on it but the option was to stay home in a cold house or go out into town and do what? shop in stores that had power or generators and try to justify taking up space there? No. In the late afternoon one of Hubby’s colleagues left the office to check on his house and drove by ours. We still didn’t have power. I lost the faith, told Hubby “I give up,” and proffered the notion that we take the cats and go to a hotel. He still found the whole thing vaguely adventurous and, like penguins, doesn’t seem to mind the cold so he got kind of grumpy. In the end I won him over and started calling around for a place to stay that takes cats. We found one. It took a half hour to get the cats in their carriers (they’d wised up after the trip to Ann Arbor), and after doing everything we needed to do to leave the house once-again unattended, found our way to the hotel and a 9 pm delivered-in dinner of Panera.

The next morning (this morning), 5 days after losing power, we called the house and it rang instead of going straight to voice mail. Once more we packed up the cats and this time headed home to power. It had been on for a few hours. Hubby’s at work. I took a nap after sleeping poorly since this whole thing started. Now I’m blogging afresh whilst listening to Firefly hum merrily in the background from another room.

Here’s what we learned about our existing emergency plan and how to plan in the future. We are by no means experts. This is not a complete list, just the highlights, and just what works for us:

• Stick together. In the same breath, check on your neighbors and friends. The Snakelady Neighborhood Hero award goes to the adult son of the homeowner across the street who was out Sunday clearing roads of broken branches with his hands, loaning his cell phone to an elderly couple in the neighborhood who had lost their landline and didn’t have cell phones, and kept us updated about the neighborhood while we were celebrating Christmas in Ann Arbor.
• Having battery-powered lights is great. Also, useless without fresh batteries. A yearly check that they will turn on does not a light for more than 5 minutes make, as several of our devices showed us. Also, stores run out of lantern batteries fast in a storm. Replace yearly.
• Already in our plan was that we never let the car get below half a tank. This proved very useful. It takes just under a quarter tank to get to Ann Arbor, where we have family, our first source of either a) refuge or b) where we stop to pick up people as we continue further south, west or east in an emergency.
• Have cash on hand. Credit card machines go down without power.
• Never underestimate the powerful mental trick of putting on clean underwear when you’re grungy.
• Frozen toothpaste is truly disheartening.
• Keep an overnight back packed at all times with your toiletries and undergarments that you can throw two changes of season-appropriate clothes into and walk out the door in under 5 minutes. Your personal stuff should be what you spend the least time on when evaccing anywhere. I’ve been doing this since college. Also, if you have long hair, keep a bottle of good conditioner in there. No need to let your grooming go to hell just because the Board of Water and Light has preceded you there.
• Always have a week’s worth of pet supplies on hand if you plan to evac with your pets. We’ve lately been getting lazy about this. Luckily we had all we needed in the house when this happened but after running all over town on Monday looking for other supplies and getting ready to leave, one more stop was the last thing I needed.
• Comfort comes in many varieties. Pack fiber. Pills or the granulated variety. Both get the job done.
• If you live in a cold climate be ready to turn off the water to your house and prep the drains. I had to find the proper chemicals for the drains before we left town and while I did, I wouldn’t have bet the stores were still stocked with the stuff two days later.
• According to Hubby: buy a generator, a Generac. According to Snakelady: this was a once-in-126-year storm. Save your money.