The three elements of nature that
cause damage– sun, wind, and water. My bet is on the last one, especially the
frozen kind. Preparing and acting upon it are two entirely different and
opposite things.
The rain started in the middle of a
Sunday afternoon, without much concern at first. Although the weather report at
first said the possibility of ice was real, it would stay south, in Ohio.
Lesson #1: Nature is fickle, and
even NOAA cannot always track the line between rain, snow, and ice.
Predictive weather paths can give you a false sense of security, and margins of
error are costly. Unfortunately, the prediction of a little bit of accumulation
of ice turning to snow was wrong. It was all ice, at least for my area in
Southeast Michigan, and we paid the price for the miscalculation.
All was well until dark. The warm
upper atmosphere and the cold air clashed as it swepted out of the northwest.
By the time I looked out the front door, two hours later after dusk, it was too
late. Ice hanging like chandeliers had already formed on the trees and power
lines in front of my house. A hundred-foot tall pine tree that had survived
decades of inclement weather soon bore witness, the branches cracking and
shaking to the ground in piles. I shut the door and told my wife that we had
better fill the bathtub and water jugs with water for drinking and flushing the
toilets.
Lesson #2: Don’t trust others
when you are first responsible for yourself and family. Local authorities
on a large-scale emergency are only reactionary and are little prepared
themselves for a regional disaster.
Before I could fill the bathtub up
halfway, the lights went out. I had backup power, so I had a false sense of
security that I soon paid for. I looked out the back window to see the
transformer located on a pole above my outdoor shed explode in a shower of
sparks. It was the fourth of July, except it was February. Luckily, I had moved
the wood pile and it wasn’t behind the shed, as the situation was only going to
get worse from here.
I had a Bearcat scanner with fresh
batteries, so I had the local catastrophe well monitored. Already the police,
ambulance, and hospital were at duty, but I couldn’t keep up with all the 911
calls. I dwelled at that moment on taking a chance of going to Walmart for
extra everything. I went outside and soon regretted taking that chance. I
reached the car and realized the vehicle was covered with an inch of solid ice.
Before I turned to get my utility bar to chip away at the mess, I found myself
in mid-air grasping for the car door to help right myself. Instead of standing,
I hit the asphalt; all 200-pounds of me was bouncing on the ice-covered
driveway. I pulled my head forward, barely in time to prevent hitting my head
flush thereby keeping consciousness. I couldn’t move. My back locked up, and
the air in my lungs was gone. I couldn’t breathe. I heard no one come to the
garage door to see what I was doing. The frozen ice had already covered my
face. Finally, I started to breathe again. I couldn’t stand. I rolled slowly
side to side, until I landed on my stomach. I crawled on my elbows up the
driveway toward the garage doorway. I had full strength in my arms, but my
lower legs were weak, leaving me unable to rise up. Those fifty feet felt like
a mile. By the time I crawled to the door, my wife opened it and I rolled in.
I asked my wife to get the electric heat pad and plug
it into the DR Series 2400 Watt Inverter/Charger
I kept in the corner of the garage with my battery bank. I forgot to check it
immediately after the transformer blew. When the power goes out, it
automatically goes from charger to inverter mode instantly. I later found out
the 30 amp fuse had blown.
Lesson #3: Keep multiple extras
of whatever you think you really need. My wife grabbed the hand warmers I kept in the
kitchen drawer. This was a chemical solution for my locked up back.
Non-electrical items are key in any emergency situation and I buy these in bulk
now. After taping the hand warmers and later some icy blue gel packs to my
lower back, I was able to stand again.
No cell phone worked. We still had a
land line, but since most of my friends had cell phone I couldn’t reach them.
Land lines have back-up batteries and operate on low voltage, which is an
advantage in a crisis situation. I called my aunt, who also still had a
landline, and made sure she had no immediate problems. I told her to take her
medicines out of the fridge and put them in the garage, as most attached
garages stay just above freezing in the winter. A thermometer revealed it was
36 degrees in ours, so we emptied our refrigerator and stored the goods in
coolers out there. We taped the freezer shut, so no one would accidentally open
it and let the cold out.
We had installed a Hearthstone wood
heater with soapstone in the living room. It gives off heat slowly and evenly
instead of a red hot steel one that burns anyone who suddenly touches it. My
wife uses aluminum coffee cans filled with rock salt that absorb the
heat and provide extra heat also. Although the central heating system was down,
we were still warm. In the breezeway that separates the kitchen and utility
area from the living room and bedrooms, we hung a blanket to keep the immediate
areas more warm. The kitchen was cool the next day, but we only prepared meals
and didn’t spend much time in there.
With the inverter down, I still had
a generator for power, but I decided not to use it at that point. I did have
several smaller inverters– 300 to 700 watt size– to use for smaller appliances,
which I used with the deep cycle batteries. The DC sump pump with the batteries
helped to keep the water entering the sump pit from flooding the basement. I
let my son do the lifting, as my back was in no condition to carry 100-pound
batteries. Two six-volt batteries in series parallel produce 12 volts and run
the DC sump pump, bypassing the AC sump pump. In the argument of Tesla’s AC
versus Edison’s DC system, Tesla’s AC system clearly is much better delivering
power over great distances, but in an immediate power down situation DC power
in a homestead has advantages over AC. Small appliances can be run fully
charged in a power down situation. Any appliance found in a RV can be run on
DC.
By morning, I surveyed the damage
from overnight. Trees and power lines were strewn across the roads. The people
on my street who dared to go out decided to leave altogether instead of staying
in their unheated homes. Our neighbor across from us left to go live with her
grown children. I went out in my backyard to get a closer look at the blown
transformer and discovered a power line was down the width of my entire yard,
just missing my shed. If it had landed on my shed roof, it would have burned
down, and with the gas can I kept inside, the shed might have blown up. That
was a close call. It was six days before the power company finally installed a
new line. They decided to put the new transformer in a new location, closer to
road access. That was a good decision. The clean up on my street took several
days, even after the power came back on.
A Big Berkey water filter
gave us a gravity-fed clean water system. Draining the hot water heater also
helped provide water for flushing toilets. Lighting was done by oil lamps and LED flashlights, a low tech
solution. I missed work for a few days but safety was my first priority after
my fall. I found lead acid deep cycle batteries are the weak link in any solar
home power system. If you cycle them down more than 50 per cent over and over,
you soon lose capacity and shorten their life. Newer technology in batteries
lessens the problem but they are more expensive. Oh well. Communication is
paramount in staying in touch with the outside world. FRS and CB radios can offer immediate
help. Shortwave still has a place and is not obsolete.
I converted a gas generator with a
conversion adapter kit to use propane years ago, and a 500-gallon tank provided
ample fuel for the week-long blackout to keep the freezer on. The power did come
back on, and everything slowly got back to normal, but I’ve been thinking
lately what would happen if you had to go a year or five years without juice.
Civilization and the population would be scaled back drastically. Everything is
doable with the proper resources and man power. No electric power, no
refrigeration, no cars, and technology strangled by the lack of energy will be
daunting indeed. The solution is around the corner, but it may not reveal
itself until after another major war and /or economic collapse. Still, GOD
makes a way no matter how grim it appears. Having stuff (solar panels, water
filters, and all of that) gives solace, but we only have the CREATOR to protect
us. Amen!
From the Survival Blog
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