I closed my most recent post with this thought: Each time I see a community devastated by Mother Nature, I wonder how I would react if there was no electricity for days, weeks or months. If you have lived through one of these disasters, send me a comment. I'd like to know how you managed the disruption.
If, after reading the following comments by two FreidomReport subscribers, you have a story you’d like to share, feel free to send it to me. If not, then I hope you have a great weekend.
-DF
First:
When our house in east Bellevue, WA was without power for 3 days in the "Great Ice Storm" in the mid-2000's, we relied on a wood-burning stove for heat, candles & battery-operated lanterns/flashlights. Our water heater & cook top were gas, so they still functioned (because gas lines are underground). We transferred commonly used items from the fridges to ice chests immediately and kept the fridges closed. There was plenty of snow to keep the ice chests cold. Fortunately, we could still cook and take hot showers. We read a lot. Played acoustic music. Somehow, we managed to survive w/o TV or computers for 3 days, although we did have a battery-operated 'boom box' for music & news. When the power came back on, we were nearly blinded by the light. We realized how unnecessary a large part of our wattage was. We still try to use only the lighting we really need, which is good because the solar panels on our new house can provide nearly all the electricity we need. Our neighborhood has underground electricity, but the high voltage transmission (grid to neighborhood transformer) lines are above ground, meaning we could still lose electricity in a storm, etc. We are looking into an emergency generator, and hoping solar storage batteries become available at a reasonable cost.
Second:
I am sure you know that our home burned down twice!! A wind driven fire is hard to stop. The way we got over it was years of just putting one foot in front of the other ‘til we were back in our home.
Okay, back to the right page. I got transported all over the website by its sensitive buttons. (They are all that way)….I only have one anecdote to share that happened just this last week….it is somewhat related to the topic. I was going to talk about sump pumps but decided instead to share the following: I was driving south on PCH from Torrance, kind of enjoying the route as an alternative to the 405,( except through some very sad poor communities) , when all of a sudden I was driving up a street perpendicular to the shoreline. As I don’t always pay close attention when I am on a straightaway, I thought that somehow I had made a left turn without intending to…………….so I just followed traffic and pretty soon I was at Goldenwest heading toward the ocean. It wasn’t me I thought, it was an intended traffic diversion. How unusual! The next morning on the front page of the Daily Pilot was a photo with the headline, « Perfect storm » closes stretch of PCH. Aha!!
So…….gone are the days of taking the California weather for granted. We now have major climatic
events, many of which are negative, especially in the last decade……. devastating fires, years of drought with more drought on the horizon, or so we think, earthquakes in unusual places, the discovery that the Newport/ Inglewood Fault is connected and apt to produce earthquakes more severe than the San Andreas fault…………..on a lighter side, you can experience flooding for instance when your sump pump stops working ( yes, in Newport Beach) or gas leaks in pipes buried deep in your yard and consequently have everything shut off for several days.
I cannot imagine how devastating it would be to have your house burn down, or flooded through no fault of your own. Or to be in the epicenter of an earthquake, or not to be able to maintain your livelihood as a farmer because of drought…….all tragic events…..