Lessons Through Power Outages: Lesson #1 - Water

Growing up in a city outside of Chicago I never had to worry much about losing power.  Don't get me wrong.  We did lose power, but it was usually restored within 12 hours or so.  We had running water and a gas stove/oven (the kind you could light with a match), so there wasn't much discomfort for us. In our area, the only danger might be snow or a tornado.  Rarely did we get tornado warnings, and though snow was a yearly occurrence, power outages didn't happen much.  Honestly, I don't remember us losing power much at all.


After I married a man in the Navy, and began to travel and have my children, I discovered it wasn't quite that simple anymore, but I was still in the Land of Oblivion.  We usually lived on base, and rarely lost power, but when we did they worked fairly quickly to restore it.  The kids would play in their room, we'd play games, cook on our gas stoves/grill or go out to eat, and not worry at all about it.

One time, we moved to a new base, lost power and I realized I couldn't cook because the stove was electric.  No biggie.  We found a place that had power and ate out which the kids loved.  At that time, it was a rare treat, and we had the money to do it.

We moved to Maine, the kids' father left the Navy and we settled here thinking it would be a good place to live.  Buying a fixer-upper was our only option financially. After a few years, we discovered we are not cold weather people at all!  But the housing market crashed and selling the house is out of the question for now.  Moving here was also a big wake-up call.  Our house has a well.  I did not realize the ramifications of this at the time.

 Since I wasn't sure about drinking well water, I kept two cases of bottled water in the house at all times.   This was a blessing in disguise. Power outage #1 showed me what happens when you have a well and no electricity.

No water.
No way to flush toilets.
No way to wash messy little ones unless we go through the baby wipes at an astronomical pace.

 We quickly discovered our house loses power if a chipmunk sneezes.  Honestly, I think the sneeze is just to cover the sound of the wildlife knocking out our power.  You can't trust a chipmunk; they're sneaky critters. Lightning took out the well pump - twice.  During storms, trees take out power lines.  Just fyi, Maine has a lot of trees.

Oh, how spoiled we were by the towns we lived in prior to this.  None of us were used to being without power for more than half a day.  Our first three day power outage was a huge wake-up call!  I'm sure the look on my face was priceless as I turned on the faucet and nothing came out.  I kept turning it off and on trying to achieve a different outcome.  I'm not sure how long it took for me to realize what was happening.

Thankfully, it was summer, so we could cook outside and the kids could play in the kiddie pool that had been filled before the outage.  They lived in their bathing suits for those three days. They viewed it as a great time.  They couldn't do chores that relied on water, they got to play and read and "camp out" in the living room since their bedrooms were hot.

Our full-size freezer was half-stocked with summer cook out foods, so it took us through the three days using the camp stove and grill.  I'm thankful we had put it in the basement which helped keep it cooler.  We basically viewed this as a 3 day camping trip and were fairly confident we had the means to get through it should it happen again. Our family was still oblivious as to what "could have been".

The day after we regained power I had to run to the store to buy food.   Reality hit me as I stared at the shelves where water, bread, canned foods, and batteries used to be.  In my entire life, I had never seen shelves that empty.  Shock enveloped me. I was struck by the following thoughts:

 What if I hadn't had water stored? 

What if I hadn't been able to go grocery shopping a few days prior to the storm warnings? 

What would've happened? 

Would anything have been left in the store by the time I got here?

What would've happened to the kids?

As a mom, the thought of my children going thirsty during hot weather and/or hungry makes me ill, especially because it's such a simple thing to avoid.  I cannot express how thankful I am that we had two cases of water  and food in the house when the storm hit. 

The usual government recommendation is to keep one gallon of water per person per day with a minimum of three days stored.  One quart of water is recommended per pet, so that's another gallon of water to think about.  For us, at that time, that would equal 9 gallons of water x 3 = 27 gallons.  That's just for washing and drinking.  For us, that does not include flushing the toilet.  I learned very quickly to fill up tubs during pending storms.

The one thing you should never conserve during an emergency is water.  You NEED to drink water, period.  It's extremely important in hot weather or if you're doing a lot of manual labor.  Without water, you are toast within a few days.  This was on my mind a lot in the following weeks.  I upped my cases of water to three, but storing it is a problem.

Winter came along and an ice storm hit.  Without a doubt, that was the biggest wake-up call ever.   Everything was covered in ice.  Trees covered in ice lost branches that fell and damaged houses, cars and blocked roads.  Our next door neighbor had a large tree cave under the weight of ice, fell and took out his outside power box.  It took two weeks for him to be able to get an electrician in to fix it.  The power lines couldn't hold the weight of the ice and broke. Traveling was dangerous for many.  We live on top of a hill, so just leaving our house was a dangerous prospect. 

We had water, so we were okay, but we discovered other problems which I will cover separately in other posts.  I will say that our water was very, very, very - did I say very? - cold!  However, because we were not prepared in other areas, it became a bit hairy for our family.  As a parent, I felt horrible because the kids suffered.  Remembering the empty shelves, I knew if we had lost power for more than three days, we would've been royally screwed.

A pictorial from Hurricane Sandy.  It was the first link that came up on my search:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/29/hurricane-sandy-grocery-stores-empty-shelves.html

Cases of bottled water need to be rotated every few months due to the plastic breaking down.   It's not very budget friendly, and I need to watch the budget, so I began buying water storage containers several weeks ago.  I'm only up to two, because of financial constraints, but it's two more than I had to begin with.  I am also buying extra spigots just in case. 

Now, we are 5 people in the house.  Two children had to move back home, because the economy is to the point where they can't afford to live on their own.  One is 17 and one never had the chance to go out on her own due to finances. I also have the kids' dad, and my eldest daughter and her family to include.  My daughter has a very tight budget.  I'll cover that in another post.

That equals 15 gallons for those in the house.  Add in another 15 for the others, if they need to come here in an emergency, and I need 30 gallons of water for 3 days.

BUT - I know people in my area who were without power for two weeks.  That isn't counting my neighbor who had his power box eaten by an ice tree.  Do you know how much water that is?!  Do you?

My family: 70 gallons
Others: 70 gallons
Total needed: 140 gallons!

O.M.G.

The questions I am in the process of answering now:

Where the heck am I going to store 140 gallons of water?  

What happens if we don't have power back within two weeks?  How am I going to be able to supply my family with water beyond that point?