After having the lights go out in San Diego (I was watching a movie with my wife at a theater 30 miles from home when it happened), I thought I would jot down some thoughts on what is useful, or not, when you experience a power outage.
1) A single portable generator trumps 100 flashlights with 500 batteries. If you have $500 invested in flashlights and another $150 in batteries, you are better off with $200 worth of flashlights and a cheap $300 portable gas-powered generator. Don’t get an expensive one, like one rated at 9000 watts, they just use more gas. Get a small one, say 2000 watts. My 3000 watt 10-year old Coleman is still running after 7 hours, on 2 gallons of gas.
A generator will keep your fridge running, ice in your freezer, microwave if you need it, and for us, TV. We are lucky that we have satellite, so as long as I can power the TV, I have access to the news. Get a generator that can meet your basic power needs, you don’t need to run everything in your house with it.
2) AA lights are the ones you want when your house has no power. Screw the throwers, they just blind people around you. And you need AA lights with a decent low. Not moonlight low, but not the low that the Xeno has. You want the light to last, and you want one for every family member to have in their pocket. A 40-pack of AA batteries from Costco is cheap insurance as well. Buy a couple of them. When the power is out, you can’t recharge your rechargeable batteries. My best AA light in the emergency was the Jetbeam BA10.
3) The camping-lantern accessory that screws onto the Ultrafire 504B or Solarforce L2p is AWESOME. Makes a great table light for dinners, and the 504B tailstands nicely. A must-have.
4) Angle-lights are really helpful to have. I used my Trustfire Z1 more than any other light because it tailstands AND puts light on the subject rather than on the ceiling. Very easy to pocket as well.Keep a 10-pack of Cr123s handy, they have a 10-year shelf life and freezing cold won’t hurt them.
5) Keep your car’s gas tank over the ½ mark, always. And have a way to siphon that gas out to power your cheap generator. When the power went off, I was with my wife and we had two cars , 30 miles from home. Hers had less than ¼ tank in it, and her “Low-Fuel” light came on in the 10 blocks it took us to get to the freeway. All the traffic lights were out and the resulting SNAFU brought traffic to a crawl, which uses a lot more gas than you are used to. One of the news commentators remarked about the unusually high number of cars that were stranded alongside freeways and roads. No gas=no go.
6) My son works at a newer grocery store that fortunately is solar-powered. They stayed open when all the others had to close. ICE sold out in 45 minutes. Did I mention I love my 10-year old generator? Batteries and flashlights went next, then water. Every checkout stand was open and the lines for each one went to the back of the store. SO HAVE SOME EMERGENCY SUPPLIES before you need them!
7) Our water stayed on, so the water department’s backup power supply (diesel-powered pumping stations) must have worked. I don’t know how much diesel they have or how long it would have lasted, but water was not an issue. Still, keep a couple of cases of water FOR EACH FAMILY MEMBER in reserve.
8) Solar-powered garden lights are your friend. I’m talking about the ones you can buy for 2 or 3 bucks each at Walmart. Buy the box that has 8 lights in it that sells for about 15 bucks. In southern areas like San Diego, they charge enough all day to last the entire night. All you do is pull them out of your garden, bring them inside, and put one in most of your rooms and all of the bathrooms as nice night-lights. The next morning put them back out in the yard to charge all day again.
9) When the lights go out, unplug all of your computers, laptops, and other sensitive electronic equipment. When it comes back on, it doesn’t come on steady and smooth, it spikes and goes back off then comes on again. No sense in destroying all your stuff, just leave it off until the power looks like it will actually stay on and the entire system us up, There are a lot of surges and lows as the power grid adjusts to putting out full power throughout the system, not just to your neighborhood.
10) Be aware of your situation, its strengths and its weaknesses. You should have thought this out before, but you really need to when all the LEOs are busy with stuff that doesn’t include your personal emergency. Be prepared to take care of your family, and to defend your home turf, you aren’t going to get much help from the government. You won’t even be able to call them, the phone system was so over-crowded it didn’t work at all for the first 3 hours. Speaking of phones, our one old-fashioned, non-cordless phone was the only one that worked consistently. Have one handy; don’t depend on your cell phone in an emergency, and realize that cordless phones need power to function, so are worthless when the power is out.
Mod; feel free to move this thread if it is in the wrong area~
Glad everything is ok.