I live in a region that, barring some wild geological experience, will never see a hurricane. I’ve been in some though, back when I lived on he east coast.
I’m watching the news out of the affected areas and I still don’t understand how, when you have several days of advance warning, you havent either A) followed the first rule of surviving a disaster (Answer: Don’ be there) or B) prepared themselves.
I’d mentioned that all these people complaining about their local governments not providing drinking water could have had several cases of the stuff from WalMart all for the price of a couple beers and packs of Marlboros. Someone opined that I was being harsh because perhaps these people were forced out of their houses and had to leave their supplies behind.
Not sure I agree with that. If youre savvy enough to lay in supplies then youre savvy enough to have some packed up for when you need to go go go. And if you’re really that on top of things then you probably have your act together enough to have left the area with your gear to begin with.
But, setting that aside, I am just unable to comprehend how many people didn’t read the blindingly obvious writing on the wall and either beat feet or stockpile supplies.
I am not entirely unsympathetic. Even Burt Gummer wound up basically a refugee when his bunker was compromised and destroyed. But Burt didn’t bitch about the .gov not helping him, and he kept on going. A fictional character, yes…but not a fictional attitude.
But…it’s easy to armchair quarterback things when I’m not the one watching my house float away, but still…where are the stories of the squared away people with their generators and supplies sitting on their porches casually performing overwatch against looters?
From what I understand, the Ashville NC location is an artist colony made up primarily of liberal eccentrics who manufacture ‘art’. So not that much common sense survival skill groups there.
They had ample time but likely just figured like many ‘It will never happen to me’ until it did.
Normalcy bias is a cruel instructor, but some will learn at the hands of no other.
Harsh, absolute truth. You can lead a horse to water…
I am thankful for everyone who still works to open the eyes of those who don’t yet see the necessity of personal responsibility and action.
The area impacted by the storm is the highest elevation on the East Coast. When they tell you to seek higher ground that’s where people on the coast normally evacuate to. This was a once in a century event.
Actually Ashville NC had more than a few serious tropical storms in the past decade.
Washing out roads and closing the highway at least twice I am aware of.
Not leaving with plenty of warning or basic preparation is a Darwin Award decision.
But that said, stuff happens. And that’s why having trusted friends that you’d accept in your home and vice versa is IMPORTANT.
Be honest. If someone tossed a couple of bottles of “mostly peaceful ” but firey gasoline into your home, how much of your preps would be Gone?
Do you have a backup plan for THAT?
CZs original plan of a healthy wad of $$$ and an updated passport for JIC is your slow society collapse plan. Get out of the way until (if?) situation sorts itself out. Having a good friend – family member willing to take you in for a ‘short visit’ is a great resource as Michael 5:47 wrote above.
For the everything I have is gone except for what I have – your BO bag and $$$ is your life raft. Refugees from across the ocean made it here – we can do the same.
Have a friend who was in Blowing Rock NC for a week. Thursday, rain was heavy. He told his wife, we are going home.
We are 2 hours away in the Piedmont region, Helene was a bad thunderstorm for a day or two for us. To his wife, he has situational awareness, always listen to him. I wonder, would I have?
Have the place for the whole week, let’s sit it out and play some board games!
Very easy to be complacent since we live a cushy life. I won’t criticize when I don’t know what I would have done.
I feel for those who cannot help themselves. The indigent, disabled, elderly, etc. I believe our role as a society is to look after the people who cannot look after themselves.
For an average type person my sympathy about being caught in a hurricane is pretty low.
People “caught” by a hurricane reminds me of the movie industry joke:
Two Teamsters are leaning on their trucks while the crew is filming the show.
One of them looks down, reaches his leg out, and stomps on a snail crawling across the pavement.
The second Teamster asks him, “What’d you do that for?”
The first Teamster replies, “That damned snail has been chasing me around all day.”
The Hurricane had a week’s warning, FFS.
If you were leaving its path by bicycle, you could have been in North Dakota in that amount of time.
I live in Hampton Roads VA. We are subject to hurricanes and nor’easters annually. If you live along the coast the threat is constant. For those folks in the mountains not so much. The last storm of that magnitude to hit the mountains was hurricane Hugo back in 1989. Prior to that was Hurricane Camille in 1969. People forget after that long a time period how bad it can be.
I live in Florida, about five miles in from the east coast. I see the rockets go up from my back yard, While we were not significantly affected by this storm, we have had issues in our area before, Florida is actually pretty good about preparedness and even has tax holidays for preparation supplies and equipment such as generators, batteries, water, and emergency foods, Newer houses are built to a much improved building code (mine is supposed to be good for 164mph winds when the storm shutters are up). All that being said, there are a lot of people that choose to do nothing because they feel it cannot get that bad. People who have been through it do prepare, A lot of times, it is people who have moved from elsewhere (economic, political, or weather refugees is what I call them). And sometimes, there is just nothing you can do to evacuate, but If there are suggestions to evacuate, I am outa here, Florida Power and Light, the grocery stores, and other industries are of a preparedness mindset, Our gunshows almost always have people selling preparedness supplies, Another good thing is that it seems no one thinks you are weird for having the supplies in your house. FPL even puts out a flyer about preparedness listing recommended supplies,
Family has a condo on other coast and have been told for decades I am crazy for wanting to do do basic preps(flashights ,batteries,water purification, life boat rations) or even measure the windows for plywood. Have gone back and found stashed preps “missing” because they take up too much room. Two near misses in two years and no change.
Based on the reports today, it looks like I will be putting up the storm shutters on Tuesday and positioning everything for easy access in the event we need it. Might need to get more Cheetos, my stress eating food, for during the worst part of the storm. Hopefully no need to evacuate, but prepared to if recommended or if we see things more dangerous than the government does
I filled up my Spectre jugs, only have three at the moment.
Tested my (2) Katadyn mini water filters, one is new the other slightly used but needs a new o-ring. Fine, silicone o-rings on Amazon along with food grade silicone grease. Both produce clear water from a steam albeit kinda slow, two quarts takes <15 minutes.
Also going to order (2) 280 gallon water tanks and place them on top of a water heater stand, and being on a septic tank, I can collect rain water from the barrels outside for non-potable water for flushing, but in the pinch I can use my water filters on that as well.
Just remember, these and any filters cannot filter out petroleum products commonly found during floods. The only ones capable of doing that are reverse osmosis systems. You “COULD” use a PIG oil absorbent mat that will catch the gas and oils leaving the water to pass through into another container before running it through a filter.
Everywhere has something that you need to prepare for. Even it it’s just “winter”. The area had TWO hurricanes in living memory, one only ~35 years ago. One might say they were due.
——
The learned helplessness infuriates me as does the lack of personal responsibility. They have been conditioned to it. The great stories of the frontier days, of the great expansion westward, individualism, and individual greatness have been suppressed in the interest of marginal cr@p from less successful cultures. When was the last time schoolkids read Paul Bunyon, Johnny Appleseed, any pioneer story? Wild Bill? Annie Oakley? They don’t even know enough about Horatio Alger to sneer at the idea of a self made man anymore.
There is pushback, and there are bright spots. The kids aren’t dumb, just mal-educated. Some will find their way out of it. And the ‘country’ kids I’m meeting from the area around my BOL seem to be doing ok. I am doing what I can with my own kids.
We can all keep spreading the preparedness word, so people can learn what to do, and know they aren’t alone. And we can work to re-introduce our lost cultural stories whenever we can.
n
I live in a South Carolina town with “Forest” in the name. Not surprisingly, many trees were uprooted in my area and pulled down powerlines with them. My power was out from Friday morning to Sunday evening. Neighbor had two vehicles crushed by a large oak, another had a pine through the roof. My roof was replaced this past summer and I couldn’t find a leak. I had previously installed a generator interconnect to my panel and was able to keep the lights on and food cold. Rationed my stock of propane and gasoline for the possibility of a longer outage and have since been able to refill my stocks. No rumors of looting in my vicinity, though I have heard tales of such in the Augusta area where the damage is apparently much more extensive. People from the harder hit areas are becoming mobile and depleting supplies further out, so this thing may not be over yet. I’m keeping tools handy for cleaning up and for dealing with undesirables.
While I totally get your point on preparedness, nobody in Eastern Tennessee or Western North Carolina is going to be thinking about evacuating ahead of time due to a hurricane making landfall 4-500 miles away.
I’ve been thinking about this article all day. I’m close enough to have been listening to the radio chatter but not in the affected area. A couple quick thoughts.
To you question where are the stories of the prepared folk: I believe they are too busy doing what needs doing to save their communities to be writing stories. and the MSM doesn’t care about prepared folks, they want to see bodies.
But here is one anyway, from the absolute epicenter: https://qrper.com/2024/09/aftermath/
Obviously, Don’t be there. Is the answer.
But maybe just as a fun blog exercise you could write how you would handle the situation if it were your AO?
Here was the real situation for many:
-The weather report is that a truly, literally, Biblical level flood is possible in your AO, the likes of which has never been seen before in recorded history in this area. Do you believe them?
-You live on the side of a mountain, you are miles from the nearest river and you’ve never even heard of a landslide happening in your area before.
-Say you do believe them, and you wisely bugout – where do you go and what do you do?
-Once the storm hits, in 24 hours you house is gone and all your goodies that you didn’t bug out are gone.
-All 3 main highways back into your county are gone. Smaller road don’t even think about it. Your street is gone. You know the neighborhood next to yours is gone.
-Your work, your local hospital, and your sherrifs office are under water
– The same is true for the surrounding dozen counties and 50 miles in any direction
-There is no power, water, sewer, food, medical, or internet services expected for at least a week
What do you do?
As someone prepared, I can’t say I know what I would do of if I would have fared much better aside from getting out and not dying. I don’t see that there is any prep for your town being washed away.
All the best
I have to agree with the previous comment. As an Emergency Manager and a prepper, I would like to think I would recognize the situation and the forecast for what could happen. But I don’t have a viable bug out location that wouldn’t also be impacted so most of my stuff woukd be compromised.
This is now another scenario I need to think through.
CZ, and gang, Ol Bert had a Duce, who else has one ?
Loved those flicks, as my old boss said,
Attitude determines Altitude, he also said ( in 1980)
How many problems would you have if you had $10k
Cash in your pocket ? 🤔. 🤷🏿♂️😁
At least old Bert had his shit together. Which is more then I can say about the current incarnation of da Gummitt. This band of Marxist couldn’t find there asses in a well lighted closet.
It’s taken 4 days for FEMA to even get there to the stricken areas. Still no idea on casulties. What the hell happened to the grand plan to preposition equipment and supplies. Mr Trump and Franklin Graham had people on the ground with semi loads of supplies and three tankers of fuel within 24 hours. They were both also on site. So where is old Joey? Stuck on the shitter like always. Or his idiot Vice President. Still trying to figure out you have to plug the ear phones into the phone before you make a call. Yeah. Well stupid is no excuse for malfeasance. In these situations screwing deliveries up are causing people- our people to lose their lives. And that just won’t do. You can bet you ass if these government idiots had skin in the game things would run better. But as long as they aren’t getting the bullhorn up the ass these bastards could care less. Thank God for Ron DeSantis. He is actually prepared in Florida. And he is sending supplies and equipment to North and South Carolina and Tennessee.
Biden on the other hand said yesterday there would be no more supplies coming. They had given all they had.
That morning he handed Zelinski a check for 175 billion American dollars for the money laundering war in Ukraine. That’s were old Joey’s interests lie. That’s where he is filling up his retirement fund.
Commander:
Your last paragraph asks why we aren’t hearing success stories from affected areas?
The reason is simple – those in charge don’t WANT people realizing that they can survive without “The State” protecting them!
The “Nanny State” NEEDS people who want nannies…
Ceejay
I live in SC. We get an all out media blitz 4-5 times a year stating “the big one is coming!!!” The big one comes about once a decade. I understand why people get complacent. Still, it doesn’t take much effort to keep some water, shelf stable food, and a camping stove around. Buy an inverter for $20 and use your car to keep some power available. But if you did none of those things there was help available just about everywhere, except a few places where the media flocked to. So 99.9 % get by just fine without a plan.
I live in the upstate of South Carolina, so I have seen the local destruction first hand. Trees are down everywhere.
We have battery backup and multiple generators for just such an occasion. So does my next door neighbor. We both ended up loaning out our secondary generator to other neighbors and then having to provide gasoline as well. For the life of me, why someone with a freezer full of meat and refrigerator full of food doesn’t have a generator is beyond my comprehension. Power can go out anytime, for a myriad of reasons. To not prepare for that is just plain negligent. As has already been stated, normalcy bias is a cruel instructor. Meanwhile, my prepared neighbor and I have been going over lessons learned to make sure any next event scenario has less of an impact. What we haven’t done yet, is put together a comms plan; I have taken responsibility for getting that done. This has been a good test for us.
For those not so familiar with Western NC, Asheville is considered by some as the San Francisco of the southeast. I worked there back in the late 70’s and it wasn’t that bad then, but now, I stay away. It is overwhelmed by liberals, which is sad and disgusting, because it’s a beautiful area.
Now, the thing that has actually shocked me, is that as gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores open back up, the number of people in line at the gas stations and fast food restaurants has been almost unbelievable. The parking lots at the grocery stores have been packed. What that tells me is that most people have nothing in their homes to eat or no way to cook, or never considered the possibility that they should fill up their cars with fuel. When I took two of my jerry cans to get refilled with more ethanol free gasoline, one of the other men saw me and said, “that’s a good idea!” I was just thinking, yes it is, which is why I have 24 jerry cans full of treated gasoline at home.
I could go on and on, but I won’t. Somewhere along the way, people quit thinking for themselves and now we’re where we are as a country.
One thing most missed was this storm was FAR out of it’s predicted path into the Midwest and Great lakes region. I was actually preparing for impact Saturday. Instead the storm took incredible turns(tight 360+then due East?) into totally unforecast path with almost no advance warning. WNC has become very liberal but went to college with a group of guys from there and have been to some of the places devastated. These are not mostly artist colonies but areas for BOL with LMI. Transportation and utilities placement is biggest problem with most in flood plains and river courses due to ease of construction and cost considerations (8 BILLION to Ukes and 8 Billion to Israel and National Guard and Army deployed to support Genocide Operations means you get nothing Lady Lindsey approves). Living in that terrain basics must be met first. Best thing I heard was helicopter pilot delivering water told it was not needed as “guy has a well and generator” but lady with newborn should get to relatives.
Just how much gear do most have packed into their vehicle to leave home with?
And how much more needed things, pots,pans, stovesn filters,will fit in with them?
Some things we can not do without, nor carry with.
What’s great about not living in the effected area is that we can Monday Morning Quarterback ‘why didn’t they leave’, ‘where are all their supplies’, ‘why x, y, z happened’. It’s stuff WE can learn from but the biggest thing is – people don’t realize just how remote some of these towns are. Their roads go along rivers and streams through the mountains that had over 10 feet of water rushing through them. Many of the places were washed out downriver of where the actual dumping of rain happened. How do you prepare for that? Who here plans for 30″ of rain to fall a few counties away and expect massive flooding to happen in your town half way up a mountain?
It’s easy to ask why people didn’t prepare this or that – this was literally something nobody could have planned for.
I live in south central Georgia and took a direct hit from Helene. Always have several generators and multiple gas cans on hand. Glad I did. Power outage expected for 4 weeks here. Have plenty of food, fuel, camping stoves, and ability to pump water. Have the ability to get places within an hours drive to resupply if needed. Hard to deal with, but I feel blessed compared to those up north. God will get us through this and we’ll be stronger because of it.
I know a TN family that got flooded out of their farmhouse that was built in 1870. It flooded the second floor of the house. The family said the water rose a foot a minute once it started. Most of these areas are used to big floods every 20 years or so. This was simply so far beyond the scale of the normal disaster its hard to comprehend.
I have a coworker that left her house the day before the flood and packed to be gone three days. The road to her house floods out during something like hurricane remnants passing through. She’s the second generation of her family to own the house and shes over 50. Her house was lifted off the foundation and had 4 feet of water in it. Again, simply unprecedented.
I have some sympathy for those that did try to prepare for a disaster well in advance, but may have neglected a low-probability but catastrophic consequence events – like a hurricane in Tennessee.
That said, besides being most folks largest investment your home really is your first line of defense against disasters too. I mentioned an ICF home in “The Road” post last week and this is partly why…
https://i.postimg.cc/VsnCNN73/multi-hazard-rating.jpg
It’s strong enough to resist the rush of floodwater and it won’t float away. When an ICF home floods you wait for the water to recede, tear out the finishing, spray clean the walls, dry it, and replace the finishing. No structural damage, no rotting/warping, no mold, and no loss of insulation value. Both literally and figuratively, they’re bulletproof.
Ok….it is easy to sit around with running water, electricity, and heat/cooling while shaking your head at the poor slubs who didn’t evacuate ahead of the storm…but the reality of it is hurricane remnants pass over Appalachia all the time…the issue was some coastal pressure system was over the area for days prior soaking the ground…some places got 30 inches of rain but that was not forecast days in advance…it was an evolving situation and there was no evacuation order prior…toss in generational poverty, historical carpet baggig and cronyism, and liberal inept leadership and BAM…collapse…looting…people shot at gas tanks…chaos…..a lot of people were prepared to ride out thes torm but when the ground opens up and swallows your home it doesn’t matter…thanks for your opinions…Yankees go home
Well….I am living Helene right now first hand. I will do bullet points for easier reading and I am on my phone:
– i am a first responder(Deputy).
-we never got a heads up about the hit only thing was non essentials county employees and schools closed Friday.
– Took 2 days and half to clear my driveway and front of my land to get out.
– Mandatory overtime for all of us that just finished yesterday.
– local businesses saved our butt. Local gas stations that were able to get some power up reserved one pump for first responders. Our contacts with grocery store managers made us be able to have food at the station for us. I was able to get a few propane tanks for unprepared other first responders.
-looting was systemic. Every dollar store, convenience store, liquor store, grocery store got hit in my district. At the press conference, our mayor said looting was marginal and under control. Lol lol lol
-traffic was hell!!!! People do not know how to navigate intersections. Road blocked made response time hell.
– people should stay home. Streets were full of cars with people trying to go to the stores that were closed. People are so gullible with the rumor mill.
-crime crime crime. You get the picture.
-80% of the news were inexact by error or expiration.
-the official body count is a lie. I will not go into details here but oxygen machines stopped working pretty fast in those homes for example.
Now, my simple advices that will get you to the 80% of living conditions and safety:
– get a generator of medium size(mine is a Honda 2000i). With mine I am able to power the fridge, deep chest, a charging station for b batteries and a 30w fan . It consumes about 1.5 gal a day because it runs on economics 90% of time.
-keep on hand at least 30 gal of gas. I keep 50 and every 3 months I renew by filling the cars with the old.
-a good professional grade chainsaw is worth a fortune!!!! It clears your land and open your way if need to
-do not count on first responders fast response.
-get a water filtering device.
-have in hand canned food for 2 weeks at least ready to eat. I will say have 2 years of food but it is out of this scope.
-have a good relationship with your neighbors but most importantly know who are the a$$hole ones. I had issue with one I knew I would.
– I could go on but now the most important that I cannot stress enough: stay home!!!!! Do not go out. Right now roads are pretty open but still the traffic and people bad. Ride the crisis home as long as you can. We are day 11 now and it is a mess with all the repair trucks everywhere, wood piles and lights still out
I’m in Augusta, GA which was one of the hardest hit areas by the storm. For a little context, Augusta, GA has never experienced a hurricane in it’s recorded history that I can find. We have had natural disasters in the past, including an ice storm that hit us pretty hard several years ago, but nothing like this before. There was no evacuation order given here prior to Helene making landfall. In fact, Augusta is one of the first major cities on the Hurricane Evacuation Route (folks on the coast will know these signs posted on the interstates and highways). This is where people come who are typically escaping hurricanes. So practically no one left Augusta. We’re usually here, helping folks get a little bit of normal back in their lives while they are displaced due to an event like this. This was a first for most of the people here, and because of that, no one, myself included was really as prepared for this as they could have been. Now, we as preppers/survivalists/term du jour know that just because something has never happened before, doesn’t mean that it can’t happen or won’t happen in the future. I don’t need anyone second guessing or “what if”-ing my actions. That’s really for me to do with my own situation. I’m writing this as a bit of an AAR for myself.
Things I learned as a result of Helene:
1. Helene stalled over the Augusta area and gained strength. An area that has never had a hurricane before suddenly found themselves in the middle of a CAT-2 hurricane. Homes/businesses here are not built for this type of event. Destruction is catastrophic in most areas. My 80 year old parents house and car are completely destroyed. Gas stations can’t get power to power all the new fancy digital pumps. Restaurants and grocery stores are not built with backup generators here. The infrastructure is just not equipped to handle something of this magnitude..
2. See #1. Whatever preps you have, you probably don’t have enough. I can remember once in my 50 years of life before this event where I’ve been without power in every day life (not camping, etc.) for more than about 5 hours. That was the ice storm several years ago that I mentioned above. We went a week without power, and lots of folks are being told it will be another 4-6 weeks before they get power restored. I had a generator and fuel here and at the BOL. I’ll admit I didn’t have enough fuel at either location to run things this long. Also, pretty much every road was impassable. Again, no “evacuate” type of message issued here, because we are far enough inland that a hurricane has always been an unheard of event. Not this time though. I thought I was being smart by dividing my freezers between locations, and at my parents house. Never did I think that I would lose power for a week at all 3 locations at the same time. It’s just one of those unfathomable things before now. Actually it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because there was no way I could make it to all 3 locations to keep things running for a week plus at each place, even if I wanted to. I had to trek a mile on foot through what I would imagine downtown Gaza looks like in order to rescue and evacuate my parents from the remnants of their house. I (twice) and they had to go over and under and around 200+ year old oaks, hickory, pine, walnut etc. trees that were downed, power lines, gas meters leaking so loud it sounded like a jet airplane about to take off. Water lines spewing water 50 feet in the air. Augusta really was a beautiful area of the country before last week. My parents live across the street from the Augusta National Golf Club (to give the golf fans perspective). Topography in this are is pretty much the same there. Not trying to sensationalize anything, just reporting the reality. So the take away is no matter how much you have of truly critical supplies, you probably don’t have enough. I have to refigure out my gameplan as far as keeping things staged in multiple locations. I can’t be everywhere at once. If one of you has ideas/experience with that, I’d love to discuss at some other time, just not right now. Too much other stuff to think about.
3. Again, see #1 and #2. Got enough gas to run the generators, the vehicles, AND the chain saw? Got enough 2 cycle oil, and bar and chain oil to keep the chain saw running pretty much non stop 12-14 hour days for a week? Got extra chains and parts? Because guess what? It’s going to be the smallest things that grind you to a halt. I know the next time won’t look exactly like this time, but there will be some things similar. During the ice storm we had trees down on power lines (most in the area are overhead, not underground, because again, hurricanes don’t happen here). The main thing I want to remind myself on #3 is the part about the small things. The small things absolutely will hang you up and prevent you from doing the big things. That gate latch that hasn’t shut just right and you’ve been meaning to get around to fixing. Well now when suddenly when you need to lock that gate to deter people from stealing your generator becomes a big issue. That wobbly wheelbarrow base that you’ve just kinda ignored while you were doing yard work for years. Guess what you’ll get to now spend the time fixing before you can start moving around cut logs so that you can successfully leave your house. Don’t put off the little things. Fix them as soon as you find them, or as soon as possible at least. If you don’t, you’ll find yourself addressing every single one of them at the same time when you really need things functioning properly in an emergency situation before you can get on to the important work at hand.
4. Do better at staging your critical preps, testing your gear, and stocking parts, things you didn’t think about before. So about a year ago, I saw a post/comment that I think was from Frosty (if not, I’m sorry I didn’t give proper credit. if so, H/T to Frosty) about things to keep on hand in your preps. This wasn’t the typical list. This was things like PVC pipes, elbows. Plumbing stuff. Electrical stuff. Handyman stuff. Lots and lots of stuff that we see every time we go in the hardware store, but just kinda accept that we’re always going to have access to them. Well when the stores can’t open, suddenly you don’t have that access to them you thought you would. I remember reading what was written and thinking “that’s probably a bit overboard. I’ll never have a need to keep all of that stuff on hand.”. I was wrong. You’re going to want to keep all of that stuff on hand, because in a large scale event like the natural disaster we’ve just been through, having that extra PVC elbow can be the difference between rerouting a busted pipe that is shooting water into the air, and just sitting with a flooded kitchen. Why don’t you just cut off the water to the room you ask? Well when there’s a 5000 lb. tree in your way because it fell through the house, sometimes you just can’t get to the valve to turn the water off to the kitchen. Why not turn it off at the street to the whole house? Well there’s probably 15 5000 lb+ trees piled up over the water main out there, so that’s not an option. Anyway, your situation will be different from mine, and the next one will be different from this one, but the point is, get the stuff when you can and keep them on hand. I ignored it at the time thinking it was overkill, but it wasn’t. And as a side note, it’s weird what works and what doesn’t during a disaster, even from one house to the next. As far as staging your preps, LISTEN TO CZ!!! When you see CZ say stuff like “tie a funnel using a piece of paracord to the generator, or the fuel can. Attach a laminated copy of the quick start instructions to the generator”, by God, do it. Even though you think you’ll never forget the 3-4 steps necessary to get the genny up and running, when it turns to go time and the tensions are high, you’ll be amazed at the simple stuff that becomes foggy in your brain. Write it down and keep it with the equipment. Also, test your stuff that you don’t use every day and keep up with maintenance. I need to re-think the “test the generator every 6 months”. Though they worked just like they were supposed to, I might need to bump up the frequency more often, just in case. Every 3 months??? TBD. Also test the stuff that you use, but not necessarily frequently. The Coleman camping stove that the family uses a couple of times a year. Take it out every so often and just make sure it’s good to go. Check gaskets, etc. Just give everything that would become critical in a disaster situation a good once over on a more frequent basis. Set a calendar reminder, and do it. Don’t wait. If you do, the likelihood of it failing when you need it most will go up significantly. Lastly on this, think about where and how you stage your preps. I know we all will suffer from this. It’s all fine and great that you have the thing you need. If it’s not right where it needs to be though, and you have to spend time going to get it, or looking to find it, it’s going to waste valuable time when you need it most. The gas cans that go to the generator (that are full of treated gas for long term storage) need to be staged right next to the generator, not out in the tool shed in the back yard with the lawnmowers, etc. (they need their own gas cans full of treated fuel, etc.) Just overall thinking out the how/why/when I’m going to use something and put all the necessary parts and things to complete a process together in one place.
I’ll try to write more as I have time. This whole thing has been for me. Your situation will probably be different. Learn from my mistakes, and hopefully I’ve given at least one small sliver of something to make you think for your situation. Now I’ve got to go because there’s still lots to do, and it isn’t going to do itself.
Lastly, thanks CZ for giving those of us LMI’s a place to come and learn from each other, share valuable information, debate successes and failures, and just look at cool stuff. I really do appreciate it!