I have looked back at the last few posts about my kitchen and boy, I even bore myself. Lists and lists of what is in the cabinets and why - I don’t even care about it. So let’s take a vacation from the kitchen.
I live in the New York City suburbs. We are currently awaiting a snow storm. Right now we are told that, depending on the “models”, the area where I live will be getting between 7 inches and 26 inches ( a large range) of snow overnight Friday to Saturday and through the day on Saturday. The timing of the storm keeps changing of course, before it was to start on Friday afternoon, currently it is pushed back to 3 am Saturday (not 2:59, not 3:14, but 3 am, for a huge area when we know that some areas will have the snow start and - hopefully - end earlier than others). Then again, if the storm does not head south into Texas, pick up water and then curve back towards the east coast - it might be nothing at all.
So the panic has started and people are getting ready. They are buying food and snow shovels and salt for driveways and sidewalks. I understand food - although knowing how people are around here, unless they are the type who eat out all time, they have more food then they could need for weeks already in their homes. (Okay, maybe they need a major run for doughnuts. hen I was in college Dunkin Donuts opened in our town. The first snow storm my mom, my dad, and I all went - separately - and bought doughnuts there before the storm - family minds think alike I guess.) Three years ago when Hurricane Sandy was headed here we were in Costco - people were loading up for the storm with all kinds of meat. This really confused me since if they lost their electricity they would lose the food they just spend money on. I can understand salt for the for the ice. What I cannot understand is why people need new shovels en mass. Sure, some people broke their shovels last year, some have just moved in to their houses, some might not like the shovel they had last year - perhaps even another child is old enough to help shovel and needs ones - but most people have last year’s shovel(s) still sitting around - have they lost them in the clutter of their homes? Did they toss them out at the end of last year thinking that it would never snow again? This always surprises me that there is a such a major run on snow shovels. We have shovels, but as we have aged and the past 3 years we have had snowstorms which resulted in much deeper snow (last year we had some huge storms that came 2 or 3 in a week) we gave in and, breaking the budget, made arrangements for a company to come and clear the snow from our small property although we still clear small storms.
When husband still went out to work it was my job to get ready for snow storms, hurricanes, etc. alone. He always thought that some of the things I did was odd. I would fill my gas tank - even if it was almost full. I would do the laundry - all of it - even if it was not the time of the week to do so. Yes, I admit it, I made sure we had enough food in the house. Due to the fact that we had 2 major hurricanes in the area with loss of electricity for an extended period in 2 years, I have started keeping less refrigerator/freezer items in the summer when the food would be lost if we lose electricity for an extended time, but more in the winter as food could always be put outside in the cold and it is harder to get to the stores to buy more when the road is frozen and icy, but easy to do so in warmer weather.
Now that we have had the two bad hurricanes, Sandy being the worst of them, as well as some bad winter storms (one of them the same week as Sandy - imagine a major tropical hurricane followed by a major winter nor’easter the same week). He understands.
Long Island is the biggest island in the contiguous 48 states. As a result in the past - before Sandy - if one area lost electricity one could go elsewhere on the Island and eat out or get gasoline and that figured into storm plans. Then Sandy came to visit.
We have always been warned that after a major storm there might not be any gasoline available - due to a combination of electrical outages of about 90% of Long Island for an extended time (we were out for 4 days, my sister for 2 weeks, my sister in law for 4 weeks and none of us were in the areas worst hit by the storm along the southern coast of the Island), so that gas stations that had gas did not necessarily have electricity to pump it and the fact that all of the bridges onto the Island were closed so no new gasoline could be brought in to resupply those stations which could pump gasoline - there was a major shortage of gasoline with lines and security needed at those stations able to pump. We had a car, a van, and a small RV - all with full tanks. We used the car sparingly - we went for a drive to see what was going on before we knew about the problem, after that we made one trip before the gasoline was again available - to my mom’s house to get her to leave it for the nor’easter as her house had been hit by Sandy and was in the line of the nor’easter and she had no telephone - she shuts her cell phone off so she does not use up the battery even when there is no storm. So filling your tank before storms can be really important. We live in an are near businesses, unusual here, so we walked. We walked to the post office, the supermarket, to vote... We went once to check the mail in our post office box (which is not in our local post office) which is several miles away, climbing over downed trees and around downed electric lines to do so.
We charge all of our laptop computers, tablets, and cell phones in advance of a major storm - they are left charging until the electricity goes out or the storm is over. Our local cable company has wifi which, despite their insistence that it is impossible, we get in the house, so even if we have no electricity, we have cable access - used sparingly if there is no electricity of course. We have copper wire telephone service in the house - no other electricity needed. After Sandy the cell phones did not work - the towers were damaged - but the copper wire phones worked fine.
I find the battery operated radios - this goes without saying. After Sandy the local (Long Island, not NYC) radio stations were broadcasting the local cable news channel - some of it was “look at this” which did not help, but since the NYC stations were not mentioning Long Island at all, it helped a bit.
I have mentioned that we are 1770's reenactors. In the 18th century (and probably others) furniture was kept against the walls (at rest) when not in use. The furniture needed would then be placed in the middle of the room and used and then put back. I do this as much as possible before storms. It is much easier and safer to walk around in a room with an empty center and not have to figure out what to walk around in the darkness or semi darkness.
I am doing the laundry - right now. I will make sure it is all washed and dried. Why? No electricity for an extended time means no clean clothes - and unlike many people, we don’t have enough for weeks and weeks.
Since we bought the RV we use it in our plans for storms and electric outages. It is currently charging. After the two hurricanes we would go in it at night, put up the antenna and watch TV for the evening. We did not put on the air conditioner or the heat (to conserve the batteries). Husband figured out that we could use the batteries for 2 hours and then run the generator for an hour and recharge them on 1/3 of a gallon of gas (had to conserve as mentioned above). I also used the kitchen in the RV to heat soup, cook eggs once (I don’t cook in it when we travel so we found out that when one cooks in it - the smoke detector goes off and needs to be covered with a shower cap.) We ate in the house though. (Did you know you can heat frankfurters by holding them under running hot water?) We could also recharge the assorted electronics. After Sandy everyone who had service was calling each other on the cell phones and reading books on their Kindles - and then realized they could not recharge them! Businesses which were open and had electricity were letting people plug in to recharge. (One community on the Island has its own power plant and generally has electricity when no one else does - even when the rest of the east coast has none - and people were going there - my mom went to a restaurant there and ate dinner and recharged her cell phone - just in case - while calling us with it plugged in.) We also (in warm weather) fill the RV’s water tank - 25 gallons - just in case. (It is currently “winterized” and we can’t use the water tanks until they are “dewinterized” next spring.)
Tomorrow I am running to NYC to a client so that I won’t have to go if there is snow and ice around next week. I have written checks to pay all the bills due out through the end of next week and will mail them out on Friday so we don’t have to worry about them. We will get gas on Friday also (after my trip to NYC and back). We will then be settled into the house for the duration of the storm.
So do you have a plan for weather or other emergencies? I know that other areas have far worse weather problems than we do here. I hope that if you are in the snow storm’s path you have an easy time of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment