Everyone who's lived through an emergency has that one thing they didn't expect. The thing that ran out first. The workaround that saved the day. The purchase they made the week after and never regretted. These are those stories.
When Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2012, we lost power for 12 days. In our part of the country we've had hurricanes from time to time but they are usually glancing blows, so the damage caused by Sandy really surprised us.
The first thing we had to deal with was the fact that it was October so it was pretty cold especially at night. We were lucky in the fact that we have a gas stove and the gas service wasn't interrupted. We heated the house by boiling huge pots of water on the stove & keeping them going all day. It worked pretty good. Of course the nights were cold because we turned everything off before going to bed. The first person up in the morning had a pretty cold house to deal with until we got the pots going again. Luckily our water heater is also gas so we were still able to take hot showers, which was huge!
For cooking, we could use the stove top or our outdoor grill. The oven didn't work though without electricity. So from a cooking standpoint, it wasn't bad at all.
As far as getting some form of electricity going, we went from store to store looking for anything but everyone else from the area was doing the same thing. Generators were gone almost immediately. I remember stories about people from other states trucking in generators and fuel. Finally, in one store we found a small inverter that would run off our car. It was just by luck. Apparently someone had it and decided not to buy it and put it back on a random shelf. It wasn't in the right place but we just happened to notice it there when we walked past it.
Although it was small, we were able to connect it to the car battery and get enough power for one lamp. We were also able to run our cable modem and one television, so now we could get the news. We were surprised how little electricity a modern television actually needs. So, we had the inverter connected to the car battery and then a heavy duty extension cord running from that into the house. We had to have the car running all the time. We did that for several hours each day.
Gas wasn't easy to find because most gas stations couldn't function without the electricity to run their pumps. People were actually posting on Twitter when they found a functioning station and they would try to tell you how bad the lines were, which could easily be 1 or more hours. We managed to find one not too far and I recall being in line about an hour but we were able to fill the tank.
Around day 10, it was getting pretty cold and while the pots of water helped the house was staying pretty cold.
With the damage being so widespread throughout our state, cell service was mostly down. Getting a signal was very random to almost impossible. We ended up hearing that a different cell provider seemed to have working service. Since my wife was due for a new phone anyway, we were able to get her a new phone with the working provider, so eventually we could make calls. To this day my wife and I have phones with different providers to maximize the chances of having one that works during another outage event.
Following Sandy we purchased two 20,000 BTU kerosene heaters. We found an alternative kerosene-like fuel for them which has a long shelf life & less odor than normal kerosene. We run them about 3–4 days a year just to “exercise” them and burn through the oldest fuel. We now have about 30 days of fuel which we stored in our outdoor shed.
We also purchased two better quality inverters which produce a little more power than the one we originally found. That at least gives us something until we make a decision about a generator. Whole house generators have become more popular in the area since Sandy. Our inverters would only be for another prolonged extreme outage, but at least we have them.
When COVID lockdowns began in March 2020, we'd been prepping for a while. We never really expected to see an actual pandemic in our lifetimes so it wasn't really on our radar. In hindsight it's interesting what prepping for a pandemic brings to light, as opposed to generalized prepping for an unknown event.
I'm sure everyone remembers the early days of COVID when we thought you could catch it by touching your mail! We took the lockdown fairly seriously and effectively “closed” our house until 2021 when all members of our household had their second vaccination.
Especially in the beginning, grocery delivery via online orders was the way to go. Finding a delivery slot was almost impossible. We'd see one become available and by the time we clicked to reserve it, it was gone. We would sit each evening and keep trying to get a time slot. When we did, we would place a very large order. When it arrived, we had it left outside. We put on gloves and every single item was wiped down with Lysol wipes and left to dry before we would bring it inside.
Milk was very hard to get. When we were able to order, we would get 6 gallons and freeze it. It changes texture a little when it thaws but it was mostly ok. To our surprise, the very first thing we ran out of was butter. Who would think that? Luckily, due to our prepping, we had a #10 can of butter powder in our long term food storage and it worked fine for cooking and baking. We replenished that as soon as we could and we now have two #10 cans of butter powder with a 25+ year shelf life, that'll last us for a while.
Masks, gloves and sanitizing wipes were also almost impossible to get in the early days. It just so happened that we had one box of N95 masks we had bought to use when we were doing a home improvement project involving a lot of sanding. We didn't buy them as a prep at all. Now we do! We always have N95 masks, gloves and wipes in our “stockpile.”
Then there was the toilet paper hysteria. I recall the multitude of images from grocery stores with the shelves actually empty. We were lucky enough not to have a problem in that area but we have since started buying it by the case (80 rolls) and we keep an extra case on hand, two when we can.
We took social distancing seriously as well, especially in the beginning. We used blue painters tape to mark a line 6 feet from our door and made sure any visitors adhered to the distancing.
The pandemic definitely changed our prepping a bit. Mostly in the items we make sure we have & the awareness that something like a global pandemic actually can happen. Prior to COVID it was just something that made for a good apocalypse movie!