I have a leg up as far as survival goes.
And this is all coming too late to help anyone now, but serves as a good list going forward, plus a reminder for me.
My mother and father raised me in a converted Mennonite farmhouse, with no indoor plumbing until I was about 22 months old. The story goes, she told my father she wasn’t going to potty train me with an outhouse and the bathroom got built.
We moved from the country to a subdivision when I was 7, but I remember remnants of the time before running water and electricity on the farm. The well outside with the hand pump provided fresh clean potable water. The bureau in the kitchen held several well maintained kerosene lamps. We had one of those ancient wood fired oven + stovetop, and that is how our food was cooked, bread baked and house heated when I was little.
I heard stories of the renovations that I couldn’t possibly remember wherein there was no insulation against the cold of Canadian winter, save some newspapers from the late 1800’s.
And that is another thing. I am Canadian.
We understand cold, our houses are built to withstand it. That being said, I have had a burst pipe (once, my bad) and many a flooded basement in my day.
I grew up in that farmhouse and the power went out a lot. But we didn’t need it. My mother had the radio on from the minute she woke up to get my father off to work, until we went to bed. If there was weather coming, she knew it. The bathtub was filled with washing/flushing water, the lamp wicks trimmed, the kerosene filled. And the garage always had enough wood to get us through for months lining the walls from floor to rafters. We had a root cellar and a deep freezer lined with ice, just in case. My mother had an impressive one acre garden and canned or froze everything she grew, all lined up in organized rows in the pantry. Of course we went to town for coffee, sugar, flour etc. but in the dead of winter where the roads were impassable, we never once went without.
I wonder what it was like for them to adjust. Both of them from Michigan, both from sizable towns. My mother and her best friend had been heads of the house at a commune for years and my father’s stoicism and capabilities to fix everything are the things of myths. But they weren’t raised on farms, they chose that lifestyle in their 20’s, before I came along.
I made a similar choice and was pretty dumbfounded about the lack of preparedness when I went to live with my husband on his farm. The garden was in ruins, the soil tainted by a leaking rototiller. A barn full of his hoarded mechanical crap instead of providing shelter for the sad looking chickens. If the power went out it was dark and miserable. And I had to give my horses lake water to drink every summer because our well would inevitably go dry, 2 trips a day, 13 buckets in the back of my jeep. I bathed in various lakes 3 months of the year too. But I made it work.
In retrospect I think it might have been easier for me to flip a Mennonite farmhouse into a productive homestead than it was to deal with his patched together hoarders paradise. Start fresh instead of constantly fixing what hadn’t been done right in the first place.
But I kept the animals alive, got the garden going for a couple of years. Fed us 100s of meals sourced within a 30 km radius by cultivating the land, raising meat birds and goats and forging good relationships with the neighbors, and when the power went out, we were fine.
I also remember the big eastern seaboard blackout of 2003, we weren’t so lucky. It was summer and my ex wouldn’t stop opening the fridge. Lost a lot of groceries and I actually had to walk home 2 miles uphill because transit stopped working when my boss finally let us close the restaurant.
We were in a grid of mostly industrial businesses, actually, our building was not zoned for residence so we were one of the last neighborhoods to have power restored. But at night we had light, because I had my mother’s kerosene lamps, wicks trimmed and ready. And I traded food with the upstairs neighbor for the use of his barbeque. I do remember how amazing it was to sit up on the roof and actually see the stars.
10 years later the ice storm of 2013 had us powerless for 8 days.
But, I was living in the snowbelt far out of town and everything I learned as a kid growing up in the nether reaches of nowhere had already been put into place.
Lamps, candles, batteries, non perishable food that didn’t need cooking, a freezer lined with ice, plentiful jugs of potable water.
Mostly prepared I should say, my piece of shit (now) ex boyfriend didn’t bother to fill the tubs and sink up so we scrambled for washing and flushing water. I was 2 hours away at work battling an ice storm to get home. But it did force me to completely drain the pipes so none of them froze.
I had a big beautiful fireplace, we stashed the contents of the fridge on the back porch and lived quite happily until the power came back on. Even had wood fired pizzas from scratch and I made a mean batch of fajitas. We lost some produce sure, all got a bit ripe a few days in, which could have been avoided had my pos ex filled the ample tubs we had with water like I asked him to. But we made it by melting snow.
It pointed out to me that there is a huge juxtaposition between city preparedness and country living. But with the weather getting weirder by the year, everyone should have
- Enough potable water on hand for 3-5 days of power outages.
1 gallon per person per day. More if you are me.
That means one of those 5 gallon jugs each, stashed away somewhere in the house. And a hand pump for the tops. - Sterno pods and/or a camping stove and fuel (alternatives listed below)
- Canned goods and a non electric can opener, other non perishables
- A battery powered or crank radio, also batteries.
- A cold temperature sleeping bag for each person in the house
- Candles, candles, candles. You can heat a room with a few tealights and a terracotta pot. Ikea sells 100 pack tealights, get 3 packs
(I’ll post a link to a “how to” below) - a) leave your taps to run a bit on cold nights or
b) know where your main shut off is for your house and empty the pipes completely.
Fill your bathtub(s) prior to a power outage so you can wash dishes and flush toilets. (Good way to drain the pipes too in case of freezing)
Potable water treatment tablets work too, if you can’t boil water.
Every item mentioned above can be stored in one rubbermaid (per person) at the back of a closet, labeled with the name of each member of the family. Make it fun if you have little ones, stash colouring books and crayons or non electronic games and treats in their bins.
Just make sure to rotate the canned goods and pick nonperishables that you actually want to eat.
Do a deep freezer clean out and layer bags of ice underneath everything, you lose a little space but it is better than losing all of your food and you know you aren’t going to eat those freezer burnt tater tots anyways.
I lived a long weekend of -20 degrees Celsius in a house where our oil heater went empty on the Friday by barricading myself in the living room and nailing blankets over the windows and doorways, I had one tiny space heater, candles aplenty, snow pants and 2 dogs. We made it until Tuesday morning.
A tent in an insulated room in your house also conserves heat when sleeping.
I am writing this, not to gloat or brag, but as a warning of sorts.
I grew up knowing how to do these things and I have realized how many people don’t know what to do and the weather just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
Rotate your food goods in conjunction with time change, just like the batteries in your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors.
Also, any combustible source of heat can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning, so be careful.
Stash an extra cord of wood in the garage if you are lucky enough to have a fireplace and a garage.
I plan on living in a tiny house living starting next year and have had to mentally reconfigure my space allotment in my head so I have all of these things on hand. Down south trailer living sounds great until the snow falls where it isn’t supposed to. I am currently looking up the pros/cons and specs for installing a tiny pot belly woodstove in a trailer.
We live in a technologically great age, but we have gotten away from being able to make it for a few days without power and running water, and it scares me. A quick trip to the camping supply section of the department store and basically the same amount of money you would spend on a couple dinners out, plus a little forethought and knowledge about how your house works is enough to save your ass when the weather gets weird and the government does nothing.
***Please note anything that produces a flame also sucks the oxygen out of the space you are in and can cause carbon monoxide poisoning, and in the last video with the pop can/alcohol stove 91% alcohol or higher and 1983 penny or older to be safe.
