Well we lost power during the big ice/snow that rolled through the midwest, yesterday the high temperature was -2 (F), the low was -8 (F) and the wind chill, if you were dumb enough to be outside was hovering around -30 (F). Streets are slick as hell, especially in the rural areas where we don't get frequent snowplows or traffic, and trees are down across many of the roads anyway.
So if you find yourself in that situation, what the hell do you do?
I've got a fairly large generator, we were fine. We called some folks in the area to check up on them and offered to let them come over if they needed. Some had power, some had generators, none was without at that time. Looking around, especially as the sun dropped, we could see some homes with lights (obviously had generators) and others were pitch black.
Now I don't know the pitch black homes so I'm a bit at a loss, but what the heck do these people do? Do they leave and hope to find a hotel and let their house and potentially their pets freeze solid? Do they hunker down in blankets and ride it out? If you don't have a generator, what the heck do you do? I'm out in the country, several miles outside of the nearest small town and I'd guess that only 20% of the homes have generators out here (and we have pretty severe failure every few years). In the cities I'd guess only 1 in 50 have generators.
For whatever it is worth, we had a 'party' or a 'snow' day. Sure I checked the generator for oil every 4 to 6 hours. Even shut it down to rest for short periods (about 15 to 30 minutes) 3 or 4 times during the outage. But mostly we watched movies, played board games, and stayed INSIDE where it was warm.
Do people not worry about things like this because it sure looked like many were totally unprepared.
So if you find yourself in that situation, what the hell do you do?
I've got a fairly large generator, we were fine. We called some folks in the area to check up on them and offered to let them come over if they needed. Some had power, some had generators, none was without at that time. Looking around, especially as the sun dropped, we could see some homes with lights (obviously had generators) and others were pitch black.
Now I don't know the pitch black homes so I'm a bit at a loss, but what the heck do these people do? Do they leave and hope to find a hotel and let their house and potentially their pets freeze solid? Do they hunker down in blankets and ride it out? If you don't have a generator, what the heck do you do? I'm out in the country, several miles outside of the nearest small town and I'd guess that only 20% of the homes have generators out here (and we have pretty severe failure every few years). In the cities I'd guess only 1 in 50 have generators.
Clearly this is aimed more at the rural dwellers, but I suppose some of you in apartments or cities may have faced issues like this too. So what do you folks do? Our longest power outage has been 8 days with air temps during that period ranging from -20 (F) to +20 (F).
Do people not worry about things like this because it sure looked like many were totally unprepared.